Lords of the Fallen, Borderlands free with Xbox Live Gold in March

By Danny Cowan February 23, 2016

Microsoft will hand out another batch of free games for Xbox Live Gold subscribers in March, including the Dark Souls-inspired action-RPG

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Lords of the Fallen and an Xbox One-compatible version of Borderlands.

The full Games With Gold lineup will be free to download throughout the month of March for Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners with an active Xbox Live Gold subscription.

Related: Lords of the Fallen review

From March 1st through the end of the month, service subscribers can download a free Games With Gold copy of Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments for the Xbox One. Developed by Frogwares and originally released in 2014, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments is a mystery-themed adventure game in which players guide the renowned detective through six cases of increasing complexity.

Detective work plays a major role throughout Crimes and Punishments, as players will need to interrogate suspects, investigate crime scenes, and identify guilty parties as they navigate the game’s challenges.

Also making its Games With Gold debut in March is Supreme Commander 2, an Xbox 360 real-time strategy game from Square Enix. The free release will also mark the first time that Supreme Commander 2 will be playable on the Xbox One via the platform’s backward compatibility feature.

Another backward-compatible release Xbox Live Gold subscribers can look forward to in March is Borderlands, a co-op first-person shooter featuring a distinctive otherworldly setting and loot-based gameplay mechanics. Multiple sequels followed in the wake of Borderlands‘ 2009 release, including the series compilation Borderlands: The Handsome Collection for the Xbox One.

March’s final Games With Gold title is the Xbox One version of Lords of the Fallen, a dark fantasy action-RPG inspired by From Software’s notoriously difficult Dark Souls series of games. Lords of the Fallen will be free to download for Xbox Live Gold subscribers between March 16th and April 15th.

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Gaming

The best rings in Lords of the Fallen

The Lords of the Fallen trailer.

Magical rings are nothing new to fantasy or games, and Lords of the Fallen makes good use of these little pieces of jewelry. Unlike armor or weapons, rings are an accessory that gives you passive bonuses as long as you're wearing them. While not as immediately noticeable as other gear can be, some of these rings are quite strong and can do a lot to improve your build and playstyle. Some give straight attribute buffs, while others have more conditional effects, but with dozens to pick from and find, you'll be spoiled for choice. No matter what build you're going for, these are the best rings to bling out your character within Lords of the Fallen.
Best rings

There are well over 50 rings in Lords of the Fallen, and despite your character having 10 fingers, or at least 8 if you don't count thumbs, to wear them on, you have to choose only two at a time. Rings can be found either in chests or by beating special enemies or bosses.
Ring of Nourishment
Health is your most valuable resource in Lords of the Fallen, as is the case with all Soulslikes. You have limited healing options normally, so getting through a tough or new area can wear your character down over time as you run out of healing. The Ring of Nourishment can't replace your default healing but is a great supplement to keep you going and save a few charges. Each enemy you kill while wearing this ring will restore a bit of your health. If you play carefully and smartly, you can use it to completely undo some mistakes. This ring won't do you much good in boss fights, though.
Ring of Gnawing
For the more spell-focused builds, mana is always tough to manage. Unlike stamina, which will automatically replenish itself over time, but require you to rest at a checkpoint or use a consumable item. If you have the Ring of Gnawing, you can get a bit of mana back every time you hit an enemy with a normal attack. This is ideal for builds that spec in both strength or agility and a magic focus since you can swap back and forth as you regain and spend your mana.
Ring of Duty
This is a somewhat boring pick, but if you're a more traditional build focused on hitting things hard and fast, then the Ring of Duty is an easy one to slap on. This simply buffs both your VIT and END attributes to make you that much harder to kill.
Queen Verena II's Ring
If the Ring of Nourishment is a bit too risky for you, you can always fall back on the Queen of Verena II's Ring. This is a simple HP regen ring that slowly ticks up your health over time. If you are patient enough, you can take a break after each encounter to get back to full health before moving on, though that can be quite boring.
Ring of Bones
Lords of the Fallen breaks down your equipment load into four categories: light, medium, heavy, and overburdened. Most players will feel most comfortable at either medium or light burden levels for a more fluid feeling combat flow, but keeping yourself that light is tough without forgoing some armor or weapons. The Ring of Bones can help you sneak under these thresholds by increasing your character's maximum equip load.
Mineowner's Ring
As an alternative to the Ring of Duty, or complement to it if you wear both, the Mineowner's Ring is focused only on stamina. Not only is it a better stamina buff, but it also increases the rate your stamina recovers so you can get back on the offensive as fast as possible.

Gaming

How to unlock the Dark Crusader class in Lords of the Fallen

A warrior stands in an Umbral hallway in Lords of the Fallen.

While not a universal rule, most games that fall into the soulslike genre feature different starting classes that dictate how your character will play -- at least early on. In Lords of the Fallen, you will choose between a list of nine default classes, but there are a couple more that aren't immediately available to you. The Dark Crusader is an interesting one, as there are technically two ways to get it, but only one that lets you do your first playthrough as this brooding soldier. This isn't an overpowered class to pick, but it is a great choice if you want a strength and radiance build. Here are the two ways in which you can unlock the Dark Crusader in Lords of the Fallen.
How to unlock the Dark Crusader
The easiest way to unlock this class, and the only method where you can have access to it before playing the game at all, is to have purchased the Deluxe Edition of Lords of the Fallen. While it is disappointing for the game to withhold a class from players who didn't pay extra, the silver lining is that there is a natural way to get the class without spending any extra cash.

If you're playing on a normal copy of the game, unlocking this class will take a bit of work. You must access and fully complete Issac's side quest chain. This involves finding and examining four Umbral stigmas, followed by defeating Issac and claiming his gear from the Umbral realm. The last step is to summon Issac to help you during the boss battle against the Lightreaper. After you've finished this questline, you will be able to select the Dark Crusader when starting a new character.

Gaming

The impending Xbox 360 Store closure makes me wary of Game Pass’ future

I'm an avid Xbox Game Pass user, often trying almost every game that comes to the service and closely following the games coming to and leaving the service each month. Following some recent announcements by Microsoft, though, I've been thinking a lot more about something else about Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft's current digital-focused Xbox storefronts and ecosystem: what happens when it all goes away?
Microsoft announced last week that it will shut down the Xbox 360 Store in July 2024. After that day, it will be impossible to buy games, movies, or TV shows digitally on the Xbox 360 store; it's just like what happened with the 3DS and Wii U eShops earlier this year. That announcement also came not long after Microsoft revealed it would replace Xbox Live Gold with Xbox Game Pass Core in September. With these changes, Microsoft is stamping out any support or focus its giving to the Xbox 360's era as a platform. As someone who grew up mostly playing Xbox 360, seeing these things I grew up with go away is saddening. It's also making me think about the day this will eventually happen to Xbox Game Pass or the store on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Frankly, I'm not as concerned that Microsoft is going to do it anytime soon. Microsoft has given no indication that it plans on abandoning Xbox Game Pass. It's a really successful subscription service heavily integrated into all of its current platforms, there are titles confirmed to launch day one on it into 2024 and beyond, and Xbox initiatives like Play Anywhere and Smart Delivery ensure that at least some version of most Xbox games are available on other platforms. While I expect it to be the primary part of Microsoft's gaming strategy over the next decade, as someone who mainly played Xbox 360 growing up and is now seeing its storefront and subscription service go away, I'm now thinking about what the end of the Game Pass era will look like.
These recent actions have indicated that Microsoft will eventually be willing to do the same to the storefronts and subscription service we're currently using. Even after the backlash PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox all faced from these announcements, Sony is the only one that has backtracked its plans to close down older digital storefronts, at least temporarily. Xbox Game Pass is the current hotness for Microsoft, but what happens come the day it isn't? A lot more games are digital-only or tied to a subscription this generation, and those are the games most at risk of being lost if a digital storefront shuts down.
What happens to the Xbox console versions of games like Pentiment or Immortality on Xbox once Xbox Game Pass and the current iteration of the Xbox Store are shuttered? Yes, they can be played on PC, but the Xbox console version will be lost forever. And right now, it doesn't seem like Microsoft has any publicly shared plans to permanently preserve those experiences, nor has it done so for all of the Xbox 360 digital games going away. Game preservation is a significant problem facing the game industry, and Microsoft has just made a move showing that it's on the wrong side of that effort.