Crytek’s Xbox One launch title Ryse: Son of Rome gets bigger on February 28 with the release of the Mars’ Chosen Pack DLC, which expands the game’s multiplayer with new maps, a new character skin, and an all-new survival-style mode. It’ll be $8.99 in the Xbox Games Store, though you won’t have to pay another cent if you already bought the game’s $19.99 Season Pass.
The Survival mode is a wave-based challenge for one or two players (online only for co-op). Your health is constantly draining away as foes swarm in from all sides, and you can only regenerate it by quickly dispatching enemies with executions. The health drain speeds up as you reach higher and higher waves, but so too do the gold and experience rewards. It’s not quite as structured as the main multiplayer mode, but it sounds like a clever evolution of Ryse‘s online play.
The Mars’ Chosen Pack also adds four new maps in all. “Firestorm” and “Dockyard” are specifically designed for Survival while “Pyramid” and “Obelisk” are specific to Arena. The popular Arena map “Courtyard” has also been optimized for Survival. It’s not quite a new map, but the re-tooled take is part of this content drop. Mars’ Chosen Pack also adds the “Legionary” character skin.
Microsoft will run a 10-day sale in the run-up to this DLC release. Starting on February 18 and running until February 24, the Games On Demand version of Ryse: Son of Rome will be marked down to $39.99. Other sales are planned too, likely for in-game content via the built-in microtransactions, but they’ll be announced daily from February 25-27, via Major Nelson and Microsoft’s Twitter and Facebook feeds.
