Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Remember when enemies in The Last of Us Part 2 reacted to their friends being killed and they made a big deal out of it? Here they do too. Speaking of that game, does that weird civil war Abby gets involved in really surpases the final act in this This Tomb Raider trilogy has been seriously underappreciated since the beginning, that first game really hurt their reputation, but they kept polishing the formula and the PS4 games are both great. It's too bad they don't get rid of some lame choices that really undermine the overalll perception of their work. Some of the criticism sounds a bit like saying BB King is too much blues, to recall one of my favourite quotes.

This is the most contemplative one so far, there are long stretches with hardly any combat. It focuses on exploration, with a sense of progression and discovery. It takes pride in the Tomb Raider IP, delving deeper into Lara's character and what makes her compelling. They realized she needs a supporting cast and rightly fixed Jonah's character, one of the weaker aspects of "Rise...", and put more effort into her sidekicks than the villains. This helped the emotional climax, tapping into Lara's loneliness and self-demanding nature. If you're gonna make narrative videogames you got to think about this stuff.

I had a lot of fun and it looks spectacular, except when they used those horrible robotic animations. The crazy setpieces are few and far between. Of all the questionable mechanics there are, I can't get over the magic rope thing, but they didn't abuse it half as much as in the previous games. The platforming was varied and well thought out. Light and verticality were used in expressive and exciting ways. I don't think it has anything to envy Naughty Dog or Santa Monica (except recognition), it's just that their plots don't really appeal to 20/30-year-old males, who are the opinion-makers.

The plot often devolves into nonsense, there's a complete disregard for the language barrier and I could go on and on nitpicking, but overall it did the job, reminiscent of 80's adventure films, not just Indiana Jones, it was cool when she went all Predator. There's not an ounce of ludonarratve dissonance here, she's affected by the violence. Some scenes were effectively moving so for all its flaws the story was controlled. It leaves her character a bit where she needed to be to begin with, so looking forward to seeing what they do next.

Crystal Dynamics already made a reboot of sorts with their Legend trilogy, but then decided to have another go with another reboot trilogy. "Shadow Of The Tomb Raider" is the final game in this new trilogy, but has been finished by Eidos.

The graphics here are really impressive and there's a lot of detailed objects and a few densely populated villages. There's an improved volumetric lighting model, and a warmer colour palette. However I did notice a few lighting bugs, like if I turned slightly, the area behind me sometimes went dark.

I thought the facial animations were rather inconsistent - sometimes they looked impressive, but then other times they looked rather strange. There were a few occasions where the dialogue seemed rather quiet. In the menu, you can choose if you want the natives to speak their own language or in English. Lara will reply in English regardless though.

Another impressive option is how "combat", "exploration" and "puzzle" difficulty can be set independently. Exploration determines the amount of paint illustrating climbable areas, and I think Puzzle difficulty drops more hints.

The game opens with a Day of the Dead festival in Mexico. It features very slow walking as you talk with Jonah - seems like Assassin's Creed with the crowds and easing people out of the way. When you do get some action, you take out a few enemies using stealth. You meet Dominquez, the leader of Trinity, who seeks a magical dagger and box to remake the world. After rappelling down into a tomb, Lara takes a mythical dagger and triggers an earthquake which floods the area, and puts you into an intense action sequence of the typical collapsing structures as you leap to safety. Lara feels guilty about triggering some apocalyptic events and wants to stop Trinity. You then fly to Peru where your plane crashes and you get temporarily split from Jonah and lose all your equipment which you need to recover, but all you get is your bow at first. After an encounter with some ferocious jaguars, you eventually come across a small town and Lara's adventure truly begins, eventually spending a lot of time in the nearby Paititi.

The action set-pieces were toned down in the last game, and it's the same here. However, the few that are here are very over the top like the floods, and a helicopter chase whose gunfire is spraying everywhere but at Lara.

They have also decided to tone down the combat - now putting an emphasis in platforming, puzzling, and stealth. In the previous games, I felt there were some ideas that weren't really developed, or pretty much forgotten about and this is also this game's weakness.

The hunting and crafting aspect is still here, and could have been more interesting, given the jungle setting. You will find some capybara, deer, jaguars, and a few birds. The skins are used for upgrading your weapons, but you don't use your weapons enough for it to be meaningful. Many skins are also acquired through chests.

The costumes are a good idea for customisation, but there's sections of the story where you are limited to the native's attire. For the capacity upgrades, these are now purchased in shops. To access the Large pouches, you need to unlock a specific upgrade. However, I didn't see them in the current shop. The next shop I found did have them, but I couldn't buy them because I didn't buy the small ones from the previous shop.

There's loads of plants, wood and other miscellaneous things to pick up in the environment, but I was often at maximum capacity, and then occasionally sold my stash at the shop. There was a long period of time where I hadn't visited a shop and therefore was just ignoring all the loot as I explored (since I was at max capacity). I did wonder if I would find the latter parts of the game difficult if I was limiting the amount of money I had, but it made no difference. Maybe on higher difficulties it matters, but the standard difficulty means you can just rush through and ignore all this because you don't need the extra equipment.

As usual, campsites act as quick travel points, and the place where you craft and spend your upgrade points on perks. The skill tree seems a bit cluttered in its presentation. There's some unlocked at certain story points, some have prerequisites but often aren't even related. There are many upgrades that increase the available moves you have like special arrows, explosives, and a few stealth moves. However, many you barely use due to the limited combat situations. I think I bought the Lure Arrow upgrade really early on, but I didn't see an option to craft the arrows. I think they required poison, but it turns out there was another upgrade I needed in order to obtain poison, but it wasn't a prerequisite for the Lure Arrow.

There's a few simple cover-based shooting sections, but most of the combat scenarios see you hiding in bushes and mud walls, attempting to take out the enemies using stealth. Lara seems significantly weaker in the damage she can take, and the damage she deals, so simply gunning everyone down is more of a challenge. You can quickly craft healing items to restore your health, and there's a couple of special items to improve "perception" or "endurance" which can help in combat (also aspects I barely used). Lara still dodges using her "scramble" technique which is a less elegant form of fleeing, almost on all fours, and great for moving between cover. There's no acrobatic flip like in the original series of games. It's always beneficial to look out for the classic exploding barrels which can quickly dispatch groups of enemies. Otherwise try and go for a trusty headshot.

Lara has some guerrilla warfare tactics here, and occasionally goes full Rambo. If she finds a muddy patch, Lara can cover herself in mud which reduces the enemy's visibility of you, and allows you to back against a mud-covered wall. You can sneak behind enemies and strangle them, and if you are currently in a bush, Lara will drag them to the bush to hide the body. Enemies always die silently even if you are axing them in the back. Bodies out in the open can be rigged with explosives to take out an inquisitive guard. Some trees can be climbed, and if an enemy walks under the tree, Lara can either leap down for a kill, or use the rope arrow to pull them up and hang her victim on a tree.

If enemies see a fallen soldier, they will begin to search the immediate area. If they see you, then they will actively engage. I think you might be able to flee and hide, but it was hard to do so, and sometimes they seemed stuck in that alert state. There was one bizarre moment where enemies were alerted to my presence but I didn't know what triggered that state because I was 40 yards away and hadn't killed anyone in their vicinity.

When you clear out an area with pure stealth, it's like a violent logic puzzle. There were a couple of occasions where I couldn't work out how the designers wanted you to progress - enemy patrol paths don't pass your hiding places. Then I couldn't work out how to take them down when there was a fixed enemy with a line of sight covering their position. Maybe you needed to lure specific guards away?

I loved popping out of water to take out enemies, but I think there were only maybe 2 situations across the game.

There's loads of crates to find, then more unique relics, and diary entries. This time, you need to press another button to view what you have found which I imagine pleases the speed-runners. It keeps the pacing of the game up which was a problem in the previous game. You can also look at previous objects in the menu anytime.

Just like the previous game, there are certain objects with text which levels up Lara's appropriate language skill. All this really means is that there's a few objects you may find, but need to come back to later in the game to actually get the XP. For the most part, I could read it straight away anyway. It's pretty pointless really.

Lara still uses her Survival Instinct which can highlight interactable objects, collectables and enemies. Some aspects are upgrades, and some aspects can be tweaked in the options menu if you feel this makes the game too easy. There's an upgrade which also can highlight traps, which, again, is a rarely used mechanic in the game. Since it was underutilised in the previous game, I expected them to use it more here, especially since they have increased the size of the challenge tombs. I suppose I only found a few of them.

The challenge tombs are normally purely puzzle and exploration, although this time there was one that involved combat. Many of the puzzles rely on physics, so you might be weighing down a ramp/elevator, moving rafts, or spinning structures. I found some of these aren't as obvious what to do, or might be slightly janky in execution.

There's lots of climbing around which is like the usual Prince of Persia style stuff such as shimmying, jumping off poles etc. The jumping animation seems a bit more floaty, yet there's loads of jumps you think you should make but won't. Then sometimes she will awkwardly jerk to make sure you reach the platform. One place I forgot about rappelling (you were supposed to drop down, then wall run right), and instead I just jumped and held right. Lara seemed to awkwardly jerk, and I actually made the jump. There was a similar thing later on in the game where I definitely bypassed a few jumps.

The previous game introduced swimming but these sections were very brief and usually was a case of holding forward for a few seconds. Now these sections are much larger, and more free-roam. Lara can hold her breath for quite a long time but it wasn't clear how long you actually had left. Many sections involve popping up at designated breathing holes, and sometimes avoiding eels and piranhas.

There are some really claustrophobic sections where Lara is pulling herself through a tight crevice. All you do is press forward to progress but it's quite stressful to watch. I'm not sure if this is a hidden loading screen, or is there just for tension and putting Lara in uncomfortable/perilous scenarios. There's loads of places where you need to squeeze through small gaps in walls to progress - these are definitely loading screens, but the frequency of them is a bit jarring in terms of immersion.

Throughout the game, Lara will acquire gadgets to progress to new areas. The rope arrow is a key feature like the previous games, and the grapple axe is more prominent. You often use it to swing across chasms, and also rappel down walls. The grapple and rappelling are quite slow manoeuvres so I feel using these more does slow the pace down. Once you acquire the spiked shoes, you start climbing rocks that are angled towards the screen. I don’t think this adds anything other than feeling rather awkward/cumbersome.

Although it does still feature some of the negatives of the previous game, and some negatives of its own, I think I preferred the jungle locale over Siberia so I think I have a slight preference for this one. It doesn't capture the action and atmosphere of the first game, so that remains the best in the trilogy. I think the main frustrations is that there’s all these ideas but they aren’t fully fleshed out, but the gameplay is fine overall.

"Shadow of the Tomb Raider" adds nothing to the franchise but is a fun adventure with the heart in the right place. Among the post-Core Design titles, it might be the only one that felt like a classic "Tomb Raider". The gameplay is the exact same as "Rise of the Tomb Raider", but the developers finally realized that they had to focus more on exploration and puzzles rather than gunfights.

The locations have always played a significant role in making a Tomb Raider intriguing and enjoyable, and the Mayan/Aztec setting is exactly what we needed. It's clear that a lot of time and careful research was put into creating the scenarios. I also appreciated how the collectibles are integrating the plot with actual historical facts and mythology trivia.

The only problem is again the writing and direction of the narrative sequences, still ages behind competitors like the "Uncharted" or even "God of War".

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the best examples of AAA mediocrity outside of Ubisoft titles. For context, i feel like Tomb Raider 2013 was a solid title (if yet it never touched the toes of Uncharted) and Rise of the Tomb Raider felt more of the same. This feels a bit step down from the first 2 in the trilogy in just about everyway

First off the visuals and the music seem to have not been improved at all, and in some areas actually downgraded. The most important of these is the blood spatter and enemy animations to gunshot, which look terrible and make the shooting feel very unsatisfying.

Then there is the story, which seems completly unintentional in how they paint Lara as a sociopath. I cant get behind their cause, not even due to the more sympathethic characters like Jonah. They feel either paperthin or incongruent. There is quite a few content in terms of side quests, but these feel very rushed and the payoff is never rewarding.

Finally there is the gameplay. There is a bigger reliance on puzzles and climbing this time around, the first of which are moderatly satisfying to solve, the climbing on the other hand always feels a drag..
As for the few times you are in combat, it feels like the game implemented all these systems to encourage the players to go the stealthy route, but because of how slow enemy movement is, this is the most boring way to tackle combat. Shame is that the shooting is so unsatisfying, and the enemies are so bulletspongey, to make more aggressive playstyles unfun.

I struggle to find positive points about this game, its as safe as AAA goes, very little ideas of its own and lacks creativity.

Bleh... I'm a pretty big fan of the Tomb Raider reboot from back when (2013) and I even thought the sequel - Rise of the Tomb Raider - built upon the first in interesting and unique ways. I love how the reboots try to distance themselves from the linear cinematic-driven Uncharted series by putting more of a focus on crafting, hunting, open world exploration, rewarding backtracking, and world lore. But sadly; Shadow of the Tomb Raider fails at providing a satisfying conclusion to the epic trilogy, it fails to introduce compelling new ideas WHAT SO EVER, and quite honestly feels scaled back and much more flaccid compared to the previous two entries. That's not to say that the game is a complete bomb however, the team over at Crystal Dynamics have become renowned for their work in environmental design, the writing put into the lore and collectables is still inspired, and the challenge tombs still gleam as the game's coolest side objectives. That said; the story is borderline awful, the combat sucks, and most of the puzzle solving is obvious and simple.

The story takes off sometime after the second game concludes (but you would't know it since barely anything from the previous games actually impact this game's story), Lara Croft and her partner Jonah find themselves in Mexico in search of a key to a mysterious silver box that's supposedly used to "remake the world"... Interrupting their search is Trinity; the vague and generic militia lead by a man named Dr. Dominguez who basically shows up out of nowhere at the start of the game without any build up or foreshadowing from the previous games. Dominguez steals the key which initiates a series of natural disasters followed by the apocalypse?... And Lara must follow Dominguez over to Peru in order to stop him and save the world... Ya'know I always kind of liked how the Tomb Raider games leaned more on supernatural elements than Uncharted did, but this time it borders on outrageous.

The acting is stale and dry for the most part which is something the series has struggled with from the very beginning, none of the characters really stand out other than Lara and Jonah; thankfully the writers decided to explore their relationship a bit more and shed light on how Lara's obsessive behaviour negatively effects those around her. There are some weak attempts to have Lara reflect on her childhood and parents, but these themes are so few and far between that they only really serve to give the developers an excuse to add in a childhood sequence that basically rips off of Uncharted 4. The writers also try to connect trinity and Dr. Dominguez to an ancient tribalistic cult which feels completely forced and awkward. There are a few disaster/army/action sequences within the game that are so over the top that it's practically satire, and they also decided to throw in the demented cave people from that Descent movie into the mix cause why not? It's sad but it really feels as though the writers had no clue on how to pick things up after the second game and just pulled this story out of their asses. There's so little emotional content in the main campaign and the villain - Dr. Dominguez - is totally flat and predictable.

Let's move on to the gameplay, but then... What's there to talk about? Nothing's changed... Lara's arsenal and gear are completely identical to that of the first and second games, IN FACT; you actually have less at your disposal than you did in the previous game. The developers actually think they're clever by introducing rock climbing at steeper angles... And repelling from walls with a rope (which is basically just them playing catch-up with Uncharted). What's even more annoying is the fact that the game can't help but blurt out the solutions to puzzles by showing tutorial-esque text prompts where they want you to go (even well into the game!) and having Lara think the solutions out loud herself... I think you may be able to tweek this in the difficulty options under "puzzle difficulty", but it's not like it makes the puzzles any more difficult tbh... There's also a weird new emphasis on underwater sections where Lara must swim between air pockets evading piranhas and giant eels. And honestly I didn't mind it so much in fact I wished they explored these diving elements way further than they did. The challenge tombs showcased the best puzzles in the game; my favourites being a lost Spanish Armada ship and a brain teaser involving mirrors. The game also has crypts to explore and NPC quests you can get involved in through the various hubs and villages within the world, but rarely were they deep or compelling outside of a few items and alternate weapons you can unlock as rewards.

Overall there's less of a focus on combat in this game, whenever bad guys show up the game usually encourages you to take a stealthy route. They did introduce a couple of new abilities for Lara; like crafting "jaguar fear arrows" that make enemies open fire on one another, and the ability for Lara to copy Batman and string enemies up with ropes atop tree branches... Cool ideas, but the thing is; there's so few legitimate enemy stealth sections in the game that it's like why bother? Like you unlock the fear arrows and only have a few opportunities to use them before the game's over (assuming you don't decide to do the boring side quests). Honestly so much of this game's progression system is pointless, you barely ever make use of a bulk of the things you unlock from the skill tree, hunting is completely unnecessary because you can just pick up furs as collectables scattered around the world, and the different outfits you can craft don't make much of a difference either. And good lord is the aiming horrible with her weapons at close range, where the hell were the play testers???

This game is a disappointment man, a really anti-climactic way to end an otherwise terrific trilogy. Nothing here is broken necessarily, and their is a certain level of talent and polish but into specific areas of the game's design. It just doesn't live up to it's predecessors on nearly every level. Rather than taking things a step further the developers just re-tred the same old grounds for the most part and even take a few steps back here and there. I have a hard time recommending this to series fans let alone newcomers, but either way your best bet is to try the first two games out because they are far more robust experiences than this in my opinion.