I don’t need to kill people to enjoy a video game

Death. It’s all around us.

Whether it’s those horrible news stories that appear all the time, gruesome murders that occur far too often in our towns and cities or in the form of entertainment, whether that be in a good book, cinema or … video game.

While video games get an increasingly bad reputation for turning the youth of today into the killers of tomorrow (for which there is very little evidence) they do have a tendency to prioritise guns and violence in order to make a profit.

There’s nothing wrong with that. We should understand and accept that the market and buying trends will dictate what is made.

Games like Doom, Call of Duty, Uncharted and Fortnite, all glorify (to varying degrees) guns and killing. One series that has always been at odds with it though, is the Tomb Raider series.

Originally released back in 1996, Tomb Raider was heavily skewed towards platforming and exploration. While main protagonist Lara Croft did bring a pair of iconic pistols with her on her journey, she wasn’t in active combat for the majority of the game. Even when she was, it was usually against wild animals (and for no apparent reason a T-Rex at one point) and was very much in the act of defence rather than a desire to kill.

Things changed for Lara and the series as it became more popular and sequels threw more and more gun-toting action and death towards our screens.

For the next two generations of consoles, Tomb Raider forgot its roots that focused on platforming and exploration, instead prioritising senseless murdering.

The much-maligned rebirth of Tomb Raider back in 2013 was positively received and critically acclaimed, but it did lean more heavily into action, with hundreds if not thousands of enemies slaughtered by Lara in all manner of gruesome ways as players made their way through the game.

The ‘reboot trilogy’ as it’s now dubbed, concluded in 2018 with the release of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. A game that has unfortunately gone under the radar for both critics and fans of the series — and myself as well until I got my hands on it recently.

The most recent entry into the series scored lower than both the Tomb Raider reboot and its sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider. Unlike those two games though, Shadow of the Tomb Raider walks a slightly different path.

Combat encounters are limited and much of the game is spent with Lara surveying the scenery, plotting her route across treacherous mountains, swimming through dark caverns and solving a plethora of ancient puzzles in order to move through the game. It’s at odds with what came before and in many ways is more in touch with the origins of the series than any past game.

Perhaps because of this it’s more of an acquired taste and one that I prefer. While games like Uncharted and other action games certainly have their place and are (it seems) more popular with audiences, I can’t help but be glad that Shadow of the Tomb Raider tried to minimise the death and increase the exploration, puzzle-solving and platforming that the original did so well.

If you haven’t already, give Shadow of the Tomb Raider a try. You might find that all the killing of other games gets in the way of the journey.