Shadow of the Tomb Raider Review
More of the same story
Whenever I fire up any edition of the latest reboot of the Tomb Raider series, I’m reminded of the exploits of George and Harold from the children’s paperback series Captain Underpants. George and Harold, much like Lara Croft and her best friend, Jonah, get caught up in some crazy adventure and quickly find themselves in over their heads.
“OH, NO!” screamed Harold.
“HERE WE GO AGAIN!” screamed George.
This time, Lara and Jonah are on the trail of a Latin American artifact, the Dagger of Chak Chel, which is the key to another artifact, the Silver Box of Ix Chel. The latter artifact serves as a “Pandora’s box” that would unleash an event called “The Cleansing.”
Much like Indiana Jones and his combative relationship against the Nazis, Lara and Jonah are fighting against Trinity once again to prevent them from bringing about a Mayan apocalypse.
Gameplay
Players control Lara in a variety of ways, including solving environmental puzzles, exploring tombs, hunting animals, crafting upgrades for her equipment, and killing Trinity soldiers/wild animals along the way. The exploration part is linear and somewhat impairs the feeling of actual discovery, which comes across as more of a parent on Easter Sunday giving obvious hints to where the eggs are.
I found myself wandering around some patch of jungle only for a notification to pop up telling me there was a challenge tomb nearby and to explore to find the entrance. I didn’t have to look far considering Lara has a Survival Instinct ability similar to Eagle Vision in the Assassin’s Creed series that highlights objects of note in any environment.
The environmental puzzles, while a staple of all Tomb Raider games, get to be annoying at times, taking me out of the game world after dying multiple times because I slightly misjudged the direction of a jump or didn’t jump far enough.
There’s a puzzle at the beginning of the game that I absolutely couldn’t solve until I looked up a YouTube tutorial, and I’m not the only one who had that same problem. The tutorial in question had over 134k views (shoutout to Gamerpillar.)
Another thing that took me out of the game was the constant need for cinematic cutscenes. During my 10 hours of gameplay, half the game was done through cinematics.
The beauty of gaming manifests itself in the successful combination of the visual world created and the personal involvement of the player controlling the events happening onscreen. When you take away the control aspect, a game becomes a television show or short film.
The one thing that I loved about the game was the combat system (when it was done right.) In the previous entry, Rise of the Tomb Raider, I loved leaping out of trees to stab enemies right in the throat, sneaking around to find my next victim.
You get some of that satisfaction in the latest title with an added mud camouflage mechanic. Finding a patch of mud in the game allows you to cover Lara in mud, enabling her to stealth her way around the environment and silently take out guards from vine-covered walls.
However, my enjoyment of the mechanic was repeatedly cut short. Finding mud puddles is challenging to do, which is strange considering Lara is in the middle of a rainforest. Some segments heavily emphasized stealth but featured no mud puddles anywhere. When you’re detected, it’s pretty easy for Lara to die within two to three hits, i.e., stealth is optional but highly encouraged.
Final thoughts
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a game for those who love the Lara Croft lore and linear gameplay mechanics. As someone who favors vast open worlds with tons of room for exploration, this game didn’t offer as much as a game like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag does.
The combat mechanics, while satisfying at times, become a hassle when it’s incredibly easy to die by environmental hazards, animals, or being detected by enemies. If you’re into exploring tombs and long cutscenes, this is the game for you. For a free game as a part of my PlayStation Plus subscription, I can’t complain.
