GAME REVIEW

Place the new Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider Reboot into a bowl. Put in basic stealth, shooting, climbing, role playing and path finding. Now, mix! Also, add some poor optimisation for the PC version. What you will get is Rise of The Tomb Raider!

Rise of The Tomb Raider is more or less a huge graphical upgrade. It doesn’t play any different from the previous Tomb Raider and even the story of the previous game was better. It is only available on Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC as of now, because it is a timed exclusive title. But, is the game worth buying right now? Keep in mind that there are micro transactions in this game as well, so you may end up spending way above $60 on this game.

First impressions

There is no doubt that you will be in awe of the first few minutes of the game. It looks absolutely gorgeous. But, there are a number of cutscenes during these sections. Of course, the developers are showcasing Lara; it’s not like there is much else to show anyway.

You will be placed in a very tight situation right since the beginning and your task will be to avoid getting crushed by an avalanche. That means you will need to reach point B from point A by jumping, repelling, ledge grabbing, sliding and cliff climbing.

The good thing is the immense amount of detail. The bad thing is that the game isn’t very different from the previous game. While a lack of effort on the opening running sequence is apparent,  however, you will soon realize that there wasn’t enough effort placed on anything else as well.

Story

Like most Tomb Raider games, this game revolves around a certain artifact. This artifact is supposed to have some powers, which I shall not mention to avoid spoiling the fun. As usual, an elite group is after it as well. So, yes, you will be searching for that artifact while killing the elite squad members. That’s it!

The villain is quite forgettable. There are not memorable characters in this game at all. In contrast, Lara has extremely realistic facial animations this time, which means she looks gorgeous. But that’s all you will remember about this new Lara. The game doesn’t even try to get your involved in her struggle to get that artifact, which was at one time something Lara’s father wanted to find.

There are a few returning characters from the previous games, but they too don’t add anything brilliant to make them even slightly relevant.

Gameplay

Just like in the previous game, you will have a variety of guns and a bow. The bow and the guns can be upgraded to suit your fighting style. You can also upgrade Lara to give her special abilities to help you complete the game easily.

You can go guns blazing or use the silent approach. The silent approach is highly rewarding, but the stealth mechanics are no way near the quality of most stealth games like Metal Gear Solid V or Splinter Cell. Its cover system is easily the best thing about this game. Lara will automatically duck behind boxes and hide behind walls. You can peek, take a shot and get back in cover again. By the end of the game, the cover system starts to lose its appeal  and it gets harder to defeat enemies.

Speaking of the enemies, there is a small variety of enemies that you will fight. The AI is very aggressive and will try to charge you and catch you off guard. They also notice that you are hurt and try to take full advantage of that. The enemies will work as a team and cover each other. Sometimes, they will even throw Molotov’s and grenades to flush you out of cover.

There are stealth takedowns and basic melee strikes as well, but they are by no means the game’s main features. You can also confuse your enemies by throwing objects to distract them and modify your weapons to inflict special damage effects. At the crafting stations, you can build grenades as well.

All the animations look great and are very fluid. The death, climbing, hurt, run, walk, sprint, interaction and dialogue animations play a vital role in engaging the player. Even though they are repeated many times throughout the game, they are still quite a joy to watch.

Graphics and performance

I can’t say that this game is poorly optimised for certain. Some PC builds have run this game extremely well, whereas others ran it at less than 30 FPS on medium settings. There is no doubt that this game is very demanding. You will have to have a very powerful PC to play this game on ultra settings at 60 FPS. Even on medium settings, this game looks fantastic.

Summary

This game is not very different from the Tomb Raider Reboot. The game is worth buying at sale price as there are plenty of other games that have better mechanics than this one. The graphics are great though and will put your PC to test. Important to note here is that users have reported a lot of issues, such as crashing and memory leaks which can be nuisance to a lot of people.

Review score: 8/10