Shadow of the Tomb Raider
About
Experience Lara Croft’s defining moment as she becomes the Tomb Raider. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara must master a deadly jungle, overcome terrifying tombs, and persevere through her darkest hour. As she races to save the world from a Maya apocalypse, Lara will ultimately be forged into the Tomb Raider she is destined to be.
Survive and Thrive In the Deadliest Place on Earth: Master an unforgiving jungle setting in order to survive. Explore underwater environments filled with crevasses and deep tunnel systems.
Become One With the Jungle: Lara must use the jungle to her advantage to strike suddenly and disappear like a jaguar, use mud as camouflage, and instill fear in enemies to sow chaos.
Discover Brutal Tombs: Terrifying tombs, filled with deadly puzzles, require advanced traversal techniques to be accessed
Uncover Living History: Discover a hidden city and explore the biggest Tomb Raider hub ever.
System requirements for Xbox One
System requirements for PC
System requirements for PlayStation 4
System requirements for macOS
System requirements for Linux
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Shadow of the Tomb Raider reviews and comments
But then comes the battle and final boss fight. It didn't feel much of a challenge at all at any point. IMO, in an action based game one should die more often during fight than falling from heights. Defeating the final boss was piece of cake. Why?
In the end, that's the only complaint. I enjoyed the story and progression and won't miss a chance to play the next game from this franchise. Recommended!
Final Score: B+
+ Incredible cinematic setpieces
+ Camilla Luddington's performance as Lara
+ Traversal is a blast
+ Darker story (even if it never fully commits)
+ Lush visuals and fluid animation
- Middle act pacing
- Not much innovation upon previous titles
- Half-baked RPG elements distract
OTOH the set pieces when you're running from/to something and the scenery falls down around you are still good and this game looks incredible holy hell its nut that games look this good. oh and i liked when you played as kid lara for a bit that was cute as a button
i think you'd like this game if you like games that think they're movies.
IMO the best of the trilogy!
Microsoft from Deutsch
I'll just list most annoying parts of the game in bullet points while saving the good things for last.
• Poor writing - overall story, Lara's self-discovery, dialogues, almost everything except additional writing for manuscripts discovered within the game. A chunk of those is written quite well, offer interesting insights into Aztec, Incan cultures and expands backstory of the Trinity.
• Lazy world craft — none of the inhabited locations within the game feels real, or alive. We visit several villages or cities and all of them fail to feel real, or important. They just exist as weird hubs, with weird secondary quests and even weirder inhabitants. All people in one area have a similar face. Females have slightly more clothing and hair.
• Failed bravery — To be honest, I was fascinated with the developer decision to hide climbable surfaces from a plain sight. Many devs move in that direction and replace outstanding or „glowing“ edges with more subtle solutions, that are directly incorporated into the game world, yet remain easy to spot when a player inspects their surrounding. Within first hour it felt like it works here, yet everything breaks down when lighting conditions change. In caves, sometimes you may fail to see a ledge under your nose due to pitch black darkness, while outside it really depends on many factors. During evening and night, it's hard to spot a ledge further away, while during the day bright light or flares may distort, hide existing ledges, while also creating white'ish spots on surfaces and suggest that a wall may be grabbable or climbable when it isn't. This is one of the key issues with my decision to launch New Game +. On higher difficulties, most of the assists are off, so this issue becomes a real pain in the ass. Not sure if the same problem exists on PS4 PRO and 4K screen though. I could accept the thought that on higher resolutions this problem may be unnoticeable. Anyway, great decision, poor execution.
• Lack of attention to details. Lara falls from a cliff into a pool of water during a cutscene. Water won't splash. Having in mind navigational issues from above, some wooden objects are annoying, cause they look and feel breakable. Same goes for some knee-high obstacles, that we can't pass. I know it's a common issue in many games, but in this case, it really feels like they could avoid that, should they pay a little bit more attention. Same can be said about some random assets scattered on the ground, that look almost identical to lootable boxes and containers. Or piranha schools that form out of the thin water, just because you swim in a weird direction. Or sudden deaths without any reason. Lara's health just starts to drop and she dies :D. Or really stupid checkpoint system, that records a save before short radio dialogue, or throws you half a map away from death location. It feels like the system is more forgiving in an open world, compared to Tombs, but „the rules of the game“ aren't exactly clear. Or fire arrows, that won't burn oil in puzzles, cause that oil is fireproof unless it's a very specific fire... And this list may go on, and on.
• Bugs — there are numerous bugs within the game. Classic ones, like rope arrows failing to stick to a surface, are noticeable, but at least not annoying. However there's a specific kind of bug, that really damages gameplay. It's a change of Lara's stances and animations in various environments. Lara's stance changes from area to area and sometimes also depending on a costume. With that said in some areas, the square button won't work, in others player can't use weapons and so on. So if Lara enters a cutscene, but player rushes her off the ledge, she may jump, or... jump action may fail, or grappling may fail. This can get repeatable and annoying especially if a recorded checkpoint is bordering on the area where Lara's stance changes due to a sudden call on the radio. I've died due to these reasons maybe a couple dozen times. Few of them actually happened in very hectic sections of the game, where platforming feels more like a series of quick time events (running from flood, earthquake and so on). Those parts of the game are beautiful and dynamic, yet when the game fails to register a clean button press, you tend to ignore all of it and just deal with frustration.
• Lazy approach towards an overall flow of the game. Shadow of Tomb Raider feels exactly like two previous games. Tutorial exploration, a sudden crash, frozen and left for dead Lara gets a knife and a bow. The adventure begins, new, „unexpected“ types of enemies are introduced. Most of them boring, mindless zombies. Not literally zombies, but...
• Lazy approach towards new mechanics — there are several new mechanics within the game, but they're there just to play some supportive role. I really loved expanded stealth mechanics, rolling in dirt, becoming one with the jungle, but there are simply not enough combat sequences. It could have been Rambo, but it isn't. Same goes for underwater exploration. The overall feeling of diving caves, lakes and cisterns is great. I don't even mind that with all the talents you can hold your breath „for hours“. Yet it's just a traversal thing, some underwater combat, more underwater puzzles, treasures and crypts would have been great!
Now for the things that I loved.
• Overall level/world design. The looks of it, as well as paths, hidden paths and zillions of marvelous frames of jungle, mountains, and crypts. Levels are well designed in terms of fun while exploring, as well as aesthetically. The world isn't entirely jaw-dropping, but it's beautiful enough to carry this game on it's own.
• Diving. Even though underwater adventures are underdeveloped, I still loved diving. It felt just right and underwater levels are mostly well executed.
• Lara's outfits. The idea to bring some old outfits is great, but the new ones are even greater. Another half of attention to detail went into designing those I guess. Outfits also come with certain benefits, yet they're somewhat trivial for the first playthrough, but will serve well for those aiming to beat the game at higher difficulties.
• TOMBS! Tombs are great in this game. When I passed a point of no return in a story, I was literally counting minutes toward the end. I wanted to be done with the game as quickly as possible, to go back and explore a couple of Tombs I couldn't access throughout my first playthrough. Puzzles are sometimes weird, or weirdly difficult, but all of them are solvable without external help while finding a solution always felt rewarding. I didn't care for new skills Tombs unlocks, just a thrill of a challenge and neat level design. Like, really, some of the Tombs are extremely beautiful, which is weird. They save on assets in an open world, populate villages and armies with clones, yet they pour so much effort into an area that will be visited by just the half of all players at the very best. That is the main reason I left Tombs for the last. I mean, I don't regret a minute I've spent with a game and I'll probably have another run later, but I'm just super annoyed by the fact, that third game in a story ark and within same technological generation just feels like a random game made in a AAA studio. Especially in a context, of other iconic characters and flagship games, that in a couple of last years pushed production values through the roof. Lara simply deserves all the attention to detail (tiny and huge) and developers failed at that. It's just another game, but at the same time, it is also a game I will remember for its Tombs. This alone is rather symbolic. With that said, buy it with a discount — minor bugs will be fixed by that time, there's no story someone would be able to spoil for you, thus there's no reason to play it now unless you're a die-hard fan :).