Rise of the Tomb Raider is the newest entry in this more gritty, dark version of the 90s action/adventure series, starring the titular Tomb Raider, Lara Croft. It is a follow-up to the 2013 reboot, Tomb Raider, and the PC version is a port of the XBox One version, exclusive to that console through Christmas. This time around, Lara is on her own Last Crusade, searching out an artifact her father only dreamed of being able to find.
Though not a traditional horror game, Rise of the Tomb Raider plays, in many instances, like an uber-violent exploitation flick from the 70s. This Lara Croft is not simply a gun-wielding adventurer, intent on seeking out and unlocking the world’s secrets. No, she is also a grim survivalist, hell-bent on punishing those who ruined her life and sent her on this journey. The new hero of this franchise snatches dudes into watery depths and slices their throats, a la Jason Voorhees, or sneaks up behind them and executes them like James Earl Cash, from Manhunt.
This incarnation of Tomb Raider is very often compared to the wildly popular Uncharted series, but I’ve got a bold claim to make here: save for the writing, I think Rise of the Tomb Raider exceeds the heights of the Uncharted games.
The MacGuffin in this game is more or less the Matrix from the original Transformers animated movie, and it totally works as a means for drawing Lara into this adventure. There are eternal prophets, soulless soldiers, and secretive organizations involved, and that sort of plot is befitting of a Tomb Raider game.
As far as actual writing goes, however, it’s kind of flat. The villain, Konstantin, is barely visible throughout the game, which is both a benefit and a curse. Why would he spend all of his time trying to taunt Lara Croft like a Bond villain? On the other hand, his absence is certainly felt toward the end of the game, when we are supposed to care about this standoff between the adventurer and the secret society wackadoo?
It’s one of the few knocks I have against this game. The writing, the banter, the characters, they are all so grim and mordant. The game has no sense of self-deprecation or humor at all, and a story that is more or less the retelling of Last Crusade without Sean Connery in a brimmed hat is kind of lacking, to be honest.
The game’s real villain and real sidekick is the environment, and that’s where the tension excels. I’ve never been a huge fan of third person platforming in these games — Uncharted included — but the combination of the puzzles and the feel of the running and jumping in Rise make for some interesting mechanics. The game handles exceptionally well, to the extent that some non-scripted climbing sequences feel as though they are cut scenes designed for the player’s benefit help the cause.
To build on that idea, the visual language of Rise of the Tomb Raider is similarly wonderful. It is built in such a way that you don’t necessarily have to constantly click the right stick to reveal your waypoint. The game naturally guides you in the right direction.
For example, walls that can be scaled are marked with white blazes, and the climbable ice has a different color tint than its surroundings. If you still can’t find your way, the waypoint indicator also reveals points of interest in directing your journey.
Some might see this as hand-holding, but I prefer it to wandering around the landscape without an inkling for where to go. The way the environments are set-up and marked gives the player a rhythm for how to traverse the world, and it becomes less about the puzzle of “Where do I go?”
The different areas are distinct enough, even if they all feel somewhat like “exotic locale” to me. What separates Rise of the Tomb Raider from its contemporaries is that it is neither a linear experience, nor is it an open world game. Unlike Uncharted, each section of the game doesn’t get locked off once you complete the narrative for it.
At the campsites, you can fast travel back to any location and complete any number of quests, tombs, or collectible hunting. The map gives enough detail to drive players to seek out ancillary content without making it seem like it’s necessary. I tooled around with some of the side content, but I basically main-lined the story for the sake of the review, and I felt completely satisfied with both the amount of content and story within the core game, so people looking for plenty more to do can find whatever they want.
The game is also not so open that you feel entirely rudderless. Rather than give you quests within the world that spit you back out into an open world, you engage in sort of linear main quests that connect different sections of the game. They are crucial to building the world and the narrative for you, and they are very often a balance of spelunking / climbing and combat.
Until the end of the game — which I’ll get to in a few paragraphs — I never felt overwhelmed by the amount of combat in this game. The combat encounters always felt necessary, or at the very least, narratively acceptable, so I dug how they were spread out among the platforming elements.
One only need take a look at screenshots or trailers to notice just how amazing Rise looks. Very often, actual gameplay looks better than the cut scenes in most games I’ve played over the last few years. The art style is also a plus. The environments not only look great, they are well designed.
And speaking of things that are well-designed, the puzzles, while simple, are some of my favorites from a game of this type in a long while. There are a few that are quite difficult, but for the most part they are intuitive and easily discernible through a little bit of detection. I found myself kind of amazed at how some of them are constructed, not merely because they are good puzzles, but because they build on the skills of other puzzles. That is really something the designers deserve credit for that I’m sure will go unnoticed.
The crafting and upgrade system was reminiscent of The Last of Us for me, personally. Beyond guns, Lara can craft various explosives from found elements in the world. Trees can be stripped for arrows, and gears help to aid weapons upgrades. It’s a fairly in-depth system, but it never gets over its own head with sophistication. It was just the right amount of added complexity to make character progression feel natural.
In addition, the game’s side content builds on the crafting and upgrade system in such a way that might behoove players to branch out and complete more of it to get their character fully decked out in the three basic skill types: Brawler, Hunting, and Survival.
The story is one of the least interesting elements of the game, but it does a serviceable job of building the story of the 10th century prophet at the heart of the game. I never really cared about any of the characters, save Lara herself, though I did find her arc in Rise fairly compelling. Besides Jonah, her erstwhile companion, I didn’t find myself connected to any major story element.
Which brings me to the third act of the game. Once all hell breaks loose, it really breaks loose. Rise of the Tomb Raider was never that game to me. It was about retrained encounters that were absolutely necessary, and yet the end of the game seems to forget all about that.
The amount of combat in the lead-up to the resolution is ridiculous, and it goes to ridiculous ends. The game seems to bask in a sort of Roland Emmerich style destructothon, much to the game’s detriment. I’m over the overly-epic finale, and I kind of wish this game had sidestepped the worst offenders of the past. AAA games have an insecurity about endings, and it is played out in a big way here.
Rise of the Tomb Raider works best when it is about exploration, spiked with some combat. When it attempts to become a third-person shooter, it loses some of the magic that made the first three-quarters special.
This is probably the most blatantly unfortunate comparison to be made between Rise of the Tomb Raider and the Uncharted series. For me, the Nathan Drake games could never quite stick the landing. The first two acts were superlative, but the third act always got bogged down in the lore, in supernatural nonsense that felt as though it had to be there to make the story bigger than life, somehow.
Tomb Raider almost avoids that trap, but not quite. Still, it’s better than ninety percent of the games I played in 2015 — I still consider it a 2015 game, despite the 2016 PC release — and so I’ll take it over a milquetoast spy movie any day.
The Final Word:
Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the best action adventure games out there, and I’d go so far as to say it’s better than any Uncharted game I’ve played.
