Rise of the Tomb Raider

A review and commentary on the latest Tomb Raider Adventure, out on Xbox One and 360.

Friends roast friends, and never really mean the things they say, even if a bit of truth lies behind their words. I love the new tomb raider, and it is a must play game for anyone looking for adventure, however, I feel like I am taking crazy pills when I can’t find a single review out there with any sort of negativity about the new Tomb Raider. I have decided that in order to balance out the overwhelming positive reviews I should point out the flaws and minor issues I had with the game, simply in the name of balance. At the end of the roast I’ll remind you that even despite its shortcomings it is a game worth owning and playing through. There are minor spoilers until I begin to talk about my thoughts on the story.

Let me start off with some praise. Rise of the Tomb Raider isn’t a perfect game, but it has improved upon its prequel in every way. The graphics are stunning. The game has some true Indiana Jones adventure inspiring epic moments. The story is intriguing and and left me interested to find out more, and had me digging deep into the culture and history of the people within the story to try and understand who they are. When Lara squeezes through a narrow gap, or struggles for air after a swim, you can feel it. I will also mention that I wasn’t a huge fan of the predecessor, but something about this one was done right.

The quick time events and ridiculous, easy to hate characters from the first game are toned down considerably. The game gave me room to breathe, explore, and provided actual challenges and obstacles with its new satisfying challenge tombs, each of which are harder than anything encountered in the reboot, which provide rewards worth the time. The stealth system is improved, and forced encounters with enemies are reduced, often allowing a myriad of stealthy options for dispatching foes. All of the things I hated about the first one were toned down, the things that were okay, like the story, were greatly improved, and the things that were good are now even better. Now then, onto the roast.

Although the game is sure to entertain, the detail focused person looking for realism may have some challenges to overcome as the game is full of nonsensical game mechanics and ludacris set pieces for the sake of action, action that often becomes repetitive. The main problem I have with the lack of realism is that it constantly reminded me that instead of being inside of her world, a world which is gritty, serious, with a hopefully compelling story that asks for realism, I was constantly reminded that I was just playing a game.

Private journals containing personal and private information are left behind for Laura to find in a way that is often too convenient, and although often interesting, don’t make for believable story telling. One journal suggests that the Byzantines in the 10th century had cannons on their ships (cannons weren't invented for another 300 years). Another series details the writings of a village woman teaching the children to hunt, as if her lecture was written word for word and preserved, then left behind on an open crate for Laura to find. Why do Russian soviet soldiers speak English in their private journals?

Anyone familiar with ice climbing will cringe at Laura's technique and her superhuman agility breaks the barriers of reality. Nearly every surface you can hang from or climb up has convenient white paint smeared along it incase you needed your hand held to find it. Laura spoils a lot of the puzzle solutions with unnecessary dialog hints, and the main story seems to lack puzzles in general. Rope arrows are a silly mechanic that the game would be better off without, and rope wrapped objects galore are too convenient. Poison arrow gas clouds made from mushrooms play well but are nonsense. Regular arrows explode explosive barrels. Giant arrows you shoot into a wall to climb add little challenge but are rather a frustrating time consumer that accomplishes the same goals. Giving you new ways to solve old problems, such as climbing, destroying barriers or jumping gaps, is a mechanic that is repeated through the storyline. Swinging from a rope tied to a thrown ice axe over a bottomless pit is actually pretty fun. But after all of these ridiculous game mechanics, we can’t have the classic Lara Croft double pistols that we received at the end of the last game? Or flares, instead of glow sticks?

Then there is the combat. Trying to duck behind cover? Enemies will throw an infinite volley of grenades at you until they are incapacitated. Flamethrower enemies need to be shot in the flame tank because their armor is somehow impenetrable. Enemies somehow know your exact position at all times once alerted, even if your line of sight has been long broken, or if you never had a line of sight with them to begin with. The enemy dialog is painful to listen to, as if written by a kid who has played too many shooters. “Suppressing fire!”, “Receiving Fire!”, “Fire in the hole!”, “We have a KIA!” etc. The stealth kill from the water feature that was shown in the gameplay trailers is gimmicky and there were only three places in my playthrough where I was actually able to do it, making it more of a set piece than a regular gameplay mechanic as I was led to believe.

What isn’t completely ridiculous logically is completely useless, such as 90% of the skills, or crafting upgrades which left me to pick the lesser of evils, and I noticed very little difference between fully upgraded skill trees and non upgraded ones. Being able to hold/gather more ammo and resources wasn’t useful when my ammo and resource stashes were always full.

Finding artifacts and journals offer little benefit. Finding maps, backpacks or deciphering monoliths to reveal the location of hidden artifacts, tombs, etc feels unrewarding since any amount of exploration reveals those things anyways. The Byzantine coins shop feels rather unrewarding as well for the amount of effort. The largest reward for challenge tombs are the sense of accomplishment and discovery, as the skills and item rewards are often lacking.

What isn’t useless or nonsense gives some sort of unnecessary buff that takes away from the challenge. One perk unlock for beating a tomb highlights traps in red so that you can see them early, and I wish I could turn it off. I didn't upgrade my damage resistance skills, because if I wanted to make things easier I would have turned down the difficulty.

Spoiler Alert. The story has ridiculous moments that I have to rant about. The enemies constantly rely on their helicopters to get them everywhere but still arrive as the same time as Laura. Why is Ana sick again, and when did that happen? So Ana somehow marked up her brothers hands, one of the most painful spots on the human body, in his sleep, when they were kids to trick him into thinking he was called by God so that he would hunt down an artifact that would help save her? Why did his hands bleed then when he prayed?

The whole game we wonder about the divine source. Divine source is a word repeatedly used and it drives us crazy, because we want to know what it is! Will it be the holy grail? A cool artifact from ancient Christian times? Some dead dudes finger? No, it is a non divine magic blue rock that we are given no answers about and Laura fails to question the 1000 year old magic pixie dust healing prophet about any of it. What were you teaching that was so divine and cool that you were hunted by Trinity for a thousand years Mr. Prophet? If you weren't using the divine source on the remnant villagers because you didn’t want them to turn into a bunch of deathless douche soldiers, why didn’t you destroy it in the first place before Trinity could show up again and perhaps gain a kinda­not­really immortal army for themselves? If you are using it to live forever, why aren’t you evil like them?

As far as we know you’re just a dude who found a magic rock who called himself a prophet for some unknown reason then the rock got you chased down by the empire’s order of trinity because heresy, so you ran off and started your own cult, then the empire who was killing you for your magic rock is now trying to get your magic rock and they somehow forgot where you and all of your villagers have ever been, so they get Lord Croft to try and figure it out a thousand years later, but then kill him, then wait for his daughter Laura to figure it out, and follow her around and jump ahead of her with their helicopters and explosives and clueless mercenaries. A clear and concise story that makes sense is important, and Tomb Raider does great up until the big reveal. Because there wasn’t a big reveal. It’s just a magic rock, and no answers about the prophet or trinity. Then Laura, who stubbornly and consistently tells those pesky remnant villagers throughout the story that she wants nothing more than to find the source of immortality, the proof of the soul, the ability to help the sick and dying in the world, the continuation of her father’s work who died for this, instantly decides in the last cutscene that instead she’s going to destroy it without much explanation or major character change. If the Prophet was so sure that she was going to destroy it anyways, why didn’t he let her get it before Trinity could slaughter half of his village? Then we are left with a massive cliche cliffhanger where Ana gets shot seconds before revealing her secrets. The story just has a ‘How It Should Have Ended’ episode written all over it.

The final boss helicopter scene was obnoxious. The waves of enemies moved away from challenging and into frustrating, and I’ve consistently found the forced combat scenes to be the weakest part of the game, so thankfully there are few and far between. Then after an hour of combat helicopter enemy waves the final boss fight consists of three thrown explosive cans and a couple of Y button presses, making it almost as anticlimactic as the boss ending of the last game.

Lots of the cut scenes left me frustrated. Like when Jonah didn’t pull the trigger on the main bad dude but let himself get stabbed. Or when Laura didn’t shoot Anna many times, even though she was about to possibly end the world. Or when we checked out Anna and Konstantine’s map after they left the room and enemies were somehow alerted to us without explanation. Or when Jonah let himself be taken up into a helicopter with the enemies, while holding the Atlas, and didn’t bother to throw it to us, or throw it into a pit now that we knew its secrets, or destroy it, or do anything besides be a mostly useless depthless side character who gets himself into trouble.

And what the heck did the Mongolians have to do with anything except be shoehorned into the whole story? Was the whole Byzantine prophet cult deathless divine source glacier explosion not enough to chew? Then there's something about shoehorned Soviet cold war soldiers finding some artifacts so the remnant slaves revolted even though the deathless would have messed them all up if they got close to the source. Why are the remnant protecting the source in the first place if they have a deathless army under an ice glacier doing that for them? What else are the remnant able to provide? And since they don’t believe in using the divine source anymore, aren’t they just normal Christians now, and not heretics? What is it that they believed in the first place that was so special or important?

I feel like the story was hashed together in a room full of game designers without a coherent direction, and some details got lost in the process.

In other news, I ran into a game breaking bug where if you don’t have any pistol ammo you won’t be able to shoot a bad guy during a cutscene, and there’s no way to go back without reloading a backup save which put me about a half hour back once I figured that out. There are a few graphical bugs but as long as you aren’t trying to break the game, you shouldn’t run into them.

Now that I've rapid fired shotguned complaints in a manner almost as ridiculous as the game itself, let me remind you that I had a lot of fun with tomb raider. I found myself going back to finish tombs and side quests, and the expeditions mode provides excellent customizable gameplay outside of the main story, with lots of throwbacks to retro games with options like big head mode, or time trials for story missions with customizable loadouts and challenges. Inside of these expeditions the ridiculous mechanics make a little more sense, and you have to carefully decide what you should and shouldn't take to improve your rewards and chances of success.

Overall the Tomb Raider game grasps for perfection, and although it doesn't quite achieve it, it is a solid game through and through