Death, however, is nothing more than a minor inconvenience in Rise of the Tomb Raider, as the game is quite liberal with checkpoints, subduing the tension even on the higher difficulty levels.Įach new zone you enter looks sizeable on paper, but most areas are sectioned off and linear, keeping you from straying too far from the scripted story. Sadly, you will be forced to watch Lara meet a grisly end many times from booby traps, wild animals, and environmental hazards.
From Syria to Siberia, the action-packed, life or death situations hang on the speed of your button presses.
It hits all the marks of a high-budget blockbuster, but it's nothing we haven't already seen in Indiana Jones or played in Uncharted.Ĭinematics permeate the game from start to finish, and you'll find few moments where your fingers aren't poised and eyes locked on the screen in anticipation of a quick-time event. Abandoned Soviet installations, a group of ancestral protectors of the truth, and plenty of priceless treasures await the eager player. Newly established, Lara is easing herself into the whole tomb raiding career, so naturally she follows a lead that takes her to Siberia where a fanatical and well-funded sect called Trinity is searching for the same credence to a centuries old myth that could lead to the power of immortality. Still, Rise of the Tomb Raider spins a gripping, if not clichéd, tale. We still root for her, but the empathy has waned. Instead of the sympathy we feel and the fervor for her to overcome the harsh obstacles that were cast upon her unbeknownst, now she has grown stubborn and become obsessed with following in her father's footsteps. The emotional attachment to Lara in Rise of the Tomb Raider differs from the one displayed in her origin story. This shift has caused her new story to become more derivative. With the prologue done and gone, we are now presented with a Lara exuding more confidence and flexing her spelunking muscles.
#Rise of the tomb raider pc review series#
When the developers at Crystal Dynamics rebooted the Tomb Raider series two years ago, their intentions were to reinvent Lara Croft by casting her in a vulnerable and untested role rather than as the unflappable heroine from her original adventures.