REVIEW – After finishing with the tropical island of the first Tomb Raider, our intrepid adventurer, Lara Croft goes on exploring the icy mountains of Syberia. Following the steps of his father, she has to find a strange artefact, which is said to grant eternal life, and she must also fight against Trinity, an aggressive, powerful organization. Sounds a bit cliché, eh? Yes, it does, but let’s delve deep into the details of the game…

Tomb Raider in 2013 was such a radical change from the original idea, yet, it was so successful that unsurprisingly Crystal Dynamics didn’t change much with the second title regarding the gameplay. It’s still a mixture of exploring, cover shooting, climbing, jumping and solving some puzzles in tombs and the outside world. What perhaps changed in this regard are the number of graves to explore, the difficulty of the puzzles (which are harder to solve this time around) and also (thank God!) the almost complete lack of QTE-s.

The game also remained faithful to its roots; so there’s no overuse of Hollywood-like extraordinary action sequences, besides the opening and some parts near the end, it’s very much the fundamental Tomb Raider action you should expect.

Dad’s dead

Contrary to the gameplay, the pretty basic story is using some Hollywood clichés at the start. Lara was already following the steps of her father in the 2001’s Tomb Raider movie (where Jon Voight, Angelina Jolie’s dad played Lara’s dad) and also Tomb Raider Underworld. I understand that it’s a childhood trauma for Lara to lose her father at such tender age, but if Lara can’t let him go, at least, Crystal Dynamics should let him go.

But no, here we go again: dad’s dead and Lara is fulfilling his legacy to after the artifact, which grants eternal life and Bla Bla Bla… It’s Tomb Raider the movie 2001 again, but while Jon Voight (Angelina’s own daddy) was perfect as the recently deceased Lord Croft, this Croft dad sounds pretty boring.

The secret society called “Trinity” also made me think of Illuminati, so I was wondering a bit, why Crystal Dynamics just didn’t remake the whole story of the 2001 movie.

Fortunately, while the story starts pretty cliché, it gets a lot better later when we learn about the legend of the Prophet with eternal life, and also, some interesting side characters show up, like the mysterious Jacob, his daughter, and his tribe. Another pleasant surprise, that even the main baddies get a surprisingly interesting character arc later. Just pity about the clichés at the start of the game.

The girl with the gun

The game also preserved the weapon and skill upgrade system, but it’s still a bit better, more complex and more interesting this time around. Once again you gain skills while fighting and exploring you can spend those on various capabilities. Most of them help you while there are a bunch of them which aren’t that useful.

You’ll have the same kind weapons as well, but this time, you’ll have not one, but three types of bows with differents proprieties. The ice axe, which is inspired by the real life DMM’s “rebel ice axe” can also be upgraded for climbing and fighting purposes as well.

Improving your skills and gear is not only a necessity but also pretty fun, and it has visible results. A brand new feature, that you’ll also learn some unique skills in the tombs you’ll discover. Those are perhaps the best skills, so trying to explore every tomb possible is very much advised in this game.

Fight for your life!

Fighting, climbing and surviving in Rise of the Tomb Raider is pretty much the same, as in the first game. The main difference is perhaps in the way Trinity fights you compared to the bad guys of the first game: they act like a professional commando team: they more tactical, but also more aggressive.

The AI still could have been improved: I can never understand for the life of me, why an enemy soldier runs at me when I have an AK 47 at my disposal, and I will surely kill, or hurt him very badly while he is running at me. OK, it’s a game, and it’s meant to be hard on higher difficulty levels, but still humans defend their lives, and running at the enemy on open ground is pretty stupid, even if the buddies are helping with covering fire.

That said I tried to play the game on higher difficulty levels, but due to some tiresomely hard and frustrating arena-like parts in the game, where I had to dispose of waves of enemies in small, isolated areas, where I had nowhere to hide, I lowered the difficulty level to normal (Tomb Raider). While doing this, I was a bit sad because I finished Tomb Raider 2013 and Tomb Raider Difinitive Edition on a higher difficulty level without getting frustrated like that.

It’s so wonderful, wonderful world!

Tomb Raider 2013 PC and Tomb Raider Definitive Edition PS4 set bar very high as far as graphics are concerned. What about Rise of Tomb Raider? Simple: Crystal Dynamics upped the ante! The PC version of Rise of Tomb Raider is gorgeous with advanced weather and foliage effect, and the game is also using Nvidia’s “Pure Hair” technology which will help float Lara’s sexy locks of hair in the air and in the water as well.

Pure Hair is an advanced technology of AMD’s TressFX, and since the PlayStation 4 is also using AMD graphical chip, it should cause no problem to use Pure Hair or a similar, PS4-specific technology. (Tomb Raider used TressFX on both the PC and PS4 version.)

Still, advanced foliage is another matter. “On Xbox One, the occasional larger piece of foliage could be affected by the movement of Lara, and by the weather. For the PC release just about everything is interactive, and the density of foliage has been increased, too, making for a more realistic and immersive environment.”

That’s the line we can read on Nvidia’s website about the “Dynamic foliage” setting, which I switched on my humble GeForce 750 TI 2GB, pretty much overclocked on a DX12 Windows 10 system. It was just gorgeous, and I am not entirely sure if it can be managed in the same fashion on the PS4’s hardware. Still, Tomb Raider Definitive Edition achieved similar quality to high-level PC settings, so I am not worried too much about that.

What else to expect for PS4?

The “Definitive Edition.” (or whatever they will call it) of Rise of the Tomb Raider PS4 will probably have the Baba Yaga The Temple of the Witch DLC and perhaps other ones as well, as they will be released for Xbox One and PC. Since the Baba Yaga DLC wasn’t included in my press review, I couldn’t try it. While not really connected with the main narrative, the Baba Yaga DLC provides what is mostly a side story that touches on Lara’s relationship with her father at one point.

Rise of the Tomb Raider will probably use the PlayStation camera’s built-in mike as well for giving simple orders like bringing forward the inventory, or the map. Same goes for the extra features of the walkie-talkie conversation and the tape logs which you can find alongside your adventure (there a lot of them) which will use your DS4 gamepad’s “talkative” features.

Lara’s face will probably remain the same (at least, let’s hope so), since the one in Rise of the Tomb Raider looks almost exactly like the one in Definitive Edition, so there’s no point to make yet another version of her.

What else? Well, we are done with the major (probable) changes, the only question remains, whether the PS4 version will sport glorious 60 FPS like Tomb Raider Definitive Edition did. I sincerely hope it will, but honestly, 30 FPS is also plenty for this type of game and doesn’t actually change the score of the title.

And thank God, the wholly unnecessary multiplayer will be probably missing in action in the RotTR “Definitive Edition” as well.

Tomb Raider… RISE!

The Rise of the Tomb Raider is a perfect follow-up to 2013’s Tomb Raider, with small improvements and additions to the already proven formula. The reboot to the Tomb Raider world was awesome, and the same can be said about Rise of the Tomb Raider. My only real gripe is with the clichéd story at the beginning, but even that gets better later.

To sum it up: if you liked the first Tomb Raider reboot, or even if you skipped it (stories are not really connected anyway) but you do like Uncharted-like games, I suggest to pick up Lara’s next adventure in November. That’s one date with one adventurous and beautiful girl; you shouldn’t miss!

-BadSector-

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Crystal Dynamics

Genre: TPS, action, adventure, exlpration

Release date: January 28 (PC), November (PS4) 2016