Lara Croft’s new adventure is full of hidden treasures.
By Lucy O’Brien
Rise of the Tomb Raider is the most fun I’ve had with a Lara Croft game since 1996. Its story is full of the right kind of danger and intrigue, its tombs are dastardly, and I was as struck by its huge, romantic environments as I was as a kid playing the original. Although I could have done with a few more puzzles and fewer firefights overall, I enjoyed every rollicking, big-hearted second of it.
It’s broad, Indiana Jones stuff that gallops along at a great clip.
Like its predecessor, Rise of the Tomb Raider revels in an ever-so-slightly-sci-fi and ultimately very fun high-concept involving a hunt for an artifact that grants eternal life. It’s broad, Indiana Jones stuff that gallops along at a great clip through gloriously over-the-top sequences grounded with a strong emotional throughline. Rise of the Tomb Raider is, at its core, about Lara and her late father, and actress Camilla Luddington’s thoughtful performance as Lara sells us on the complicated relationship she has with the ghosts he left behind.
We want to hear it.
Above: The first 27 minutes of Rise of the Tomb Raider.
As a character, Lara Croft has never been so endearing.
Minute-to-minute, Lara shines. She’s confident and smart, and reacts to danger with an action hero’s calmness and intuition. Yet she’s scarred by her last adventure, so she carries a sort of charismatic weariness that tinges her quips with self-deprecation. As a character, Lara Croft has never been so endearing.
Her ambitions are more complex, too. This time round she’s driven by obsession, not survival, and for the first time we see her in shades of grey. Unlike 2013’s Tomb Raider, I wasn’t wincing at her constant broken bones – she’s now a formidable fighter who inflicts more than she takes – but I did see the cracks in her moral compass.
We want to hear it.
Above: Watch IGN play one of RotTR’s tomb puzzles.
Elsewhere, Rise of the Tomb Raider’s supporting cast are less developed, but fortunately they occupy far less screentime than Lara’s juicy antagonists. To talk about these two – and the mysterious organization they associate with – in too much detail would spoil some great twists, but they’re morally grotesque foes, and their clash of wills result in moments of real darkness.
The most heart-hammering moments in Rise of The Tomb Raider come from frantic, acrobatic chases.
Lara’s means of traversing her world has also been expanded upon. All her tools – which now include a wire spool for latching onto hooks while airborne and arrows Lara can use to climb up vertical surfaces – can be used in quick succession to keep her in the sky for longer. The most heart-hammering moments in Rise of The Tomb Raider come from frantic, acrobatic chases as I fumbled for the right button hundreds of feet above ground.
Lara’s rope arrows get a lot more use, too, and the puzzles which utilize these span a remarkable range. One saw me blowing up a statue, another had me slowly and delicately equalizing the weight on a platform. A couple left me lingering idiotically around a rope-wrapped stump, clueless as to what to do with it, until that rush of relief when I spotted another in the distance.
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While puzzles have been baked deeper into the main storyline than they were in Lara’s last outing, the most interesting ones are still those that you have to hunt down on the side. Rise of the Tomb Raider’s ‘challenge tombs’, those that speak most strongly to Tomb Raider’s heritage, are its highlight; imaginative, environmentally gorgeous, and increasingly tough as you progress through the world. There are a couple by the end I spent a good hour or two on, but the elation I felt upon solving them was huge.
My only real criticism of Rise of the Tomb Raider’s puzzle-solving is that there isn’t more of it. As I played through the main storyline, I increasingly found myself hurrying through combat sections just so I could branch off and hunt down my next puzzle fix, buried in the unsettled guts of an icy mountain or under a murky lake in the mouth of a cave.
Not that combat a chore. While its third-person shooting is the least inspired aspect of Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara can now build nail bombs, smoke bombs, molotov cocktails, and special ammo while on the fly, all of which can turn a mundane shootout into a pile of dead bodies in seconds. It’s a fun, vicious, and slightly ridiculous new ability which adds a great deal of variety to enemy encounters.
She’s such a potent fighter that I didn’t find any real incentive to avoid combat altogether.
It does, however, make Rise of the Tomb Raider’s much-touted stealthy approach rather redundant. While you do get XP bonuses for stealth takedowns and you can hide in bushes and up trees, she’s such a potent fighter that I didn’t find any real incentive to avoid combat altogether. It was much more enjoyable to cause as much destruction as possible and gain bonuses for headshots and multiple kills using a combination of crafted items and Lara’s significant arsenal.
Happily, playing with the latter is still nice and crunchy. Weapons are upgradable based on parts you can find scattered throughout the world, which injects new novelty into combat every few hours. Like in the last game, I found myself gravitating towards the shotgun and bow; the former for its lethal incendiary bullets, the latter for its wide-reaching poison arrows. Lara’s as powerful as a Terminator by the end of Rise of the Tomb Raider on standard difficulty mode, however – something to be considered when choosing how you want to play.
We want to hear it.
The enormous, snowy mountains, crumbling tombs, and dark forests here have been built with great imagination.
Outside of the main storyline there’s plenty to discover, and Rise of the Tomb Raider’s beautiful semi-open world provides the incentive to hunt for it. While pretty vistas have always been a calling card of the franchise, the enormous, snowy mountains, crumbling tombs, and dark forests here have been built with great imagination. A dark corner of a tomb might house a number of skeletons in stocks, eternally forced to pray at the feet of a statue. Take a left in a forest and you might discover a crypt, or swing ‘round a mountainside and meet the stoney face of some forgotten god of an ancient race. It’s meticulously crafted stuff.
It isn’t purely exploration-driven, either. Besides the aforementioned optional tombs, there are mission-givers who you can return to for new jobs in exchange for coin, outfits, and XP, and area-specific challenges that offer rewards for exploration. For true completionists, there are plenty of relics, documents, murals and caves to discover, which can take an average playthrough from 15 hours to around 30 or 40.
Rise of The Tomb Raider also offers additional play in its Expedition mode, which replaces 2013’s inessential multiplayer with a fun enough way to compete against yourself and your friends in challenges that you can customize through collectable cards. Modifiers can make you weaker (one life only) or stronger (stealth kills earn temporary invisibility), and timers determine who comes out on top.
We want to hear it.
Above: IGN’s Icons series showcases Lara Croft.
Though I certainly wouldn’t recommend paying for these cards with real-world money – an option you’re offered – I did earn enough in-game credits in the main storyline to buy a couple of packs that made for some hilariously off-beat challenges. Big Head mode coupled with a card that sees enemies burst into flame after a melee attack is a personal favourite.
Rise of the Tomb Raider raises the bar set by Lara’s last outing with a rollicking adventure story, strong villains, gorgeous vistas, and smart puzzles – go off the main path to find the best stuff in dastardly optional tombs. Though the mandatory combat doesn’t distinguish itself with challenging enemies unless you crank up the difficulty, Lara’s newfound versatility on the battlefield makes fighting a lot more fun. Once again it’s Lara herself, however, who steals the show, her complex ambitions and hardened resolve showing new sides to a character who has well and truly grown from survivor to the most fascinating action hero in video games today.
