

Even swimming puzzles don’t feel tedious, as Shadow of the Tomb Raider soon takes the action back to dry land. With few exceptions, completing the challenges is a reward in itself, as they use emergent gameplay to teach you techniques for solving them without you realizing it. They give you the opportunity to show your prowess, as Croft must use her climbing axes, ziplines, and rope to traverse seemingly impossible obstacles. Tombs often become enormous, multi-stage levels, despite looking like holes in the cave wall from the outside. Eidos Montreal has put tremendous time and attention into every puzzle and obstacle. Most tombs are optional, so you can beat the game without much tomb raiding, but you’d miss an important part of the game. One minute you’re solving a slow water wheel puzzle, and the next you’re leaping from crumbling buildings in an earthquake.

You must decide if you want to continue on or take a 30 minute break to tackle whatever puzzle the tomb holds. In the middle of a mission, Lara can stumble across a tomb entrance. Peru and the city of Paititi are filled to the brim with secrets, hidden tombs, rare animals, and treasure, most of which you’ll be teased with while traveling along the critical path. Shadow of the Tomb Raider most important character, however, is the world itself. However, when talking to random passerby in the game’s hub areas, some less advanced animations fail to impress. The game makes excellent use of motion capture technogly, which ensures quiet moments have proper emotional weight. We reviewed the game on an Xbox One X with 4K resolution and HDR enabled, and the results were impressive. There’s just enough to drive the point home, and no more. We already know Jonah is cautious, and that Lara will do whatever she was planning on doing regardless of his assessment, so the game doesn’t hammer it into the player’s head with redundant banter. It’s a relationship that has evolved over the course of the trilogy, and offers the opportunity to cut out pointless dialogue. Jonah’s enormous frame helps him take down multiple enemies at once, but he mostly acts as a logical foil to Croft’s aggressive tendencies.

You must decide if you want to continue on or take a break to tackle whatever puzzle the tomb holds.Įven if you aren’t familiar with Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s characters, their personalities quickly make them distinguishable. Only with a second relic can she hope to save the planet from destruction, and her mission takes her to the jungles of Peru in search of answers. Initially searching for a relic capable of “reshaping” the world in Mexico, Lara soon discovers removing it from its resting place has triggered a Maya apocalypse. Picking up after the events of the previous game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider finds Lara and adventuring partner Jonah Maiava in pursuit of Trinity, the organization Lara has fought against since the first game. That means you’re in for one hell of a ride. Shadow of the Tomb Raider isn’t interested in putting the training wheels back on Lara Croft. She has completed her transformation into the ultimate adventurer, warrior, and archaeologist, and even the collective efforts of a secret society hell-bent on altering the entire planet can’t stop her. The fear she felt during the events of 2013’s Tomb Raider and its sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, has been replaced with deadly confidence, and her name is now spoken like the stuff of legend. Lara Croft emerges from a murky pond and mercilessly slaughters a mercenary with her knife.
