Rise of the Tomb Raider

With a title like Rise Of The Tomb Raider, you might think this would be the first game in it's series, however you would be mistaken. As a sequel to the 2013 surprise hit (at least for me, personally) Tomb Raider, the second game seeks to build on the new direction for stalwart video game icon Lara Croft. Back are voice actor Camilla Luddington as Lara and Rhianna Pratchett as the lead writer, back are the white ledges letting you know where to climb, back is the gravitas and weight given to taking a life- actually, that's not back at all. Well, the comparisons to the Uncharted games sure are still around. While some of the decisions are questionable, Rise Of The Tomb Raider does enough right that it proves it belongs in the same conversation as it's predecessor as far as great action games go.

For being such a big part of the first hour of Tomb Raider - and then never really being a problem after that - the idea of Lara struggling with killing, human, deer, or otherwise, isn't really all that much of a factor now, which is easy to do when you have an antagonistic force like Trinity standing in front of you. This previously unseen ancient order of knights turned paramilitary world police serve as the villainous organization full of faceless mercenaries ripe for the killing this time around, lead by Konstantin, a man whose sole motivation seems to boil down to "believes he is chosen by God to find stuff" as he and Lara race through Siberia looking for the mythical city of Kitezh and "the divine source".

For something that was so highly praised for it's writing and character work, it's a shame the sequel to Tomb Raider is so lacking on that front. Not to harp too much on the title, but the word "rise" is hardly appropriate for what transpires in this game. Lara Croft "rose" to her calling in Yamatai in the last game, she started out naive, maybe even a bit arrogant, and grew and changed over the course of her ordeal there. While Rise Of The Tomb Raider is largely about her trying to clear her disgraced father's name and grow closer to him by succeeding where he failed, Lara herself does not really change in any substantial way. She thinks she's on to something, turns out she was on to something, and must stop this something from being exploited by cartoonishly bland bad guys who have no redeeming or sympathetic characteristics. Not that the sun cultists were morally grey or anything either back in the first game, but this time out I was hoping to see a continuation of Lara's character arc instead of her just stagnating off where she ended up last time, and that would have been greatly served by having a worthy counterpart to compete against.

It's not just a disappointing arc, either, much of the dialogue is corny or forced, and for a lot of the first half of the game the plot moves at a pace that could only be described as "breakneck". There are basically only six characters with names that matter - maybe seven if you include the flashbacks of Lara's father - but none of them really come into their own or separate themselves from the tropes they're based on. It is in holding this deficiency in writing up to the actual gameplay that you get into the debate of what's more important, because there just aren't very many action games that move and play this well. If you're here to climb cliffs and shoot arrows into dudes, then this is the package for you.

Lara is fast and can scale walls and jump up ledges with ease, which is incredibly satisfying. More than how she acts, the way that Lara moves around the world and through each encounter is the real way you can show how powerful and capable she's become. Exploration is snappy and rarely frustrating or a hindrance, while combat is versatile and thrilling. The sheer amount of options, from the different weapons, to the different types of ammo therein, to utilizing objects in the environment to your advantage makes each fight fun and never the same thing. Crafting might be a little over-powered, one poison arrow can take out way more guys at once than it should, but the light character specing coupled with the multitude of viable strategies allow you to really approach most situations in any way you'd like. Near the end of the game, the action segments outnumber the exploration segments by at least double, but at around 12-14 hours to complete the main campaign, this doesn't really cause the game to drag too much.

I estimate that it took me 12-14 hours on the critical path, but there are plenty of other things to do along the way that can offer even more content to busy yourself with. The quasi-open world map lets you fast travel back to any camp site you've found in the ten or so large areas that are explored over the course of the game. Besides the numerous types of collectables to find, there are some scattered NPCs around the world that will offer side-missions with rewards that will almost always help you in your quest. The structure of these missions aren't revolutionary in any way - go here and free these prisoners, destroy these radio towers, etc. - but they do at least offer a diversion and something else to do. As well, of course, there are the tombs, single one-off puzzles with lore and abilities hidden within them. While they varied from tomb to tomb on just how complicated and time-consuming they could be, these sections were still some of the most fun I had with the game.

There are a lot of great ideas and cool things about Rise Of The Tomb Raider -learning languages around the world is a neat way to gate progress on finding all of the collectables - but there are also some bizarre and disappointing choices as well - I wish my waypoint was just always on the screen without me needing to click in my "survival instincts" or whatever, and why does every single gun noise, both in gameplay and cutscenes, come through the PS4 controller as well as the screen? At the end of it all, however, I see the good things shine through more than the negative. There is absolutely room for a better story with richer characters, but I wasn't thinking about that as I swung from my grapple point onto some unsuspecting guard to take him out and grab the nearby bottle to make molotov out of so I could take out his buddy across the way. How much you value character motivation may be a factor for you, but if you like "action-adventure" games, this is one you probably won't regret looking into.