It's OK, I guess
Unsurprising, that is about the best I can say for this game.
Lara Croft is once again on the trail of adventure. Trinity is still at large and trying to take over the world, again. This adventure takes Lara to South America to meet up with old and new friends and foes alike.
This is the third game in this reboot of the the series and unfortunately the story is just as mailed in as the first two. The setting may have changed but it is more of the same half-hearted and short-sheeted emotional misses that plagued the other games. Every attempt to make Lara empathetical falls short especially when she is then put into a scenario that the she must directly murder all in site. Case in point, in the story a character close to Lara is reported dead and she then goes on a murderous rampage to avenge this person. Then when the person turns up alive the moment is summed up with a brief sigh and the game goes on. The emotional weight that should have been in this moment is poured onto the floor like water and trampled on giving no way to make Lara more relatable.
It is a shame that the story falls short when the game works well on a technical level. The environments are lush and beautiful even on an original PS4. Whether you are in the depths of the jungle or swimming underwater there is great detail in everything around you. The only issue on a technical level was that sometimes when trying to interact with an object as prompted it didn’t always work correctly. If you walk around a little bit and try again things would work.
The fact that this is the third entry of the series is what makes it disappointing. It seems that the first two games weren’t the building blocks they should have been. Shadow of the Tomb Raider comes off as a carbon copy of all the same issues that the first two games had. The aesthetics of the game do little to make up for the shortcomings of the characters. It’s fun to run around in the jungle and solve puzzles but in the end Lara Croft comes off a character that there is no reason to care about. The attempts make a connection to Lara’s plight are poorly balanced against the moments when she mows down foes at will.
It’s an ok game but could have been much more. It was good enough that I got to over 80% completion but I also don’t feel any desire to replay this game again. This would be one of those games that if asked I would tell people it is worth playing but not buying, a great game to rent not to buy.
