Rise of the Tomb Raider

Lara Croft has made a name for herself after the events which took place on the island with the lunatic cult and immortal samurai warriors. But newspapers (including the Sun most likely) have claimed her venture to be all a hoax and that she’s just as mad as her late father. So Lara decides the best thing to do is to continue her father’s work and find the Divine Source located within a hidden city in Siberia. All the while a Religious organisation hell bent over world domination attempt to stop our English Rose dead in her tracks.

Sounds like a pretty solid plot right?

Sadly the game’s major flaw is the flat and highly predictable storyline. It’s something you’ve seen a million times before, with elements that hardly differ from any Uncharted game or Indiana Jones film. Compared to the edgy and bleak story of the last game, this Tomb Raider returns to familiar ground but doesn't improve or heighten the narrative structure. It’s pretty much a paint by numbers plot where Lara wants to the find the divine source to clear her father’s name and save the day. There are some standard daddy issues included, an evil religious organisation who want the source for its diabolical plan with standard betrayals and heart felt messages all round.

Rise of the Tomb Raider could have packed a few narrative punches, examining a Lara who is broken, recovering from the past experience on the island and who might be tackling PTSD. This could have been a very interesting theme along with continuing the darker tone of story telling. The game even takes elements from the previous instalment by bringing in an army of immortal warriors, just like the Sun Queen army, only now they’re painted up as Roman legionnaires. They are the more engaging antagonists in the game but again an idea that has been already used.

What does prevails in terms of narrative or to help project the story is using Siberia as it's setting. Making sure to use a wealth of history not normally explored and create such a rich and diverse game world to learn of. With stellar voice acting and an excellent soundtrack befitting the extreme and exhilarating nature of the game.

Where the narrative fails, Rise of the Tomb Raider excels in most other areas, making major improvements compared to its predecessor. The design has evolved with new mechanics that create an even more engaging, open world action adventure. Siberia is represented with a fantastic looking and deeply immersive world, holding a vast amount of exploration at hand. Siberia feels highly organic with its dynamic wild life and weather systems making it even more a wonder to observe. The detail in texture, colour and ambient lighting are sub-par to other Xbox One beauties such as Ryse: Son of Rome and Halo.

New features include character driven side quests, more methods of traversing the environment, new gear along with bigger set pieces and a major improvement for the tomb raiding aspect. There is a huge amount to seek out and engage with inside this immense world and soon enough, you'll care for your own progression and the finding the secrets and rewards. It was shocking to see how much each location had to offer in context of exploration, loot and unlockable content. So much so I would spent many hours in a single area and still felt I’d not seen everything or that I wanted to find it all over again.

The tombs are incredible and stand out improvement in this sequel. Optional and story driven tombs are more complex in design, presenting stronger lateral challenges and a greater depth in back-stories. The higher level of aesthetics and design will take Lara to fascinating locations such as disused Soviet mines, flooded bath houses, Golden Tombs, frozen Viking ships and many more memorable locations. Each of these tombs harbour a mini adventure by themselves and present more interesting rewards, such as knowledge and new skills for Lara to acquire for traversing, combat and survival.

Lara will face more challenges in Rise of the Tomb Raider with much of it shaping into intense and brutalising combat with various immortal warriors, highly trained gunman, bears and even mother nature. We are given a mixture of grand scale set pieces such as avoiding an oncoming avalanche mixed with close courter’s gunfights. We are also presented more freedom with open encounters, leaving players to decide how to overcome patrolling enemies. Encounters like these can be tackled with predator like stealth, using trees and booby traps for a tactical advantage or simply blow the crap out of everything with a range of heavy weaponry. You can in some segments set off larger group kills, such as setting off a warehouse explosion to take out overwhelming enemy numbers.

New skills can be learnt and tactics to develop over the course of the game, from making smoke bombs to booby trapping dead bodies for passing NPCs. Some skills will feel a little redundant towards the end of the game, but the options are open enough for players who use stealth or action, to have enough freedom over what they use. Even the weapons have been given a major boost with new additions such as poison arrows, which engulf enemies with a deadly toxic cloud. Some items such as the poison arrows can make the game feel a little too easy, seeing as you can kill five guys with one arrow, it’s something that players can abuse and end up flying through some of the more overwhelming segments. for seasoned adventurers, it’s best to consider the later difficulties for their first time playing for that real challenge.

Not to say the game won’t long with a campaign that can last around ten hours and more side quests and extras to dive into. You can double that time easily. Along with the new range of upgrades that can be bought as well, you’ll push yourself to find additional gold pieces and find every heavy storage box in order to complete your deadly arsenal.

Another new addition to Tomb Raider is the Expedition Mode, where players can replay favourite tombs or battles just for the sake of it or with added tweaks to the gameplay. Over the course of the game, players will unlock cards that prompt new game play features that increase the difficulty such as faster bleed outs or enemies that are always on fire. you can also activate cards as humorous cheat codes and upgrades such as big headed characters or ridiculously overpowered firearms. It’s a fun extra mode that will make sure you’re given the same experience with a dynamic twist. Cards can be earned reasonably easily but there is the micro-transaction option. It’s not needed yet again it’s not intrusive nor does it affect anything in single player. It’s rather more so odd, as points can be earned replaying levels or completing objectives and challenges in the main game.

Tomb raider has never felt so fun to play and Rise of the Tomb Raider is the most dynamic and greatest adventure since The Last Revelation. This will appease old fans that enjoyed the more focus puzzle/exploration elements of older games but still keeping things more energised and alive with its intense and brutalising action. The story maybe lacking in charm or structure but this is definitely a glorious return and a contender for game of the year.