--Lara Croft, Shadow of the Tomb Raider
2013's Tomb Raider [1] had spectacular gameplay and served as a wonderful introduction to a rebooted version of Lara Croft, but the game suffered from a serious lack of character depth. The immediate sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider [2], improved practically everything about the former game. Thankfully, Shadow of the Tomb Raider continues the needed evolution of both certain gameplay mechanics and Lara's characterization. This time, Lara is at her stealthiest and most powerful point in the trilogy, and yet she is also at her most emotionally vulnerable. Her friendship with her best friend Jonah (it's very refreshing to see a strictly non-romantic, intimate relationship between a man and woman in entertainment!), a returning character from the two preceding games, helps highlight her emotionality in deeper ways than before. The two share some of the most moving moments in the entire series, the personal journey of Lara occurring alongside a race to thwart the Mayan apocalypse, which Lara unwittingly triggers.
Production Values
Gorgeous visuals welcome players to a detailed realization of Mesoamerican cultures and environments. Tombs, caves, and marketplaces are animated beautifully--though I did notice some sub-optimal lip-word synchronization at one point. The sound matches the quality of the graphics, with excellent voice acting on the parts of Lara and Jonah carrying much of the narrative. The visuals and sound contribute to a sometimes horror-like atmosphere, something that allows Shadow of the Tomb Raider to have the creepiest moments in the trilogy. One thing that I did find odd, despite my praises, is the gratuitous and bizarre change of Jonah's facial structure and ethnicity. The voice actor from before does reprise his role, making for a strange blend of the familiar and new.
Gameplay
Lara has become a predator just as lethal as any of the most dangerous wild animals encountered in the game. She can cover herself in mud to evade enemy detection, hang enemies from tree branches without alerting others, and easily dispatch multiple enemies in a row from the cover of vegetation, pulling the corpses into bushes to conceal her presence. The stealth system is at its absolute peak here. Not only can stealth be incredibly fun to utilize, but it is sometimes the only way to most effectively ensure that players don't repeatedly die in some combat scenarios. Just don't think that all of Lara's opponents are easy to kill using stealth: this game introduces Trinity soldiers with goggles that can detect Lara's body heat through plant cover, so even maintaining stealth can be challenging.
Besides these improvements, there is not much about the gameplay that is new. This does not mean that players will not have a hell of a good time executing stealth attacks, engaging in gunfights, raiding challenge tombs, completing tasks for NPCs, and upgrading Lara. Anyone who would not want to play something fairly similar to Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider might not appreciate the gameplay very much, but anyone who enjoyed the other two entries in the trilogy should find many things to enjoy.
Story
Spoilers!
Having dedicated herself to fighting the shadow organization known as Trinity, Lara Croft, with her best friend Jonah Maiava, visits Mexico. In a benevolent but catastrophic decision, she takes the Dagger of Ix Chel from an area marked by a mural depicting a hidden city and several apocalyptic events called the Cleansing. Lara discovers that her actions seem to have set the very apocalypse portrayed on the mural in motion, and a Trinity member named Pedro Dominguez (who knew her father) confiscates the Dagger.
Dominguez seeks to "remake the world" according to his preferences, hoping to find the secret Box of Chak Kel affiliated with the Dagger in order to stop the apocalypse from reaching its final phase. In the wake of a tsunami that devastates a local community, Lara grapples with doubts, regrets, and guilt. She travels to the hidden city of Paititi shown in the mural, a civilization faced with the threat of the cult of Kukulkan, a cult that practices human sacrifice.
More disasters ravage the environment as as Dominguez comes closer to uniting the box (which is in his possession) with the Dagger. Lara makes an alliance with the Yaaxil, creatures that once guarded the box, and together they overpower Trinity forces, at which point Lara defeats Dominguez and averts the Cleansing by offering herself as a symbolic sacrifice.
Intellectual Content
There are plenty of puzzles, both in the main narrative and in the side quests and optional challenge tombs, to occupy the attention of players looking for intellectual stimulation. Lara can give hints if players desire so, but the difficulty of the puzzles can be adjusted so that Lara gives minimal hints or none at all. Completing the challenge tombs grants access to skills only available to those who conquer them. Some of these abilities can greatly facilitate certain parts of the main story, so there is an incentive for even non-completionists to invest some time in discovering and finishing the challenge tombs.
Conclusion
A post-credits scene hints at a possible continuation of this iteration and its version of Lara, but if the series ends with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it will end with a very personal, fitting story that shows how the new Lara has matured since her first game in 2013. The narrative has the highest stakes of any entries in the trilogy, which complements the exploration of Lara's personal demons rather well, as Lara faces both environmental cataclysms and emotional conflicts at once. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is indubitably an adventure worth embarking upon for those who fell in love with the style and characters of the earlier reboot games. After all, the best elements of the series have been refined to the point where it would be very difficult to improve them further. And that is exactly what the final installment in a trilogy should accomplish!
Content:
1. Violence: The combat is brutal but largely non-graphic, though, near the beginning of the main narrative, a dismembered corpse is shown onscreen.
2. Profanity: On several occasions (not very often), Lara and Jonah use the word "fuck."
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/game-review-tomb-raider-xbox-one.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/04/game-review-rise-of-tomb-raider-xbox-one_6.html
Gorgeous visuals welcome players to a detailed realization of Mesoamerican cultures and environments. Tombs, caves, and marketplaces are animated beautifully--though I did notice some sub-optimal lip-word synchronization at one point. The sound matches the quality of the graphics, with excellent voice acting on the parts of Lara and Jonah carrying much of the narrative. The visuals and sound contribute to a sometimes horror-like atmosphere, something that allows Shadow of the Tomb Raider to have the creepiest moments in the trilogy. One thing that I did find odd, despite my praises, is the gratuitous and bizarre change of Jonah's facial structure and ethnicity. The voice actor from before does reprise his role, making for a strange blend of the familiar and new.
Gameplay
Lara has become a predator just as lethal as any of the most dangerous wild animals encountered in the game. She can cover herself in mud to evade enemy detection, hang enemies from tree branches without alerting others, and easily dispatch multiple enemies in a row from the cover of vegetation, pulling the corpses into bushes to conceal her presence. The stealth system is at its absolute peak here. Not only can stealth be incredibly fun to utilize, but it is sometimes the only way to most effectively ensure that players don't repeatedly die in some combat scenarios. Just don't think that all of Lara's opponents are easy to kill using stealth: this game introduces Trinity soldiers with goggles that can detect Lara's body heat through plant cover, so even maintaining stealth can be challenging.
Besides these improvements, there is not much about the gameplay that is new. This does not mean that players will not have a hell of a good time executing stealth attacks, engaging in gunfights, raiding challenge tombs, completing tasks for NPCs, and upgrading Lara. Anyone who would not want to play something fairly similar to Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider might not appreciate the gameplay very much, but anyone who enjoyed the other two entries in the trilogy should find many things to enjoy.
Story
Spoilers!
Having dedicated herself to fighting the shadow organization known as Trinity, Lara Croft, with her best friend Jonah Maiava, visits Mexico. In a benevolent but catastrophic decision, she takes the Dagger of Ix Chel from an area marked by a mural depicting a hidden city and several apocalyptic events called the Cleansing. Lara discovers that her actions seem to have set the very apocalypse portrayed on the mural in motion, and a Trinity member named Pedro Dominguez (who knew her father) confiscates the Dagger.
Dominguez seeks to "remake the world" according to his preferences, hoping to find the secret Box of Chak Kel affiliated with the Dagger in order to stop the apocalypse from reaching its final phase. In the wake of a tsunami that devastates a local community, Lara grapples with doubts, regrets, and guilt. She travels to the hidden city of Paititi shown in the mural, a civilization faced with the threat of the cult of Kukulkan, a cult that practices human sacrifice.
More disasters ravage the environment as as Dominguez comes closer to uniting the box (which is in his possession) with the Dagger. Lara makes an alliance with the Yaaxil, creatures that once guarded the box, and together they overpower Trinity forces, at which point Lara defeats Dominguez and averts the Cleansing by offering herself as a symbolic sacrifice.
Intellectual Content
There are plenty of puzzles, both in the main narrative and in the side quests and optional challenge tombs, to occupy the attention of players looking for intellectual stimulation. Lara can give hints if players desire so, but the difficulty of the puzzles can be adjusted so that Lara gives minimal hints or none at all. Completing the challenge tombs grants access to skills only available to those who conquer them. Some of these abilities can greatly facilitate certain parts of the main story, so there is an incentive for even non-completionists to invest some time in discovering and finishing the challenge tombs.
Conclusion
A post-credits scene hints at a possible continuation of this iteration and its version of Lara, but if the series ends with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it will end with a very personal, fitting story that shows how the new Lara has matured since her first game in 2013. The narrative has the highest stakes of any entries in the trilogy, which complements the exploration of Lara's personal demons rather well, as Lara faces both environmental cataclysms and emotional conflicts at once. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is indubitably an adventure worth embarking upon for those who fell in love with the style and characters of the earlier reboot games. After all, the best elements of the series have been refined to the point where it would be very difficult to improve them further. And that is exactly what the final installment in a trilogy should accomplish!
Content:
1. Violence: The combat is brutal but largely non-graphic, though, near the beginning of the main narrative, a dismembered corpse is shown onscreen.
2. Profanity: On several occasions (not very often), Lara and Jonah use the word "fuck."
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/game-review-tomb-raider-xbox-one.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/04/game-review-rise-of-tomb-raider-xbox-one_6.html
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