Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Xbox One)
On Lara Croft’s first adventure in the new Tomb Raider trilogy, she did what she had to to survive on a strange and dangerous island. Then in Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara set off to clear her father’s name and encountered a group named Trinity who violently suppressed the investigation of ancient mystical artifacts. Now, for what might be her final adventure in this rebooted series, Lara Croft is responsible for the start of the apocalypse.
After spending years foiling the work of Trinity, Lara Croft finds herself in Mexico tracking who she thinks is just another member of the group’s upper ranks. To her surprise though, Lara discovers that her target, Pedro Dominguez, is actually the leader of Trinity, his organization currently searching for a dagger and a box that are said to remake reality if they are reunited. Lara tries to get ahead of the group’s efforts, uncovering the dagger only to discover that moving it from its resting place set into motion events that could lead to the destruction of the entire world. Now, the search for the box is more pressing than ever for both Lara and her enemies, both setting off into the Peruvian jungle to try and make sure the world continues, the conflict coming from how they both intend to deal with having the dagger and box together. Pedro Dominguez, despite being the leader of the enemy forces that Lara has devoted her life to stopping, really isn’t all that compelling of a villain unfortunately, primarily because his presence isn’t felt too much during the story compared to the previous game’s villain. He has understandable motivations for wanting to remake the world and some of them are even noble, but the price of letting him have his way would be the erasure of anything he doesn’t deem worthy in his new world, so Lara is doing all she can to stop his efforts while also trying to make up for her mistake.
While the villain isn’t all that strong of an adversary, the game does take time to look more closely at its protagonists to compensate. Lara Croft herself is given a closer look at her personality and drive, a lot of it springing forth from the fact she is undeniably the one who sets forth some of the events that are leading towards the world’s end. Immediately after taking the dagger, a tsunami foretold to follow strikes the small Mexican town nearby, but rather than dwelling on the destruction or death toll, Lara is immediately driven to go and try to right things. At first this might seem almost callous or oblivious, but over the course of the game its shown that her way of coping with her troubles is to always keep moving, for as long as she is goal-driven and working to right what wrongs she can, she won’t settle down and reflect on the tolls her adventures take both on her and those around her. A surprising amount of work is also done with Lara’s friend and adventuring companion Jonah, a character present since her island adventure but never so important to the events to warrant mention before. While Lara has left many people behind as she becomes more focused on her efforts to uncover mysteries and stop Trinity, Jonah remains by her side as pretty much the only consistent and reliable support she has. Jonah isn’t just blindly supportive either, pushing back against Lara’s increasingly destructive activity while also trying to prevent her from breaking down when she’s pushed to her limits. Even in gameplay Jonah features more, helping during navigation and even taking down some enemies himself. While always an endearing helper in the previous games, Jonah feels like a full-fledged participant now whose increased importance makes Dominguez’s simple antagonistic role easier to accept.
The Amazon rainforest is an excellent setting for this game’s action, the dense jungle able to incorporate plenty of trees, foliage, and water in its navigation that are great at hiding secrets or serving as helpful tools when in combat, Lara able to drop down from trees on enemies or camouflage with the brush to sneak up on them. Underwater swimming areas expand the variety of places to be found in the Amazon as well, exploration mixing up moving between branches, climbing across rock faces, and swimming to prevent the jungle from growing stale. Despite having a huge jungle to work with though, the game does break away from it a few times to provide new locations that inject some major variety into your exploration, the game beginning in a Mexican city, a flashback taking Lara back to her childhood home, and the game sometimes putting you in more developed man made areas. The settlements, whether they be modern Peruvian towns or the hidden native population’s homes, are actually hubs for the player to buy new things and find many side quests to engage with, these optional tasks playing well into the game’s increased focus on exploration and puzzle-solving compared to the previous titles.
The world around Lara is filled with archeological trinkets to find, materials that can be used to unlock upgrades for Lara’s equipment, and challenges both optional and mandatory that involve puzzle-solving. Challenge tombs are giving a bigger emphasis than before in this title, these areas requiring the player to figure out how to set up a large area so Lara can get to her rewards, those being treasures and a new ability useful for play that make these worth the effort you put into them. The main plot has plenty of similar puzzles to these tombs as well, with actions out in the jungle sometimes taking on the form of needing to arrange things properly to open the way onward, with things like learning how to activate or interact with ancient mechanisms being a pretty common theme. Many of these are active puzzles as well, meaning that you will need to climb around, open up ways to access different parts of the puzzle, or move quickly enough to complete a puzzle’s task in a small time window. The greater focus definitely allowed the developers to make these more complex than previous Tomb Raider titles, many of them having systems unique to their tomb that must be learned for completion, and the similar crypts are added that are often a bit simpler and with different rewards to keep giving players more to do in a game already with strong action along its storyline and plenty of side activities to complete in its towns. The game even had the confidence to stop trying to shoehorn in extra modes like the previous two titles did with their multiplayer and mission reframing, this game instead turning its already well-designed challenge tombs into the option for more play. By tackling them in different ways, they are turned into score challenges with online leaderboards and post-release purchasable tombs that focus on this trilogy’s biggest strength without corrupting it with any drastic formula changes.
While the action may be downplayed compared to the puzzle-solving and exploration, it still works well when it is present. At certain points in her adventure, Lara Croft will end up in a situation that requires the player to run through a dangerous and deadly area, some of these triggered by her own initiation of apocalyptic events. Timing your jumps right and moving quickly before the world can crumble around you here is key, the action having some impressive visual destruction around you to sell the intensity of the moment even if the checkpoints are kind enough to make failure during these not too concerning. The same mechanics used for exploration in calmer moments feature here so they feel a natural fit when framed this way, there’s just more pressure on doing them well instead of using them to find new secrets. The combat is an interesting element of the game though for how measured the game is in using it. During your adventure Lara will be forced to fight, relying on her bow and a small set of firearms when the need arises that are effective but limited enough to encourage smart use or make foes bigger threats. A lot of the resistance Lara will encounter will be from the wildlife like maned wolves and jaguars as well as some strange creatures tied to the apocalyptic prophecy, their speed and numbers meaning these fights can be fast-paced and action-packed even when you’re packing some powerful gun options. When you face off against humans though such as the Trinity soldiers, stealth is actually given a pretty big emphasis, since if Lara is detected they tend to gang up on her quickly and call in better-armed back-up to help with taking you down. You have plenty of options for sneaking around and taking down foes quietly that don’t slow down play either, and if you are spotted, your weapons can pull you out of the jam if used well.
Combat with humans increases later in the game as does your strength to compensate for it, but over the course of the game you’ll also level up so you can unlock new abilities that will help with different parts of the experience. You can choose to spend ability points on things that help in combat, exploration, or material gathering. Perhaps more interesting than leveling up your abilities to help with these though is the game’s interesting approach to difficulty. Rather than just selecting one difficulty that determines your experience, you may at any time tinker with the difficulty for three facets of the game, those being the puzzles, the traversal, and the combat. What were previously series staples like environmental objects having white coloring to subtly indicate the path forward in a natural way are now removed on higher difficulty options, and the survival instinct option that will dim your vision to highlight items near you or important objects for puzzles can also be made less effective if you so wish. These will likely improve your experience if left active, but you also have the option of trying to make things more natural or survival focused while still being able to set puzzle and combat difficulties separately to avoid being overwhelmed. You can have more hints for puzzles if you need them or make your enemies more deadly, and even in these higher difficulties you can sometimes get the assistance that was stripped away by way of unlockable optional abilities if you only want that one missing feature. It’s a bit difficult to determine just how well balanced things are in general with such a flexible system, but that flexibility in itself means you can quite easily find a comfortable or challenging way to play this game if you so wish, the customizability making it a bit more open to different types of players.
THE VERDICT: For a possible final journey in the rebooted Tomb Raider series, Shadow of the Tomb Raider does not disappoint. The Amazon jungle is a good fit for the exploration focus the title is emphasizing, with the many tombs and story moments along the way including some interesting navigation puzzles that gel well with the exploration. Combat’s use of stealth only continues to push the focus on intelligent movement, but there is still enough action to break things up and serve as injections of adrenaline amidst the problem-solving and secret searching. With Lara and her ally Jonah getting interesting new looks at their characters in a plot about trying to stop the end of the world, Shadow of the Tomb Raider has strong personal and global stakes while also squeezing in some side quests to serve as ways to engage with the areas and game mechanics a bit more along the way.
And so, I give Shadow of the Tomb Raider for Xbox One…
A GREAT rating. In some ways, Shadow of the Tomb Raider could be described as “Rise of the Tomb Raider but in a jungle”, which isn’t a negative thing, but it does carry over many things that worked with that title without pushing it any further. I had hopes this would be the game that pushes the series even higher, and the greater emphasis on tombs was a smart direction, but it seems a bit comfortable in its design ethos so it still didn’t hit that highest mark. More of a great thing is a great thing though, so Shadow of the Tomb Raider definitely has a lot to like for those interested in the series and a few changes that do play to its strengths. Such a flexible difficulty system means its main components can easily be made more enjoyable, and the base design shared across the difficulties still ensures the battles are well structured to reward careful approaches, the puzzles give you plenty to think about, and the exploration is packed with things to find and rewards for looking around and doing optional activities.
Lara Croft will undoubtedly go on new adventures even after this particular trilogy has wrapped up, but it was an interesting journey that gave us some interesting characters, excellent locations, high-octane action, and strong puzzle-solving across all three games. With the largest stakes yet and a more refined balance of its component parts, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a great conclusion to this particular set of stories that helped reinvent one of gaming’s biggest heroines in an interesting and enjoyable way.