Drinking game: Take a shot every tame Lara says “Joerrrnahhhh”
I have fond memories of the previous two games in this trilogy, so I was looking forward to finally playing the conclusion. I figured I’d play it now since I just played the Uncharted series and the Tomb Raider reboots take a lot of elements from those games. All that did for me, however, was highlight Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s flaws.
To start, the story in this game is pretty bad. And not just the story, but specifically the dialogue and line delivery too. I remember the past two games having pretty mediocre stories as well, but they felt passable enough to justify the action, and the dialogue was decent enough to make me care somewhat for the characters. Shadow though has some laughably bad cutscenes. The actors often feel like they’re over-acting and the game takes it self far too seriously for how mediocre the story is. I couldn’t bring myself to care about any part of the story in this game, even though it’s the third game in the trilogy and I’ve been with this world for two games now. There’s also very little setup and payoff. There are some pretty cool moments in this game, but none of them feel earned. Certain character beats felt like they came out of nowhere. There were parts where I thought “ok damn maybe this game is heating up”, but then it didn’t keep that momentum and it just ended up feeling underwhelming. I almost fell asleep multiple times playing this game.
The combat in all three of the Tomb Raider reboots isn’t very good, and I didn’t feel much improvement, if any, in this entry. It feels pretty clunky and unexciting to control. I never thought I’d praise the combat from the first three Uncharted games, but it feels much smoother and easier to control there. The stealth in Shadow feels pretty guerrilla at times which is cool. The ability to rub mud over yourself as a disguise and sneak through bushes and mud covered walls made me feel pretty badass.
The platforming feels kind of clunky and annoying. During some cool action-platforming set pieces, I found myself dying often over a cheap death from a jump I should have landed, which completely killed the action and made some of these sections very tedious to get through. When they worked though, the action set pieces looked nice. The graphics aren’t anything to brag about, but they got the job done. They look a bit dated on PS4 for 2018, but they aren’t that bad. There are some really pretty environments to explore, and the art design overall is good. The game had some performance issues in the hub area where the frame rate would chug a bit, but it was a relatively smooth 30fps for most of the game.
This and the last game feature a semi-open world design that does nothing for the gameplay. Most of the side quests offered are meaningless filler. These games could benefit from a more linear approach. Streamline the game, but still have certain larger areas to explore with branching paths that lead to challenge tombs, without all the other fluff. Remove all the side quests and hordes of collectibles bogging down the menu. I feel like they made both this and the previous game semi-open world just for the sake of making it bigger. It feels hollow and uninspiring.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider doesn’t do much to set itself apart from its predecessor. It does almost nothing new that’s notable. This would have been OK if the world and story had been as interesting as Rise of the Tomb Raider, but it’s not. I would only recommend this to fans of the past Tomb Raider games who want more of the same.
I have fond memories of the previous two games in this trilogy, so I was looking forward to finally playing the conclusion. I figured I’d play it now since I just played the Uncharted series and the Tomb Raider reboots take a lot of elements from those games. All that did for me, however, was highlight Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s flaws.
To start, the story in this game is pretty bad. And not just the story, but specifically the dialogue and line delivery too. I remember the past two games having pretty mediocre stories as well, but they felt passable enough to justify the action, and the dialogue was decent enough to make me care somewhat for the characters. Shadow though has some laughably bad cutscenes. The actors often feel like they’re over-acting and the game takes it self far too seriously for how mediocre the story is. I couldn’t bring myself to care about any part of the story in this game, even though it’s the third game in the trilogy and I’ve been with this world for two games now. There’s also very little setup and payoff. There are some pretty cool moments in this game, but none of them feel earned. Certain character beats felt like they came out of nowhere. There were parts where I thought “ok damn maybe this game is heating up”, but then it didn’t keep that momentum and it just ended up feeling underwhelming. I almost fell asleep multiple times playing this game.
The combat in all three of the Tomb Raider reboots isn’t very good, and I didn’t feel much improvement, if any, in this entry. It feels pretty clunky and unexciting to control. I never thought I’d praise the combat from the first three Uncharted games, but it feels much smoother and easier to control there. The stealth in Shadow feels pretty guerrilla at times which is cool. The ability to rub mud over yourself as a disguise and sneak through bushes and mud covered walls made me feel pretty badass.
The platforming feels kind of clunky and annoying. During some cool action-platforming set pieces, I found myself dying often over a cheap death from a jump I should have landed, which completely killed the action and made some of these sections very tedious to get through. When they worked though, the action set pieces looked nice. The graphics aren’t anything to brag about, but they got the job done. They look a bit dated on PS4 for 2018, but they aren’t that bad. There are some really pretty environments to explore, and the art design overall is good. The game had some performance issues in the hub area where the frame rate would chug a bit, but it was a relatively smooth 30fps for most of the game.
This and the last game feature a semi-open world design that does nothing for the gameplay. Most of the side quests offered are meaningless filler. These games could benefit from a more linear approach. Streamline the game, but still have certain larger areas to explore with branching paths that lead to challenge tombs, without all the other fluff. Remove all the side quests and hordes of collectibles bogging down the menu. I feel like they made both this and the previous game semi-open world just for the sake of making it bigger. It feels hollow and uninspiring.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider doesn’t do much to set itself apart from its predecessor. It does almost nothing new that’s notable. This would have been OK if the world and story had been as interesting as Rise of the Tomb Raider, but it’s not. I would only recommend this to fans of the past Tomb Raider games who want more of the same.