ToriJ's Reviews #1: Rise of the Tomb Raider

[Ayen]

Hello everyone. ToriJ here and welcome to the first edition of ToriJ’s Video Game Reviews. Today I’m taking a look at my all time favorite video game, Rise of the Tomb Raider, developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix and was a timed exclusive for the Xbox One in November 2015, and is the second installment in the rebooted Tomb Raider series that began in 2013. We’re once again reunited with Lara Croft, voiced by Camillia Luddington, as she travels to Siberia in search of the lost city of Kitezh to find the Divine Source and renew her father’s good name.

The game starts off with you climbing a mountaintop in Siberia with your good pal Jonah in search of the lost cities. Here you’re introduced to climbing and jumping as you reach the top. It’s not until later that you once again get your trusty bow and arrow and different firearms to combat a variety of different enemies and hunt different animals for materials.

Fighting is a big part of the gameplay. Once you get to a certain spot the game throws more enemies at you than you can shake a stick at. For some reason it’s easier to kill human enemies in this game than animals. I understand why the bear and the wolves would be hard, but deer? It’s deer! I should be able to kill it easily! Are there any hunters in the audience? I need to know if this is accurate.

You can take behind cover to protect against bullets and you can even use stealth to take out enemies instead of taking them all head on. There’s a Survivor’s Instinct mode which highlights items of interest and where you need to go next so you don’t get lost. There’s also a map which is actually a big help. There are plenty of challenge tombs to enter to make it feel like a traditional Tomb Raider game, and side quests which grants you different items on your adventure. You can just follow the main quest, but what’s the fun in that?

There are different areas you can go to that makes it feel more fresh. Different from the last one which was in one location, there is a flashback scene that takes you to Syria before you’re back in Siberia. Eventually you meet a paramilitary organization named Trinity that’s after the same thing you are. Led by an evil self-righteous man named Konstantin.

The story is pretty good even if you see some plot twists coming a mile away and there are a few cliches in the story that I can’t explain without spoiling the plot for you. But the overall journey of Lara looking for proof of the supernatural to renew her father’s good name and dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder from her first adventure is well done. It makes Lara seem more human and you can easily relate to her as she goes through these trials to find what she’s looking for, learning the truth of things and that some things are bigger than even her deepest desires.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love Lara Croft as a character, and I love the Tomb Raider games. Okay, I started the series with the 2013 reboot, but still. Lara Croft has a lot going on for her. She’s smart, trustworthy, and overall a good person who just wants the best for mankind. She feels connected to her father who sadly died the more she learns about the supernatural and finding things that can’t be explained through science. Once thinking that her father was a fool for his beliefs, now she’s seen, and many of us can relate to that if we really saw real proof of the supernatural. Especially evidence of the immortal soul.

The villains do their role well. You come to loathe Konstantin the more you see him, but he also has a soft side to him when it comes to his sister. His sister is dying and wants the Divine Source to heal herself. You learn that most of Trinity are just religious madmen, but some of them lacked purpose that Trinity had provided them. You’re even offered a chance to join Trinity, but of course the game doesn’t let you choose. Lara just refuses. It would’ve been cool if you could join Trinity and then double cross them at the end, but that would go against the values that Lara Croft stands for, so I understand not being granted that choice.

Jonah and the natives you meet in the city are great too, but it’s hard for me to really dive into what make one of the natives so great without spoiling plot points, and I don’t want to do that in case any of you readers haven’t gotten a chance to play Rise yet, so I’ll just say you’ll see the surprise coming, but it makes it worth it to see.

The puzzles are great too and what makes Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider. The graphics are clean and neat and if you can play it on either Xbox One, PS4, or the PC then it’s worth it to view. I don’t know what else to say about Rise other than the fact it’s a much more superior sequel with good replay value after you complete the game and different skill sets and XP you can gain throughout the game. Learning new languages and solving different puzzles to get closer to your goal of the Divine Source. It still remains my favorite game of all time.

Get it!