Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015)

This title is a polished and visually stunning sequel that builds upon the 2013 reboot. The snowy Siberian landscapes, detailed ruins, and dynamic lighting create a highly immersive atmosphere that makes exploration a pleasure. The game balances cinematic, linear sequences with larger hub areas that encourage backtracking, puzzle solving, and uncovering secrets. Challenge tombs are a particular highlight, offering clever environmental puzzles that feel more rewarding and substantial than before. Combat and traversal are fluid, with stealth, climbing, and weapon variety blending smoothly into the action.

Lara herself is portrayed as more mature and driven, with her character development adding weight to the story. While the narrative can lean on familiar tropes and predictable beats, it still provides memorable moments and a strong motivation for Lara’s journey. This reboot is a funny phenomenon, it inspired a lot of titles such as Sony's Uncharted, and as time goes by, this reboot was actually inspired by Uncharted. And this is actually a nice thing since all these titles are very good in general. On the downside, the game sometimes suffers from repetition, with an overabundance of collectibles and side tasks that can feel like filler.

The crafting and upgrade systems, while functional, rarely transform gameplay in meaningful ways. Overall, this second entry to the Tomb Raider franchise reboot is an excellent action-adventure title. It doesn’t reinvent the formula, as already mentioned, it actually gets inspirations from games it inspired in the past. But its mix of exploration, puzzles, and cinematic storytelling make it one of the stronger entries in the franchise and a must-play for fans of this series.

If you are familiar with the first game in this trilogy, then playing Rise of the Tomb Raider should be a no-brainer. This game took everything I loved about the first entry in the series and extended that gameplay with some new additions. My only regret is that I waited eight years to finally sit down and play through this highly polished title. With that said, let's dive into specifics.

The Good

• Story:

  As with any Tomb Raider game (or Indiana Jones movie), the story combines a mixture of high-intensity, world-hopping, treasure-hunting excitement with a healthy dose of the supernatural. RofTR doesn't pull any punches and you're thrust into the action right away. From the onset, you find out you're up against a vast and shadowy organization known as Trinity. Lara's father left behind numerous clues that he was onto something big and Trinity is desperate to obtain this incredible treasure known only as The Source. As Lara, it's your job to get there first and in addition to thwarting Trinity, clear your father's disgraced name. The story is pretty straight forward and the narrative moves along pretty quickly.

• Atmosphere

  This game absolutely shines when it comes to atmosphere. Solid background music, on-point voice acting, and beautiful set pieces. The forests felt lush and full of life with animal sounds. Snow crunched under your boots in winter settings and caves felt lonely and ominous. The developers went the extra mile with every map containing loads of detail to sell the immersion of your surroundings. Even at eight years old, this is a beautiful game.

• Gameplay

  This is my favorite part. The bow mechanics, once again, shine in this sequel. The bow is so satisfying to use, Lara's assortment of firearms basically collected dust. Old favorites return, like the Rope Arrow mechanic, and some welcome new additions like the Poison Arrow type. Another fun addition was the ability to pick up cans and bottles to create make-shift explosives during combat, which added a fun new dynamic to combat. Also having the option to rig downed enemies with a poisonous cloud trap was a brilliant addition. Skill trees make a return and so do weapon upgrades. There's also a host of relics and documents to collect. Plus, a large number of crypts, and Tombs with their own set of puzzles. Every Tomb felt unique and was a great source of entertainment during my playthrough.

The Bad

• Honestly, I didn't find anything super unpleasant about the experience. The only real complaint I might have is the large amount of time spent collecting items in a couple of areas. The Mining Camp in the Soviet Installation map grew tedious over time, due to the constant retread to collect documents/relics and complete challenges. Traversing the Chasm a few times, to clear the Voice of God tomb, and again to deal with the Baba Yaga DLC was mildly annoying, simply because of the time spent climbing the same cliff walls over and over. The Geothermal Valley grew a little tiresome as well, during the collection process. If you're going for a straight story playthrough, these areas can be bypassed quickly, but if you're heading for 100% completion, you'll waste a lot of time on these maps.

The Ugly

• I don't really have anything to say here. I enjoyed the game from the title screen to the credits and two of the DLCs beyond. A solid game with a lot to offer. Perhaps the only ugly bit is the fact she's a rich, white lady desecrating the sacred places of ancient peoples to swipe their hidden treasures. But hey, if she doesn't do it, Nathan Drake or Indiana Jones will probably swipe them anyway.

ACTION-ADVENTURE - Lara Croft goes to Siberia to discover the truth about immortality, a mystery in which her father died trying to solve.

PROS:

++ Solid narrative. Story is solid, with good characters in Lara, Ana, Konstantin, & Jacob.

++ Freedom. Open level design that encourages and rewards exploration.

++ Incredible graphics.

++ Fun combat.

++ Solid DLC. The best one was the Blood Ties DLC which gave important context to the main story.

CONS:

-- Resource gathering. Too many resources to gather, and it felt tedious gathering them.

-- Easy combat. Combat was fun, but too easy in later stages.

-- Collectibles. Too many different collectibles that don't really reward much.

Образцовый сиквел по формуле «тех же щщей». Больше прокачки (всё такой же приятно-бесполезной), больше оружия (набор старый, но разновидностей стволов каждого типа - дофига), больше гробниц (всё также необязательных, но с более... многоэтапными, но простыми, загадками). Лучше графон, больше зоны для исследования и сбора всякой шняги.

Вот на сборе всякой шняги и начинает спотыкаться. Игра 13-го года подсовывала большую часть всякой собираемой шняги прямо под ноги, а здесь предлагают побегать и пособирать: детали для оружия, шкуры, дерево, тряпки. Поизучать разные языки (путём разглядывания фресок), покрафтить разные стрелы и бомбы. Вся эта шелуха по-прежнему не предмет первой необходимости, но внутренний манчкин не дремлет. А ещё тут есть дополнительные задания и хаб во второй половине игры. Вот и выходит, что стремительное приключение оригинала становится умеренной (и приятной) дрочильней.

Вместо сценария тут адовый замес из забористой клюквы (Сибирь, Гулаг), мифологии (Китеж-град, Византия, источник бессмертия) и вялой семейной драмы с местными жидомасонами (смерть матери, ДЛС с родным поместьем и Троица). Всё это, конечно, адовый бред, а необязательные внутриигровые записки намного интересней основного сюжета. Но иногда попадается такая забористая чушь (моё любимое — византийский корабль вмерзший в стены сибирской пещеры), что становится любопытно: а что ещё придумают?

В общем, Rise of The Tomb Raider это опять замечательная йоба. Если зашла игра 13-го года, то и и эта зайдёт.

Shout-out to Crystal Dynamics for willingly releasing an expensive, triple-A game with a story this batshit.

The game is fun, but I really can't take not-Jesus seriously. Or the evil step-mom. Or her uncomfortable relationship with her brother. Or literally anything that happens in this game at all, plot-wise.

Also, there's no Sam Nishimura in this game, which is fucked up.

So I finished Rise of the Tomb Raider and... it was pretty good! Made a lot of improvements over the first game in just the general feel of your actions and gameplay. I didn't like the story as much as the first one, and I think that's because it trended a lot more towards a generic action-adventure plot and the themes it was going for - especially the "this obsession will destroy you, Lara!" - felt kinda inorganic. The way the cast was structured didn't feel great either, and in general this one reminded me a lot more of Uncharted in both good and bad ways.

I really loved the sort of stealthy bit where you're swimming around under the ice. Made me feel like some kinda man-eating mermaid, which was great.

This is a game of two parts - exploration, whether freeform or directed, and combat. The latter is markedly less interesting and fun than the former and trying to turn the game into a 3rd-person shooter is not very effective. This is especially bad in the latter part of the game, where the combat becomes the main activity , with multiple armored foes in close quarters making the mechanic difficulties of the game apparent.

However, the exploration is marvelous - beautiful settings, lovely animations, and interesting environmental puzzles all make a mediocre plot look better and the supporting characters look less ridiculous (american-sounding Russians notwithstanding).

Also - don't play this if hunting and killing animals makes you queasy.

I had not played the first version of the Tomb Raider reboot because of the extremely graphic fail scenes, so I was stoked when this version made those more palatable.

I really enjoyed most of this game, from the survival feel to the combat set on easy that was actually easy (ie, I could beat even the hardest encounter after a few tries). Best of all is the feeling of real exploration and the beautiful and awesome environments. I really preferred this to Uncharted because of the existence of more explory than shoot em up bits. After awhile the levelling up mechanic was sort of pointless, although I suspect that has more to do with playing on easy than anything else.

I need a break from it after beating the main story, though, and I do intend to go back and do the challenge tombs I didn't get to and the DLC.

I've just been reading up about the latest news on the piracy scene and it's quite enthralling. Apparently I've been completely out of the loop, but a new company appeared a while ago called Denuvo which created the Holy Gail of DRM, something that seemed to be virtually uncrackable. The wiki page lists 20 or so Denuvo-protected games, many of which have been out for months, and none of them have been cracked. This includes Doom, Just Cause 3 and Farcry Primal.

All uncracked, except one: The Rise of the Tomb Raider, which was fully cracked the other day.

It's very fascinating, but it seems like there's a huge arms race going on between hackers and these corporate encrypters.. but given that it took so many months to crack Tomb Raider, perhaps the art of DRM is finally approaching perfection. One Chinese cracker super-group came forward recently and, after being stumped by Denuvo, said that they were giving up the business. They also said that 2 years from now game cracking will no longer be mathematically possible. It's strange, DRM and game piracy has been happening for decades, I never thought we'd see the day where the hackers would be outmatched.