Shadow of the Tomb Raider is an alright game, in that it does some things phenomenally well while falling flat on others. It was a fairly good wrap-up to the Eidos Montreal trilogy and a fitting end to the most modern we've seen Lara Croft.
If I start off with the good, this game is jaw droppingly beautiful at just about every point. The rich and luscious forests that exist within the Central/Southern American jungles pop and burst with color. There were moments in traversal where I had to simply stop and stare at all that was gorgeous around me. Everything from the environments to the ruins (including the underwater segments, to the characters was absolutely astonishing. I found myself in awe of Lara's character quite a bit because of how human she looked and was presented, many a moment spent in reflection of how far games have come. There were drawbacks to this amount of visual fidelity (of which I will touch on below) but they added an intense amount of taste to the already exciting series.
Another great piece of Shadow of the Tomb Raider was again how sound the series is mechanically in platforming and in movement, especially when contrasted to its Naughty Dog counterpart in Uncharted. The amount of travesal tools the game gives you (and requires of you) makes the extensive running, jumping, and climbing never feel like a chore. There are moments where you must complete only a wall run, and others where the player is tasked with adding a vertical rock climb and descending rope climb to that run. Mix and match the various combinations are you have a lot of ways that Lara gets from point A to point B. For a game that asks that of the player quite a lot, Eidos makes it feel rewarding and appropriate for the adventurer that Lara is.
Negatively there are a number of things I have to say with Shadow of the Tomb Raider that, while they do detract from the general experience, didn't make for a bad playthrough.
The first is the aforementioned performance issues. I have a capable computer with reasonably new specs, and pre-loading of the game identified it was good to run the game with all settings on "high." After a few hours in I found my computer crashing and in need of a hard reboot, this would go from every ten minutes to every thirty seconds of running the game. Eventually I ticked everything down to "medium" and it still looked good, but I wanted my vistas to look better dangit!
Otherwise the story was largely forgettable and the inclusion of the ancient civlization/natives was cool, and you definitely have a degree of suspension of disbelief, but their heightened prescence was a bit odd in comparison to the mythical elements of the other two games in the series. In Uncharted and in Tomb Raider 2013/Rise the mythological pieces and parties play a very large role as the games conclude but stay mythical until then. In Shadow they are included extremely early and were all over the story. Like I said cool, but was an odd tonal shift and inclusion that in the grand scheme of things didn't make too much sense.
Shooting and combat in Shadow was also largely forgotten for much of the game, you have a lot of time without real combat that made some parts of the game feel a bit one note. Again the shooting (and I don't expect it to be great) is nothing to give praise as the odd spray pattern and armored enemies penalizes the player for trying to complete fights in a semi-quick manner.
I had some fun playing through Lara Croft's latest journey, but I'm not sure it was the best use of time.
If I start off with the good, this game is jaw droppingly beautiful at just about every point. The rich and luscious forests that exist within the Central/Southern American jungles pop and burst with color. There were moments in traversal where I had to simply stop and stare at all that was gorgeous around me. Everything from the environments to the ruins (including the underwater segments, to the characters was absolutely astonishing. I found myself in awe of Lara's character quite a bit because of how human she looked and was presented, many a moment spent in reflection of how far games have come. There were drawbacks to this amount of visual fidelity (of which I will touch on below) but they added an intense amount of taste to the already exciting series.
Another great piece of Shadow of the Tomb Raider was again how sound the series is mechanically in platforming and in movement, especially when contrasted to its Naughty Dog counterpart in Uncharted. The amount of travesal tools the game gives you (and requires of you) makes the extensive running, jumping, and climbing never feel like a chore. There are moments where you must complete only a wall run, and others where the player is tasked with adding a vertical rock climb and descending rope climb to that run. Mix and match the various combinations are you have a lot of ways that Lara gets from point A to point B. For a game that asks that of the player quite a lot, Eidos makes it feel rewarding and appropriate for the adventurer that Lara is.
Negatively there are a number of things I have to say with Shadow of the Tomb Raider that, while they do detract from the general experience, didn't make for a bad playthrough.
The first is the aforementioned performance issues. I have a capable computer with reasonably new specs, and pre-loading of the game identified it was good to run the game with all settings on "high." After a few hours in I found my computer crashing and in need of a hard reboot, this would go from every ten minutes to every thirty seconds of running the game. Eventually I ticked everything down to "medium" and it still looked good, but I wanted my vistas to look better dangit!
Otherwise the story was largely forgettable and the inclusion of the ancient civlization/natives was cool, and you definitely have a degree of suspension of disbelief, but their heightened prescence was a bit odd in comparison to the mythical elements of the other two games in the series. In Uncharted and in Tomb Raider 2013/Rise the mythological pieces and parties play a very large role as the games conclude but stay mythical until then. In Shadow they are included extremely early and were all over the story. Like I said cool, but was an odd tonal shift and inclusion that in the grand scheme of things didn't make too much sense.
Shooting and combat in Shadow was also largely forgotten for much of the game, you have a lot of time without real combat that made some parts of the game feel a bit one note. Again the shooting (and I don't expect it to be great) is nothing to give praise as the odd spray pattern and armored enemies penalizes the player for trying to complete fights in a semi-quick manner.
I had some fun playing through Lara Croft's latest journey, but I'm not sure it was the best use of time.