Exclusive: Shadow of the Tomb Raider review (no spoilers)

Írta: Matie.

sottr review Two days to go until Shadow of the Tomb Raider becomes available to those, who have preordered the Croft Edition, and everybody can wander deep into the jungle on September 14th. We’ve had the chance to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and thanks to this wonderful opportunity, we can now share our experience with you, without any spoilers.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider has surpassed its predecessors in several aspects, it’s a perfect closure for the reboot trilogy. The story, the exploration, the music and sounds, the visuals, the tombs and puzzles, the combat, while some of these have been good before, all of them have gone through tremendous improvements.

(Note: the screenshots in this article are taken from before the game was patched on „normal” settings, the final version with high graphical settings is going to look even more beautiful.)

„Tears were pouring down my face, and I thought finally! Finally a Tomb Raider game has truly touched me”

Perhaps one of the most striking changes came through the storyline and dialogues. While the story and character development has not really taken a step forward in Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider has surpassed my expectations in that regard. Lara and Jonah’s character go through serious development, they have particularly funny moments, and they also confront each other sometimes. They’re much more human, we get to know them better and start to love them, too. Lara Croft is strong, confident, intelligent, but not perfect. She makes a mistake that puts terrible weight on her shoulders and she would do anything to fix it. She’s not influenced and controlled by what’s happening around her, but instead she takes action, and she does so with confidence and wit.

The game is set one year after the events of Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft is racing against time and Trinity to stop the maya apocalypse that might destroy the world and she must face the consequences of her own actions as well. The dark atmosphere in the beginning is nicely balanced with some light-hearted moments, neither goes to the extreme or gets too overwhelming. It’s dark when it needs to be dark, lets us breathe in some lighter moments, and may even bring some deep emotions to the surface. For example, a simple dialogue got me so much, I suddenly realised I’m tearing up. They’re not scratching the surface anymore, this time it’s much deeper than that.

The mystery is back, and it shows constant presence, and keeps our interest up throughout the whole game. Similar to Hoshi’s notes in Tomb Raider 2013, we can read documents that flesh out the background story quite nicely. Shadow of the Tomb Raider can drag you into its world so much, it’s particularly difficult to stop playing, because you want to know and discover more.

„I stopped for a moment, because I got stuck. My brain was working desperately to find the solution, and I freaking loved it.”

We can safely say Tomb Raider has returned to its name. The tombs and the puzzles are not optional side tasks only, the game is all about them, which changes everything in an absolutely fantastic direction. This is the game that both classic Tomb Raider fans and reboot fans are going to enjoy. Old and new elements create a wonderful, very enjoyable combination. Furthermore, puzzles, exploration and combat can be adjusted and customized to fit your syle of play.

If you don’t like getting stuck and not know where to go, but you’re up for some challenge in combat, the difficulty of these elements can be changed separately, so combat is on hard, exploration and puzzles are set to easy. If you do this, you can use survival instinct when you need help, climbable surfaces are more visible, and you get helpful tips during puzzle solving. If combat is not your favourite, but you enjoy being forced to think more, you can raise the difficulty level of exploration and puzzles, then the path will not be marked with bright paint, you have less time to react when climbing, and Lara doesn’t give any solutions away, you need to figure things out all by yourself.

I have tried the latter and I have no regrets. I have fallen a couple of times, but I didn’t find it to be annoying at all. (Also, there’s a new animation when Lara falls from great heights!) You need to be attentive when solving puzzles, every solution makes perfect sense. They don’t rely solely on physics and game mechanics, the game offers actual riddles to solve.

The joy of discovery is present on multiple levels, whether you find something through the story, or whether you stumble upon a path that leads you to some hidden objects. The space itself is expanded upon greatly, free underwater swimming is now possible, the bottom of large pools of water can be explored, you can navigate through small cracks and long, flooded caverns, which are nothing short of dangerous. Lara’s new moves now give us more freedom through vertical spaces. Rope swinging, wall running, descending on a rope offer more possibilities and widen the variety of traversal and exploration.

Paititi, which is said to be the biggest hub so far is truly enormous, and it’s easy to get lost in the jungle. There are several crypts and tombs waiting to be explored, crypts are smaller and shorter, you can unlock outfit parts in them, tombs are bigger, more expansive and have serious challenges in store, plus if you’re not careful you can easily walk into a trap. Brutal deaths are also back, so you should take care of Lara as much as you can, because one bad move can end pretty badly.

Locals in hubs and cities can be talked to, which is worth doing, as they reveal the location of some secrets. Side quests open from time to time that make you wander off the main path, these are simple tasks mostly, but they have animated conversations and have a story written around them, which fits the main story at the same time.

„Goodbye real world, hello jungle. We won’t see each other for a while.”

The atmosphere is absolutely captivating wherever we are. The wildlife, the sounds, the music all compliment each other and build a living, breathing world. The capybaras and hares running around, the sound of exotic birds, the croaking of the frogs, the sound of wind in the dense forest and sprinkling water all make you believe you’re in a real jungle. In Mexico the Day of the Dead comes to life in front of us.

The music that plays in the main menu is a beautiful adaptation of the reboot’s main theme, and good musical cues also play during cutscenes. There’s even a choir at one point, which has been executed so well, I couldn’t have imagined anything better than that, it was so effective I had goosebumps from the whole scene. The sounds and music all fit the gameplay and events perfectly, sometimes serious, sometimes playful, or majestic, and sometimes terrifying with excellent delivery.

„I didn’t always have all the weapons with me, but that didn’t bother me at all. Lara can kill with the look of her eyes alone.”

Two hits and you’re in trouble on normal difficulty in combat. One hit is enough on hard. Combat situations can be approached in a variety of ways, you can go rambo and jump in guns blazing, but it may not end so well. The most rewarding approach is stealth, which offers new opportunities, along with the old ones. Lara can attack from bushes, tree branches, high platforms, underwater, with headshots, and an entirely new arrow type that scares and poisons the victim… she can also cover herself in mud for camouflage and hide at walls covered in foliage, to strike enemies from there. If things go awry and enemies are alerted, it’s possible to hide from them again and try a new approach. The amount of combat and exploration is more balanced, there are no annoying waves of enemies attacking throughout the entire game, and I found the stealth to be quite enjoyable.

The skill tree has been reordered, it’s divided into three branches: combat, exploration and scavenging. We do not have to start from zero again, Lara can already utilize most of the previously acquired skills, but some of them still needs to be reacquired, such as shooting two or three enemies at once with the bow. Healing is done with the help of herbs, and there are other special herb effects, which can be unlocked through the skill tree and make Lara stronger, help her focus or allow her to spend more time underwater.

Lara’s ammo and resource pouches can also be upgraded, missing gears and weapon extensions can be bought from merchants. Gold and jade are scattered throughout the map and can be sold, along with the resources collected.

„I was astonished by the colours and lights. I was just walking around staring in amazement.”

I have to say I haven’t had the chance to play the game with the highest settings, it only ran with normal settings (and several options turned off) for me. But despite all this I was very surprised, because everything looked fantastic. Personally, I was happy they didn’t insist on strictly sticking to realistic visuals and they dared to use colours instead. Lights and water effects have been reworked completely, underwater areas are breathtakingly beautiful, the play of lights shining through gives a wonderful sight. Lara’s hair has also been improved, her forehead is slightly bigger, her hair is not so messy anymore, which highlights her face. I found the mimicry in the cutscenes to be better than in Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Antialiasing must have gone through serious development, while Rise of the Tomb Raider had problems with it, the edges weren’t pixelated at all in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Many new options made their way into the game that help tailor the experience, such as the separate difficulty settings, turning the beams and highlights of survival instinct on and off, and setting the language spoken by the locals in the game. There’s also a photo mode, which can be used to create original and creative screenshots using frames and filters, and changing the camera angle, the depth of field and Lara’s expression.

All in all, Shadow of the Tomb Raider absolutely amazed me.

I’m in trouble, because I have feelings similar to a fellow webmaster, who said: „I’m afraid they’re going to believe I got money to write so many good things about it”. As for the negatives, I can say I felt it was too short and ended too soon. I may be getting that impression, because I got so into it I didn’t want it to end.

Another area where I felt something was lacking was the story, but I didn’t think it was that much of a problem at all, because I found it to be less predictable than before and it was much more compelling and dynamic this time. Perhaps I can also mention the variety of the locations here, which results of the nature of the jungle, but it still has surprises in store.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider has become my favourite Tomb Raider game, so now it sits next to Tomb Raider 2 in my TOP1. It has several impactful moments we definitely won’t forget, all in all, playing it through was a fantastic experience. The developers fulfilled many wishes from fans, it is something the game greatly benefitted from. I haven’t felt so satisfied after having completed a Tomb Raider game for quite a while, and I sure hope you’ll enjoy playing it as much as I did.