Shadow of the Tomb Raider released at a pretty weird time - right next to PS4's Spider-Man and a few weeks away from Red Dead Redemption. Because of the tight, crowded release window, gamers who only wanted to buy a few games probably opted out of Shadow of the Tomb Raider and only the hardcore fans got behind the latest Tomb Raider game. Potentially as a knee-jerk reaction from Square Enix, less than a month later, the same hardcore fans felt like they were slapped right in the face in the form of a heavy discount on Shadow of the Tomb Raider on all of the platforms. During the Steam Autumn sale, it was discounted by 50%. That hurts if you were a pre-order buyer. And it makes the game look weak. Gamers know that only sucky games go on sale soon after launch.
But is Shadow of the Tomb Raider actually a weak game? Or was it Titanfall 2'd? Well, let's take a look.
Visual masterpiece
It really is. If you thought Uncharted 4's jungle vistas were something to behold, you ain't seen nothing yet. This is probably the most gorgeous game on the PS4 that isn't a console exclusive. It's one of those games that you could pause and screencap at any moment and it'd look like a poster good enough to advertise the game with. This is especially true for the outdoor bits lit by daylight.
The towns feel alive and lived in and organic, while the ruins look dank and dreary and dangerous. Underwater areas, which is a sizeable chunk of the game, looked brilliant, as well.
Every tomb and ruin has its own little visual identifier, which makes exploring them easy to tell apart in case you wanna do a bit of backtracking.
Lara looks amazing. Facial animations are so good that just a subtle expression can convey so much emotion. The NPCs and some of the supporting characters aren't as detailed but that's to be expected. Important thing is that Lara Croft is a sight to behold. Lara's outfits look great, too. Most of the old outfits from Rise and the 2013 reboot are there, as well as some classic low-poly skins. Unfortunately, a good chunk of the game locks out your ability to swap out costumes, which kinda irks me, especially since there are skins you work for and craft using resources that give bonuses, only to have those stripped away from you because the game decided Lara needed a specific costume on.
Also, thanks to photomode, a feature ALL single player games should have, it's possible to get some really gorgeous screenshots.
Hello darkness, my old friend
The game is dark, and I don't just mean tonally. There are some parts that are legitimately just way too dark.
On the other side of the same coin, Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses lighting (or lack thereof) very effectively to affect gameplay and mood. Problem is there are portions that are just completely devoid of any light, making it difficult to just move around and traverse the environment. I would sometimes even use the photo mode and raise the brightness all the way just to be able to see what's around me. Is that cheating? Maybe, but it gets really hard to see what's going at some points. To its credit, though,the same darkness gives Shadow of the Tomb Raider's stealth sections some nice visual depth. In the pictures below, Lara is somewhere in there, hiding. Can you find her?
Lara the Predator
One of the first things you'll notice when you get thrown into your combat and stealth sections is that the gunplay (arrowplay, too) and silent takedowns feel amazing. Nocking, aiming, and letting an arrow loose all feel tight and responsive. The firearms sound crunchy and visceral. Getting headshots is rewarding, and not just with the extra XP. Melee isn't as good, as if Lara's pick axe goes through enemies like a paddle through water, but you shouldn't be using melee most of the time anyway unless you've unlocked the counter attack skill that one-hit kills almost everything. Thankfully that skill isn't as OP as it used to be in Rise of the Tomb Raider - the timing got a lot more tight. All in all, combat, even though it isn't the focus of the game, feel really rewarding.
And that's why it sucks so much that there isn't enough of it. The meat and bones of the game is tomb exploration, for sure, but with the enhanced stealth mechanics and improved combat, it feels like you were given all the toys but you weren't allowed to play with them. We have the cake, no fork or plate.
AI noobs
On top of all of that, the AI NPCs all seem to wanna die. Whether you're playing on the Normal or Deadly Obsession difficulties, the AI doesn't seem to get any smarter. You could literally wait in one spot and just kill them all as they come to you one by one. It's like playing hide and seek with a bunch of toddlers with Alzheimer.
All skill, no thrill
With unchallenging AI and the lack of combat diversity and stealth encounters, all the skills you eventually are able to unlock, especially for the later more complex skills, seem to be essentially useless. You will tend to default to a few key skills that work over and over. I think I unlocked the ability to nock 2 or 3 arrows at one time and I literally used it only one time just to try it out. After that, because I had way more than enough arrows and guns, which were kinda overpowered against any kind of opponent, I never really needed to rely on any advanced skill.
Want for nothing
Unlike the previous games, survival isn't a core focus of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. You have plenty firearm options, and the jungle gives you more than enough materials to craft arrows. Almost all the enemies leave behind some ammo when you take them out, and vendors in towns who sell stew also sell guns, rifle parts and ammo. And you pay for all of those using coins that members of a long lost and undiscovered civilization give you in exchange for some gold and jade that you mine from their very own land. If you were skilled enough, you can just go in guns blazing even in missions that sort of force stealth upon you, which is a shame because the stealth was so good.
The real stars
The best things about Shadow of the Tomb Raider are the Challenge Tombs and puzzles. Every tomb puzzle is unique and challenging. As a reward for completing them, you get a skill or an outfit diagram. The skills aren't particularly useful, and the outfit bonuses didn't really provide that big of an advantage. You'd still be better off picking whichever outfit you think Lara looks best in. But that doesn't matter - the reward itself is in completing the challenges. Having that eureka moment in the challenge tombs made me feel like a genius, and that's what made them compelling.
Wait... so what's the threat again?
In the trailers and the first 10% of the game, the basic premise is that the artifacts that Lara was messing around with cause natural disasters. This made sense until maybe a quarter into the game. I'm not sure if I'm just an idiot but after a while I couldn't understand what the actual threat was and what the actual goal of the main antagonist was. It just became a convoluted McGuffin chase, with no real fleshed out rhyme or reason for the objective above "obtain object X."
And speaking of the antagonist, he's probably the biggest let down of all. We all know the saying that the hero is only as good as their villain. And we've seen this to be true time and time again - this is why we hold MCU Loki and Kingpin and Erik Killmonger in such high regard. They lifted their story's protagonist up. Shadow of the Tomb Raider's main antagonist is so damn forgettable, his name has already slipped my mind. I have no idea exactly what he wanted to achieve and I'm confused as to how. On top of that, given what the game explains to you as what he wants to accomplish and his origin, he's supposed to be a pretty big deal, but he just ends up being another generic bad guy, which really hurt the story.
Verdict
Shadow of the Tomb Raider feels incomplete. That's probably why they're shipping out extra DLC packs - to try and give the player more things to do in the game, which is something I don't generally agree with. I found the story quite confusing and unfulfilling. If this were the very last entry in the rebooted Tomb Raider series, it would not be a very fitting end to Lara Croft's story.
The combat and stealth sections too few and far between, even though the actual fighting felt great. Challenge tombs were diverse and challenging and fun, and the game is gorgeous. So, despite the game's shortcomings, it is still a good game and worth picking up BUT not at full price. It's goes on sale quite often now so I'd recommend you get it when it does.
To those who purchased the game at full price, Square Enix thanks you for your money. Maybe this will serve as a lesson to not pre-order games anymore.
7.3Overall7Gameplay8Presentation7Value