3.5/5 ★ – Wiwa's review of Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

TOTAL WEIGHTED SCORE: 72.1% How's the vibe? 5.3/10 How's it play? 8.9/10 How's it look? 9/10 How's it sound? 7/10 Attention to detail? 7/10 - This is a great game to pass a bit of time and doing some real tomb raiding, but expect a dissatisfying story and weak character writing. The exploration is the strongest part of the game, with a range of interesting and engaging places to find. The accessibility options are good, the visuals look awesome even 6 years later, especially the hair and lighting. The performance is excellent. I especially liked the customisable difficulty since I enjoy the climbing and puzzling, but less so enjoy the combat. However, the game is let down badly by its writing and characters. The story initially threatens to be interesting: maybe they will address Lara's reckless nature and self-centred attitude ("I'm the only one who can solve every problem")... But then it quickly abandons that idea. What we're left with is bad guys who are objectively bad guys who only do bad stuff because they're bad so it's ok to kill hundreds of them, versus Lara and her allies, who are all good guys who are objectively good and always do the right thing. Lara speaks almost condescendingly nicely to every person she meets, and multiple times throughout the story, the following interaction plays out: Person 1: "Here's a plan for what we will do." Person 2: "Or we could do something like this." Lara: "No, I, the awesome hero, will solve the entire problem and you guys wait outside." Everyone: "Yeah, that's the best idea, nobody else needs to be useful except you Lara!" By the end, the writers pretend as if she has gone through growth, yet Lara has done nothing to change her approach to problems. The one time anyone challenges her at all is in the first hour of the game - after that, everyone just decides she is always right and follows her plans unquestioningly. An additional note that sat poorly with me: As Lara, we steal every single artefact we find and bring it back to display in her mansion, including the mcguffin that almost ended the world. The game is written as if from the biased viewpoint of a colonial-era explorer, who stole from native communities, then behaved as if they were hero adventurers - those peoples' history and heritage were just trinkets for them to take as souvenirs. The happy ending - actually kind of a sour note.