4/5 ★ – gamingitlaldy's review of Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

The finale of the reboot trilogy Shadow of the Tomb raider FINALLY feels like the old Tomb Raider games. ‘Tomb Raider’ felt like a proof of concept that bore no resemblance to a Tomb Raider game. ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’ made massive improvements and was a really enjoyable game but there was still more action than tomb exploring in the game than I would have wanted. Shadow puts you in tombs for most of the game, shame that cumulatively it ends up being a short game. Despite being a previous gen game (at time of writing) it looks absolutely stunning and the underwater swimming looks and handles the best out of any game I have played. The lighting and detail of the environments is breathtaking despite the lighting glitching out in almost every area I visited. You would see sunlight being cast against a wall but you would see it flashing rather than just being static light. I never got round to playing Croft Manor in the DLC of Rise but playing it in Shadow and climbing the side of the house reminded me of using the ‘Climb all Walls’ cheat in Tomb Raider 2 / 3 and brought back nostalgic memories. Apart from that there does not seem to be any call backs or tributes to the earlier games as far as I could see. As each game progresses in the reboot trilogy each game improved vastly on the one before, it’s just a shame that Shadow doesn’t improve the map to make it easier to traverse the areas especially crypts and challenge tombs. Like the other games, Rise is littered with a plethora of collectables. One difference this time is that lara will not inspect documents or relics by default, instead just picking them up and it’s down to you to choose if you want to read documents or have lara explain a relic. Personally as I don’t care much for the fine details so I was happy to skip all of them. Recently someone posted on Twitter about the Resident Evil 4 remake having very obvious breakable and collectable items and how it hurts immersion. Shadow has the opposite effect where all the collectables blend in with the scenery and I found myself constantly tapping R3 to find them. After the game was completed I didn’t feel the desire to go back and find them all as I had already unlocked all the skills I was interested in on the skill tree and all my weapons easily dispersed of enemies as I was playing on easy mode. Shadow does have less climbing than the previous games but there is still a lot of it. I climbed so many holey walls in Shadow that I developed trypophobia while playing the game. Another annoyance of mine was when you would try and pick up an item with a full inventory and Lara would say “impossible” no Lara it’s not impossible, you have two free hands you could use to carry the item. I did enjoy the scene where Lara gets raging at the main antagonist and goes tonto with a automatic rifle shouting and swearing at people, more of that please. I enjoyed her character more in this game than the previous instalments. I was casually progressing the game and thought “when I get to the end I will backtrack opening a lot of locked areas for the collectables” but the game just ended abruptly and so quickly. I was sitting thinking “surely this is not the end of the game after traversing like 4 areas” it was. I don’t even have the temptation to go back and finish all the collectables as the rewards are so minor that it wouldn’t be worth my time. Such a shame as well being the best in the trilogy. Lara doesn’t REALLY get new tools or weapons that will open up previously sealed areas, there is one or two but none that would make you want to backtrack all the way to open a previously locked off area. Due to this, I barely used the fast travel system. Only really to get from one side of an area to another without running. My other nitpicks of the game are: The fact Lara has a moulded flight case for a shitey wooden bow and a walkie talkie. Getting achievements for actions Lara does in cutscenes. Again, and how short the game was. This is the best in the series and actually does not rely on the previous two games to be understandable meaning that if I was to recommend to someone to dip their toe into the reboot trilogy and they have limited time I would just recommend that they play this game and skip the rest. I wanted to give this game 4.5 stars due to how amazing it looked and played but the repetitive climbing and enjoyment from opening up previously locked areas made me downgrade it.