2.5/5 ★ – trudes's review of Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration.

I absolutely loved the first game, so perhaps had some unrealistic expectations for this. Nonetheless, it's underwhelming in many areas. Compared to the ruthless location, stranded context, and characters of the first game, this is not it! Thought the story was boring, the new side characters didn't compel me, and while Anna being a baddie was pretty fun, Trinity in general are too much alike countless other faceless organisations in games. The final act of the first game felt really personal, I wanted to save Sam, knew what Lara's friends meant to her and the stakes of getting off the island. Here, I was just gunning people down and jumping around and without a great story that gets old super fast. In my opinion the only reason Uncharted keeps me coming back is that the storytelling outmatched the just okay gameplay, while this sequel is an example of what happens if one side let's the other down. As always, I loved spending time with Lara. She seemed to look different which threw me off but honestly I'm not one of those nerds to fixate on what female characters look like — that being said, where are her muscles?! She would absolutely have some. The game looks great considering age and I had a smooth experience playing 60fps. The different weapons and outfits (I have the edition with all the goodies) looked really nice in texture. I have mixed feelings about the looting. It's been years since I played Tomb Raider but I don't remember it being so pervasive with stuff littered absolutely everywhere. It felt like I was constantly on the lookout for beige boxes. Finding relics etc was also no fun as all the mythology is done through these tapes that you have to listen to in entirety before crossing out of them. I didn't want to spend an extra hour listening to them as it wasn't interesting enough to sacrifice that time. I found upgrading the gear quite fun, though. It's satisfying and the skill trees make a big difference in-game. Overall I still love Lara so while I'll be skipping all the DLC I got with this, I'll still definitely be playing Shadow of The Tomb Raider, I'll just go into it a bit more level headed. This review sounds super harsh but I have high hopes for my gurrl, okay?