Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PS4)

The last part of the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, is a beautiful but fairly uninteresting game that doesn't bring that much new to the table. It is an enjoyable game for fans of the series but the weakest in the trilogy.

I'm a big fan of adventure games and the Tomb Raider games are high up on my list of great adventure games. Even if I might be feeling a bit of a gaming fatigue after playing through the huge but great, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, I will try to not be too hard on Lara, she's been through enough.

Usually I like to point out all the good things about the game I'm reviewing but this time I'm going to do the reverse and point out the things that I didn't like first.

So first of all, all games don't have to be open world role playing games. What I liked about the first Tomb Raider (2013) was that there was a natural flow to it. It was a game you didn't want to stop playing and the game didn't give any reasons to do so. Shadow of the Tomb Raider however breaks this flow by wanting to be too much. Side missions and NPC:s are pretty boring and there are too many cut scenes that break your flow.

Even though much of the appeal of the Tomb Raider games are exploration and puzzles I think Shadow of the Tomb raider lacks combat. There is some, but not enough and each combat encounter feels confusing and short. You have all kinds of weapons you can upgrade and it's a real shame you don't get to use them.

Then on to the the good parts. The tombs and puzzles are fun but quite few and not too difficult. You can change the difficulty for them but I'm not sure how it affects them. The world and location is beautiful and the underwater scenery is breathtaking (pun intended). Playing as little Lara in the backyard of the Croft estate was also a fun addition. When it comes to characters Lara and Jonah make a really good team even if they're no Nate and Sully.

The story was fine but not really the epic conclusion I was hoping for. I guess my expectations for this game was a bit too high. That being said, in no way is Shadow of the Tomb Raider a bad game it's just not great and it came out at the same time as many other greater games. All parts of an epic adventure game are there but the game lacked focus and excitement. It might have been more fun if I had just focused on the main story and skipped the added side content.