Nathan Middleton

This game leaves some very mixed feelings. The gameplay and design aren’t bad and have aged reasonably well. It’s not without its flaws though, but most of them are reconcilable. However, where the game falls apart is when it comes to the story, and how many illogical parts there are to the game. The story itself is largely predictable, with the exception of one plot twist relatively early on. From there on it’s just a mass of boring cliches, contradictions, and desperate attempts to create some kind of tension. The worst part of the game though is how so much of it just makes no sense whatsoever! (Warning: spoilers) For example: the whole premise of the game is to find this lost civilisation, recover a lost artefact, and beat the bad guys. However, you spend all this time battling the elements to find this city, get to the doors, find a way to break them open, get into the city….only to have the enemy fly their helicopters in?!?! So, this “lost city” could be found by just flying a helicopter around and then going in and landing…yeah, ok! Or how about the fact you have knife wielding enemies right from the start of the game, plus an ice climbing axe with a sharp edge, but it’s not until much later in the game that Lara stumbles across a knife and thinks “hmmm, this might be useful” which then opens up a bunch of previously unavailable options for the game. It’s just so lazily done and the game is riddled with similarly senseless design just for the sake of gameplay. Some of the combat is equally as stupid, especially some of the main battles you have, most notably the final battle against Konstantine. It just beggars belief that someone, presumably extremely intelligent and likely with a degree in software/graphic design, looked at these parts of the game and thought “yeah, that’ll do”. In summary, if you want an open world, action-adventure game, where you can play a female protagonist, who goes around solving puzzles and collecting resources, play Assassins Creed Odyssey. It only came out a few years after Tomb Raider but is better in EVERY single way and by a large margin! Only reasons someone would like Tomb Raider more is if they prefer games set in modern times, or they were a fan of the old Tomb Raider games.