![]() ![]() Each side of the conversation speaks a different language - these isolated tribespeople somehow know English - and everyone switches to English for cutscenes. ![]() It’s a cool idea, but implementation is bad. Tucked away in the options menu is an immersive language option which sees characters speak in their native tongue. The uzi in my holster was purchased from an indigenous Peruvian tribeswoman who has never had contact with the outside world. Shadow of the Tomb Raider really wants to tell a gritty story and pull you into its fantasy, but there’s so much here that pulls you out.įor example, I have a hard hat buried in my bag of artefacts, and I bought an automatic shotgun from a Christian missionary. One memorable sidequest is literally: ‘talk to five people’. Of course, the script and its delivery could be overlooked if you actually did interesting things for these side characters. Another NPC introduced himself to Lara twice in two different conversations that were minutes apart. At one point, I thought an NPC was crying when they were actually laughing. The dialogue - particularly the stuff that plays outside of cutscenes - is atrocious at times. Shadow of the Tomb Raider takes its Mayan apocalypse storyline overly seriously. The way she’s written, she’s hard to empathise with, and it doesn’t help that voice actor Camilla Luddington delivers her lines like she has dual pistols to her head. She starts the game as a selfish rich girl, and she ends it a little less selfish. Unfortunately, that transformation never happens. This is where she’s supposed to make her proper transformation into the seasoned tomb raider we all know. In this story - something Square Enix is dubbing ‘the final origin chapter’ - Lara is still chasing her dad’s dreams. The Lara Croft who broke down after her first kill is well and truly dead, replaced by an unfeeling predator who occasionally gets murdered by fish. When murder is necessary, you have many more ways to approach things: there are rope darts to string people up from trees you can rub mud into your face for camouflage and you can coat the tips of your arrows with a fear toxin to send enemies on a killing spree. There are moments where the peril feels fake - those squeezy gaps - but there’s often a real danger when clambering around. It’s refreshing to have the focus back on, you know, tomb raiding.Ī good portion of the game is built around navigating acrobatic puzzles with a climbing system that’s far more hands-on than Uncharted - digging your climbing axe into a wall, rappelling down chasms, dangling from overhangs, and swinging from branches. On-foot stealth options are expanded, and there’s a focus on exploration over violently murdering people and animals. Combat feels more immediate, satisfying, and each shot feels deadly. It’s a shame because there’s also some good stuff here. No doubt these sequences exist to mask loading times, but it doesn't stop them being bad and overused. By the fifth time, your eyes tighten and you fall asleep. The first time you cram through a crevice, pushing forward on the left stick while dramatic stuff happens, your chest tightens. ![]() When you're not swimming, you might instead be squeezing through tiny cracks. ![]() It’s almost as if the developer decided to combine two of the worst things in video games - insta-fail stealth and limited-time underwater sections - just to personally fuck with me. You can stab the eels (in a QTE, of course), but the piranha nip you to death as soon as you are spotted. You’re mostly defenceless in these stealth sections as you plunge through seaweed to avoid detection from moray eels and schools of piranha. To the designer who thought filling a video game with insta-fail, underwater stealth sections was a good idea, I have a message for you: no.Ī lot of your time in Shadow of the Tomb Raider is spent swimming. ![]()
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