Rising and Falling

Rise of the Tomb Raider just doesn't feel like a positive iteration on its predecessor.

It has the same gameplay elements that made the 2013 game work -- blending stealthy assassination with run-and-gun action, combining thoughtful wilderness exploration and high-octane chases through exploding ruins. A few years ago, this mixture of gameplay had Lara Croft challenging the likes of Nathan Drake and Batman. But while Arkham Knight and Uncharted 4 pushed envelopes like open-world traversal, exploration puzzles, and parkour combat, not to mention strong characterization and storytelling... Tomb Raider hasn't evolved.

Rise's open-ish hub areas have lots "to do," in the form of vapid collectibles and checkbox challenges. But their implementation suffers from a trio of fundamental flaws-

1. Your first time through the area, you won't have the necessary abilities for everything (like fire arrows, or, uh, explosive arrows). This discourages organic exploration, suggesting that you come back for the collectibles later.
2. You have to collect too many things to get a reward; getting all of a certain collectible takes too much time. The collection itself isn't fun, mostly just searching for semi-hidden glowy or flashy spots. So the act of collecting is tedious.
3. Finally, the rewards themselves aren't very good! Lara might get a slightly more powerful shotgun, or a silencer attachment for the pistol -- but none of these upgrades really change how the game is played. (Even the silencer isn't as good as using bow-and-arrows instead.)

After I got bored of the first hub area, the only extras I continued to seek out were the Challenge Tombs. It's the name of the game, after all! Lara raids tombs. And while the upgrades from these tombs did feel meaningful, the tombs themselves were still very underwhelming: each one consists of a single puzzle. They're over in a few minutes.

Overall, the non-linear aspects of Rise simply aren't very fun. The game got more enjoyable once I focused on its linear campaign. And while - like I whined about last time - Ms. Croft never feels like she has a good reason to be in this adventure, it is still an adventure.

The main storyline provides plenty of exhilirating action sequences, like climbing up a crumbling tower, or running through a burning building, or evading pursuers by diving underwater. Unfortunately, it also has its fair share of disappointments -- like a few action scenes (and even one puzzle) that play out in cinematics instead of being interactive. And then there's the final boss fight, which ... well, when the final boss is a helicopter, you know you've run out of ideas.

But the real shame is how dumb the plot is. The story is full of revelations that are either easily guessable, or flat-out spoiled by collectible audio diaries; frequently, Lara is the last person to figure something out. And the cartoonishly "evil" Trinity organization is just bland and uninteresting as a villain.

If Nathan Drake is like the Indiana Jones of video games, Lara is starting to feel more like National Treasure's Nick Cage.

It's this foundational failure to build an interesting plot that hurts the most. Rise's failed attempts to improve the formula - the tiresome NPC sidequests, the difficult-to-use Broadhead Arrows, the microtransaction-driven Expedition Mode - and even its occasional bugginess, like when I kept getting hit by an invisible enemy and had to reload my save file ... all of that would have been easy to forgive if I was engaged in Lara's journey.

It'll be nice if Shadow of the Tomb Raider makes its hub areas less boring, and even better if it adds truly meaningful new mechanics -- but the best thing it can do for Lara is to give her a riveting and compelling story.

Better than: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Not as good as: Tomb Raider (2013), or any of the Uncharted sequels.
The cliffhanger mystery ending: did not hook me. I don't care what happens with Trinity. There's your challenge, Crystal Dynamics: make me care.