Thoughts on Shadow of the Tomb Raider (No spoilers) (Patreon)

So, I finally finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Which, I guess, also means I’ve finished the latest Tomb Raider trilogy! And I want to share some thoughts on this most recent game - and then the trilogy as a whole.

More lootin’, less shootin’

One of the most surprising things about Shadow of the Tomb Raider is how it’s almost completely devoid of combat. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that there are no more than 15, maybe 20 combat encounters throughout the entire game.

Which is very strange to see in a modern AAA game! Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider were rightly criticised for turning the Tomb Raider franchise into an ultra violent Uncharted wannabe, and Shadow seems to have toned it down massively - and made some in-roads to returning the series to its roots by focusing more on climbing, exploration, and puzzles.

But while I am all for this (I’m a big champion of non-violent games), the change actually feels quite weird considering other decisions made in Shadow.

For one, this is supposed to be Lara’s darkest game yet. There are cutscenes of her rising out of the swamp like a god damn Terminator. New combat mechanics let her camouflage herself in mud, pounce on people from bushes, and even string people up from ropes. She’s become a terrifying predator in this game. And yet, Lara doesn’t do much fighting at all.

And then there’s the fact that so many of the game’s peripheral systems are rendered pretty much irrelevant. Everything from merchants to weapon upgrades to ammo crafting to pretty much the entire skill tree are about making Lara more proficient in combat… the combat that very rarely crops up.

There’s definitely a disconnect going on here between different aspects of the game, and it leaves the game feeling like it doesn’t have a real identity. Is this Lara’s dark descent into violence, or a bold return to the franchise’s rock climbing roots? I’m just not sure.

The traversal mechanics

So what do you do for 15 hours, if not shoot people? Well, the game is much more interested in climbing. Which, naturally, piqued my interest - even if the traversal in these games is a bit shallow. 

Just like the previous games, Shadow of the Tomb Raider has a pretty simplistic climbing system that is similar to the stuff you’d find in Uncharted or Assassin’s Creed. Lara snaps magnetically to hand holds when you jump at them, and on craggy walls you can just hold a direction and she’ll hand-over-hand with ease.

It’s made a little more tricky when you need to press X in mid-air to latch onto a craggy wall with your climbing axe - but the timing window is incredibly generous that you’ll almost never screw that up. 

The grappling hook is the most interesting tool in Lara’s arsenal. She can, of course, swing across chasms when there’s a hook point above her. But she can also drag herself towards rock-faces like a hook shot, or abseil down cliff faces. From here she might want to start a swing, or run back and forth along a wall to gain momentum and make a big jump.

None of this is particularly difficult to perform, mind you. Pretty much the only times I died during these segments were when I misread the environment and tried to make Lara leap onto something that she’s not allowed to jump on. And if the main challenge is deciding when and where to use each of these tools, that’s almost always given away by tutorials that pop up for much of the game. 

Seriously: it will keep popping up “do this to abseil” or “do this is grapple to a ledge”, constantly giving away what you need to do next. It would be like a game always popping up a tutorial to let you know which weapon is most effective against a certain enemy.

There’s also the issue that the platforming can be quite inconsistent. This isn’t like Mario where you can learn the exact height and distance of his various jumps, and use them on the levels - Lara’s moves can change and adapt for the sequence at hand - sometimes letting her jump further than expected if the level design calls for it. Sometimes the grapple-to-rock mechanic works, sometimes it doesn’t.

You’re not using a consistent toolset to overcome challenges, you’re kinda just shoving Lara into the next animation she needs to do.

What saves the platforming is the inventiveness of the level design. There are some really cool structures that you’re climbing up, and finding the route to the top is an interesting puzzle in both figuring out where to go, and what tools to use (when the game isn’t spoiling the answer). 

The challenge tombs

If you ask me, all three Tomb Raider games in this latest trilogy are saved by the challenge tombs. These are optional areas that test your platforming and puzzle skills, and because they’re non-essential side content, the devs have been free to make them a bit harder that the main capaign.

One particularly memorable tomb involves light beams and mirrors and moving platforms, and it was genuinely tricky! Puzzles in games like Uncharted have notoriously been the most simplistic and patronising junk around - more like palette cleansing breaks between combat, rather than actual head scratchers. So it’s really nice to find some puzzles that really work like puzzles.

Other challenge tombs play with things like raising water levels, physics, ropes and pulleys, and small platforming gauntlets. And they often look stunning - it’s amazing to me that Square Enix would create a whole Spanish Galleon ship wreck, for a bit of side content that many players might never see.

The beautiful environmental design does lead to problems, though. It can be hard to actually see which parts of the environment can be interacted with and I often found myself spamming the Spidey Sense button (what’s it called in this franchise? Survival Vision?) to highlight the various switches and rope connection points that were too hard to distinguish from the background.

Whatever the case, I made sure to finish all nine of the tombs. But finding them was quite tricky…

Hubs and spokes

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (and the previous two games) have a strange world design that is some bizarre middle ground between linear and open world. It’s mostly structured like an Uncharted game (though with some hub bits like towns and villages), but you can also fast travel back to areas from before in case you missed stuff.

And I always find these levels hard to explore because they’re clearly made for a linear progression - not for going off the beaten track. They’re not set up for more freeform exploration. And to get these challenge tombs, I just looked up their locations on YouTube - it’d take me forever to find them otherwise.

An open world, or perhaps Metroidvania Tomb Raider game would actually be really cool - just having Lara bombing around a jungle on her motorbike, following treasure maps and randomly stumbling upon tombs. I could be into that. But right now, this middle ground between two schools of world design often comes off as quite awkward. 

Difficulty settings

One of the most interesting parts of Shadow of the Tomb Raider is that you have a lot more control over the game’s difficulty. It’s not the first game to do it, but it is accomplished pretty well.

So you can independently set the difficulty of the combat (changing Lara and the enemy’s health, plus tweaking the auto aim), puzzles (changing how items are highlighted, and whether or not Lara gives hints), and exploration (changing how clearly your route through the environment is telegraphed).

Some aspects of this are better than others. It’s actually really hard to traverse the environment without the interactable elements being highlighted, for example. But I loved being able to ramp up the difficulty of the puzzles, without needing to beat my head agains the wall during combat encounters. 

Overall - Shadow of the Tomb Raider

I definitely found a lot to enjoy in this game. Incongruity aside, I’m pleased that the game moved away from its firefight focus and I’m more than happy that I spent most of the game’s runtime just solving puzzles, climbing up mad ancient structures in a beautifully rendered jungle, and delving into tombs.

But without strong traversal mechanics, the main part of the game just feels a bit weak. Slightly improving the shallow platforming found in the previous two games wasn’t enough. If Shadow of the Tomb Raider really wanted to make rock climbing its focus, it needed to reinvent itself and do something quite bold.

I also didn’t follow the story at all. I find these games take themselves way too seriously while also having cartoony villains and dumbo Hollywood action set pieces and I just can’t get invested in any of this stuff. 

Overall - The Tomb Raider trilogy

So, that’s the latest Tomb Raider reboot over. I’d definitely call myself a fan - I even bought an Xbox One just to play Rise of the Tomb Raider! Regretting that, now!

But overall, this trilogy has been quite disappointing. These are all absolutely fine games, with plenty to enjoy (such as the incredible environment art, and the challenge tombs), but in totality I’d call them quite bland, safe, and - worst of all - familiar.

Yes, it’s no secret that these games are heavily inspired by the Uncharted series - and that should not be the fate of one of gaming’s most famous franchises. If Mario was an obvious Sonic rip-off, or Doom turned out to be a shameless Call of Duty clone, I’d be equally sad. 

I’m not saying that franchises should never change, but the things that made Tomb Raider special - the isolation, the climbing, the exploration - have been lost, in favour of things that every other game is doing - combat, stealth kills, cinematic set pieces, side missions, crafting systems, cutscenes, etc.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider definitely did do something bold and valiant to get out of Uncharted’s, erm, shadow, by changing the focus away from combat. But it didn’t do it with enough passion - leading to a game without a coherent vision. It’s all a bit too little, too late.

I really hope the Tomb Raider series returns in some fashion, but it needs a new vision - and it needs to really go for it.