The sequel to the Tomb Raider 2013 reboot is here. I never played any of the older Tomb Raider games sadly, despite their popularity. I did however start with the reboot. I received this game the Christmas a month after its release, I only had a choice between TR and Fallout 4 on the release and it's pretty obvious F4 was going to win, but this is a Tomb Raider review, so enough about Fallout! :(
This is a direct sequel to the reboot and as good as this game was, it wasn't anything special, unlike the first one. The game is good but there's not much new and is more of the same but a little less engaging. I found the story and characters to be less interesting than the first. The game is very Uncharted like which is definitely a good thing, I guess in short you could describe the new TR as 'Uncharted with a female lead and a lot less humour'. Being compared to Uncharted can only ever be a good thing though, right?
The story I found to be less interesting as last time we were trying to save Lara's friends, but this time we were trying to stop the villain from getting some sort of supernatural artifact, taking an Uncharted approach storyline (and yes, this probably won't be the last Uncharted comparison). The gameplay, like the first is excellent! A nice choice of weapons to choose, like pistols, shotguns etc but the bow is the most fun obviously. Creating poison, fire and explosives arrows is a great new feature and can take out groups of enemies effectively. The scenery is beautiful to look at and walking in the snow is so well done, the graphics are great and looks pretty realistic at times. Side missions were a good addition that added to the game but I found the option to turn them down pointless.
The secondary characters aren't very interesting and a pretty poor main villain really brings the game down. To not care about the characters isn't too helpful in a game, but at least Lara is pretty cool. The climbing mechanics are great and the action scenes are fantastic and the best parts of the game for sure. The stealth sections seemed to have improved, although they were pretty good anyway for a third person action game. Getting stealth kills by sneaking up on enemies or doing takedowns from above is a nice change of pace and it's always a plus to avoid shootouts.
The music fits the game really well and sets the tone for an adventure game. Another important feature is now being able to sprint, why wouldn't you wanna run faster? Climbable arrows are new also they let you shoot them into certain walls to climb higher up. They can be quite awkward at times as I fell to my death more than once, but when you get used to how they work they should be no trouble. You can now also heal during a fight, by quickly crafting a medkit, this is incredibly handy seeing as you can die very quick when you're out in the open. All the items you can pick up lets you craft arrows or upgrades for your gear, which makes you want to scavenge constantly. The grappling hook was also a nice new addition, being able to get across huge gaps that would result in your death.
A couple of bugs and imperfections, like your bow disappearing off your back when you squeezed through walls and then magically reappearing when you're out of the cinematic definitely wasn't pretty to watch. A good game overall but a pretty disapointing sequel to what was a brilliant game and a fantastic reboot to the popular but deflating franchise. Tomb Raider is definitely back and I'm looking forward to more, but they definitely need to up their game for the next one and not settle for a good game and aim for an amazing one like the first. But I'm just mainly glad that they went from the big boob, short shorts, cartwheeling sex object to an actual adventure-type looking female lead. See, not every female character needs to be a sex object to be great one. Let's hope the reboot of the movie franchise also remembers that and makes us forget about that movie Angelina Jolie starred in.
7.8/10
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