I don’t like Tomb Raider and I don’t like Lara Croft. To me she represents the toy that developers can use and abuse, throw around, sticking spears, knives and forks through. The way it’s animated it feels like they enjoy it and it makes me sick.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a bad game. I don’t like it at all.
I wish this game was about exploration, uncovering a mystery by going on an adventure. I would love such a game, where you uncover more about the truth the farther in you go. This is not it.
This is a cover shooter. Not a good cover shooter but a bad one. In the beginning I thought there was an option to be stealthy, but there really isn’t. As soon as you shoot your first arrow everyone know where you are.
The enemies are the same through the whole game. They are guys in lots of armor so you can shoot them 5 times in the head before they die. There are enemies that you cannot shoot but you have to go into close combat with, and those really suck because the game is not made for it. The camera can’t keep up so I keep swinging and dodging madly because I can’t see my enemy.
I chose to play this on the easiest difficulty because the shooting doesn’t interest me. Still the game is hard as balls and I keep dying all the time. Since I have no interest in the fighting, this just makes me very irritated. It’s not that I’m bad at video games, it’s just this video game that is bad. The last and only boss is really infuriating. You are supposed to do some aiming that I’m sure is fine with mouse and keyboard, but not at all with a dualshock.
What I thought I would enjoy is the story. I like a good convoluted story arc with a few surprises. This is none of the sort. ‚”Hey! There is a divine source, go get it!” There is nothing interesting happening along the way. You shoot the same guys in the same landscape for 11 hours. The scenery changes slightly from time to time but it is still filled with the same props you’ve seen everywhere else. It makes it much less interesting.
This game doesn’t know what it wants to be. It portray itself as a role playing game where you level Lara between bonfires (where have we seen that before?), but I don’t think the level system makes much difference. The game wants to be an open world and you should go out for a hunt, but at the same time the progression is extremely linear. You can warp between bonfires but I see no point. The game wants to be about crafting, but the crafting system is very weak and just in the way. Even worse the game wants you to craft bombs and Molotov cocktails while you’re under fire and that just doesn’t work.
Now to the worst thing, what irritates me the most. It is the Uncharted syndrome, and I thought we were past this several years ago. You kill 100 guys going from one bonfire to the next and then you get this cinematic where Lara can’t hurt a fly because she has moral issues.
The same thing happens when you get shot over and over. You take so many bullets and you patch yourself up with some herbs. Then in a cut scene Lara takes a knife and suddenly she is dying. She is almost freezing to death in a cave during a cut scene and next you dive and swim through an underground river. What!? The big bad boss in the end reaches out and takes my bow, and manage in one swoop take my gun, my shotgun and my fully automated rifle as well. And then I go full out beating him to a pulp with my ice picks, but he will not die because you can only kill him with stealth.
So yes, I hated this game. I don’t know why I bought it because I didn’t like the previous one either. Please don’t let me buy Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Remind me of this review and how much I dislike Lara Croft.
I rate this game as BAD.
Replay 