Rise of the Tomb Raider is a sequel from Tomb Raider, taking place a couple years after her last adventure on Yamatai, Japan near the Dragon’s Triangle. Lara Croft a young second generation archaeologist/explorer has become an experienced survivor in search for the mysterious Divine Source located in Siberia, Russia. However, her adventure is not a walk in the park, while she is being hunted down by a sinister secret society called Trinity lead by Konstantin and his sister Ana.
The game’s protagonist, Lara Croft has some unique features while getting through tough obstacles along with some new stealth combat moves. Lara can use her duel pick axes to climb up mountain and use the pick axe to open doors, she can also use it as a weapon for melee combat. Later on in the game, Lara can use a rope attached to a pick axe to get to hard to reach places nearly Batman-esque. She can also use a rope tied to an arrow and use it as a climbing rope line or a zip line, she can also use it to pull down obstructions and barricades to find secret entrances and whatnot. A new feature for the arrow rope is that she can shoot the rope to a stringed up swinging lamp and swing across hard to reach places. Rise of the Tomb Raider has its influence from other modern adventure/action games in terms of going through obstacles.
The combat controls are very simple, and Lara can get upgrades from her weapons. One disappointment is that most of us were expecting to have Lara use her signature twin pistols, but instead she uses a single pistol. She has her trusty bow and arrow, you can craft your arrows, such as poison arrows from a poisonous mushroom to kill multiple enemies especially super Mario (lol). You can go Rambo style by using flaming arrows and arrow grenades to bring down barriers or take out enemies in a blaze or a bang and in the end, what Konstantin and Ana need “are a whole bunch of body bags.” (quote by Col. Trident from Rambo First Blood). Stealth combat has been enhanced with new features such as using a knife to sneak up from behind and kill a victim. She can leap off a ledge and stealth kill an enemy Assassin’s Creed style. She can come out of a pond, sneak up and drag her victim into the water and choke out an enemy underwater. These are more of the fancy stealth kills, Green Beret style. Lara can use different types of explosives to take out multiple enemies. She can take a beer bottle and light it up as a Molotov and throw it at a distance burning up multiple victims standing in her way. She can craft a bomb and blow foes up into pieces, or craft a smoke bomb causing temporary blindness seizing the opportunity to stealth kill foes in the smoke cloud.
Rise of the Tomb Raider 20th celebration edition has special features and additional DLC for PS VR side games such as Blood Ties. You can get Classic Lara Croft skins and outfits. The game is amazing to play overall, it leaves players having a fun, challenging and rewarding time to explore areas that haven’t been explored yet. Although there are side missions in the game which most players may not bother doing so many of them while playing the game for the first time. Rise of the Tomb Raider is well worth the purchase for any Tomb Raider fan or for those that never played a Tomb Raider game yet.
Jon Bynoe