Rise of the Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics favored world design that plopped Lara Croft into dense pockets of small activities. From the small river town to the hidden, thriving Inca civilization you discover chasing the second half of the Lara’s dangerous quarry, Shadow of the Tomb Raider unfolds with organic grace. Save for the introduction and a few late-game story digressions to set piece locales like a 17th century Catholic mission and an exploding oil refinery (is there any other kind in video games?), the game takes place in an expanse of Peruvian jungle. What follows is, at least physically, the best of the modern Tomb Raider games that started with 2013’s reboot. Unfortunately the story portion fails to deliver. This is a mistake, one that opens up a miraculous game space while holding immense potential for the series’ iconic heroine. Rather than let Trinity get their mitts on it, Lara snatches it up. When she reaches this particular McGuffin, it’s accompanied by an explicit warning beyond the typically vicious Rube Goldberg traps surrounding it: Do not touch this mystical knife or the world will end. Still waging a one-woman war against Trinity, the global paramilitary conspiracy that murdered her father, she finds herself in Mexico hunting yet another relic with cataclysmic power. Little has changed for Lara Croft since Rise of the Tomb Raider. Every step in Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a luxurious delight, but every time it demanded I think about why I was doing any of it, my only response was: good question. But then the characters speak, and the voyage’s pristine clarity is muddied by personalities and a plot that, though inspired at the outset, bring the whole point of the game into question.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a balanced journey with the right ratio of beauty, cleverness, violence, and batshit insane ideas of how to do archaeology the right way. Of course, I’ll come with you, Tomb Raider! The call to adventure is irresistible when everything works this well.
Use your wits to dive into a deep well of teasing (but never daunting) puzzles. “Lara, come jump all over this grimy stuff! Find some gilded totem that lets you jump all over more stuff.
The jungles, gargantuan ruins, and improbable contraptions you have to clamber through and over speak so clearly on their own. Shadow of the Tomb Raider would be a perfect game if no one spoke.