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After All, You're a Croft

“ It’s broad, Indiana Jones stuff that gallops along at a great clip.

Loading Above: Rise of the Tomb Raider - Xbox 360 v Xbox One v PC

“ As a character, Lara Croft has never been so endearing.

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Her ambitions are more complex, too. This time round she’s driven by obsession, not survival, and for the first time we see her in shades of grey. Unlike 2013’s Tomb Raider, I wasn’t wincing at her constant broken bones - she’s now a formidable fighter who inflicts more than she takes - but I did see the cracks in her moral compass.

Above: Watch IGN play one of RotTR's tomb puzzles.

Tomb Tools

“ The most heart-hammering moments in Rise of The Tomb Raider come from frantic, acrobatic chases.

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Lara's Revenge

“ She’s such a potent fighter that I didn’t find any real incentive to avoid combat altogether.

Elsewhere, Rise of the Tomb Raider’s supporting cast are less developed, but fortunately they occupy far less screentime than Lara’s juicy antagonists. To talk about these two - and the mysterious organization they associate with - in too much detail would spoil some great twists, but they’re morally grotesque foes, and their clash of wills result in moments of real darkness.Lara’s rope arrows get a lot more use, too, and the puzzles which utilize these span a remarkable range. One saw me blowing up a statue, another had me slowly and delicately equalizing the weight on a platform. A couple left me lingering idiotically around a rope-wrapped stump, clueless as to what to do with it, until that rush of relief when I spotted another in the distance.While puzzles have been baked deeper into the main storyline than they were in Lara’s last outing, the most interesting ones are still those that you have to hunt down on the side. Rise of the Tomb Raider’s ‘challenge tombs’, those that speak most strongly to Tomb Raider’s heritage, are its highlight; imaginative, environmentally gorgeous, and increasingly tough as you progress through the world. There are a couple by the end I spent a good hour or two on, but the elation I felt upon solving them was huge.My only real criticism of Rise of the Tomb Raider’s puzzle-solving is that there isn’t more of it. As I played through the main storyline, I increasingly found myself hurrying through combat sections just so I could branch off and hunt down my next puzzle fix, buried in the unsettled guts of an icy mountain or under a murky lake in the mouth of a cave.Not that combat a chore. While its third-person shooting is the least inspired aspect of Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara can now build nail bombs, smoke bombs, molotov cocktails, and special ammo while on the fly, all of which can turn a mundane shootout into a pile of dead bodies in seconds. It’s a fun, vicious, and slightly ridiculous new ability which adds a great deal of variety to enemy encounters.Happily, playing with the latter is still nice and crunchy. Weapons are upgradable based on parts you can find scattered throughout the world, which injects new novelty into combat every few hours. Like in the last game, I found myself gravitating towards the shotgun and bow; the former for its lethal incendiary bullets, the latter for its wide-reaching poison arrows. Lara’s as powerful as a Terminator by the end of Rise of the Tomb Raider on standard difficulty mode, however - something to be considered when choosing how you want to play.

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Keep On Raiding

“ The enormous, snowy mountains, crumbling tombs, and dark forests here have been built with great imagination.

It isn’t purely exploration-driven, either. Besides the aforementioned optional tombs, there are mission-givers who you can return to for new jobs in exchange for coin, outfits, and XP, and area-specific challenges that offer rewards for exploration. For true completionists, there are plenty of relics, documents, murals and caves to discover, which can take an average playthrough from 15 hours to around 30 or 40.

Rise of The Tomb Raider also offers additional play in its Expedition mode, which replaces 2013’s inessential multiplayer with a fun enough way to compete against yourself and your friends in challenges that you can customize through collectable cards. Modifiers can make you weaker (one life only) or stronger (stealth kills earn temporary invisibility), and timers determine who comes out on top. Loading

Above: IGN's Icons series showcases Lara Croft.

Though I certainly wouldn’t recommend paying for these cards with real-world money - an option you’re offered - I did earn enough in-game credits in the main storyline to buy a couple of packs that made for some hilariously off-beat challenges. Big Head mode coupled with a card that sees enemies burst into flame after a melee attack is a personal favourite.

January 28, 2016

I played the Rise of the Tomb Raider PC port on an Intel i7-6700k @ 4GHz with 16GB RAM running Windows 7, with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti with the January 27, 2016 Game Ready Drivers installed, as recommended by Square Enix for this particular port.

Running on these specs at 1920x1080 resolution on the high graphics settings preset, Rise of the Tomb Raider looks stunning. Visuals are crisp; hair and shadows and facial textures in cutscenes are particularly improved over the Xbox One version.

While stuttering and and tearing has been reported elsewhere, I noticed only the occasional stutter in cutscenes. Further, my game ran fluidly at 60 frames per second in both dark, tight spaces and bright, broad environments with a lot of detail.

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Above: The first 10 minutes of Rise of the Tomb Raider on PC

My only criticism with the PC port is a stickiness when climbing using the mouse and keyboard; a couple of times Lara moved in a direction I didn’t intend her to move while stuck to a wall. With this in mind, I recommend using a gamepad for this port.Ultimately, Rise of the Tomb Raider looks best on PC - although be prepared for your hardware to be stretched if you intend to max out the settings.