Game Details Developer: Crystal Dynamics

Publisher: Square Enix

Platform: Timed exclusive on Xbox One, Xbox 360 (Xbox One reviewed)

PEGI Rating: 18

Release Date: November 10, 2015 (US); November 13, 2015 (EU)

Price: £40 / €65 / $65

Links: Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon USA | Official website Crystal Dynamics: Square Enix: Timed exclusive on Xbox One, Xbox 360 (Xbox One reviewed)18November 10, 2015 (US); November 13, 2015 (EU)£40 / €65 / $65

The trouble with a successful reboot is that there's only one way to follow it up. Rise of the Tomb Raider is bigger and bolder; its film-like set pieces pummel you into your sofa with more ferocity than a 1980s cassette tape . You will be entertained and then some.

What comes after Rise of the Tomb Raider is depressingly inevitable: a piling on of features to appease an increasingly demanding audience, with ever more outlandish action sequences that are a desperate attempt to top what came before. A few sequels later and the masses, flaming pitchforks in hand, will be calling for the bloated, directionless mess that is Tomb Raider to be rebooted. The publisher will have no choice but to dutifully oblige.

But I digress. Rise of the Tomb Raider is an excellent game, even a brilliant one in places—it's just gonna be very hard to top it.

Or at least most of it will be very hard to top. If there's one thing that Tomb Raider didn't quite get right (and a thing that's sadly repeated here), it's the story—but it's not for lack of trying. If anything, Rise of the Tomb Raider tries a little too hard to correct the narrative flaws of its predecessor, shoving as much heavy handed and often clichéd characterisation into its cut scenes as humanly possible. As you can imagine, this quickly grows tiresome. At the very least, the game's supporting cast is a little bit more engaging this time around, their profiles raised from forgettable archetypes to interesting, if emotionally over-the-top individuals.

Lara herself remains the most well-rounded character of the lot, though. Following her trials at the hands of cultist weirdos in her last adventure, she's a noticeably stronger character here. There's no build-up to Lara's first kill this time around, that's for sure. Without giving too much away, there's instead a greater focus on Lara's past, particularly her relationship with her father. This certainly provides the suitable motivation for Lara jetting halfway across the world to take on a centuries-old secret society and find the source of eternal life (yes, it goes there), even if the daddy issues she's saddled with get painfully predictable at times.















Despite its flaws, it's hard not to get sucked into Rise of the Tomb Raider's story. I'd even go as far as to say it's that little bit more enjoyable than Tomb Raider's. But the real draw—which now thankfully doesn't involve quite as much awkward panting and shrieking thanks to poorly executed quick-time events—is the action. And boy does this kick off with a bang. The opening sequence, set high along the ice-covered rocks of a Siberian mountaintop complete with an impressive sense of scale, is as tense as you might expect from having to keep Lara from plunging 5000 metres to her death. Rocks crumble, ice cracks, and snow thumps down from the mountain top, sweeping Lara and her companion Jonah off the rocks, leaving them dangling by a single tired rope.

Eventually Lara crafts a bow and then finds a gun (then an even bigger gun), and it's off to the races to bust a cap into the asses of soldiers from a mysterious militant group called Trinity. The game does a fine job of setting up the group as an unconscionable collection of angry young men, which is good thing given that you've got no choice but to lay waste to at least a few hundred of the evildoers during Lara's journey. The cover-based stealth combat is enjoyable and well executed, mostly thanks to a beefy set of weapons that span the gamut from pea-shooter pistol to face-exploding shotgun. There's also a tighter set of mechanics that makes taking cover a painless experience.

The difference this time is that there's far more to do than just practice your headshots. After the initial onward march towards a story-driven goal, Rise of the Tomb Raider essentially becomes a Metroidvania/Zelda-like game, complete with a large interconnected world map and plenty of places to explore. What's great is the game introduces you to these places gradually as the story progresses, teasing you with a door that requires a tool to open that you don't have yet, or a path that requires a skill you haven't yet learned. Eventually, you might get the rope dart, letting you cross previously impassable chasms. Or perhaps you'll find a set of arrows you can fire into wooden structures to create new paths.