A year after the traumatic events in the Tomb Raider-series reboot, Lara Croft has shifted her focus on the research done by her deceased father, who was looking for a lost city of Kitezh in his quest of finding the Divine Source. He was ridiculed by the scientific community for his attempt in proving immortality exists. This is what Lara believes drove him to suicide and now, after her own tryst with the supernatural, she is heading to Syria with her friend Jonah. From there, she believes to find the truth that will absolve the memory of her father.
As it is the case in stories like this, Lara soon finds out that she has again stumbled on something bigger she ever imagined. Hidden deep in the Syrian mountain range, Lara finds a valley, long since abandoned by the Soviet forces, but now a battleground between the people who live there and a ruthless organisation called Trinity. The leader of the group, ruthless soldier Konstantine, dead set in locating the same city of Katezh Lara is looking for. Both have the same goal: finding the secret of immortality, only their reasons differ.
After Lara rescues a man called Jakob from the hands of the Trinity, she finally begins to get closer to her goal, as Jakob is the leader of the people fending off the attackers. Together with the followers of the Prophet, she heads on the final offensive to rid the valley of the threat of the Trinity and to find the answers to the questions her father sought.
Just like the previous game, Rise of the Tomb Rader is separated into several maps of the different locations in the valley. You can either follow the story or spend your time finetuning Lara's skills by levelling up and by looking for hidden relics, tombs and crypts. At times, you meet characters who offer some additional side quests. So, if you are familiar with the gameplay of the previous game, you should find the gameplay cycle very familiar, maybe a bit more finetuned.
In order to progress, you do need to have the right tools. Every location has places you can only enter after you either get the tools or manage to upgrade your existing set. These tools range from climbing equipment to weapons. Story related items you get on their due time when the plot so mandates, but in order to get all the possible perks, you do have to travel back to the previous locations to see if the items you've gathered are of help there. And what comes to those locations, it's not all a game of hiding and seeks, as the valley is littered with maps that will provide locations for the treasures and tombs hidden there.
Besides adventure gear, Lara is pretty handy with all kinds of weapons, as you'd imagine from the previous game. For silent take-outs, she has the bow or later on a silenced pistol. The bow is also used as a method of solving environmental puzzles, as Lara can shoot rope- and climbing arrows with it, which will allow her to connect ropeways, pull items and reach otherwise unclimbable locations. Additionally, she has poison, explosives and fire arrows. Explosive and fire arrows can be used to solve some puzzles as well. For close combat, she has an axe, which also is used for mountaineering and pulling down weak walls and opening locked chests and cabinets. As a side note, the bow was my go-to weapon in the game, as sniping unaware enemies with it is quite fun.
If things get heavier, Lara also has a shotgun and a rifle. For each, she can equip different variations, depending on if you can find the guns hidden in lockboxes. All of the weapons can be upgraded with the materials found all over the valley. You get the materials by scavenging the environment, boxes, corpses of the enemies and the animals you hunt. Upgrading itself can be done on campfires scattered all over the valley. The skill points Lara has received are distributed on these campsites as well.
At the core, this new iteration of the long-lasting series is an action-adventure game more than anything else. While it does have plenty of puzzles to solve, the main focus is on exploring the area and fighting the bad guys. This all is done during a story that can take itself a bit too seriously at times in contrast to the premise of the story: an archaeologist going head to head with an armed to the brim secret organisation for the ownership of a device that grants immortality. In the middle of it, she also wants to absolve her father's memory. But then again, the dramatic bits, like Lara trying to make sense of her father's suicide, are actually very well written and the acting is solid. It still is basically a pulp adventure, but with a more nuanced style of writing.
Controls are more or less the same as they were in the previous game, which is to say, the game controls very well. It doesn't really matter if you are trying to stealth kill your enemies, or climbing a rockface, the controls generally work as you'd expect them to work. Even with a couple of months in between playing the game though, it was pretty easy to slip into the controls, at least when playing on a gamepad. I don't know how the game controls with the keyboard and mouse, I'd assume well enough. Personally, I've always thought games like this are meant for pad play.
I never was a huge fan of the original Tomb Raider. I played them too late for them to make an impact on me. While I can appreciate what it did for gaming as a whole, they are something that should have been played when they actually came out. So in that sense, it's actually interesting that I like this new take on the series as much as I do.
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