{"id":21992,"date":"2018-10-03T21:09:48","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T11:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=21992"},"modified":"2018-10-21T00:11:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-20T14:11:08","slug":"shadow-of-the-tomb-raider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=21992","title":{"rendered":"Shadow of the Tomb Raider"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shadowofthetombraiderposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Developer:\u00a0 <\/strong>Eidos Montreal, Crystal Dynamics
\nPublisher:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>Square Enix Co Ltd
\nPlatform:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>Playstation 4<\/p>\n

S<\/em><\/span>hadow of the Tomb Raider<\/em> is the third and final instalment in the latest series of Lara Croft adventures.\u00a0 This series reboot which started in 2013 with\u00a0Tomb Raider<\/em> and continued with\u00a0Rise of the Tomb Raider<\/em> in 2015, charts the origins of Lara Croft and how she came to be the ass-kicking, globe trotting treasure hunter we meet in the original\u00a0Tomb Raider<\/em> all the way back in 1996.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Shadow of the Tomb Raider<\/em>, Lara and her best friend Jonah continue their struggle against the sinister Trinity organization, as they race one another around the globe to discover powerful artefacts\u00a0that could give unimaginable power to those who wield it.<\/p>\n

In this chapter, Lara and Jonah discover a long lost civilisation in deepest, darkest Peru where an ancient Mayan prophecy grants control of the lost city to the one who possesses a\u00a0special ceremonial dagger.\u00a0 When Lara initially gets her hands on the dagger, she unwittingly triggers a cataclysmic event that threatens to wipe out the entire indigenous population of Paititi.\u00a0 Lara becomes riddled with self doubt as Jonah challenges the person she has become and asks whether she is actually doing more harm than good with her treasure hunting obsession.<\/p>\n

\"shadowofthetombraider\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We’re now five years into the current generation of game consoles and its safe to say that when it comes to triple A character action games,\u00a0there has been a homogenisation in design elements where most blockbuster games (including\u00a0God of War, Assassin’s Creed, Spider-man<\/em>) have RPG-lite traits including skill trees, weapons crafting and loot collecting.\u00a0 To be honest, I don’t really begrudge seeing these familiar elements pop up again in\u00a0Tomb Raider<\/em>.\u00a0 They’re neat features and help bring a sense of progress to the proceedings.<\/p>\n

Shadow of the Tomb Raider<\/em> has received generally positive reviews, but there’s an acknowledgement that the formula is now pretty well worn and feels kind of stale, especially if you’ve played any of those other titles recently.<\/p>\n

I think if anything,\u00a0Shadow<\/em> is a slightly underrated game and there a couple of design elements that I feel have gone under-appreciated by critics.\u00a0 Firstly, I think a refreshing part of\u00a0Shadow of the Tomb Raider<\/em> is the heightened emphasis on adventuring and puzzle solving, particularly in the first two thirds of her journey, where there are only very infrequent breaks for combat.\u00a0 Anyone who has read my reviews of\u00a0Uncharted\u00a0<\/em>games know that I have a love\/hate relationship with them.\u00a0 I love the characters and presentation of the game but I get increasingly worn down by the tedious waves of repetitive combat the games makes you grind through.\u00a0 In the original\u00a0Tomb Raider\u00a0<\/em>[1996], Lara spent the majority of the game exploring her environment and there was only a total of six human enemies that she encountered.\u00a0 While the number in\u00a0Shadow of the Tomb Raider<\/em> isn’t quite that low, it is nice to the developer shine the focus mainly on exploring exotic locales and solving puzzles.<\/p>\n

Secondly, and this is a very personal appreciation of the game mechanics relative to my current lifestyle,\u00a0Shadow of the Tomb Raider<\/em> offers a unique breadth of options when it comes to tweaking the difficulty of the game.\u00a0 Instead of providing the player with the standard difficulty settings, players can choose to tweak easy\/medium\/hard settings on combat, exploration and puzzle solving.\u00a0 For someone like me who enjoys certain aspects of the game but has limited time because I’m\u00a0raising a seven month old baby, I genuinely appreciated this set of options to customise my experience.\u00a0 In fact, that overall flexibility is a fantastic part of\u00a0Shadow of the Tomb Raider<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s possible to simply barrel through the story mode, focusing solely on plot progression, where you can wrap things up in between 15-20 hours.\u00a0 However, for those who have the luxury of time, there is a lot of additional content including collectable rare items, challenge tombs and a New Game+ mode.\u00a0 Variety is the spice of life and I like that\u00a0Eidos let me enjoy my Tomb Raiding experience in such an accommodating fashion.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, this is very much a\u00a0Tomb Raider<\/em> game that has the playability and production values of the previous two entries in the series.\u00a0 For some people, it may be a touch too derivative when compared to Naughty Dog’s franchise but I’ve loved what Camilla Luddington has brought to the role and although I can take or leave many of the story elements, I thoroughly enjoyed exploring ancient ruins with Lara and the combat with the bow and arrow is still a delight.<\/p>\n

Where to for Lara from here?\u00a0 As the story neatly wraps up the origins of Lara Croft, I suspect we may see Square Enix take a break from producing these games for a while.\u00a0 But I hope its not for too long. I have a sweet spot for the\u00a0Tomb Raider<\/em> series and I’d be happy to sign up for whatever adventures Lara gets up to next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Lara Croft races to save the world from a Maya apocalypse, she must become the Tomb Raider she is destined to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1039,1594,1702,2723,2724],"class_list":["post-21992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-eidos-montreal","tag-lara-croft","tag-playstation-4","tag-shadow-of-the-tomb-raider","tag-square-enix-crystal-dynamics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21992"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22113,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21992\/revisions\/22113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}