Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Welcome back fellow Steemians, it's that time of the week again, game review day and I'm rather excited about this one.

This takes me way back to my younger days, where my love for video games pretty much began. Lara Croft was basically the pin-up girl video game character, a female version of the iconic Indiana Jones, but with a posh British accent. Looking back it's amazing to see how we went from having a full blown pixelated character with a literal block head, to where we are today and it's almost impossible to to distinguish her from a real life person.

The new Tomb Raider series which started in 2013 is technically a complete overhaul and reboot of the game franchise, and then reconstructs the origins of Lara Croft. The story writing worked so well that they actually took the script of the game and literally followed it scene for scene in the Tomb Raider film that was released last year. I recall watching the film and thinking the entire time that this feels like awfully too familiar and I could put my finger on why I knew exactly what would happen next. I almost thought that I was developing special powers, but it hit me like a bag of bricks, I've played this before.

This story follows shortly on the heels of the previous 2015 game Rise of the Tomb Raider, and this is were we start seeing Lara finally become the hardened bad ass treasure hunter we grew up with.

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Our story begins two months after the events that transpired in Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft and her good friend Jonah have now dedicated themselves to stopping the organization known as Trinity at all cost.

They track a Trinity cell to the remote area of Cozumel in Mexico, which is led by Pedro Dominguez, who is the head of Trinity's High Council. Lara finds that Trinity has started excavating close to a legendary tomb in search of something, she finds an alternative back entrance to the tomb, and inside discovers an ancient temple containing the Dagger of Ix Chel and references to a hidden city. The murals all over the walls allude to the Silver Box of Chak Chel, along with an ominous warning of "the Cleansing", which the Mayan's believed to be an coming apocalypse brought on by a solar eclipse. Unfortunately Lara has no choice but to ignore the warning and takes the dagger to prevent Trinity from getting hold of it, as she's is busy escaping Dominguez catches her and reveals that by taking the Dagger, she has actually triggered the Cleansing. He then takes the Dagger from her, intending to unite it with the silver box to stop the Cleansing and use the power it grants him to remake the world in his own image. The action of taking the dagger can not be undone and a tsunami appears that destroys Cozumel area, Lara and Jonah escape just in time.

Lara has no choice now than to chase down Dominguez and somehow try prevent this coming apocalypse. The location of the silver box is somewhere in the Amazon so the two take a small plane, but due to a massive tropical storm that crashes the plane and separating the two somewhere in the jungle. Lara has to scavenge to survive the harsh jungle and make her way to where ever Jonah might be, and then find the box.

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"A famous explorer once said, that the extraordinary is in what we do, not who we are. I’d finally set out to make my mark; to find adventure. But instead adventure found me. In our darkest moments, when life flashes before us, we find something; Something that keeps us going. Something that pushes us." - Lara Croft

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a bigger world, far more dangerous than before and this makes this the most ambitious game of the modern trilogy.

What I loved about this game was that the developers didn't go for a complete overhaul in the controls, so right out the gate it was very familiar, and no need to first get accustom to the controls. It was like riding a bike and you can get straight into playing the game. The game also fit with the previous two installments, you basically feel like you are taking part in a block buster action film, with high suspense moments where you'll need to make some really quick decisions, so don't put down the controller when there is a epic cut scene.

I loved the story which had some great emotional moments and satisfyingly fulfillment of Lara’s initial quest that began in 2013. There is also a great flash back moment where you get to play as Lara when she is still much younger in her garden looking for treasure. The folks at Eidos took note of what fans had to say about the last game and therefore the actual practice of tomb raiding takes the front seat in this game, just like if was with the originals games from way back when.

All in all this Tomb Raider game was successfully wraps up the origin story of Lara Croft, and leaves her in a place resembling where we were first introduced to her more than 20 years ago. It's everything you could want in a Tomb Raider game, I do hope that the future games have a full open world as opposed to this linear kind of semi open world. I'm already looking forward to the next installment.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by the good folks at Eidos Montréal in conjunction with Crystal Dynamics.

Eidos was responsible for taking over the new rebooted Tomb Raider franchise and this would be their third title after 2013 Tomb Raider and then Rise of the Tomb Raider which was released in 2015, which I reviewed right here a few months ago. They were also behind the creation of Thief as well as Deus Ex series, which I'll be covering hopefully in the next coming weeks. The game is published under Square Enix who are a pretty well know name in the video game world and known for Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider continues the story of Lara Croft from the 2015 game Rise of the Tomb Raider and is the twelfth mainline entry in the Tomb Raider series since it started back in 1996. The game was released worldwide in September of 2018 and available on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with a further release on MacOS and Linux set for 2019 some time. This is still pretty new so keep an eye out for any deals if you're a fan, I'm sure you'll be able to find this as a pre-played title at your local game shop.

I'm giving Shadow of the Tomb Raider a solid rating of 8/10

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In case you missed it, here is the previous game review

Thanks for popping in, hope you liked the post. Please leave me your thoughts and or opinions in the comments below, have a beautiful day.

Game review for ADSactly by MorkRock

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect the official policy or position of ADSactly

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