Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration Reviews
Rise of the Tomb Raider is an excellent game. The graphics are outstanding and the story is well written with interesting characters. Overall an enjoyable game.
It was well worth the wait.
Rise of the Tomb Raider remains an incredible product for action/adventures fans. The twentieth anniversary edition is obviously the most complete: there are four additional mini-adventures, which extend the game experience, focusing on the figure of Lara, and playing with the emotional value of memories.
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Setting foot in Croft Manor is an enjoyable afternoon experience, doubly so if you're an early adopter of PlayStation VR. While not integral to the Tomb Raider story, there's something to celebrate if you've already waited this long for the complete experience.
It was already a worthy follow-up to the Tomb Raider reboot, but with all the DLC, and some interesting new extras, this is not only a good game but also a great bargain.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is the complete package for both newcomers and series veterans. Barring some wonky gunplay, the base game is superb, with its sublime exploratory mechanics, wonderful semi-open world hubs that deliver tons of side content, and sensational graphics. Lara's Nightmare does feel like a bit of a throwaway, but Blood Ties and the Baba Yaga DLC are more than worth your time if you want to stray away from the main adventure. Lara Croft is back where she belongs, and you owe it to yourself to join the 20 year celebration and get back to some tomb raiding.
The PS4 version isn’t quite the definitive edition, but the smoother frame rate and more responsive gameplay makes a great Tomb Raider even greater. The new Blood Ties mode is an interesting adventure that gives us time to go deeper into Lara’s back story, while the Lara’s Nightmare mode is a fun, fast-paced action challenge. Throw in the other extras and the enhanced, co-op friendly Endurance mode and you have a package to make the wait worthwhile. Sometimes being the second-best adventure of the year is more than good enough.
The material grants a depth and poignancy to Lara’s zealous chase across the globe to finish her father’s work.
With a wealth of new content to enjoy, on top of the already excellent and expansive base game, Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration just about makes up for its late debut onto PS4.
The formulaic plot, and some immersion-breaking moments don’t take away too much from this being quite a fun adventure, with a ton to do and return to. Plus you can unlock pointy-boobs Lara from Tomb Raider.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is frustrating on one level because it’s so completely in thrall of the blockbuster system that you can feel the creative frustration on several levels through the game, from its storytelling through level design. That frustration has resulted in a blockbuster that almost breaks free of its limitations at times, and it’s certainly an enjoyable game. It’s just that it would be interesting to see what the developers could come up with if they had a more limited budget (and thus lower sales expectations, allowing them to go after a more specific audience with a more focused game).
I’m still excited to see how Lara grows from here; there’s clearly still a lot of story left for the teams over at Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics to tell. While it’s still niggling at my mind that Trinity was introduced in this entry just to lead into a potential sequel, there’s always the hope that we’re being set up for much grander and epic adventures.
It is still hoped that Lara is isolated a bit more in her next quest, as minimal interaction with other characters is where Tomb Raider has worked best, but it has been necessary to shape her personality in this storyline. The rebooting isn't quite there yet, but Rise of the Tomb Raider is sure-fire proof that Crystal Dynamics is on the right track, as the essence of Tomb Raider is alive and kicking here, with plenty of promise for the future. The gameplay mechanics and Lara's determination are more or less solidified, barring an overreliance on the Survival Instincts feature, so now it's just a case of carrying that through into her next adventure and expanding on the already-great atmosphere, freedom and tomb raiding that has been applied in this chapter of Lara's story. There is certainly plenty of bang for the buck in this edition, ensuring PlayStation 4 owners are getting the best deal if they have held out to purchase it.
Rise of the Tomb Raider represents a graphical leap forward from its predecessor, but the rest of the changes are merely minor tweaks and refinements to a formula that is starting to feel rather tired due to a certain other series having done this many times before.
As for the extras, players are most likely to run through ‘Blood Ties’ only once or twice, (depending on whether you have a shiny new PSVR), while ‘Lara’s Nightmare’ has limited appeal, and co-op Endurance mode, while great, may force you reconsider some long-standing friendships if you play it for too long. However, this all just icing…Wait, no, the DLC is the icing. This 20 Year Celebration is the cherry on an already delicious birthday cake for one of gaming’s most iconic, enduring, and beloved series. Happy Birthday, Lara! Here’s hoping you don’t have to reinvent yourself again for your 30th anniversary!
Happy 20th birthday, Lara. I hope you find your way home one day.
The game treats Lara like shit, threatening to freeze, drown, impale, burn, eat, or otherwise murder her at every turn.