Rise of the Tomb Raider [Gameplay #4] - The Infernal Machine
0Rise of the Tomb Raider includes its fair share of fancy-looking set pieces, but we've seen this all before in the first Crystal Dynamics reboot of the series. Inbetween the action, the game's semi-linear level design is supposed to make you feel liberated but only really succeeds in weakening the campaign's pacing and making me worry in an OCD-like manner about missing collectibles as well as vital upgrades hidden in obscure places across the different environments. The gameplay is certainly not bad (although both the shooter and platforming controls are slightly wonky), but it doesn't improve meaningfully on the preceeding title from 2013. By far the best thing about Rise of the Tomb Raider is its use of Byzantine history, culture and architecture to provide a distinct sense of place and tether the game's weak action movie plot to some semblance of reality.
As for the story, it would no doubt have been awkward if the writers had stuck with the narrative premise of strange artifacts being imbued with the literal power of God. Still, the late plot twist which hastily discards that explicitly Christian mysticism (without really explaining *anything*) effectively reduces the fantastical dimension of the game to the cookie-cutter supernaturalism of the previous Tomb Raider, and thus removes the one thing which somewhat distinguished RoTR from its competitors in the AAA action adventure genre.