Rise of the Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider is the most fun I’ve had with a Lara Croft game since 1996. Its story is full of the right kind of danger and intrigue, its tombs are dastardly, and I was as struck by its huge, romantic environments as I was as a kid playing the original. Although I could have done with a few more puzzles and fewer firefights overall, I enjoyed every rollicking, big-hearted second of it.

Like its predecessor, Rise of the Tomb Raider revels in an ever-so-slightly-sci-fi and ultimately very fun high-concept involving a hunt for an artifact that grants eternal life. It’s broad, Indiana Jones stuff that gallops along at a great clip through gloriously over-the-top sequences grounded with a strong emotional throughline. Rise of the Tomb Raider is, at its core, about Lara and her late father, and actress Camilla Luddington’s thoughtful performance as Lara sells us on the complicated relationship she has with the ghosts he left behind.

Minute-to-minute, Lara shines. She’s confident and smart, and reacts to danger with an action hero’s calmness and intuition. Yet she’s scarred by her last adventure, so she carries a sort of charismatic weariness that tinges her quips with self-deprecation. As a character, Lara Croft has never been so endearing.

Her ambitions are more complex, too. This time round she’s driven by obsession, not survival, and for the first time we see her in shades of grey. Unlike 2013’s Tomb Raider, I wasn’t wincing at her constant broken bones – she’s now a formidable fighter who inflicts more than she takes – but I did see the cracks in her moral compass.

Lara’s means of traversing her world has also been expanded upon. All her tools – which now include a wire spool for latching onto hooks while airborne and arrows Lara can use to climb up vertical surfaces – can be used in quick succession to keep her in the sky for longer. The most heart-hammering moments in Rise of The Tomb Raider come from frantic, acrobatic chases as I fumbled for the right button hundreds of feet above ground.

Lara’s rope arrows get a lot more use, too, and the puzzles which utilize these span a remarkable range. One saw me blowing up a statue, another had me slowly and delicately equalizing the weight on a platform. A couple left me lingering idiotically around a rope-wrapped stump, clueless as to what to do with it, until that rush of relief when I spotted another in the distance.