Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration Review

Rise of the Tomb Raider released last year on Xbox One and PC and now it’s time for PS4 owners to get a taste of the action.

Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration
Developer: Crystal Dynamics
Price: $60
Platform: PS4
MonsterVine was supplied with a PS4 code for review

Rise of the Tomb Raider kicks things off a year after the events of the previous game and interestingly enough doesn’t require you to have played the first game. There’s only a single vague reference to the events of that game, with the bulk of the plot focusing on Lara’s quest to complete her father’s research in a mysterious object that could grant eternal life.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first game. I thought it was a decent experiment at rebooting the franchise, but I didn’t like how it couldn’t decide between being Uncharted or its own thing and I really wanted it to dig harder in either direction. The game even opening with a very similar setup to Uncharted 2 had me a bit concerned that Rise of the Tomb Raider was going to repeat the same mistakes but it thankfully wasn’t the case. Despite a slow opening, the game quickly comes into its own once you venture into the first proper hub area and even more so when you reach the second.

The somewhat open area and hunting mechanics established in the first game are expanded upon here with two fairly large hub areas serving as your central stomping grounds in-between story missions. As you explore these areas you’ll find crypts to loot, animals to hunt that you can then use to craft upgrades, complete side missions or challenges, and hunt for collectibles that offer their own background plots. What’re easily the best diversions are the challenge tombs which offer a mechanically, and visually unique puzzle for you that are unfortunately almost criminally easy. The solution to each room is always interesting or clever, but they’re all so simple you’ll usually discover the solution immediately upon entering the room and finish it ten minutes later.

Something I never really saw anyone talk about in this game is how fast the gunplay is. Unlike most third person shooters that have you glued to a wall, Tomb Raider instead doesn’t allow you to stick to cover and opts to having Lara constantly crouching whenever in combat. This means that you’re almost always already in position to be behind cover while still keeping your movement speed so that you can quickly move positions if things go bad. In each fight I was darting from cover to cover, flanking enemies and spraying shots where I could while making sure to be constantly on the move. It made for an interesting change of pace and gave me a taste of the momentum I crave in my shooters.

I mentioned previously how you can craft upgrades for yourself by acquiring resources from the world or hunting animals and this mechanic unfortunately isn’t executed as well as it could be. At a certain point you’re going to need to make repeated stops to one of the hub areas to collect resources for your upgrades because many materials that you need won’t be found during the story missions. This then turns the upgrade process into a bit of a grind as requirements go up and your resources need to be severely replenished. The RPG mechanic in the game is equally frustrating. There are three core skills (Brawler, Hunter, & Survivalist) with over a dozen different skills in each tree. You’ll earn experience points from doing pretty much anything in the game and you get skill points at a fairly reasonable pace, but the issue is how worthless the majority of the skills are. The system in place clearly wants to be an RPG but also wants to make it totally optional for those people who likely aren’t interested in that aspect; unfortunately this then makes the entire system completely pointless. There are maybe a half dozen skills that are worth getting and I spent the rest of the game dropping points into whatever I hadn’t unlocked because it really didn’t matter. I really want to see Crystal Dynamics get the courage to lean into this part of the game a bit more in future titles instead of entertaining this flip flop attitude.

Rounding out the rest of the package is a slew of extra content for you to work your way through. The expeditions mode is basically a hub area for the half dozen game modes that you can expect to find in the game. Chapter replay, replay with all your upgrades, and score attack are the traditional modes available. Remnant Resistance is a mode also included which has you replaying the hub areas from the game with new goals and also features custom missions that you can share with others in the community. The endurance game mode is easily the most interesting feature here though. In it you’re placed in a snow covered forest where you’ll need to scavenge for food and escape the cold as you work to survive as long as possible while exploring to find artifacts. It’s a really neat mode that I hope is expanded upon in the next game. You’ll also have all of the DLC from the season pass which includes the Baba Yaga and Cold Darkness Awakened story missions, a dozen outfits, 7 weapons, and some card packs for the expedition mode.

The already beefy package also includes some new content in the form of a new separate story mission called Blood Ties, a zombie mode called Lara’s Nightmare, PlayStation VR support for Blood Ties, an additional difficulty mode, some additional skins and weapons, and the previously mentioned endurance mode can now be played with another player via co-op.

Blood Ties has you exploring the ruined Croft Manor in search of a letter from your deceased father and is more of an exposition dump on who Lara’s parents were than anything else. You’ll walk through the relatively small manor examining dozens of documents or relics with some narration from Lara on the significance of that object in her life whether it was something precious to her mother or was perhaps a birthday gift. You can easily complete it in thirty minutes or so, and if it wasn’t because the writing is somewhat engaging this would be a pretty lackluster experience.

Lara’s Nightmare is less Call of Duty zombies and more of a quick score attack sort of deal. Your uncle has summoned a horde of zombies to take you out and you’ve got to work your way through the same manor in Blood Ties, finding weapons and basically trying to stay alive and finish. There are three floating skulls scattered throughout the manor that you need to destroy which will then unlock a boss battle that once defeated will end the experience. I played through the mode a few times and I’m not sure if I encountered a glitch or if the skulls are in the exact same place during every run. Each time I would spawn in the cellar with the skulls appearing in the library, painting room, and vault with only weapon spawns being randomized. After maybe half a dozen additional resets the skulls finally started spawning in different locations, as did I, but it was usually always just one of them in a new spot with the other two still being in the same location; once or twice I was able to get all three to be in completely new areas. It severely dampened my experience having the skulls show up in the same location for the majority of my runs and hope this is something that can be patched.

Rounding out the new content is a multiplayer co-op version of the endurance mode which will have you and another player stranded in a map trying to survive for as long as possible. The survival mode is already a really neat mode and getting to do it with another player just adds to it. If you want more info on these modes, including the VR mode which I wasn’t able to try, you can read our hands-on preview here. If Xbox One or PC owners of the game have already purchased the season pass then they’ll receive the new content through that.

The Final Word
Rise of the Tomb Raider’s foray onto the PS4 is an impressive package that shouldn’t be missed by fans of the genre.

– MonsterVine Review Score: 4.5 out of 5 – Great