Shadow of The Tomb Raider Review

hey everybody hidden demon here from PC world I'm here with Adam and Patrick Murray hey that's me normal good be back here in our little studio and today we are looking at shadow of the Tomb Raider I am ready to raid some tombs which is a Laura Croft right Lara oh dang it Lara did it again so yeah we are about six hours into the game seven hours at the hub of Pi TT no hidden city which they this is where our demo cut off over the summer so first time I mean not the first time I've been here cuz I've obviously been playing this game but first time this has been out in the public eye I think and I don't know we'll talk to some people running around we don't really have any objectives at the moment so we're just kind of exploring this beautiful city great so what do you think is it more Tomb Raider have they really shaken things only more Tomb Raider I don't know I have been kind of unimpressed so far and I hate making that sort of value judgment right now because I'm like eight or nine hours in though it's probably a 25 hour game okay but so things could change yeah it could change but yeah so far I have not been incredibly impressed with the story especially it's just baffling we're gonna sit through this cutscene here and his cutscene shows that like somebody who's like the head of Trinity is also like the head of this village okay it's like isolated from everybody else in Peru and like is in the middle of the jungle is called the hidden city I don't know it's a very strange plot and I feel like it's really gone like um like full Assassin's Creed like the Desmond arc in Assassin's Creed eventually you were just like what is going on like I don't understand even like what the plot is at this point I'm sort of there with this game like I don't really understand what is happening huh say yeah no it's dr. demean yes oh no not dr. Dominguez I also want to point out that a lot of the voice acting in this game is really rough it's just kind of like cringy I don't know like it feels a little over the top and a little uh but he's real named me some model he was born here but Reese lied to it's just like not really doing it for me and so and like there's a scene in this cutscene one of my favorite parts here is in a second this lady on the last is going to say the clothes that you're wearing will only keep you safe and unnoticed from the guards for so long in this town it's like what because she's literally the only white person she's not wearing like a mask or anything she's just like very obviously lara croft in like a in like a native dress walking around in this town so a little bit of logic leaps yeah i just baffled in a lot of respects in in terms of your plot here huh and I feel like we're harping on it mainly because like the rest of it is the same thing as the last two games which is not bad I actually am enjoying it in the mindless way that I enjoyed the last two you know it's a lot of raiding tombs it's a lot of like climbing walls like that same sort of open-world uncharted I guess is the best way to put it it does look nice yeah it looks beautiful and there there's a rate racing update coming after you know but it's not featured in this now it's not it's not in this but yeah I don't know I just uh the plot I just don't feel like it's a great call so basically she she steals as Maggie for the beginning a game and it may be he's gonna unleash the apocalypse and then that leads her to this village where she's trying to find a box that will prevent the apocalypse oh here we go your clothing won't hide you long from the guards okay really all right yeah but if you put these on then you're good yeah maybe if you put a bag over your head was just out for placing straw with my son I can't like the voice-acting it's just like really this game is like a you know second sequel to a game that was like really well-received I like the 2013 Tomb Raider yeah the people really really enjoyed that reboot yeah and then I was kind of iffy on rise of the Tomb Raider and then this one I just feel like I've completely lost the plot but I don't know like it plays fine the animations can be a little you know you know how in uncharted does that thing where like if you almost miss a jump it'll sort of like magnetically teleport he over to where you're supposed to go like here you go they take that to an extreme in this game there are times where you're like making like 15-foot jumps oh yeah and stuff is that tied to difficulty or just part of the mccain no I think it's just part of the mechanics there are like some nice that's one of the things we talk about there is like a really cool thing they do with a difficulty here I'm game play maybe oh no yeah here so you can actually adjust the difficulty for combat exploration and puzzles separately and they do different things like an exploration you'll notice that well we walked around here that there's like white paint on all the things that we can climb if you turn the exploration difficulty up too hard it just removes that paint out of the equation um so you actually have to like find your way through things Wow okay that's good so like yeah there's there's some cool stuff in there we're gonna get really to that but like look at like how they I think they like really wanted animations to be like instantaneous but it just like ends up feeling kind of janky a lot of the time you can really do some some weird stuff and then like none of the hub areas have been very engaging so far they haven't been bad it's just sort of what we were saying before it's like more tomb raider so like I feel like this whole jungle area feels very similar to like the jungle II outdoors area and rise of the Tomb Raider which was like cool it's just a big empty area with a village and then some tombs and you're still doing the usual thing where you upgrade your equipment yeah well you know collection stuff we like one of the worst interfaces I've ever seen oh I will have to find a base camp which I assume will you know once we go in here there will be one soon I haven't actually done any of this because I've been just like messing around in the village for the last two hours doing like random side content stuff but I assume there's a base camp in here somewhere and the the skill upgrade menu is just like it's designed to look like a I got Mayan tomb with like these at like squares everywhere as a result it's like basically unreadable oh we're good you have like mouse over every single thing individually like figure out what is going on one of the new skills and there's like probably the skill that I'm most in love with is you can rappel like swing around oh that's fun they don't use it nearly enough but it's a fun one there's also underwater that was there like big pitch back in April and they revealed this game is like oh you can go underwater now let me ask you Adam have you ever enjoyed being underwater and a video game has a swimming level that you've been like wow I really wish that he's done more of this Metal Gear Solid 2 just kidding that's a No so yeah it's a there's underwater sections and it's just as bad as you would expect okay yeah so let's here's the skill menu Oh visually interesting for that it's beautiful every time that you come in here you have to like mouse over each of these individually like way what's what be like okay wait what's the skull with the little thingy oh it's the head Shaolin okay yeah what's the outline of the guy with the clock yeah it's just a man kind of like these are all like very small well I want to say like these are all like very small nitpicky complaints I think yeah but like they all add up to just like not having a very smooth time with the game well I'm not to mention this is this is the third one yeah and things start to wear things so I can see how effective I mean we've also talked to him over the last like couple Islah three or four years now I feel like one of the trends has been you know video games and especially triple-a to use that term Triple A video games we've kind of hit like a minimum bar of quality yeah and like there are a couple of games that come out and her just like abysmal flops but like generally everything falls into this like six out ten seven out of 10 8 out of 10 range for a good reason like the the the developers put lots of money into these games to hit that bar of quality and so you end up with games like this and and games like like avalanches Mad Max or stuff like that and where it's like it's not actually bad time with this game but also I just don't really understand a lot of the choices that were made and I think that it was like a better game that could have been made here I also think that tumor there you go with one of those like free oh yeah hand foot jumps it made it look so easy and light I also think that Tomb Raider kind of suffers here oh no am I supposed to go up there Yeah right Tomb Raider suffers here from like the fatigue of these sort of like climbing games like I feel like when uncharted did it first you know it was like this amazing like oh this is like the evolution of platforming oh that guy's got some physics on him kick him how away again I was like this evolution of like the platforming genre and then when the Tomb Raider reboot came out in 2013 it was like oh somebody finally I can like these jumps somebody finally took that formula and like made their own like spin on it right and it was like a really cool idea like man by the time uncharted 4 came out I was like kind of just done with this whole concept yeah and then we had like Lost Legacy and rise of the Tomb Raider and so then for another one of these games it's like oh yeah the things gonna break and we're gonna slip two seconds down where do you know what I mean like that's every starting to feel a little root yeah and it doesn't again like it doesn't help that like a lot of the animations and controls here or like kind of janky feeling so I feel like Uncharted 4 kind of got away with from it or got away with it because it was like wow look how realistic all this looks this to me shadow the Tomb Raider just feels like another one of those Tomb Raider games if you can't fall back on a very in-depth story line like that cross the game the game like that was sort of the appeal I think of that first Tomb Raider was like wow it's sort of an interesting take on on Lara Croft and now three games in it's like the same take there's been a lot of like giggling behind the scenes I think we with pressed because the way that they marketed this game was like Lara Croft is finally gonna become the Tomb Raider that *** was meant to be and it's the exact same marketing line they used for the last two games like that was the point of the the reboot was like oh you're gonna see Lara Croft before she was Lara Croft and then you know rise of the Tomb Raider comes along they're like you're gonna see Lara Croft become the Tomb Raider and you're like oh wow crazy oh that was almost deadly because I looked over Apes yeah you're gonna see Lara Croft become the Tomb Raider that she was meant to be and then you know we move on to the third iteration here and it's like what are we doing this time oh we're gonna see Lara Croft become the Tomb Raider it's just like wow okay like I thought that she would be there by now but maybe not well there's always more tombs to raid I will say like I like a lot of the the art direction and stuff like I think a lot of the tombs look really cool yeah actually step up this time I've only hit like two or three real puzzles in this game but every time it's been like sort of interesting there's one that was like a like involves a bunch of columns that you were to get the right numbers on stuff like cool it's not like really genre breaking but it's like interesting at least I like how the tone of this is very gold yeah very warm and we're just crawling over dead bodies so like no biggie I'm seeing her become the real Tomb Raider but yeah again like it's not a bad game it just feels sort of like been there done that it is what it is game you know what to expect like yeah if you ask me like is this more Tomb Raider it's like Chloe up it is more Tomb Raider again we're like eight or nine hours in or I'm a hundred nine hours in and so like who knows maybe we play for the next like 15 hours or whatever and it turns around I'm like oh this is actually one of the best games of the year maybe there's a late game twist that really blows my mind but yeah for the moment it just feels like exactly the sequel that you would expect it okay that's all right well uh we'll look forward to your full review yeah you won't have to look forward to it if you're watching this video because out rue the videos the embargo will be up that's a I think like the 11th through the 10th but yeah for now I don't know that's how I'm feeling nine hours in it's just like that game so yeah all right how's that sound Adam yeah I like it again this is shot of the Tomb Raider hidden Dingman for PC world and Adam Patrick Murray thanks for sitting in with me and you know being a magical man of course any time I'm talking today bye bye