Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, the last in the (well-meaning but deeply-misguided) new Lara Croft trilogy that was released on September 14th has already been discounted by 34% on Steam – and early-adopters are not happy.
Discounting the game by such a significant amount so quickly after launch is pretty shitty to those who forked out full price just a few weeks ago but fortunately, the good gamers of Steam are not taking this wallet-wankery lying down.
Since the discount hit the game has been bombed with negative reviews and rightly so. This is the big release season with massive games like CoD Black Ops 4, FIFA 19, Battlefield V and Red Dead Redemption 2 just a few of the juggernauts on offer, destined to hammer your poor bank account into overdraft oblivion – so it’s all the more important your purchase decisions are respected.
To make matters worse, Shadow Of The Tomb Raider is a step backwards from the previous game Rise Of The Tomb Raider, with a far less expansive and explorable world, bringing this laboured remake of the classic characters adventures to a bit of a whimpering end.
It’s sad that despite three massive games to establish the origins of the Lara we all love and remember, Crystal Dynamics has failed to give us the confident and carefree posh adventurousness of the original character – leaving us instead with a pained, whining privilege-apologist who carelessly destroys every beautiful place she visits.
And as for the games mechanics, instead of expansive fantasy tombs full of complex and challenging environment puzzles (with all the time you’d like to solve them) this game is so scared of you becoming bored that despite placing the player in some beautifully rendered settings, the game allows hardly any time or space to explore them. Ripping you out of any wondrous moments to engage in a series of pointless fire fights with the completely implausible Trinity organisation – the perennial tomb raiding party-poopers.
So yes you’ve guessed it, we don’t recommend it, even at the lower price.
If there’s a silver lining here, the discount has got the game some extra attention the developers were unlikely to be expecting. Unfortunately for them it’s absolutely the wrong kind.
