Komplettlösung shadow of the tomb raider: Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Tipps, Lösungen und News

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider review — DTF games

On September 12, owners of Shadow of the Tomb Raider deluxe editions got access to the game, and everyone else will have to wait another two days. Meanwhile, the DTF Editor-in-Chief shares his impressions of the trilogy’s finale.

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All screenshots in this article were taken on Xbox One X in resolution priority mode.

Almost until its release, Shadow of the Tomb Raider remained a mystery. This game could be anything from a terrible failure that could freeze the series for several years, to a fresh look at the franchise that could extend its life to the next generation of consoles.

The Canadian studio Eidos Montreal, which picked up Tomb Raider after the Californians from Crystal Dynamics, chose perhaps the most boring option — they did about the same thing, slightly changing the tone and adding a few new mechanics.

This option will certainly suit most fans of Lara Croft’s adventures, but will raise the first questions about the «fatigue» of the series. The mechanics, which seemed fresh and interesting back in 2013, are overgrown with moss five years later, the new ones do not really change anything, many animations are used for the third time, and the plot has not even risen to the level of a second-rate series. But with the tombs everything is in order. It seems to be.

Apocalypse Now

The plot of Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the most daring and ambitious in the series. Somewhere in the jungles of Latin America, Lara Croft finds a powerful artifact that in no case should go to the Trinity — a sinister organization from the first two parts.

After a moment’s hesitation, the tomb raider grabs a magical dagger and thus launches the Apocalypse — not some joke, but quite real, with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and turbulent oceans.

To save the world, Lara needs to find the second artifact — a magic box. Together with the dagger, this box can not only turn off the destruction of humanity, but also «reboot» reality, changing it to the taste of the owner.

However, as soon as Lara leaves the tomb, the head of the Trinity immediately takes the dagger away from her. And Croft has no time to worry about the loss: she needs to survive the first «round» of the End of the World — a tsunami in which people die before her eyes and collapse to the foundation of the house.

After a cataclysm that turns out to be some kind of arcade race in which Lara tries not to crash into obstacles, the main character enters a state of existential crisis for the first time and asks herself: “Am I doing bullshit? Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if I just disappeared?»

However, the answers to these questions remain up in the air, and Lara goes to the jungles of Peru to find the second part of the artifact and prevent the leader of the Trinity from rebuilding the world in his own way.

First the tombs, then the end of the world

During the tsunami, Lara sees how dramatically a child is dying. And this is one of the thousands of victims. Or hundreds of thousands? We do not know this, because the game never gives an estimate of the scale of the tragedy.

But we know for sure that the tsunami will be followed by a series of terrible earthquakes. And if Lara does not have time to take possession of both artifacts before this time, then even more people will die.

In theory, the main character at this moment should start a frenzied race against time … but in Shadow of the Tomb Raider this does not happen at all. Never. After the introduction, Lara, along with her faithful friend Jonah, crashes somewhere in the jungle, and the usual Tomb Raider begins, almost no different in rhythm from the previous parts.

A few hours after helping to deal with the wounded and dead during the tsunami, Lara calmly returns to her routine — breaking pots, stripping flimsy trees, spending time plundering unnecessary tombs and crypts, and only occasionally remembers the coming earthquake from campfire — while pumping his shotgun or getting another skill.

After several hours of surviving in the jungle and some truly terrible encounters with predators, Lara arrives at one of three hubs — locations where she is bombarded with side quests in which she works as an errand girl — either bring a ceremonial bow, then return the dice then talk to five strangers. Anything to save the world.

The dissonance between the global objective and side quests is a serious problem in many open world games. We all remember Geralt looking for a frying pan for a lustful grandmother while Ciri is in mortal danger. That is why many developers began to reduce rates in their stories.

In the same God of War, the main quest is to scatter ashes in the mountains, and the dead, as you know, are in no hurry. In Assassin’s Creed Origins, Bayek is driven by revenge, which is known to be best served cold. In Spider-Man, Peter Parker is constantly given free time for routine activities, while the development of the plot is in the hands of other characters.

Many developers — who are successful and who are not — are trying to smooth out this dissonance, but in Eidos Montreal they pretend that it does not exist. In many ways, this is why you stop taking the game’s plot seriously by the middle of the 25-hour campaign — especially since the developers suddenly remember about the cataclysms only towards the end, and even those turn out to be not cataclysms at all, but the next “racing” levels in which Lara slides down from mountains or swim underwater. Other locations are almost completely unaffected by the destruction, and the feeling of danger of the End of the World never appears.

Ends with ends

However, if we put the Apocalypse aside, then there are still a lot of things in the game that do not converge with each other.

The same hubs that look intriguing on paper, in practice cause more irritation than joy. For example, the giant Paytiti is something on the level of medium-sized cities from Assassin’s Creed Origins. Dozens of houses, dozens of NPCs to talk to.

However, the more you are in such hubs, the more clearly you understand that this is more about saving resources than demonstrating the capabilities of a new studio. Instead of linear locations, the developers force Lara to run back and forth through a poorly designed city full of invisible walls and strange restrictions — shortcuts are almost never possible. Therefore, Paytiti quickly drowns in fast travel loading screens.

Numerous NPCs also turn out to be just a screen. They are «talking heads»: these are characters who suddenly, for no reason, begin to explain something to Lara Croft, although she did not even ask them about anything. At the end of such a «conversation» — usually played and written in the worst traditions of inexpensive RPGs — Lara is given some kind of hint or side quest.

At the same time, there are a little more than a dozen side quests in the game, and the largest hub accounts for only about half of them. And all of them are the standard “go and fetch”, without twists. The fact that all the minor NPCs in the game are barely moving figures with glassy eyes does not help the immersion either.

To make the dialogue more realistic and show the local culture, the developers have recorded a track for the NPCs in their native language. However, in fact, there is no smell of realism here, because Lara continues to speak English with everyone.

When the main character in the story needs to change into a national costume and pretend to be a local, she continues to communicate with the guards in Paytiti as if ordering coffee at Starbucks in London. Such stupidity is even more difficult to endure than the natives who speak English, so sooner or later you turn on the monolingual track back.

But not all problems lie in the language barrier. Many of the dialogues in the game are written without taking into account the fact that Lara communicates with people who live by hunting and farming in the wilderness of Peru. For example, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider there is a man in shorts who tells the main character about his trading «business», and one of the side quests is built around a murder that guards in national costumes investigate as if they are not natives, but heroes series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. All attempts by developers to give what is happening at least the illusion of authenticity fail miserably. Even the «cranberry» from the latest Assassin’s Creed looks more convincing.

Sometimes the game breaks the notorious «suspension of disbelief» in the most unexpected places. For example, the story focuses on the fact that the inhabitants of Paititi have almost no contact with the outside world, but all local shops sell uzi, shotguns, laser sights and master keys. But they are sold exclusively for Lara — the locals still use mostly arrows. Even the royal family doesn’t have a grenade launcher in their cellar.

The developers could have made it so that Lara received each type of weapon exclusively for the story — from Trinity soldiers — but in Eidos they simply did not bother with this, relying on a simple game economy: Croft finds gold and exchanges it in shops for weapons.

Cold barrels

Speaking of weapons, we can’t help but mention how few shootings have become in the game. 15 hours after the start of the passage, a lot of pistols, machine guns and shotguns accumulated in my inventory, and for some reason I even pumped them, but did not use them at all.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the developers have heavily shifted the focus towards research, and the amount of action has been reduced to a minimum. But these changes were not reflected in the pumping system. Lara still carries a lot of rifles with her, although a bow and knife is enough for most conflicts.

In photo mode, the main character can be made to smile at any moment — even in cut scenes

Almost all combat scenes in Shadow of the Tomb Raider take place in tight spaces, where opponents immediately run up to Lara and start to beat her. And if the mercenaries can be answered with an ice pick, then the locals know how to dodge it, and you have to comically run away from them. Add to that the brutal input lag the game went on sale with, and you’ll want to ignore gunfights as much as possible.

Fortunately, you only need to shoot a few times in the game — according to the story. Yes, and in these scenes, all the enemies carefully huddle up to the exploding barrels. The rest of the time, you can resolve conflicts with the simplest stealth. As in the previous parts, the enemies here do not hear how Lara strangles their comrades-in-arms two meters away.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider introduces the much publicized ability to hide in overgrown walls, but it’s ridiculous to call this part a new mechanic. These are the same bushes of grass — they are just not on the ground, from which the essence does not change at all.

There is also a sense of «mechanics for show» from the skill tree. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara gains almost all of the important skills over the course of the story. Therefore, most of the time you will pump skills that are either almost never used (why a blinding cartridge if there are a couple of shootouts in the game?), Or only slightly change the quality of life of the main character — breathe a little more underwater, a little lower prices in stores, and so on. . It gets to the point that at the end of the game you start spending skill points, no longer looking at the descriptions — because everything you need is already there.

I will plunder the tomb for you

As with the previous installments, one of the main pleasures in Shadow of the Tomb Raider is exploring the optional tombs and crypts. There are almost no puzzles in the story part of the game, so if there is a need for them, then visiting these additional locations is a must — especially since they often give really useful skills for them.

Unfortunately, there are no outstanding puzzles in Shadow. Some crypts even resemble dungeons from The Witcher 3, where the main task is not to hack some powerful mechanism, but simply to reach the end by applying a few small tricks.

In the tombs of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, complex structures do appear, but none of them are surprising. Here and the standard «direct the rays in the right sequence» and even more hackneyed «lower the water level, then to raise the water level and lower it again.» Nothing here is as beautiful as the frozen ship from Rise of the Tomb Raider, or as elegant as the mammoth turn-based mechanical game from Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.

However, the most frustrating thing is not so much the simplicity of most puzzles — they are still more sophisticated than in the same God of War, but rather small ill-conceived moments. If you suddenly get stuck in Shadow of the Tomb Raider for a long time, then the results will surely turn out that the problem was not in you, but in unsuccessful game design — somewhere the solutions are simply illogical, but somewhere you have to deal with pixel hunting.

Anyway, exploring the tombs is a key and perhaps the best part of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. It is interesting to go through them, only now they remain in the shadow of what we have already seen in other games of the genre, including the Tomb Raider series itself.

Ups and downs

The parkour system in Lara Croft games has stood out from the competition in recent years. If in Uncharted 4 you can fall asleep in these sections, because the main character does almost everything himself, then breaking loose is a trifling matter.

However, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the parkour is slightly worse than in previous games. The developers have made Lara a hook-cat, with which she can cling to various hanging beams and even soft walls. But this hook at Eidos, to put it mildly, did not work out. Firstly, it is not always visually clear when it’s time to get it, and secondly, input lag often leads to death out of the blue.

I focus on input lag for a reason — in the starting version of the game, it poisons almost all mechanics that require accuracy. When you see on the screen that Lara is still riding on her ass on the ground, and you press the button to make her push off, the engine already thinks that Croft fell off. It’s hard to put into words how annoying this is — especially in an unforgiving game.

Rise of the Tomb Raider had a similar issue at launch, but it was fixed with subsequent patches. Let’s hope that Shadow will be fixed, otherwise this detail — at least on consoles — will remain a serious minus of the game.

Even sadder, the unreliable hook mechanic almost completely replaces the beams on which the heroine used to swing — there are almost none of them in the triquel.

In addition to the hook, which is played by Lara’s hatchet, the developers have added to the game the ability to move along almost horizontal slopes, but this, as in the case of stealth, is not so much a new mechanic as an alternative version of the old one.

If you suddenly wanted to see at least some kind of transport in the game, then it is still not there — not at all. Therefore, almost all the action scenes and chases in Shadow of the Tomb Raider are either sections with running and fast jumps, or episodes already worn out by the previous parts in which Lara slides, dodging obstacles.

At Eidos Montreal, they decided to pay more attention to the underwater sections, and they really work — they create additional tension due to lack of air. However, there is also a drawback — a strange stealth with the participation of piranhas, killing the main character almost instantly. You have to hide from the fish in the algae, and this is not that very interesting — especially with a strict time limit.

First, it’s beautiful

Apart from poor lighting in some locations, in static Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a beautiful game. Especially in the version with 4K textures, which on consoles are only available to owners of PS4 Pro and Xbox One X.

HDR also helps to enhance the effect. It looked strange in the press copy, but in the first day patch, the developers tweaked the settings, and the picture became closer to Gears of War 4. The HDR in the game is bright and juicy, but without the visible benefits of including 10-bit color space.

However, the picture problems in Shadow of the Tomb Raider manifest themselves precisely in the most expensive and difficult part — in motion. In terms of animation blending, Tomb Raider games are still far behind the competition. Lara often rests in the air, twitches and comically sticks to objects that are half a meter away from her.

It’s clear that Shadow of the Tomb Raider is unfair to compare with Sony games, but you can’t get away from the impression that the basic things in the game Eidos Montreal are done carelessly. Moreover, developers are using some animations for the third time to save money — for example, the destruction of a stone wall, or squeezing through a narrow passage that hides the download.

Another problem with the Shadow of the Tomb Raider art is the inconsistency in the quality of the environment. Some shots of the game — especially closer to the finale — amaze with their incredible beauty, but it’s too easy to stumble upon locations that are made at the level of some Eastern European RPG.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider could well compete with Uncharted 4, but Naughty Dog has corny better artists — they draw a picture where technology cannot.

Shadow play

When the developers decided to call the triquel «Shadow of the Tomb Raider», they unwittingly sealed the fate of the game. This is really the finale of the trilogy, which never came out of the shadow of the previous parts.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the new studio keeps doing small experiments, but then they abandon them, afraid to break the working formula. For example, in the first third, Shadow of the Tomb Raider confidently enters horror territory and scares the player no worse than some Dead Space, but for some reason this amazing idea is abandoned in the middle of the campaign and never returns to it.

What the developers can really be commended for is fine-tuning the difficulty. If you turn off all hints in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the passage slows down a bit, but then you begin to perceive the world around you differently — more carefully.

The ending of Eidos Montreal turned out to be spectacular, but boring and predictable to the point of insanity. Here there was a place for an annoying helicopter, from which you have to run, and an arena with a final boss in the spirit of Uncharted 2.

But, the saddest thing is, Lara still does not receive clear answers to her existential questions. Yes, the main character finally becomes less selfish and begins to understand that she does not have to be a plug in every barrel for the world to live its own life, but the emphasis on this in the script is so weak that the ending seems far-fetched. The remarks of the inhabitants of Paititi that the tomb robbers are, in general, not very pleasant people, do not help much either.

Like Uncharted 4, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a game about the nature of obsession, but where the writers at Naughty Dog develop the idea throughout the narrative, showing how Drake is torn between family happiness and adventure, the writers of Eidos Montreal pay attention only beginning and ending.