RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER - TWIGS AND NIGGLES

I kinda thought of making a full review of the game which goes into full detail but it's just useless, it'll be too long and everyone will fall asleep quicker than the audience of my drama back in 5th grade, hell, I doubt this thing will even be checked out.

Anyway.....

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a direct sequel to the reboot Tomb Raider which made the well-known dual pistol wielding badass archaeologist Lara Croft into a baby-faced archeologist Lara Croft with a bow and arrow... who suffers from asthma and always forgets to bring her inhaler anywhere. The new Lara is cuter and all, but she's rather boring. They try to make the new Lara more relatable by showing origin story from "help me, a leaf flew across my face" into "eat your heart out, Nathan Drake". Which was covered in the cleverly titled "Tomb Raider" back in 2013. So, that game was the birth and this is only the rise? I guess they're going to stretch the franchise more than Lara's sports bra.

Lara Croft, an archaeologist with asthma fetish and daddy issues has stumbled upon her dad's research and found a tangible decisive evidence to show that her late dad's work was all true and he wasn't just scribbling notes of the voices in his head and smearing his own shit on the whiteboard to form a complicatedly made-up clues, but the game never really bother explaining what this tangible evidence is. In fact, it was never really clear what lara is searching for here, it's always been explained as probably God's crystallized booger that can do magic and bring people back from the dead, we always need that point so Lara can later on fight ancient demonic soldiers.

Everyone is so hung up on the treasure that we never really get any closure from any of the characters, we only know we're Lara Croft so we love and hate what she also does, I never really get any real reason to root for Lara, she's a blow-up doll that emits the sound of an old dusty vacuum cleaner, she has no real sense of purpose, she wanna finish her dad's research, but her dad's characterization from any of the flashbacks never really make him likable. I might as well root for the main antagonist, at least he has a clearer purpose.

by the middle of the game, you've pretty much got all the equipment you need to solve 80% of your problems which is the skull of your enemies, no weapon feels any special, it's just my instinct to switch to shotgun if the enemy gets too close and stabby, other than that I find myself thinking which weapon I haven't used in a while so the enemies get their balanced diet of 5 arrows eye-drops, 10 pistol clips, 4 shotgun barrels and 22 doses of rifle enema every day. This game should give us the feeling of being stuck in the wild looking for materials and supplies to survive, looking out for wild beasts that wanna turn your face into glory-holed hamburger, but I never get any rush of risk them, when I do get jumped by a bear it's always quick-time events and scripted sequence that really make me tell the game "yay, finally a bit of threat, better wait for a button prompt"

The upgrade system in here is really needless, oh I can hoard more ammo from enemy corpses? Well I can see ammo boxes every 34 steps, crafting materials every 20 and I can craft my own ammo and heal on the fly, why can't I craft my own inhaler yet? Lara's asthma is just getting worse. An upgrade that shows you're aiming at the enemy's head? No, I think it's just an apple attached between his shoulders, you know what they say, an apple a day keeps the Croft away! I literally purchased most of the upgrades because I feel bad for the game giving me a platter full of the thing and to make it quit nagging me about weapons and skills upgrade.

The end of the game tries to play the execute or leave the final boss taunting you about how much of a manwhore your dad was, well too bad, I never got any closure about the father to like him enough either, I just pick the choice that supposedly gives me a secret ending or something, besides, he gets bombed and dies immediately if you choose to spare him anyway. In the end Lara does get the treasure, but she does the cliche realization about how mankind isn't ready for such a powerful crystallized booger and smashes it, Could we at least get a free 3-days trial first?

So, Rise of the Tomb Raider, came to see the pretty environment, wasn't disappointed, expected a scene of Lara getting tortured, well she gets tortured by nature throughout the game, I guess that's a check. Anything else? Maybe stop taunting us with all the heaving and moaning sounds, I kinda expected Lara to get raped by a panther at one point.