7.5 / 10. An interesting campaign and aesthetically pleasing South American settings. Unfortunately, some glitches and item / tomb finding grows tiresome

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the third instalment of Lara’s recent origin stories in the famous Tomb Raider franchise, created by Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal. Following Tomb Raider (2013) and Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015), you play as a much younger Lara Croft, on the road to becoming the seasoned tomb raider we know and love.

Set shortly after the events of Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara travels through tropical South America to mythical, hidden city Paititi, where she faces off with the villainous paramilitary group Trinity and races to stop an apocalypse – that she set in motion. Whoopsie.

The game has an exciting campaign with an authentic, yet convoluted, story which starts with a great action sequence in Cozumel, escaping a flood. The aesthetically pleasing South American settings were a seamless pleasure to explore. However, maps revealing points of interest, such as documents and crypts, may be inaccessible until later in the game, but you don’t find that out until you get there, which is tiresome and irritating.

Shadow is a solid franchise installment, however, Lara herself seems to take a back seat to the story and is less interesting than usual, which is disappointing. Camilla Luddington provides a worthy voice to Lara.

There were glitches where character’s mouths didn’t move when speaking and some freezing when jumping across ledges, etc. The game features an interesting mixture of puzzles, traversal and combat, and you can set the difficulty of each separately. I especially enjoyed the separate challenge tombs and was glad that Jonah (Earl Baylon) was along for the journey.

Tomb Raider is one of my favourite franchises. I remember playing the original Tomb Raider 2, standing on the Great Wall of China thinking, what would happen if you could go off the track and explore? Now we have all these beautiful open world games.