The Rise of the Tomb Raider teaser trailer is like a U.S. Marines recruiting video. I wanna get up and get doing. Lara urges us to “Aim Greater” like Amelia Earhart, and do something amazing. I’m inspired, but then I see Lara up in the Alps or Himalayas braving the cold and heights. She’s ice-climbing without a rope, at one point falling to near doom before she ice-picks to safety. At that point, I’m thinking “Greater” is sitting at home playing Tomb Raider on my Xbox.
The Xbox exclusive (360 and One) is a survival action adventure. Raiding tombs is a must in tomb raider but before looking for relics, Lara’s got to survive. That means crafting, which has come a long way in video gaming since King’s Quest. When it’s cold, a good coat is a must. To acquire the coat, you need to kill a special type of animal, like a wolf. To find the wolf, you have to wait for it at a certain place during a certain time. Remember the N64 Zelda games where you sit and wait for that one guy to come running in through town to finish your mission and if you miss him, you have to wait again, sometimes a full in-game day? Yup. Fun stuff.
Weapons are also crafted from things in nature. It’s like found art but more fun because you can kill with what you find.
It’s also a stealth game that requires you to optimize your surroundings to get things done, like sneaking up on people. Always fun to hide behind a bush and scare the pants off someone, or in this case, hack them in the back of the neck with your elk-bone axe.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is out Holiday 2015.
She made some interesting wardrobe choices considering where she was going…