Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Ein großes Abenteuer, das sich nur noch Größeren beugen muss: Spaßige Action und solide Puzzles in manchmal zu schnellem Wechsel.

In the end, however, the main problem is that Shadow can’t decide what kind of game it wants to be. Had it committed to an open-world structure, with Lara raiding tombs of her choosing between bouts of stealthily killing Trinity goons, I think it could have been quite brilliant. But it’s held back by a need to service a character who, frankly, had run out of narrative steam by halfway through the second game. I expect that if we see Lara again, it’ll be in yet another new form, one less haunted by the shadow of her past.

In this Tomb Raider, Lara Croft again shows signs of renewal, not as the gritty survivor we met in 2013, but as a more complex character who actually talks to the people she meets on her travels and understands the gravity of her actions. Many come to Tomb Raider games for adventure and escape, to visit beautiful places and solve befuddling puzzles.

It’s unsatisfying, is all. Shadow of the Tomb Raider, as I said up top, isn’t a bad game—at least by traditional metrics. It’s just not a good game either. It falls in that weird gray area of okay, like Mad Max or a Shadow of War. There’s not much of substance here, certainly not on the story side and, after two predecessors that play almost exactly the same, not really on the moment-to-moment gameplay side either. The optional Challenge Tombs are great, but they're only one small part of the whole. What should be a victory lap, a stunning denouement that sets up an older and wiser Lara Croft, instead feels like the least vital entry in the trilogy. Maybe it’s time for another reboot—or at least a reinvention.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider looks like the darkest game yet in the rebooted series, and manages to live up to its name. Here's our review, following days of raiding tombs and fighting bad guys in the jungle.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider ends this reboot on much the same note that it began, which for its fans may not be such a bad thing. This is a well-crafted and polished experience, and when the game actually gives you full control and leaves you alone to seek out its quieter mysteries, it can render you wide-eyed with wonder.

Square Enix liefert mit Shadow of the Tomb Raider eine technisch gelungene PC-Version des letzten Teils von Lara Crofts aktueller Trilogie ab. Die Grafik beh�lt zwar den optischen Stil des Vorg�ngers bei, sieht aber �berall ein St�ckchen besser aus. Das f�ngt bei den erneut sehr h�bschen Gesichtsanimationen an und setzt sich �ber vielbev�lkerte Levels bis hin zur dichten Dschungel-Umgebung fort.

Bottom line: XeSS is now available, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the first public release to get it. You can give it a shot on whatever GPU you might be running, but you'll be most likely to benefit if you have an Nvidia Pascal GPU or later, an AMD RX 6000 card, or an Intel Arc GPU. You'll also probably want 8GB or more VRAM or you may be limited to single digit percentage gains.

There are also some settings it seems you do not need to turn up, as the visual impact is hard to spot, but then that might not be the case at resolutions above 1920x1080. I do continue to find DLSS unimpressive and so do not recommend using it, unless you are okay with how it softens the image, at least at 1920x1080.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider was a demanding PC game before ray traced shadows were added into the mix. Using the game's Highest Preset, the game already dipped below 60FPS at 4K on an RTX 2080 Ti, something which will no doubt leave a lot of PC gamers confused as to why the game needed to become even more challenging to run.

Out of the DXR games on the market, Tomb Raider seems to be fairing the best. However, I fully expect we’ll see huge FPS gains within weeks as we have done before. I’m still not sold on DLSS, but again, it’s early days and I think the tech has a strong future for gamers.

Yesterday NVIDIA announced that they are bringing RTX raytracing support to their Pascal lineup, too, with much lower performance of course. Still, this gives developers a nice incentive to add raytracing to their games, and also focus on its performance cost, which will only help us, the gamers.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of PC gaming's latest graphical showcases, with Eidos Montreal showcasing how far PC visuals can be pushed beyond the capabilities of even today's high-end PS4 Pro and Xbox One X consoles.

Is Shadow of the Tomb Raider a worthwhile experience? I am a little torn on this one in part because of the criticisms I have for the story. It really does leave me feeling like it is more of just a 'game' than a deeper experience. It definitely has good and strong narrative moments, but the lack of presence I felt for them and their themes hurts it for me.