In the span of a 15-minute demo, Rise of the Tomb Raider made me feel the sheer sense of wonder, excitement, and terror of one of the classic Indiana Jones movies (sorry, Shia) better than nearly any game has. I survived a near-death experience (ok…more like a dozen of them), studied ancient murals in hopes of learning a foreign language, got horribly spooked by skeletons and scorpions, and escaped a temple that was simultaneously crumbling as well as flooding.

In short, this Lara Croft is every bit as amazing as Indy ever was.



My hands-on time with Rise began in the sun-baked mountains of Syria. After my driver turned on me, a thing that happened to poor Indy on more than one occasion, I climbed a cliff-side looking for a way inside a long-forgotten tomb. The gorgeous lighting, dynamic wind, and incredible particle effects all immediately worked in tandem to deliver one of the best-looking video game demos I’ve ever played.

Once inside the cave itself, the game transformed into the Xbox One Tomb Raider game I’ve wanted since Lara got her reboot. My favorite part of the series has always been the exploration and puzzle-solving that stemmed from a particularly well-designed tomb. An early chamber had me examining various murals, relics, and artifacts in an attempt to help Lara better her understanding of the foreign language. Though fully optional, each discovery gave me a bit of XP while simultaneously inching me closer to fully understanding the language, which made me want to scour every nook and cranny of the ancient resting grounds.

I was pleasantly surprised by the way Rise used animation and environmental storytelling Rise to help flesh out Lara as a character. Whenever I stumbled upon a particularly awe-inspiring moment, Lara shared the same sense of wonder that I did. When she had to shimmy through a dark, narrow crack in the wall, she proceeded forward with a similar trepidation as myself (granted, she’s handling the situation a thousand times better than I would). And when a spooky skeleton jutted out from a wall and began to vomit scorpions all over the place, she wanted to get the hell out of there just as quickly as I did.

One of the things I love most about the Indiana Jones movies is the way that he constantly finds himself in impossible situations, only to find a way to narrowly escape by the skin of his teeth. The exact same thing goes for Lara throughout my Syrian demo with Rise of the Tomb Raider. Rooms flooded with water, and she had to swim her way to freedom in one giant breath. The bridge she was walking on crumbled, and I had to make a run for it and start making Olympic-sized leaps to safety. It feels great to see a character narrowly avoid danger, but it feels even better to know that they did so because of your skills.

One thing that didn’t sit as well with me as the rest of the demo was an extremely brief action scene that occurred in the waning moments. After a quick montage of events, the game threw me in media res in a gunfight with two bad dudes. While the gunplay in Rise of the Tomb Raider doesn’t feel bad by any means, it’s incredibly jarring to go from the exploration and spelunking of Lara’s adventures to scenes where she murders a bunch of fools in cold blood. My favorite scenes in the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot were ones where Lara and I survived the elements, solved puzzles, and explored rad places. Here’s to hoping that Rise has more of that and less of the whole bang bang shoot shoot thing.