Rise Of The Tomb Raider

Audiovisual Showpiece

Rise of the Tomb Raider looks absolutely incredible. Even though the characters both look and animate stupendously well, they're overshadowed by the varied environments designed with an astounding attention to detail. In addition to touches like Lara leaving tracks in the show and the character's mouths moving in accordance with speech in-game, Lara regularly reacts to the environment. It greatly contributes to immersion when Lara wades through the deep snow, struggles to walk against the heavy winds, and is left shivering from the Siberian cold. These moments of environmental reaction characterizes Lara far more than the story itself ever manages to do, and it's through spending time with her in the harsh and unforgiving Siberian mountain range we begin to care for Rise of the Tomb Raider's protagonist. From the snowy peaks to the scattered patches of green, to subterranean caves housing impressive tombs, each location feels authentic in context to the game world, in addition to being some of the best looking so far this console generation.

More importantly than being aesthetically breathtaking, the environments are impressively designed to suit the game's mechanics. The visual language expertly communicates what is--and what is not--available for traversal and which method to employ, and to a lesser degree it
Rise of the Tomb Raider's soundtrack compliments each scene in the plot over the duration of the experience. In addition to the soundtrack, each of the characters--in particular Camilla Luddington as Lara Croft--brings each character to life. Even though the dialogue, like the story itself, isn't the game's strongest