Set roughly two years after her last run in with the ancient military organisation, Lara’s latest adventure opens with a quick stint in Mexico, before moving to the dense jungles of Peru in search of (you guessed it!) a mysterious artefact. Visually, the new setting is a nice change-up to the bitter Siberian snows Lara faced during her last outing, giving players the chance to plunder everything from underground ancient ruins to forgotten hidden cities previously untouched by man. Environments like this also serve to tie in more with the harsher themes Shadow Of The Tomb Raider overall does a good job of exploring. Reflective of this more serious tone are the fresh tools Eidos Montreal has added to Lara’s arsenal. Her trusty bow, survival senses, and multipurpose pickaxe all make a return, but there’s much more emphasis on stealth than ever before. In previous games you’ve always been able to take down soldiers from behind or quietly get the drop on them from above, but now Lara can get a much better angle on her enemies thanks to the introduction of mud and grass walls. Appearing during certain sequences throughout the campaign, Lara can now cover herself in dirt, making it increasingly difficult for foes – including those wearing thermal goggles – to spot her. This works well to give you more freedom when choosing how to dispatch the game’s many Trinity-laden areas, empowering you with the feeling that you are the ultimate hunter, not the hunted as you once were in prior instalments. If anything, it would’ve been nice to see these segments crop up a bit more. It’s too much fun to sneak along a mud wall, clamber up to an adjacent tree, then string up adversaries using a well-placed rope arrow. If you’re lucky, what you’ll stumble upon will be one of the nine optional challenge tombs scattered throughout the map. These small, contained tests of logic, puzzle and skill return once more to yet again be a highlight, if only due to the slow change of pace each dictates compared to the high-stakes set pieces provided by the main campaign. There’s just something about entering a freshly exhumed tomb and working out step-by-step how to resolve the riddle before you. This is what Tomb Raider does best at its core. And though most won’t have you scratching your head for too long, all nine still act as the icing on an otherwise well-prepared (mud)cake. If indeed you do find yourself stumped, however, Shadow Of The Tomb Raider has got you covered. Difficulty of puzzles, traversal and combat can all be adjusted individually to either easy, normal, hard, or the aptly-named Deadly Obsession. When tweaked each make for a uniquely tailored experience, aiding players who might find themselves struggling with a certain aspect. Dropping puzzles from normal to easy, for example, will see Lara illustrate her thoughts aloud in a little more depth, with survival sense highlighting the objective in blue rather than the intentionally vague yellow. Features like this help make the game a fully adaptable experience, and assure that any chin-stroking challenge tombs and other puzzles never stunt progress to a screeching halt. Shadow Of The Tomb Raider might not surprise from a gameplay perspective, but why mess with a formula when it works so well? The freedom to experiment more with stealth is a nice one, but these instances are too few and far between to be considered truly revolutionary. Where Lara’s latest outing does innovate is in how it continues to develop the personal roots initially planted in the previous chapter, coming to the fore as the famed treasure hunter finds herself forced to solve the biggest puzzle yet: herself. Shadow Of The Tomb Raider is out 14 September
