Recent reviews by Dan

For me, Shadow is the weakest of the entries in the reboot trilogy. While it has some good sequences, the game overall was fairly disappointing. After seeing the initial trailer, I really was convinced this was going to be the best Tomb Raider to date, however the more I saw, the more I was turned off. Don’t get me wrong, Shadow is a good game, but compared to TR and Rise, it’s definitely lacking. The story is not particularly engaging, and to be honest I had no clue what was going on most of the time. The supporting characters will not grip you - Jonah has returned and is still a great character to be alongside, but other than that, there is no character that you will care about. The game is over fairly quickly - it took me quite a while to finish the story the first time round, and not much longer to reach 100% completion - but even a second run through of the game on Deadly Obsession difficulty only got me to 50 hours playtime.

Onto the positives - the graphics are really good, and there are some stunning environments. Challenge tombs are even more puzzling than ever before which feels really refreshing. There are lots of collectibles to find which can keep you busy. Some really good action sequences, as well as some great acting/dialogue between Lara and Jonah. The new game mechanics, such as wall-running and overhang climbing, add a new layer of traversal which is nice, however become frustrating when they don’t always function properly - this was especially annoying on Deadly Obsession difficulty when the grapple would not attach to an overhang climb, and my progress was reset to my last base camp...

Overall, I would recommend SOTTR to any TR fan without hesitation, but would not recommend it as an introduction to the TR series. If you loved Rise, you will like this too, but will definitely feel that it is inferior. If I could give this an accurate review rating, it would be “mixed”, but my love of TR forces me to give it a positive review.

Boring game, got a refund. Too much time spent running around and seeing no one, and when you do find someone you get killed within 2 shots. If it was more intense gameplay I'd love it, I think it's a great concept, but the map is just far too open to be enjoyable. The game is very glitchy too, crashed multiple times in one night, hopefully this is fixed for those who play the game in full release.

On the plus side, the graphics are very good and gameplay is varied due to differing spawn locations.

I'd like to play this game, but it's just not fun when you're no good at it.

Most of the negative reviews are due to messy servers at launch, however they have since been updated thanks to the hard work of the developers.

Pros:
+ Very fun to play
+ Good community of gamers, some people are so funny on mic
+ Challenging enough to make it hard to survive but not so hard that you die every game
+ Graphics are really good, nice sense of realism
+ Plenty of tools at your disposal, I like that you can actually defend yourself in this game compared to Dead By Daylight where you're almost completely helpless

Cons:
- Gameplay is sometimes a bit repetitive, I often spawn close to Jason at the start of the match which means I die first
- To get your XP points you have to wait till the end of the match which can take as long as 20 minutes, however it can be fun to watch other people survive so it's not a huge drawback
- Unless it's been fixed since I last played it, achievements don't work properly, but I'm sure this will be fixed soon so I'm not too bothered at the moment
- Only 3 levels and they're all the same

On the whole, very good game, could maybe be a tad cheaper for lack of content but it's still very much worth a go if you're into this type of game.