In the course of 45 minutes with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft gatecrashes a fiesta, scales a cliff, wrestles an eel, levels a temple, steals a magic dagger, murders a bunch of dudes in Mariachi skullpaint and drowns a city after triggering the apocalypse. That’s quite the evening’s work, especially if you factor in all the times I accidentally impaled her on rebars, but I’m already struggling to remember the details. The first Tomb Raider game with Eidos Montreal at the helm, Shadow is so far exactly the blend of handholdy exploration, uneven combat, wilderness stealth, gauntlet runs and grisly snuff footage we’ve come to expect from the series under Square Enix. Two games on from the 2013 reboot, that could be a problem. I realise it’s old hat to moan about major franchise sequels lacking originality, but even by blockbuster standards this game is surprisingly unsurprising.
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