Standards up five years post Uncharted 3
Both Crystal Dynamics and Microsoft lucked out that the tumult behindUncharted 4: A Thief’s End‘s development shift and scrapped work pushed Naughty Dog’s adventure into 2016. It gives Microsoft the best exclusive holiday line-up for the second year running and positionsTomb Raiderahead ofUncharted. For whatever the latter owed to the original Lara Croft games, both owed to a deeper legacy (includingIndiana Jones, which released in 1981 and was itself a somewhat romanticized take on the ’40s complete with villainous Nazis).
That jockeying for position matters somewhat. The 2013Tomb Raiderreboot built uponUncharted‘s iteration in the genre. I can’t remember a single non-Croftian character from the originalTomb Raiders (aside from Gerard Butler and Daniel Craig in those Angelina Jolie-led films), whereas the reboot shines a light on Lara’s personal relationships, just withoutUncharted‘s breezy quips.
Now, though, Lara’s come out ahead. It was a mild challenge during theRise of the Tomb Raiderreview to not compare it to Nathan Drake’s adventures. The things that excited me aboutUncharted 4, that differentiated it from its stale third entry, a lot of those have — at least superficially — been done byRise of the Tomb Raider.
The contextual stealth bushes (as seen in the upcomingHorizon Zero Dawn, too), the grappling hook.Unchartedhas always had stealth and its grappling hook might prove more meaningful thanRise‘s I-can-jump-further-now tool, but those things might not feel like meaningful additions with two games from a direct competitor now released since the lastUnchartedfive years ago.
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deceptionwas less than well-received for bringing little new to the table, instead offering a disjointed series of set-pieces that could have been strung together by throwing darts at a board.Rise of the Tomb Raiderthreads its hub worlds and set-piece sections — a derelict Soviet gulag built vertically into the side of a mountain — together much more organically.
It also basically mushesUncharted 2andUncharted 3‘s antagonists into one game (spoilers in this paragraph). Konstantin is a Burberry-clad Lazarević, just as driven and merciless — a common trope of a character — and even serves asRise‘s final boss fight in full tactical gear, not unlike inUncharted 2. Here, though, it’s a stealth affair with Konstantin disarming Lara, who must sneak around the ruined arena and stab him a few times. Meanwhile, equally posh Ana, the character really running things, has shades of Katherine Marlowe. Superficial, maybe. Maybe it stands out because of the general rarity of older-aged British women as villains.
Rise of the Tomb Raideralso handles the requisite third act turn to the supernatural better than anyUnchartedsince the first, which became a creepy, horror-tinged affair to smartly contrast all the lush jungle violence. InRise, it means expansion to the visual palette with all the blue flames and orange embers (shortly after introducing the new class of regular enemy with the lens flare-ish flashlights and dot sights — a good look). The enemies’ melee focus makes sense and moves the third act away from strict cover shooting, which is welcomed for its variety but also because the cover shooting is probablyTomb Raider‘s weakest part.
Then there’sRise‘s position as one of the prettiest games of the year, anUnchartedstaple. It isn’t just the technology or graphical fidelity, but a new focus on using color, lighting, and other visual cues to set the mood. It is colorful withoutUncharted‘s more cartoonishness.
HadUncharted 4made its holiday 2015 release, it mainly would’ve been up against itself, or its past self. Being better thanUncharted 3would’ve been enough for a lot of people.Rise of the Tomb Raiderraises the standards though, by iterating in a lot of areas whereUnchartedexcels. The former is still bogged down by bloat (crafting and skill trees and static menu audio logs and so on) and a go-nowhere story that was more than tired by the timeUnchartedgot to it (protagonists want thing, antagonists also want thing), but it nails movie-like visual direction (down to the color grading) and exhilarating platforming.
