I played Shadow of the Tomb Raider before christmas. I enjoyed it, but also found it a bit disappointing. It's not quite as good as Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I loved.
The developers have tried to enhance the tomb raiding and downplay the combat, which would be fine except the new tombs aren't that interesting to explore. There is a cool new separate difficulty slider for puzzles, which is a great idea, but even on max difficulty I didn't find them much of a challenge.
The combat is visceral and fun, but almost too much. Lara becomes an absolute crazed killing machine, and there are bits in the forested sections where she reminded me more of Predator than Indiana Jones. Also, as the focus was now supposed to be on the tomb raiding, the combat sections are over much quicker. Again, this would be fine if the tomb raiding was better.
Overall I enjoyed it and did finish it, but hard to shake the feeling that it could have been more.
