Still, we are still firmly in reboot territory so things were always going to be a little different. Winston is gone, the gym in the ballroom has been dismantled, and young Lara has not yet installed a pool instead, a large tree occupies the West Wing. It was great to be home, but, like the reimagined Lara in the new adventures, home is not the same as I fondly remembered it.
#RISE OF TOMB RAIDER REVIEW SERIES#
Having fond memories of playing the original series back on the PS1, returning to the mansion came with mixed feelings. Instead, the mission takes Lara down memory lane, remembering the time she spent with Winston the butler as a kid (including her love of locking the poor bugger in the freezer), and players even discover why Lara flexes her shoulder during her idle animation. Players are restrained from shooting anything while wandering around the dusty old mansion. ‘Blood Ties’ sends Lara on a scavenger hunt around Croft Manor to find her father’s will, in order to prove her right to the estate. The first piece is an hour-long story mission called ‘Blood Ties’ (also playable with PSVR), and the other is a score attack mode called ‘Lara’s Nightmare’ in which players must survive for as long as possible while under attack from hordes of zombies. The bulk of the new content in the 20th anniversary edition is set in Croft Manor. This 20 Year Celebration edition also introduces co-op support for Endurance mode, which is a Don’t Starve-style hunt for food and resources while trying not to snuff it. The main game also receives an extreme survivor difficulty that removes all checkpoints from the campaign, along with plenty of new outfits and ‘classic’ skins, which replace Lara with her Tomb Raider 2, 3, or Angel of Darkness models. They may have had to wait a year, but they are receiving the best edition of one of last year’s best games (you can read Nick’s original review here), as well as all of its DLC, including the fantastically trippy ‘Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch’ and the borderline-survival-horror of ‘Cold Darkness Awakened’.
#RISE OF TOMB RAIDER REVIEW PS4#
It is safe to say that PS4 owners have been the ‘winners’ in the whole Rise of the Tomb Raider exclusivity debacle.