Card Shark - A Gaming Diary

Review:

Card Shark is a brilliant game.  Utilizing various combinations of control stick movement, button combos, and quick-time events, it creates one of the most mechanically unique experiences I've ever had. It really does a lot with this concept of "cheating at cards", putting forward a variety of super unique tricks that both work well on their own AND when chained together to create complex but satisfying con jobs with which to fool opponents.  It's incredibly fun.  Furthermore, the game is very narratively compelling.  While at first it seems like a simple game of conning your opponents unravels into a mystery.  There's a CONSPIRACY!!!  It's not perfect by any means, a lot of tricks are one-offs and it feels like at times the game could benefit from less fluff for a more focused player experience, sometimes it can be information overload.  And some mechanics are very much just QTEs which feels kind of lame when so many others require the player to be craftier.  But on the whole, like, this almost made the 5 star list, I loved this game, I thought it was going to knock Gravity Rush 2 off my current top 3 for the year before I sat on it for a little while.  9.5/10

Diary - Spoilers Ahead!!!:

7/13/25

This game is already hurting my brain.  There are so many tricks I have to remember exactly how they work, and on top of that the game keeps expanding existing tricks so that I have to remember the specific nuances of the cheating I'm meant to do.  And I'm just REAL BAD at some of them, y'all.  But it's fun, it's so much fun.  Like, even if I panic just a little bit, I've yet to find a trick I'm just totally like "this isn't fun, please don't make me do this".  Even the trick I'm absolutely the worst at, the one where you have to pick up the cards on the table in a certain order to stack the deck, is fun.  I'm absolutely terrible at it, my brain doesn't work in a way where I can do that one fast enough, but it's so cool to pull off and that's all that ultimately matters, isn't it?

In fact, making the player feel cool is such a central theme to Card Shark, I love it.  Every trick makes you feel like you're really outsmarting the opponents at the table.  Like you start out not really doing anything cool, glancing over your opponents' shoulders to see what card they have and then signaling to your guy at the table what their best suit is.  But quickly the game introduces sleight of hand, having you learn a proper card trick, allowing you to rig what the top cards in the deck are during your shuffle, and once this is added into your arsenal, then you're cooking with gas.  In my opinion not only are these the tricks that make you feel the coolest, allowing you to manipulate the deck during the shuffle without anyone becoming overly suspicious, they're also the fastest and most fun to pull off.  I think the game even knows it because it feels like these tricks are the ones where you gain suspicion meter fastest.

Speaking of the suspicion meter, this game is incredibly well balanced so far.  Like, you can tell a lot of testing went into this.  So the way cheating at cards works in this game is that you have a "suspicion meter", representing how suspicious your opponents are of you in the midst of the game.  The longer you take to do tricks, the more suspicious they become of you, and it feels like the more their suspicion goes up, the faster it then goes up from there.  And it seems like the harder the trick, the slower the suspicion meter fills.  So with the sleight of hand tricks, because they tend to be the easiest to grasp, the opponents become suspicious faster, while a more complicated trick will make the opponents' meter go up way slower, it's a very well balanced game even if it doesn't make sense sometimes.  Like the trick I'm the worst at, the one where everyone's cards are on the table and you have to pick them up in a certain order to stack the deck in your favor, is thankfully one where suspicion goes up slow, but also how does it work in context, the other players are just seeing my sit over the table hesitating to pick up cards as I sort their order.  A really risky strategy you can implement if you can afford to do it, is to intentionally mess up a hand, as that will take suspicion off of you, but you will lose your bet and that can be damaging in the mid to late game as bets really start flying due to the games' double or nothing system.

And you need to keep that money to help the orphans.  Card Shark is set against Enlightenment era France and your main character and his mysterious eccentric mentor are traveling with a Romani caravan which, allegedly, seeks to con with a good cause.  You can certainly keep your money, at least I guess so, I don't know what happens if you don't.  But what the game wants you to do is stop in and donate money every so often to the cause.  Any money you put into the Caravan is seeded around, used to help the poor and disenfranchised within France, namely Romani orphans.  I'm really interested to see how this part of the game develops, if it even does.  It might just be to make you feel good, that's valid too.  But I wonder if gaining the trust of the Romani will aid me later on, you know?  Like there might be a point where my mentor is going to betray me but because I gained the trust of the caravan they save me?

So, like.  Voltaire is just here.  I'm kind of surprised how many Enlightenment-era French historical figures are present in this game.  Like I knew it took place in that era, but I guess I just didn't assume it would also have us encountering real historical figures, you know.  I don't know enough about the players in the Enlightenment to really comment on most of them, but I really wanted to draw attention to Voltaire because I find his characterization so fascinating but also so distinctly him.  Voltaire, along with his Jean-Baptiste (modeled after Jean le Rond d'Alembert), know they're getting swindled.  Absolutely bamboozled.  Totally smeckledorfed.  They just don't really care.  Both of them find our ability to con them so effectively quite amusing if anything and, at certain points, help us to find marks for our crusade against the nobility just to see our process in work.  I think it feels very true to both men, both highly intelligent and curious and maybe a little arrogant so as to feel like they are part of the game we're playing, forgetting we are still hoodwinking them.  Unrelated but kind of related to French historical figures, it took me until this game to realize that a "musketeer" implies "a musket" and that despite basically modern media depicting the musketeers as fighting primarily through fencing, they would be gun toting soldiers.  Felt so dumb.

There's a conspiracy!  A mystery to uncover!  So excited for a mystery.  So, at the end of the first chapter, the game is separated into chapters, chapter-based games with mysteries have never gone poorly for me, we discover that King Louis XV, along with a prominent politician, a former noble who is now on the run in foreign lands, and the now elderly, slightly senile former leader of the musketeers, are possibly involved somehow in the death of Sophie d'Aubigny, one of the few characters besides the protagonist in all of this who isn't a real historical figure.  We know not why the King is seemingly involved in Sophie's death, or what motivation the party would have for this presumed murder.  And yes, if you know the name "d'Aubigny", Sophie is related to exactly who you think she is.  I genuinely just thought this game would be about cheating at cards and then eventually you beat enough people, the fact that this game has a conspiracy in it?  Tres magnifique!

7/16/25

I found out what happens when you die!  I don't actually know how often death is on the table for this game, it feels like it's specific encounters but for all I know it could just be the result of letting any suspicion meter fill all the way.  When you die in this game, you awaken in a sort of purgatory, an alternate plane of existence where your fate must be decided.  The only thing seemingly in this purgatory is a large banquet table, your protagonist taking a seat on one end of the table and, at the other end?  Death herself, an beautifully dressed headless skeleton whose head sits on a platter in front of her.  She asks you for your time of death (this uses the system clock) and then you make her a offer: play a game of cards for your life back.  I have to imagine that these encounters will get harder the more times they occur, but in this particular instance we managed to successfully rules lawyer Death into letting us live on another day, arguing that we did not say that if we won the game we would revive, just that if we played it at all.

It me.  Am big baby false shuffle.

On that note: game hard now.  Like, game was always hard, I'm not quick, so suspicion meters fill QUICKLY, but like.  It's getting to a "do I lower the difficulty" degree as the tricks become increasingly complicated and longer to pull off.  There's one trick that happened in this section where you spend like ten minutes setting up the trick by painting errors on cards that hopefully your opponents won't notice but you'll be able to subtly note as you're dealing cards.  Speaking of which, dealing is a thing now, and it's something you have to do at a consistent pace because stopping to try and sort out what the cards do is a major tipoff.  The complexity makes all of the tricks super rewarding though.  There was a point in this section where the game was like "you've been doing this for a while, see what technique you think you need to use to do this con" and I got it so quickly, I felt like a pro.  I do think we passed the first "unfun" trick however, the mirror trick where you have to pass out cards so your opponent's cards are reflected in a mirror and you can take note of their highest value card.  It's a clever mechanic, I just feel like it's one of the easier ones to gain suspicion on for me as I cannot take the info in as I quickly go over the mirror and usually have to pass it back over.

There's a dueling minigame!  I was wondering if we'd ever have proper combat in this game.  It makes me curious if this is an option moving forward, if I lose out on a con, instead of it being an arrest/execution, I can duel my way out, would be interesting.  Dueling is a fun but simple Simon Says minigame, you have to watch your opponent and then replicate their moves, clashing and parrying until your opponent does a move that leaves them open, allowing you to strike.  So far it's been a simple 3-4-5 structure, with the final move on the 5 set being the moment to strike, but I imagine it'll switch up the more dueling I do.  I also would not be surprised if we learn how to "fight dirty" later on in the game, taking advantage of "noble opponents" to gain advantages.  There are very few tricks we've learned so far that haven't been expanded upon in a later point of the game.  And also Julie d'Aubigny is here and she didn't teach us how to duel despite fencing being her whole thing, so you know, we have that to look forward to.

This game is high drama, y'all.  So, it turns out that Sophie d'Aubigny WASN'T murdered but instead died in childbirth.  Because she was secretly pregnant with King Louis XV's child!  The conspiracy, referred to as "The Twelve Bottles of Milk" throughout the plot, was that twenty years ago, Louis XV, along with his three trusted advisors, had hidden away his secret wife during the pregnancy at a pub named the Twelve Bottles of Milk.  They arrive the night the baby was born to discover her having died and a mysterious stranger, S.W. Erdnase being present holding the king's newborn.  Erdnase, btw, is a pseudonym for the author of the book "The Expert at the Card Table", a book about card tricks and sleight at hand.  In real life, Erdnase's identity has long been a mystery, with some speculation being that the tome may be much older than its publishing date in 1902.  It's all coming back around, y'all.  Erdnase whisks the child away, putting them into the care of the pub owner, a woman by the name of Ms. Porterhouse, who flees into the countryside to begin a new life.  And that baby is the protagonist.

Yes, as it would happen, our silent, or rather, mute protagonist is the missing Prince!  Or at least that's what everyone suspects, I'm doubtful the conspiracy is over so quickly.  The only information Erdnase actually passed to the king was that the child was "born without a tongue", indicating muteness.  In the introduction to the game, Ms. Porterhouse was murdered by a high ranking official in the French court, a sort of Javert type of cop.  It seemed as if it were simply a crime of passion, this man got swindled at the table and started acting out, fleeing from the scene before attempting to frame her adopted son for murder.  But now it's clear that it was deliberate.  The prominent politician that served as one of Louis XV's co-conspirators, William MacGregor, has been working from behind the scenes to try and end the life of our protagonist, who has now adopted the name "Eugene", in hopes he will never make himself publicly known and claim his status as rightful heir to the throne.  Now that we know the truth, allegedly, our mentor has begun hatching a scheme.  A scheme to set up Eugene on the throne with hi, by his side, the ultimate con.

So, as mentioned, Julie d'Aubigny is now in this game.  This is a pretty substantial change from the actual historical record that really recontextualizes what we're doing here.  In real life, Julie died long before the reign of Louis XV, dying sometime in her early 30s and leaving behind one hell of a legacy.  In this game though, Julie survives into her old age and, in fact, has children.  That is the relation between Sophie and Julie, Sophie is Julie's daughter who disappeared 20 years prior.  This is all important, because it turns out, Julie was ALSO investigating what happened to Sophie.  A process she undertook using Sophie's twin sister Deborah to try and weed out the info from the aging former musketeer captain by posing as his long-lost niece.  The niece that was there when we challenged the captain to cards to also weed out the info, causing him to get upset and take his own life!  The DRAMA y'all.  We are literally first introduced to Julie with her confronting US, believing that we are spies for William MacGregor who were sent here to get in Julie's way.  All the while, we had come around to the Hospice where the musketeer captain had resided to confront Deborah, thinking SHE is a spy sent by MacGregor.  DRAMA.  I'm glad we've met Julie now, I still don't trust our mentor and she may be a powerful ally in the event of a betrayal.

A little note I enjoy about the game's progression is how Eugene's journal evolves throughout the journey.  So, Eugene starts out the game as a random peasant and only has the most base understanding of reading and writing.  One of the overarching subplots in this game, however, is that Eugene's mentor is teaching him how to read and write.  He starts out with spelling and then moves on to improving his grammar.  And so, if you check the journal throughout the journey, Eugene is getting more and more eloquent as time goes on.  He kind of starts out with that "caveman speak", using very simple words and phrasing, just trying to get the point across with his limited knowledge.  But then he starts capitalizing proper.  And then using longer words, adding punctuation, improving his sentence structure.  It's a really interesting way of doing character development for the protagonist.  We also see the protagonist get better at drawing as it goes on, evolving from rough sketches to beautifully done pieces, it's super nice.

7/20/25

I'm at the point where I have to grind for money.  RIP me.  Admittedly, I feel like I wouldn't have had to grind for money nearly as much if I had been playing my tricks better.  In this part, there is one story important mission where you have to go to a gambling hall recently opened by one of your mentor's friends and face off against someone who is also cheating, using a deck of marked cards.  You have to then sneak the deck off the table to mark random low value cards with the same marking.  I didn't pick up on this, I thought I was supposed to remove the face cards since those were marked, so I wasted A LOT of time trying to remove a bunch of faces before realizing what I'm meant to do.  Totally my bad.  This mission ended up taking me three tries but you know what, it's fine, I got there.  And it was a learning experience, I didn't die like I thought I was going to with each failure, I just got arrested and then bail was posted.  I'm curious what missions result in death if you fail them and which ones don't.

Grinding for money is also like, not a problem at all.  I think I've mentioned this previously but after a certain game you play, you unlock a regular game against a trio of high ranking officials who hate each other so much and are also so drunk that they are easy marks.  This game that you keep being allowed to do as many times as you want, also lets you pick your cons per round.  You can also just leave the table at any time so like.  It's very easy to just like bet 500, pick up 1000, leave, and then immediately come back to do the same thing.  At the start of this play session, I was like "oh there's like no risk here" except the game introduces the concept of Highwaymen this time around.  If you carry too much money around on your pockets, your carriage is in danger of being assaulted by highwaymen.  This appears to be one-of, if not the only, function of donating your money to the Romani.  If you carry around too much, you will just simply encounter robbers.  Or the guard of the guy who wants you dead, same difference really.

Interesting trick that happened this time around, we are crossdressing now?  This is a tactic we've seen utilized with our merry band of travelers before, one of the Romani has been posing as a wealthy, disabled female aristocrat for quite some time, doing a good enough job to fool our mentor in fact.  That guy gave us a mirror earlier in the game and now we are utilizing it, posing as a widow mourning her husband and who our mentor has taken under his wing to teach her the rules of cards so she has something to do now.  You utilize this mirror to look at your mark's hand and then signal to... I'm sick of calling him "our mentor" I kept doing it because I figured I wouldn't be talking about him this much because I didn't realize how deep this game goes, his name is Comte de Saint Germain, who kind of is and isn't a real historical figure, he was a mysterious traveler who bumped elbows with tons of important European figures in the 18 century but nobody knows who he actually was.  Anyways you signal to him the most prominent suit and how many cards of that suit your mark has using a fan.  As an aside, it only just occurred to me that the game we play in every trick is different?  Some of them have five card hands, some of them have two card hands, some of them have three card hands.  I don't actually know what's going on.  Anyways the trick is cool and I was surprised crossdressing became a tactic in this game.  We almost get caught immediately our first time using it too because Julie d'Aubigny sits down at our table.

I can feel the divide starting to form between Eugene and the Comte.  In this section of the game, Eugene gets stopped by MacGregor's men and ends up getting arrested, the Comte having abandoned him.  While Eugene manages to get the upper hand on the men, even shooting the sheriff who leads them, he still manages to get arrested for his trouble.  He's then broken out, not by the Comte, but rather the Romani mentioned in the previous part, a man who mysteriously can get into our cell and already has the key to get out.  Our protagonist is, understandably, VERY upset by this, the man he has been trusting to keep him safe and now to help claim his alleged birthright abandons him at the first sign of real trouble and then isn't even involved in the plot to bust him out of there.  When Eugene returns to the camp, he refuses to even acknowledge the Comte, instead choosing to sit himself down in the spot where the Romani mystery man usually sits.  He knows who his real allies are.  The Romani assure the Comte that, in time, Eugene will forgive him.  But we all know how difficult loyalty is to restore once it has been broken, don't we?

7/23/25

Man, the mechanics of the finale are just so good.  Yeah so I beat the game last night, and first off the drama y'all?  Top tier.  But first, something I really love about Card Shark is that by the end of it, it's introducing new tricks to you but then just being like "ok, you're familiar with so many tricks so far so instead of just having a tutorial run using only this trick or this trick in culmination with like a shuffle, we're going to immediately show you the sequence where this trick is at its most useful".  But also it doesn't just throw you into the deep end without practicing first, it will prompt you on if you want to review the other pieces of the trick so you're familiar with them.  Like I just really enjoy how much this game trusts that the player "gets it" without punishing them for needing a little refresher in case it's information overload.  And if kind of is sometimes, you learn a new card trick a level basically so it can be overwhelming.

Speaking of chaining tricks together, there are a few high intensity sequences in this section that I really enjoy.  Like, there's a really good game in Chapter 4 where you have to peek at your opponent's cards reflected in a mirror as you deal them for a couple rounds and signal to your partner what prominent suits they have, but you only do this for a couple rounds because the whole point is to get the opponent, a prominent card player and infamous cheater in his own right, to take notice of your playing because you're attempting to intimidate him.  And then you go in for the kill, using a technique that your party invented and kept pocketed for such an occasion, allowing you a subtle but potent way to effectively mark the whole deck.  Donning our female disguise yet again, a disguise which has gotten us into a lot of trouble this section, actually, due to someone trying to flirt with us and ruining our game earlier, we begin marking cards with makeup.  Then, using our skills with sleight of hand, we fix the deal so all those marked cards got distributed out to where our team wins.  Super good.  I kind of wish that more of these techniques got screentime, a lot of them are only for the game of introduction and cannot logistically appear elsewhere.  It's one complaint I have with Card Shark, actually, there's no real free play mode to utilize these skills in.

The "final boss" though, THAT's a game, oh man.  The game loads you up with tricks that really test your understanding of the game's mechanics.  You have to really get in the weeds and be intimately familiar with how to swipe cards without raising suspicion, how to shuffle, how cards are dealt, when to change up strategies.  All the while being commanded to give certain cards to certain people at the table.  The goal of the "final boss" isn't actually to pull off a major con but rather to start causing drama around the table, using the cards to draw attention to or away from different people seated around.  Your end goal is to make the true villain of this game reveal themselves, let the pressure be put on them so much that they get angry and throw a fit, allowing the entire world to see who they are and what they did.  And then it all ends off with the protagonist doing one final con, one not for money, or even for himself, but one last hand of cards to determine who among the remaining players wins the greatest game of all.  Such a great finale, I loved the final part of this game.

So, I was right, the Comte did betray us.  I actually do like how they depicted the Comte's betrayal in this game, I think it really is more than just "oh he was just greedy all along" and I kind of wish I didn't have to break before I could get the whole sequence.  There's a lot more nuance to it than I was honestly expecting.  Basically what ends up happening is that the Comte really starts to see his end coming.  As the game progresses his arrogance, his need for one final big score consumes him.  We start taking on targets with higher and higher minimum bets, seemingly for no other reason than the Comte getting ahead of himself with regards to his future standing.  And these start going badly.  The Comte gets swindled himself and only barely catches the con, having to rob the con artist directly to save face.  He gets cocky and thinks that a former victim won't recognize him, causing him to end up in a fist fight and leaving him battered and humiliated.  When MacGregor finally corners him and offers him a large sum of money to walk away, he takes it immediately, feeling like his time in the game is up and he should cash out.  He didn't believe MacGregor would actually hurt Eugene and he does regret selling him out to some degree.  He truly does care about Eugene and, in one of the endings, there are multiple, he allows himself to be the victim of the guillotine in his stead.

Speaking of MacGregor hurting Eugene, the conspiracy!  The drama!  I love it.  So, MacGregor finally corners our protagonist and, after the Comte sells him out, challenges Eugene to a duel.  MacGregor pulls an underhanded trick, and impales Eugene on his blade, after which he tells Eugene the full story of the Twelve Bottles of Milk.  See, MacGregor had known S.W. Erdnase was involved the entire time, because he had hired him in the first place.  Erdnase, disguised as a midwife, was there to help birth the child and then give Sophie and the child safe passage into the night after the King had been given a chance to meet his first born.  However, obviously, that didn't happen.  Sophie died, and Erdnase took the child into the night, never to be seen again.  MacGregor, however, adds important context to this action, as he discovers that the tea cup that Erdnase had given to Sophie to help her sleep while she birthed the child, had actually been laced with poison.  Erdnase had murdered Sophie d"Aubigny and ran off with the King's firstborn son, MacGregor following close behind.  As you sit there, dying, you realize that while MacGregor is A villain, he is a loyal servant to the crown, and this entire time you've been hunting the wrong person.

And then we once again meet with Lady Death.  Our second meeting with her goes much worse than the first, luckily, we were only mostly dead and were pulled back to the land of the living by our grandmother, Julie d'Aubigny.  Julie recounts a few of her exploits to us as we heal, including the famous story of her swashbuckling rescue of her lover from a convent she was sent to, and then we get back to work with a new objective.  We must find the Comte and make him answer for his betrayal, of course, that much is obvious.  But more importantly, we must find the true villain of this tale.  We must find the mysterious S.W. Erdnase and bring him to justice.  Luckily, one event leads to the other.  As you best the Comte and follow him over days, he leads you to the King of Thieves, the enigmatic leader of the Romani in France.  Cornering him, the King of Thieves begs you to spare his life, revealing that he has been hiding in plain sight as your Romani friend, Ireneo, the man who broke you out of jail.  He is also, as previous established, the aristocratic woman who has aided you on your journey and who the Comte is smitten with.  And, of course, he is S.W. Erdnase himself.

Erdnase, understanding that he's in hot water, immediately jumps into his version of events.  According to him, while MacGregor's events are mostly accurate, MacGregor left out a very important detail: it was he, not Erdnase, who poisoned the tea.  Erdnase had been given what he believed to be sleeping medicine.  He discovered that he had poisoned Sophie when everyone else did.  Everyone else, of course, except for MacGregor.  Erdnase does, however, reveal his final deception, something that not even MacGregor knows, something that he set up to eventually undo MacGregor, fill him with paranoia until he inevitably crumbles: Eugene is not the King's son.  Sophie's child was stillborn, that was the real reason why he would not cry.  Eugene is simply what he always thought he was, a mute orphan, and also a game piece in a game being played between two powerful men.  This is presumably why Ms. Porterhouse hated him, she had to raise this guy who wasn't even the prince for Erdnase's game.  I would not, of course, blame you if you did not trust Erdnase's events, I don't think he expects you to either.

Which brings us to the final game.  As previously mentioned, the purpose of the final game is not to win, it's to have the villain, MacGregor, reveal himself but fixing the game so that mistrust is sewn between the King and MacGregor.  It works flawlessly, mind, MacGregor is so furious by the combination of your cheating, you getting away with it, and the conversation constantly being led to place suspicion on him that he gives up the entire game, his fiery Scottish temper shining through.  But it also makes one thing clear: even if Erdnase is telling the truth, he is far too manipulative to be trusted.  And so that brings us back to the final hand.  You have all the aces, you've pocketed all of them.  It's just up to how you deal them.  However you do so will decide the future of Eugene and his little party of thieves and con men.  Do you place all your fates into the hands of the King?  Trust the Comte, despite his betrayal?  Try to take down Erdnase by framing him for cheating?  Or none of the above, do you forge your own path?

In the ending I received, the King reveals Eugene's hand, showing it has 5 aces in it, as I dealt myself the four pocketed aces.  The King has him set for execution but the Comte steps in, not wanting his protege that he does, truly, care about to die.  And the Comte dies.  Erdnase disappears into the night, but Eugene speculates he has adopted yet another identity and likely has taken over MacGregor's role.  And as for Eugene?  He retires to the countryside, taking his mentor's advice to reopen the pub he was raised in and live a quiet life.  Many years later, in the midst of the revolution, two people sit at the bar and order drinks from Eugene.  They know who he is, they know about his exploits, and most importantly they tell them that the money he donated throughout his journey was a major contribution to the revolution.  And as Eugene tends to both their drinks, he watches the two men both pull off tricks against each other, tricks Eugene knows well.

Card Shark is one of the coolest games I've ever played in my life.  I have my problems with it, don't get me wrong, I wish that more of the tricks were important and I honestly just wish there was more game to play.  I would love some sort of free play or puzzle mode to experiment with the various mechanics of the game, some of which you only really get to use once.  But it's so mechanically unique, it's story is so gripping and interesting, it's just.  Masterful.  I loved this game, I feel bad for Rise of the Tomb Raider that just like IMMEDIATELY it gets knocked down a peg.  Too many good games, y'all.  9.5/10

Rise of the Tomb Raider - A Gaming Diary

Review:

Rise of the Tomb Raider, the second in the Tomb Raider reboot series by Square-Enix and Crystal Dynamics, is truly something special.  Taking what worked about 2013's already great reboot of Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider adds a considerable amount to the formula by having a greater focus on puzzle solving and exploration.  There is just more to do, more collectibles and artifacts to find for world building or just interesting little niche observations, there's a high number of tombs to explore with fun puzzles to solve, overall this feels more like a "Tomb Raider" than its predecessor.  But it manages to keep the excellent stealth action gameplay of its predecessor completely intact, feeling like a far more refined product overall, it's a great time.  It's not a perfect game, mind, I certainly have my gripes and nitpicks with it, as you can tell from the diary, namely the story just being kind of okay.  But of this sort of micro-genre of "Uncharted-likes", I think this one is easily the best, even beating Uncharted itself.  9/10

Diary:

6/20/25

I feel bad for laughing at this game right out the gate, because this is a very serious game, like, it's meant to be taken seriously.  But the ice axes have just become such a meme to me at this point, I can't take it seriously like.  I might be misremembering because the movie came out so long ago, but I remember the Alicia Vikander Tomb Raider film made getting the ice ax a big triumphant moment because it's an icon of the first reboot Raider game.  Since then I haven't been able to take the ice axes seriously.  They're a good gameplay mechanic to have, mind, I'm not saying they're a problem.  It's nice that Lara isn't restricted by geography as much as her contemporaries in this same subgenre because she can scale up the sides of things better without needing to grab onto things all the time.  It's just not something I can take seriously anymore either.

It feels very nice to be playing reboot Tomb Raider again.  I was a pretty big fan of the first reboot Raider game (so much that I own it three times), despite being a pretty obvious Uncharted ripoff, I think it's excellent.  To be honest, I kind of think Tomb Raider 2013 is better than all of the Uncharted games I've played.  Like, I like Uncharted 1 and Uncharted 3, can't stand 2, but in my opinion Tomb Raider just succeeds at being a more fun game.  Narratively, it's nowhere as good as the Uncharted franchise, Tomb Raider 2013 is quite messy if anything, but the reboot Raiders just have more fun and interesting gameplay to me than the Uncharted franchise, idk.

Speaking of narrative, I feel like this game is trying hard to be less... yikes... than the first game.  Tomb Raider 2013 has a bad habit of forcing Lara to go through extreme circumstances to progress for seemingly no other reason than to put her in a situation where she's being put through something beyond human capability.  Back in the day, some content creators I no longer watch speculated some unsavory reasons for it.  I think it's moreso that Tomb Raider 2013 is engaging in the common but somewhat problematic trope in fiction that to explain why a woman is strong, you need to force her to go through excruciating circumstances.  Rise is much better about this, I suspect unfortunately that it's partially because Lara is already established, but so far we aren't putting her through hell every couple scenes so.  Improvement.  Instead her character's whole thing in this game is trying to prove both herself and her missing father right with regards to supernatural happenings and secret ancient organizations, which, while not a new story by any means, feels much better.

Something I immediately enjoy a whole lot about the second game is the greater focus on like proper "tomb raiding".  While I enjoy the first game, it wasn't super interested in the Tomb Raiding aspect of Tomb Raider.  There were some tombs to raid and puzzles to solve in them that were fun, but like.  It was mostly a cinematic third-person action-adventure game, there was way more gun fights and way less archaeology.  The second game corrects this by just having a greater focus on archaeology.  Lara now has a language system that you can level up as you go on, as she reads more of a language, she gains a greater knowledge of the language, allowing her to translate increasingly more complex artifacts.  Speaking of artifacts, there are now artifacts hidden everywhere on the map for Lara to collect, centuries old documents, lost murals, hidden treasure caches, etc.  It feels like a much more whole experience because of this, like the team really went out of their way to make this what Tomb Raider should be in the modern day.  It's a shame they never got to follow up on it because Square Enix forced them to make an awful Avengers game that had the consequence of sinking the Tomb Raider franchise.

I am not, however, a huge fan of how the game restricts basic mechanics until the tutorial for them pops up.  This is kind of just a problem with game design for a lot of the HD era, mind, they lock off basic mechanics to you until you learn how to do them and it's frustrating.  Sometimes it makes sense, I don't necessarily like it but like.  Lara not being able to craft poison arrows until she has an obstacle that she needs to poison does make sense.  But like, they won't even let this woman hide in the bushes until they give you a tutorial for it, it's actually insane.  I'm glad games don't do this anymore, it's very frustrating to know a mechanic exists and then drive yourself crazy trying to figure out how to activate it only for it to be locked behind a tutorial you haven't accessed yet.

6/25/25

I've now officially gotten the all too important Tomb Raider reboot experience of "trying really hard to be sneaky, failing miserably, and scrambling getting caught in a gun fight".  I love the stealth gameplay actually.  Like, I'm bad in high intensity situations, I've played so many action-adventure games to know that I can and will almost definitely fail if I attempt to go in guns blazing.  Stealth makes it more like a puzzle to be solved, approaching a situation and figuring out the most effective way to confront the group of enemies to get through, which plays to my strengths much more.  I'm also just very bad at aiming and so I kind of immediately fumble when put into a gunfight.  This is probably one of the main reasons I don't like Uncharted as much as these games, come to think of it.

The greater focus on archaeology in this game really does add a lot because of the numerous documents hidden throughout the world to collect.  It feels like we aren't just experiencing one story, but dozens.  There are tons of compelling micro stories hidden around the map that add a lot of context to what is happening in the present day.  The story of the Byzantine soldier having to chase the heretical prophet deep into the mountains of Siberia.  The story of the Mongols fighting against the Greek invaders to their homeland.  The story of a Soviet engineer writing to his family who is set to join him, wondering if or when they will make it to him.  The world feels so complete with all of these little notes added to it, and it really makes the various artifacts we find throughout pop more with all this added context to it, like they're truly part of the grander narrative.

Due to the setting of Rise of the Tomb Raider, I find myself comparing this game to Uncharted 2 more than I really want to.  As previously mentioned, despite Uncharted 2's reputation as not just the best Uncharted game, but also one of the best games of all time, I think it's rather bad.  There are a number of reasons for this but a big one is how the game chooses to communicate its location.  Uncharted 2 similar to Rise of the Tomb Raider takes place entirely within the mountains of East Asia, but it chooses to present this area in a very dull way, making Nepal look very grey and sad.  And I think Rise shows that it didn't have to be this way.  Rise manages to make the snowy mountains of East Asia pop amazing, even though the color scheme is primarily white and grey, it's very vibrant and interesting to look at.  It almost feels like a flex on Uncharted, tbh, like we're literally going through utilitarian Soviet Ironworks and it still looks interesting.  I was already like "Rise is probably my favorite of this type of game" but it showing up Uncharted 2 like this really is putting it over the edge.

That being said, the white and grey do make it a little harder to figure out where to go if you're facing a cliff face.  There's a lot of discourse now about the yellow paint that shows people where you can climb in games and how people hate it despite it being objectively good game design, and I think Rise is a perfect explanation of why.  Lara can scale certain rock walls with her ice axes, and the game indicates what she can scale by the wall being an off white.  In the first game, this was pretty easy to spot most of the time, but in this setting it becomes very difficult.  I've scanned through areas multiple times trying to figure out how to proceed only to, on my third comb over with my detective vision, realize there's a climbable wall right there.  A cool solution I think the game should've done is have the cliff faces be marked by the indigenous tribe living in the mountains that Lara meets on her journey.  That would've been a good lore bit and also solved the "can't really see the cliff faces" problem.

I'm really sad Rise of the Tomb Raider has been so slow going, it's like I can't find time to sit down and play it.  I really am loving it, this is a real top 10 contender so far and I'm only a few hours into it.  I look forward to playing more of it when I can find a couple hours to stop and play it.  I've actually been really wanting to get into the Tomb Raider series as a whole, and thanks to Amazon's free games I own the entire series at this point.  Unfortunately I don't have a PC that could run Shadow so that's kind of off the table for now, but the other Tomb Raiders, the classic ones, are easily on my list.  I'd even be interested in playing the like PS2 ones, the ones no one likes or talks about.  Maybe someday!  The list is real long is the problem.

6/29/25

From my limited knowledge of the Tomb Raider franchise, namely being the original Angelina Jolie movie, the 2013 reboot game, the 2018 Alicia Vikander movie, and the episode of obscure Disney Channel sitcom Life With Derek where they, in 2008 or whatever, have the timely debate on whether or not Lara Croft is empowering to women, it seems like this woman gets betrayed a lot.  It's no wonder that she turns into a go-it-alone type, I swear.  I do think this game does a good job of making this wound feel fresh.  Like, this one was, effectively, her mom.  This isn't just like a friend or a colleague, this is a person who was, apparently, playing the long con to betray her family, so long in fact that she was Lara's main maternal figure her entire life.  And was literally banging her dad, so she was kind of actually Lara's mom.  And I like that it does matter to Ana that she's known Lara her entire life, that she's pushing for the main villains to recruit her, make her see their way of things, not kill her.  She doesn't want to admit it to herself, but she cares about Lara more than she's willing to admit.

It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize that the Assault Rifle is an automatic weapon.  I felt so stupid when I finally realized, like, of course it is, that's the whole point of an assault rifle.  Here I was sneaking around trying to get headshots with it.  I'm thankful for a big automatic weapon like this, as I have previously mentioned, I am really bad in a gun fight.  I tend to freeze up in the midst of more active combat in honestly any shooter, happens in Splatoon, happens in Fallout, happens here.  So just giving me a weapon that lets me really even the playing field in more intensive combat encounters is super helpful for me.  I still tend to lose in those kinds of encounters but, you know.  I'm better equipped for them.  Though my aim is awful and I burn through ammo constantly.

Potentially hot take, actually, I know it's a hot take, lots of people complain about this but uh.  I kind of love sections where the game strips away all your resources from you and you have to start from 0, fighting your way through to get your equipment.  I don't know, you'd think I wouldn't because you know.  I'm famously bad at video games, I've said it a million times in this blog, but like.  I don't know, there's just something to having a peak of power and then having to start back over again, re-evaluate your strategies, play with new toys, that sort of thing.  Granted, it can be argued that Rise does this too early, we're not even at the halfway point it feels like and we've gotten this sequence, but like.  I really like it.  I like having to rethink my strategies and, honestly, it's a great way to introduce new mechanics like the assault rifle or the explosives crafting.  The Gulag was a very fun sequence, what can I say.

I got VERY distracted in this section.  I don't normally bother with DLC, it's a very rare game that can make me want to come back to do post game content, I'm very much a "when it's done it's done" gamer.  But the game popped up a mission with the title "Baba Yaga" and you know what, I'm there.  I want to fight Baba Yaga.  It is very silly though that Lara is kind of taken aback by the possibility that a witch exists, like, that's the most eccentric thing she's even encountered and it's like, girl, you're up here in Siberia hunting for the secret to immortality, I think a witch is pretty tame all things considered.  Granted, there is a 0% chance it's a real witch but like, if there were, this is like not even in the top 5 weird things that reboot Lara has encountered, let alone Lara Croft as a whole.

The Baba Yaga storyline is great so far, though.  The Batman Arkham games have given us a lot, the way they shaped open world games and especially superhero games cannot be overstated, but my favorite part of their legacy is that we have these weird, trippy, pseudo-horror sequences in action-adventure games now.  It's usually a fun time, a chance for the devs to get away from their usual game's setting and themes and go all out on being weird.  The Baba Yaga toying with Lara, forcing her to go around and around in circles until she's completely lost, chasing a vision of her father, forced to relive the trauma of her father's death all over again in a shockingly real vision.  So good.  And then the Baba Yaga and her infamous house looks amazing on top of that.  Baba Yaga gives such strong forest witch vibes, decked out in her eccentric clothes and wearing a deer skull on her head.  And the house is just fantastic, I love that it doesn't actually have bird legs but rather it has like.  Flooring and scaffolding and stuff twisted into the image of bird legs.  It's been a fun little side story so far, even if all it has turned out to be is just "a woman using Scarecrow fear toxin" basically.

The Voice of God tomb is a standout moment in the game, just an absolute peak part, I'm surprised this location is optional.  I really like how the temple surrounding it is full of documents being like "we were lost in the mountains until we found this place, then we knew this is where we belong."  Like they give you a lot of context on what the Voice of God means for the people who now call these mountains home, that it's a place they make pilgrimages too, but they never tell you what it is.  They very much want you to see it for yourself.  And after you solve the simple but fun timing puzzle, you enter out into this breathtaking view of this massive canyon with natural formations caused by erosion that makes the entire thing a giant woodwind instrument.  Absolute highlight of the playthrough so far, I was speechless when I saw it.

7/1/25

It was really neat seeing how "Baba Yaga" kept the myth alive.  Yeah, that's right, I made like no progress this part because I wanted to finish that Baba Yaga storyline.  I don't feel good about it either.  It was really cool though, seeing the illusions that the Baba Yaga made, simply to suggest that the Baba Yaga is real, allowing the hallucinogen to take over and fill in the blanks.  Placing scarecrows all around to have the mind fill in that they're monsters created by her, building her base deep within a winding path in the woods so people get lost, repurposing a lift to look like the Baba Yaga's famous house?  It was great, good stuff here.  I almost want to go back through the Wicked Vale, see if there are any other neat little details about her trickery that I missed.

The boss fight was also just super cool.  It can be difficult to design a really cool boss for this kind of game because, while the combat is super fun and super good, it's all very samey.  Like, this is the type of combat that is built for either stealthy take downs of groups of enemies or all out gunfights, so it's hard to make a boss in this context that really pops.  But the Baba Yaga fight is very cool and very unique, resembling something of a Zelda puzzle fight.  You enter into a big room where the Baba Yaga is hanging over the center and you have to rope her to various gears and time it so that the fire of her own machines damage her.  All the while under the effects of the hallucinogenic flower she is refining, creating a visually intense boss fight.  It's not like one of the greatest boss fights of all time or anything but it's nice to have a really cool, unique boss in this kind of game.

I genuinely forget how many optional tombs there were in the first game, it didn't feel like a lot.  Like maybe I was just not looking that well or maybe the game did a worse job of communicating there was one nearby, this game actively notifies you when you're near one, but it feels like they're everywhere in this game.  It's really nice being able to find an ancient ruin a few times an area with a fun little puzzle to complete.  This might be a controversial take, but I enjoy the shrine structure of BotW/TotK WAY MORE than traditional dungeons, because it feels like I'm getting more fun puzzles to solve more frequently over getting a couple big puzzles to solve every 2-4 hours.  Tombs in Rise of the Tomb Raider feel like that, there are a couple scattered around the area, you delve deep into them, solve a little puzzle, get a treasure, and you're out.  It's a good vibe.

7/4/25

There are so many chase sequences in this game, my lord.  I feel like this is my fourth one where I'm having to run away from an instant death barrier chasing me.  People talk about those little "going through tight hallways" moments in these games as hiding loading screens in these games, and first of all, hiding loading screens?  Not remotely a problem.  I don't get why people are so upset about having an organic loading screen in the gameplay.  That being said, I'm pretty sure these chase sequences are loading screens because they literally always happen to lead into a more intensive scene with a lot of enemies/gunfights or a significant change in a pre-existing area.  And again, like, organic ways of hiding loading without breaking up the gameplay are good, I enjoy them, I just keep getting chased and it's hard not to notice.

So like, Jacob is 100% the Prophet we've heard so much about, right?  Like, okay, the Prophet is allegedly a miracle working Greek who was forced to flee East to avoid persecution from the Byzantine Empire and is, allegedly, immortal.  Like finding the source of immortality is kind of the point of this game.  And like.  Dude's name is "Jacob".  His name means many things that are thematically appropriate.  "To follow", which the Prophet gained a cult of followers who would then follow him into the East.  "Supplanter", given how the Prophet supplanted the common understanding of Christianity.  "May God protect", indicating how he believed he was doing God's true will despite the common understanding of the faith at the time calling him a heretic.  On top of that he's a distinctly European face leading the native populous of this section of Sibera, who are otherwise very Mongolian looking and/or mixed to have Mongolian features.  His diary entries are also very interesting, how he talks about how he has dead wives and new flames and how he struggles to maintain these emotions, but these women he talks about all have names that are now the names of children and teens in the native village he runs.  Like he talks about his dead wife "Sofia", and also Sofia is the name of his young daughter, which I guess that's not unheard of, naming your child after your wife, but like.  Suspicious.  Very suspicious happenings here.

The Geothermal Valley is yet another fantastic location in this game.  Like I love how they did this "lost city hidden in the mountains", that it exists on a series of hot springs that naturally heat the area and because it exists in a very remote location deep inside the mountain range, it kind of maintains its own ecosystem.  It feels surprisingly plausible in the midst of all of this.  Like, I kind of made fun Lara for not believing in witches when we are hunting the source of immortality, but I do enjoy that this game gives a grounded explanation for the 99% of weird seemingly supernatural stuff happening in it.  It makes the 1% that is supernatural stand out way more and feel that much more special.  The Geothermal Valley is also just like.  Beautiful.  Such a pretty place, the locales in this game are amazing.  I really hope we get another proper Tomb Raider game like this in the future, man.

I once again need to highlight how much I love that this game cares about Lara Croft the archaeologist.  Like there was a point in this section where Lara uncovers ruins and immediately starts geeking out about the mosaics on the ground, trying to figure out what they mean.  It's so endearing to me.  I also love that they are putting forward an effort to make sure Lara practices ethical archaeology.  Aside from any damages that may happen from puzzle solving, Lara always leaves Tombs and Crypts basically how she finds them.  She leaves documents where they are, only noting their contents, artifacts she'll leave behind, she's careful not to overly touch anything, only moving some dust to read the contents.  She leaves everything to the people they belong to, even if said people may not exist anymore, and I appreciate it.  There's literally a sidequest you can do in the Geothermal Valley where a person asks for Lara to find lost artifacts and she goes "of course, they are yours to begin with".  Idk, it's so easy for this kind of game to get into the Indiana Jones treasure hunting 30s archaeology mindset where you're just taking stuff, it's nice to have Lara do an ethics.

I really like how this game continues to play around with resource management.  Like, at the point of the game I'm at, Lara should be fairly well equipped, having two guns to deal with enemies effectively.  And in this context it could be very easy for a player to lose the desire to want to use the bow.  But then the Geothermal Valley happens and being a valley of people who live a simplistic, agrarian lifestyle, it's like.  Yes, they do have ammo that they're raided from the Soviets and the villainous Trinity organization, but it's very scarce and very limited.  You, as the player, have to make the decision on when to use your now limited gun ammunition, meanwhile the bow once again becomes a more effective tool as the valley is full of resources to craft arrows.  They even introduce fire arrows for you to utilize, arrows that contain small flasks with oil that ignite on contact, once again bringing the bow into focus.  It's really good game balance, I like it a lot.

7/6/25

I got a grappling hook!  I don't care what game it is, I'm always excited about a grappling hook.  I once again am appreciative of how much this game doesn't restrict Lara's movement to just the ground and ledges.  Lara has already been able to do so much more than certain other action-adventure protagonists cut from the same cloth, and now not only is she not restricted by cliff faces but also not by large gaps.  It almost makes me wish this game was less of a linear cinematic action-adventure game because I'd really like to take Lara's kit out for a spin in a more open format.  But also like, we have enough open world games now, it's fine.  Anyways, grappling hook, on board, certified good game.

I have mentioned the archaeological aspect of this game a lot so far, but something I really adore about it is how you can track the development of this agrarian native civilization evolving from the Prophet's ornate, luxurious civilization.  Loads of documents detail the fall of the Prophet's city of Kitezh around a thousand years ago, and the subsequent adaptation to a "harder life".  You enter tombs and find abandoned places of luxury, in this section in particular I found what was once a luxurious bathhouse the ones who fled Kitezh used to bury their dead.  There are loads of artifacts scattered about the map and it's always so neat seeing Lara note that this is an expensive bowl or vase or basket or whatever, clearly made only to be decorative, that the people have had to make into a practical piece.  I distinctly remember one artifact was an expensive piece of pottery that the natives had to poke holes in to make room for plant roots to grow out.  It's great environmental storytelling, love it.

Bomb arrows were not something I expected to be in this game.  I just really like how this game continues to make the bow feel important even as we gain more and more guns and, moreover, more powerful guns by finding pieces of them around the map.  Like, obviously, the bow is always going to have SOME advantage, as it has infinitely renewable ammo without having to find it or loot it off enemies, but the trick arrows really add a lot to both combat and puzzle solving.  I mean in theory, I always forget to use them in combat as I try to get stealthy headshots with the bow, inevitably get caught, and then get in a gun fight I struggle to win because I'm bad in gun fights.  Like the main thing you get out of doing the Baba Yaga storyline is a bow that turns your poisons arrows into hallucinogenic arrows, so if the opponent survives the poison, they will turn against their fellow opponents for a little bit, I've used it like twice.  Love the trick arrows though.

This also makes me really appreciate the notes that the Tomb Raider games take from something like Metroid.  I'm not going to go on a whole "Rise of the Tomb Raider is secretly a Metroidvania" thing because it's not, not even a little, but I do like that you're encouraged to return to previous areas after you get pretty telegraphed things like the fire arrows, bomb arrows, the grappling hook, etc. to unlock new stuff in said areas.  I actually have to go back to the first major hub in the game, the Soviet Installation, to finally unlock the last cave come to think of it.  I just love incentivizing continued exploration of previous area, and I think the way Rise does it, having these larger hub areas stitched into the more linear ones is a very nice way to do it.

The story is ramping up majorly.  I did admittedly cover quite a lot of the game in the last section which is why, but like.  Lara is getting caught up in more moment to moment gun fights as Trinity is going on the offensive against the natives.  They've now infiltrated and assaulted so many of their sacred places and Lara has had to do a lot of work taking out the hostiles.  A point I actually like about this is that the natives are adapting quickly to this new style of warfare, picking up their guns an effectively arming themselves against the invaders.  This is something you also see in the native's documents, an anxiety that their lifestyle may be forced to come to an end as they are fighting a threat that, and I quote, "gets stronger each generation".  A lot of them talk about the children and how fewer and fewer survive each onslaught, them seeing their own extinction happening before their eyes.  And so, whether they like it or not, survival means adapting, adapting to this modern warfare.

I also like this darker side we're seeing from Lara.  That her being betrayed by the last person she considered family has kind of broken her to a point where she's letting her desires get in the way of her archaeology.  She holds the woman at gunpoint, something that she probably wouldn't normally do, making it clear she is honestly kind of okay with murdering her to a point where the woman, who had previously been like "we should recruit Lara to our side" is now like "kill her on sight".  And her being too close with this adventure, due to her father dying as a result of looking for the source of immortality and it causing him to be disgraced as an archaeologist, is really clouding her judgement.  I talked about Lara largely partaking in ethical archaeology but this is a line she is willing to cross, despite the protestations of the natives, Lara NEEDS to find the source of immortality, she needs to bring it back in the world, and while she claims this is for the good of mankind, she is obviously only doing it to avenge her father, posthumously prove him right in the eyes of the world.  The natives even take note of their ally's ambition, stating openly that while they are friends of Lara today, they WILL be enemies of her someday soon, knowing they will die to protect their most valuable treasure and Lara will die to obtain it.

Speaking of hostile natives, a third faction has entered the fray.  The natives tell stories of a group of theirs who, rather than flee the lost city of Kitezh, stay in the Catacombs protecting it.  They call them "the Deathless Ones".  They are ruthless soldiers, utilizing the power of Greek Fire to make sure there is nowhere their enemies can hide.  As an aside, Lara really should try and get a barrel of Greek Fire, we don't know what that was and it could solve a centuries old mystery.  Anyways, the Deathless Ones are REALLY effective threats.  We don't see them at all until literally the end of their "introductory dungeon", instead they introduce them as shadows on a wall and distant voices in the dungeon.  As well, we see them mowing down heavily armored Trinity members with nothing but arrows and greek fire.  They seem so otherworldly, like they aren't human, they even speak an Archaic Greek that, unlike the other languages of the game, Lara cannot seemingly translate.  Or at least hasn't been given the opportunity to.  I really like this introduction, even if it ends up at another chase sequence.

I am even more convinced that Jacob is the prophet.  Like, the game is doing a very clever job of making that point ambiguous, I think you as the player are supposed to clock this as a possibility and then have the game play with your expectations by making the timeline messy and then cleaning it up and then making it messy again.  So like, they'll introduce Jacob's former wife and lover and it's like "this feels like it happened long ago" but then later go "actually this happened within the last generation and this is the current' Sofia's mother that Jacob is writing about" but then also, also, Jacob's journal entries are scattered about in odd places that make you wonder how he could've gotten there and/or known to come there in a single lifetime.  There's also a very interesting journal entry where a citizen of the native camp talks about a mysterious stranger coming down from the mountains with no memory and while most people believe it was simply one of their brethren, they are convinced it is, in fact, the Prophet returned to them.  And the description given notes that the stranger has long, unkempt hair and a sort of shaggy beard, much like Jacob.  I'm not going to act like this is a huge call, in my opinion it's a very obvious twist, but you know.

Something I am starting to get annoyed about, though, is the Survival Caches.  Throughout various maps, there are survival caches, buried there by explorers and hikers and natives and what have you that went through the area that contain supplies.  These are nice little additions, you can find some needed and/or rare crafting materials on the fly with them, but the thing is that the game will not let you pick up a crafting resource unless you need said resource.  Which I guess is good, you aren't wasting material when your pack is full, but the problem is Survival Caches are a collectible.  And because of this, you can just have to go back for a collectible a dozen times not being able to obtain it because the material it contains is something you are already full on and like, how can you keep track of that, you know.  Just a very minor annoyance, nothing huge at all, it's not like I'm going to 100% this game anyways but like, it is a thing:tm:.

As I near the end, I don't think I have that much game left, it's making me really sad I can't jump into Shadow for the forseeable future.  I know Shadow of the Tomb Raider is not nearly as good as 2013 or Rise but like.  It just makes me sad, you know, knowing this story has a conclusion that it'll be a long time before I reach because either I need to build a PC that can run it (yay, more complaining about how hell PC gaming is) or swallow my pride and just buy it for console even though I technically already own it.  At least I have the entire classic Tomb Raider collection to move onto.  I'm really excited to try them out actually, I may be repeating myself here but I'm even looking forward to eventually playing the "bad ones".  I own basically the entire Tomb Raider series at this point besides like, the top down twin stick ones, so hopefully I'll be able to revisit Tomb Raider in the not-too-distant future and continue to be like "Lara Croft is just better than Nathan Drake and I don't know why Uncharted has the pedigree that it does, it's like if Joss Whedon wrote an Indiana Jones film."

7/8/25

To literally no one's surprise, Jacob is, in fact, the Prophet.  Again, it's such an obvious twist it's difficult to even call it a twist, his name is Jacob.  I do enjoy that he is like immediately going "yes, I am immortal, but no, it's not a God given ability".  And that despite that, his faith is still outwardly strong.  Jacob is a very interesting character, I like him a lot.  Like, as someone who isn't in the faith but grew up surrounded by Evangelical beliefs, I find it very interesting when nuanced depictions of belief are put forward.  That Jacob's belief in the Abrahamic God is strong despite his objective knowledge that some things aren't of God.  It reminds me of a bit from a video I saw, I forget if it was a Miniminuteman video or Dan Olson's excellent video on the Paluxy River Tracks, but it was a quote that was like "how upsetting it must be that your faith must be backed up by science in order to be valid, thus you must live in fear of any scientific discovery that it may undo your entire belief system".

The Orrery is yet another all timer location for this game.  I really wish I had a reliable way to get screenshots off my PS4, because man this game has so many beautiful, iconic locations in it.  This giant mechanical model of the solar system, seemingly far beyond the prowess of anything in historical record, is just mesmerizing, even Lara cites her appreciation of it.  It's also a really fun little puzzle, having to use your rope arrows to move the model around so that you can climb up further in the structure, only to then have to time your jumps and swings and stuff when you get up to the top to access the path forward.  It's not a groundbreaking puzzle by any means but it's a real good one and like.  I don't know if it's the final puzzle of the game, but it kind of feels like it?  It's a very "use everything you've been using for puzzles together" kind of puzzle, you know?

I think I kind of saw where the game had to cut corners to ship on time in this section.  Rise of the Tomb Raider is typically very good about all the areas feeling interconnected.  There are some points where you can't readily go back from an area, don't get me wrong.  Usually a tighter area with lots of cover for tight stealth/combat situations ends up having a point where you leave it and then can only go back via Fast Travel points to pick up collectibles.  But in this section there's literally just a point where Lara has a conversation with someone and then the camera cuts to an entirely different area of the map and we're just here now.  And then when the section is concluded they just cut back to the Geothermal Valley in the same way.  Either they couldn't think of a real way to get Lara from point a to point b with how the map is laid out or they had to cut some corners because modern game development always has to cut corners.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple areas meant to fill in these gaps that got cut for time, tbh.

It took me literally until this section to remember Jonah is a character we're meant to know already.  Now, granted, it has been many years since I've played Tomb Raider 2013, I beat it in 2018.  I only know that because it was a game I did for a different blog I was running at the time that was basically just this but worse.  And he looks radically different in that game anyways.  But like, the cast member I remember from that game besides Lara was Sam.  Lara's best friend and professional documentarian, which is also definitely something they took from Uncharted.  I don't really remember Jonah and I think it's really weird that he's like the guy now.  He's Lara's equivalent with Sully.  Like, the actor is great, he performs the character super well.  It's just the character is not that interesting and a lot of this game is built on Lara's friendship with him.  Like the moment that Jacob and his people decide to truly trust her is her "this has gone far enough" where she's willing to give up a chance to find the Divine Source of immortality to go rescue her friend.  And it's a nice moment, but I barely remember who Jonah is.

The next segment will be the last, I left off in the pathway to the Lost City of Kitezh.  I've really loved this game so far.  It's obviously not a perfect game, I've had more than my fair share of criticisms with it, but like.  Of this kind of action-adventure game, this one is easily my favorite.  Do not be surprised when this makes the best list this year, like, currently I'm placing it at the #6 spot on my spreadsheet.  See y'all on the other side!

7/9/25

Something I don't think I ever drew attention to during the diary was how much I love Lara's campfire inner monologues.  First of all, it's just good game design.  Lara will recap the recent events of the game when you sit down at a campsite so if it's been a minute since you've played you can get a nice refresher on what you were doing leading into this point.  But also I just like getting Lara's thoughts on things.  It's not that Lara isn't a proactive protagonist, she is making a lot of her own decisions in this story, but often times she is very guarded and is carrying less than half of a conversation as she gets exposited too by the other characters.  So it's very welcoming to get these looks into who Lara Croft is, her true thoughts and feelings of the people surrounding her.  This also being a journey about Lara's relationship with her father, she ends up remembering a lot of exchanges with him, and it's just really nice.  You're always reminded of how personal this quest is for her.

I really liked the final optional tomb you could do in the game.  Not because of the puzzle, which is in my opinion one of the worst, there's a lot that's kind of unclear about how it works.  But I, a, like that it's entirely set in a cavern underneath the Valley where the natives fled to after the fall of Kitezh, showing why it's so unnaturally warm up there, but also 2, how the Prophets followers believed that this was a portal to hell.  The final tomb, the Exorcism chamber, takes place inside a giant cavern of volcanic activity where people were imprisoned based on the belief that they were demonically possessed.  What is actually happening is that the gas that is emitted from the chamber is causing adverse neurological symptoms, causing them to act odd.  There's even a note from a prisoner in the exorcism chamber who has a rare moment of lucidity and writes about how she knows it's not demonic possession but she does not blame the priests for the abuse they're putting her through.  She is aware that there is a sickness within her that cannot be cured, and that the priests simply believe they are doing their best.

I was so excited to find out I get to use a trebuchet.  Like first of all, shoutout to the puzzle design again, there was a really fun little puzzle to operate one of the trebuchets I liked.  But just man, having this giant weapon to pilot in the end game, it so good.  It does the thing a lot of good video game end games do where it gives you a massive power trip moment right before the end.  You just have so much destructive power as you rein down Greek fire from the skies, it rules.  I also love that they make you take down a bunch of enemies with the trebuchet, so cool.  By the way, Lara did indeed learn the recipe for Greek Fire, this trip wasn't a total waste after all.

I kind of feel like the Deathless Ones lose a bit of their luster once we're actively fighting them.  Don't get me wrong, there are definitely some hard fights with them, some of the hardest mob fights in the game are in this section.  But like, okay.  So the Deathless Ones were introduced brilliantly, right?  Keeping them largely in the shadows, never showing too much, etc.  And then in this part of the game, Lara starts to see the full scale of their army as they march on Kitezh to once again defend the city from Trinity's invasion, and it really ups the intimidation factor.  You realize there is something truly inhuman about them, that these are not men, these are monsters.  The documents in this section reinforce this belief, painting the Deathless Ones as something truly terrifying, an undying force that will continue to chase you across your lifetime should they be allowed to.  

And then the game drops two tidbits that ruin the whole thing.  1: The Deathless Ones are weak to fire, like, to the point where if you hit an unarmored Deathless One with flames they immediately burn up into ash.  While this does bring up a lot of interesting questions about how the Divine Source actually works, it is kind of silly that this imposing final threat is basically just Paras.  2: the Deathless Ones are not actually conscious.  Something about how they obtained their immortality and/or how they keep returning from "being killed" has caused them to lose all sense of humanity.  Now this could be scary, except that they now just roam around, patrolling the areas they used to when they were alive, meaning they become incredibly predictable and easy to manipulate and take down.  Like they can still be a problem in more open combat but like, just traversing the world they're kind of nothing because they don't really have any awareness to speak of.

I completely understand why the Divine Source doesn't have that many or, really, any answers to the many questions raised about it.  Because like, that's not the point, right?  The point of the story is Lara letting go of having to find these answers, having to redeem her father posthumously.  The Divine Source is better off with nobody knowing what it was or how it worked, that it simply must be contained or destroyed.  But I do think that there's a really big question that the game should've answered on how it works, and that is why the Deathless Ones are how they are.  For context, the Divine Source is also obviously what has been keeping Jacob alive for these past centuries, and in his case, the Divine Source has very few adverse side effects.  Jacob is still Jacob and has been Jacob for centuries, and that's his penance.  He is unhappy with immortality, thinking it to be unnatural, and seeks his own death.  And then when Ana takes the Divine Source, she too remains who she is.  But the Deathless Ones didn't.  They turned into this unfeeling, inhuman army that so do not resemble the people they once were that they literally have become a faceless collective doing a perverse mockery of the lives they once lived.  And I would've liked maybe some speculation as to why that is, a document that puts forward a theory on why the Deathless Ones are the way they are, because I feel like understanding that aspect of this whole thing is really important to the motivation to destroy the Divine Source.

Remember what I said after the Baba Yaga fight about this kind of game being hard to design bosses for?  The final boss isn't good.  Like I think it's the best they could do with the gameplay style they have, you have effectively three phases, a wave based fight against a helicopter where you have to shoot it out of the sky using Greek Fire while it summons enemies and destroys more of the arena between each hit, a phase to refresh on your stealth takedowns where you engage with a couple waves of Deathless Ones and have to take them all out without being seen, and then the final battle against the game's main antagonist Konstantin where you have to perform two stealth takedowns on him as he strips you of all your weapons except for, you guessed it, your climbing axe.  Part of the problem is, admittedly, I'm bad at aiming!  The first phase requires you to be able to hit the Greek Fire barrels that the trebuchet is firing at the helicopter at just the right time so as to cause the explode on the helicopter, which means both timing your shots and often leading your shots.  I'm not good at that.  I have probably added like an hour to this playthrough just waiting for enemies to stop moving so I can headshot them because I'm bad at leading shots.  So that's on me but also just like.  The final boss fight is just kind of frustrating in general in a way that isn't particularly rewarding?  Like I said, it's not a problem that this game doesn't have great boss fights, its gameplay is not designed for boss fights.  It's just really noticeable when it does have a boss fight and it kind of sucks.

I did really like getting to be able to explore Kitezh though.  Even if it was just a small area, it was super nice to actually get to roam around the lost city and have things to see and do.  I was very worried Kitezh would just be another hallway area because this type of game tends to start having its hallways when you near the end.  But I feel like for the game Rise of the Tomb Raider was, having a more open area with its own secrets and even a final optional tomb makes it feel more right, you know.  There's also this sort of "lost world" quality to it, a sort of Journey to the Center of the Earth vibe, because the entire city is technically underground but it's still teaming with life.  The entire city has been buried under a giant glacier (Lara pronounces this "glass-e-er"), which makes it feel like Journey, but a lot of flora and fauna, presumably the descendants of animals originally brought into the city to use as livestock or entertainment.  I'd be very interested to see what the genetic makeup of the boars that roam this city is like, being likely not true boars but rather the descendants of feral pigs.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination.  As you could probably tell from my diary, I had a lot of criticisms with this game, a lot more than I feel like I usually do?  That being said, I still think Rise of the Tomb Raider is among the best, if not THE best of the cinematic action-adventure shooter genre.  It's certainly the best one I've played.  Like, despite all my grievances, I do love this game, I had a blast playing it.  I'd be surprised if this didn't make my best list for the year, at the time of writing this it's in a solid #6 position. 9/10