Lara’s home. Literally. Rise Of The Tomb Raider’s long-overdue appearance on PlayStation brings Ms Croft back to the console family that helped propel her into cultural phenomenon status. And just in time for the franchise’s 20th anniversary, no less. But that’s not what we mean. It’s Croft Manor that’s caught our eye: a classic component that veteran fans spent hours exploring in the ’90s, and a series relic that dev Crystal Dynamics has excavated from the past, dusted off and reconstructed for a new generation.
The PS4 port of Rise Of The Tomb Raider is no mere spit and polish job. Called the 20 Year Celebration edition, the disc contains the full Rise Of The Tomb Raider campaign and its arcade Expedition mode bolt-on, along with all the pre-order outfits, weapons and expedition card incentives from last year’s Xbox release (see Rise Matters on p84). It also features all of Xbox One’s £20 Season Pass content, comprising the Baba Yaga: The Temple Of The Witch story DLC, the Endurance survival mode, wave-based battle mode Cold Darkness Awakened, a dozen bonus outfits, seven extra weapons and almost two score extra expedition cards.
Homeward Bound
It’s a bumper package indeed. Yet still not bumper enough to make up for PS4’s long wait, it seems. Which is why, under the banner of that two-decade anniversary, Crystal has been toiling away on a suite of all-new modes and features, starting with that iconic mansion.
Lara’s estate is the star of the fresh Blood Ties chapter. Set between the campaign’s Syrian prologue and Siberian main event, it sees Lara do battle of an altogether different kind: namely, for the ownership of her home.
“This is to serve as your final notice for the purposes of terminating your ownership of Croft Manor,” reads the letter from Lara’s uncle, Atlas DeMornay, at the episode’s opening. The executor of the family estate has nefarious plans to acquire Lara’s wealth for himself in the wake of his brother-in-law’s suicide (Lara’s mother vanished mysteriously when Lara was a child). “You are required to immediately vacate and surrender possession of said manor,” it continues.
It’s a battle fought not with twin pistols or a bow and arrow, but with legal documents. Not the sexiest of premises, perhaps, until you deduce that Lord Richard Croft’s last will and testament is likely tucked away inside a locked safe in his study, and the only way to retrieve the papers that will send Atlas scarpering is to embark on a secret-hunting spree throughout the mansion, uncovering hidden passages and solving riddles to learn the safe’s code. So begins a measured, narrative-led episode that completely dispenses with action, instead playing out like a more puzzle-heavy spin on Uncharted 4’s home invasion chapter, The Brothers Drake.
Rise and Fall
Did we really say Crystal had reconstructed Lara’s home? A careless slip of the keyboard: make that deconstructed. Perhaps having enjoyed the demolition job Croft Manor received in Tomb Raider: Underworld, Crystal Dynamics’ latest vision for the mansion is again one of catastrophe. Her father’s study isn’t in too bad a shape – layers of dust over bookshelves and desks the extent of the carnage – but stepping out into the main hall highlights the severity of the mansion’s disrepair.
The glass ceiling high above has caved in, exposing the hall to the elements. Torrential rain saturates the once-plush carpets; howling wind buffets a lone chandelier so forcefully it’s a wonder it hasn’t crashed to the floor; and hanging dust sheets and slick, grimy tarpaulins dash any sense of homeliness, making it feel as much of a dank tomb as the underground temples Lara picks through in the main campaign.
In this tomb, however, it’s secrets and memories that are buried in place of bodies. As we’re walked through the house in Crystal’s private demo room, we’re shown dozens of collectable documents and keepsakes that begin to fill in not just Lara’s backstory, but that of her parents as well. A journal entry reveals that Lara’s mum was set to wed the Earl of Farringdon, but broke it off to instead start a life with Richard Croft – much to the anger of her family (sparking Atlas’ bitter resentment of all things Croft and his eagerness to strip Lara of her inheritance).
This investigatory urge is what will propel the story forwards: Lara can pull open drawers and cupboards to dig through her family’s history, and concludes early on that the safe code is probably hidden in the library. But the door is locked tight.
Checking an old map from her childhood reveals a secret route through the servant quarters that leads straight to her goal, starting with a hidden door disguised as a hallway panel. Pushing it opens the way forwards, but the windowless stairwell that’s revealed is too dark to explore until Lara finds a source of light. Just like the world in the main campaign, different areas of the mansion are gear-gated. The west wing, where Lara’s mother’s room has been preserved, is another example: a master key’s needed to unlock the door and uncover the stories lurking behind it.
Fridge Raiders
There’s a flashlight in a trunk by the main door. Once it’s pocketed, we head back to the passage and step into the gloom. Leaving behind the lavish wallpaper of the main house, our beam of light traces over brickwork and bare stone on our journey down to the basement – it’s a spooky moment, despite no obvious reason for unease beyond a single rotten step that collapses under our weight.
Downstairs, in a wine cellar, we meet a few trolley-pushing puzzles to open up new routes. Only rats live down here now, but in days gone by it was a hang-out spot for butler Winston, who’s left behind some letters. Apparently, when she was a child, Lara once locked him inside the walk-in freezer: a sublime nod to the past that true fans will appreciate.
Deeper into the basement we press until we have to wade through mud and silt. Water damage from above has flooded the lowest passages, and a fair amount of ducking beneath collapsed floorboards and squeezing between toppled brickwork is needed before we can finally wind our way back upwards and into the library via a second door. Everywhere we look, history books are hastily piled up in head-height towers of non-fiction, and a pair of parchments hint at our next steps: one is a series of hieroglyphs and numbers to help us break a cryptic message, the other’s a hint at the safe’s code, featuring a trio of important dates and facts we need to hunt down by checking pictures and other knick knacks strewn about the manor.
Virtual Tour
The walking speed-only detective quest marks a huge change in pace from the regular Tomb Raiding action, which explains why Blood Ties hasn’t been inserted into the campaign’s opening hours, but is instead selectable from the main menu. It’s a hugely exciting shift in tone for the series, and not just because of its bigger focus on narrative. Two days after Rise Of The Tomb Raider is released, PlayStation VR will hit shelves. And when that happens, you’ll be able to pull on the headset and play the Blood Ties chapter, start to finish, as a first-person virtual reality explore-a-thon.
PS4-exclusive VR functionality is a huge coup – after all, it gives us the opportunity to fully immerse ourselves in the most famous gaming mansion not called the Spencer Mansion – but even that’s not the end of the Croft Manor goodies. The third and final major mansion feature is the Lara’s Nightmare chapter, which reinvents the manor mission into a gruesome zombie infestation slaughterfest.
“I will grind the Croft name to dust and leave it utterly destroyed; forgotten for all time,” reads Atlas’ letter this time – considerably harsher than it was in Blood Ties, and spoken in a demonic voice warped by anger. With that, Lara’s then dropped into a random portion of the mansion and begins her fight against glowing-eyed zombies. Her overall goal is to track down Atlas’ three floating ‘Heads Of Rage’, and to kill them before their projectiles burn her flesh off. Doing so unlocks a final showdown to, presumably, end the nightmare.
Treat Dreams
We say presumably because we don’t get to see it all the way to its conclusion. Franchise creative director Noah Hughes is playing, but he can’t make a beeline for the end because the mode is randomised. Lara’s starting point is random, as are the locations of the heads. Plus at least one of those targets is trapped behind a locked door – the room that’s shut off, and location of the master key that opens it up, are also, you’ve guessed it, randomly generated with every single restart.
“There’s this tension to exploring the darker corners of the manor, and we get to just turn that up to 11 with the zombies mode,” Hughes laughs, having just kneecapped a zombie and then knifed it in the skull. Although Lara starts off with just a pistol and a handful of bullets, she’ll be able to grab more exotic weaponry as she explores the twisted recreation of her home. A few bullets or arrows later and they’ll be useless, though: ammo is worryingly scarce.
Interestingly, Crystal Dynamics had originally prototyped a version of this Uncharted-cumResident Evil mashup that required you to pick your way through the total darkness with only a flashlight, grabbing spare batteries to top up its ever-dwindling beam. “We realised we didn’t need it,” continues Hughes. “You’re never really safe in the manor – you can clear the skulls but you can’t clear the zombies – and we realised the enemies themselves were the better pressure cooker for the player than the resource dependency.”
Forage Wars
Besides, if you want to rummage for resources in order to survive, Rise Of The Tomb Raider has you covered with another mode. The Endurance survival gametype was originally released on Xbox as part of its Season Pass DLC. Not only is it included on the PS4 disc, it’s now packing a major upgrade: a two-player online co-op mode.
The premise of Endurance is simple. Lara (or Lara and her buddy Nadia, who’s introduced in the Baba Yaga and Cold Darkness Awakened modes) has been stranded in the middle of a procedurally generated forest, and has to survive for as long as possible. She needs to eat to keep her hunger meter topped up, and she must maintain her temperature gauge’s levels in order to avoid death by freezing. Hunting animals and gathering berries takes care of that first meter, while lighting campfires and huddling over flaming barrels at enemy compounds halts her mutation into a human ice lolly.
Starting out with nothing but her bow and a few arrows, you have to salvage anything and everything to survive. The more days you last, the more credits you’ll earn, and with every new day bringing colder temperatures and fiercer creatures, the pressure’s forever mounting.
Popping berries on a chilly Day 2 is a borderline holiday versus the blinding snowstorms that can hit two weeks in, masking deadly bear attacks until teeth and claws are close enough to pierce the skin. Oh, and regenerating health is totally out: you need to craft your meds and splints to fix your wounds.
“But it’s a survival game with a point,” says lead live designer Will Kerslake, who oversaw the mode’s creation. “Everything with Tomb Raider is around the concept of raiding tombs, and inside the Endurance space are caves. At the base of these we have relics, and you’re there to pick up as many artefacts as possible. So you’ve got to go into the most dangerous areas – into these tombs with lots of traps – to get as many relics as you can.”
Relics mean credits for buying bonus expedition cards for new game modifiers, and these tombs can also contain rare weapon parts and codices to instantly unlock a random skill tree ability. Every fresh run wipes the world and creates a new one, and also resets Lara’s stats. You can upgrade skill trees and weapons at campfires (if you’ve the resources to light the fire, that is) in a massively accelerated version of the main game’s progression system – play smartly and it’s possible to machine gun through the improvements.
At any point you can also light a massive signal pyre to call in an evac chopper, though doing so attracts the attention of all nearby creatures and soldiers, necessitating a final stand before rescue comes. The kicker? You’ll only get the hefty vat of credits that pay out for snaffled relics if you survive. Die before escaping with the goodies and they’ll count for nothing, meaning there’s a keenly balanced risk/reward element to every decision.
Freeze Company
With two players co-oping Endurance, things are taken up an extra notch. First of all, it should be noted that both players play as Lara – player two is always seen on-screen as Nadia, meaning nobody misses out on being the star. The underlying structure of the mode itself is the same, but the difficulty’s ramped up to ensure things aren’t too easy-going from the off. Within minutes of grabbing the pad, we discover how much Endurance improves with company.
For starters, it’s frustration free. If the pair of you stick together, scavenged items are automatically shared between both players. A joint pool of three revives means you’ve got to keep an eye on your buddy as much as you do yourself, but with both players’ food and temperature gauges always on display, that’s easily done. Can’t find your friend? Survival Instinct vision shows where they are to help reunite you both, while aiming and pressing X will create an on-screen marker to point your partner to specific areas.
It’s when we stumble into a Trinity base camp that co-op mode comes into its own. When faced with a combat situation solo, we’d either need to carefully stealth kill the enemies or take everybody down quickly, mindful of the fact that all incurred damage must be fixed with gathered resources. But with two players, it becomes a game of misdirection and hunting. Nadia fires her scavenged pistol and draws everybody’s attention, and as the Trinity soldiers charge towards her position, we loop around and take them down from behind while their gunsights are trying to follow our partner. Cruel? Perhaps. Entertaining? Definitely.
Every Endurance round keeps track of who did what for bragging rights, but the overall co-op score is shared between players to ensure both are fighting for the team. (Similarly, friendly fire’s disabled – though carelessly deployed explosives can injure partners with splash damage.) Each player can also attach two expedition cards to the quest at the start, meaning everybody’s responsible for live modifiers for any given Endurance run.
Rounding off the bumper 20 Year Celebration edition is a new Ultimate Survivor difficulty mode (which dispenses with checkpoints between campsites), the cold weather outfit-andweapon pack based on Tomb Raider III’s orange jacket and camo pants getup, and a quintet of classic Lara Croft skins. Just like how Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes let us drop in a low-poly Snake, blocky Lara Croft models from Tomb Raider (the manor outfit), Tomb Raider II (Lara’s classic look and also her bomber jacketwearing model), Tomb Raider Chronicles (the catsuit) and The Angel Of Darkness (the default look, complete with those shades) form part of the bundle.
Wait And See
There’s still an elephant in the room, and it’s the controversial decision to partner with Xbox for a timed exclusivity release in 2015, which stretched the series’ close ties with PlayStation’s audience to near snapping point. Did Crystal Dynamics understand the vocal outpouring of PS4 players’ frustrations at the news? Does it believe the 20 Year Celebration edition bonus content makes up for that disappointment?
“People will have to determine for themselves whether the game is worth the wait,” answers Hughes, diplomatically. “Without getting into much trodden territory about the decision and things like that, from the moment we released, I’ve been waiting for the day that PlayStation players can get their hands on this game. So I’m excited to have had the opportunity in the intervening time to try to make it as special a version as possible. I’ll let everyone make their own judgement, but I love our fans and I sympathise with their frustrations, whether it’s with game design or business choices. We take everybody’s feedback to heart and this launch, for me, is probably one of the most special Tomb Raider launches I’ve had since I’ve been with the franchise.”
And the million dollar question: do us PlayStation players need to steel ourselves for another timed exclusivity situation when the next Tomb Raider game is on the horizon? “Clearly I can’t speak to anything like that,” Hughes straight-bats back. “No crystal balling.”
It’s not the definitive answer we were hoping for, but we think he’s being overly cautious with that first response. With what effectively feels like two Season Passes worth of content bundled with the game, not to mention the fact that the virtual reality Blood Ties experience is a PS4- exclusive, Rise Of The Tomb Raider’s goodies categorically make up for the long wait. And, let’s not forget, holding it all together is a core campaign that could singlehandedly muscle its way into our PS4 Hall Of Fame list.
Its journey to PS4 has been a troubled one, but after all the sweat, tears and anger, Rise Of The Tomb Raider is on the cusp of reaching its final destination. And it’s saved the very best for last. Once again: Lara’s home.
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