X15 Toronto: Rise of the Tomb Raider Another Cut-and-Paste Puzzle Adventure?

I was treated to a 15 minute demo of one of the playable tombs in the upcoming Rise of the Tomb Raider for Xbox One. Members of the development were on-hand at X15 in Toronto to show off the game and answer any questions we may have had.

To be fair, the game does look great, and the developers mentioned a desire to make Lara more believable than ever. One example of this is when Lara gets out of the water she may cough up some water, and she will wring the water out of her ponytail. Everything they showed, however, was a climbing mechanic we have seen in every adventure game since the Xbox 360 and basic puzzle mechanics that have been used over and over again.

I am definitely looking forward to playing this title, and we will have a review up soon after we receive our review copy from Microsoft. It is hard to shake the unnerving feeling I have. However, with a strong story, varying environments, and good combat game play, Rise of the Tomb Raider could really shine. It is unfortunate that I didn’t see any of that in the demo we were shown.

There is still a long ways to go until the launch of this title, and we were only shown a tiny portion of what the full game has to offer; there is definitely room for improvement between now and release day.