Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider closed out the rebooted Lara Croft trilogy, this time set in the dense jungles of Central America, where Lara tries to stop the organization Trinity from triggering an ancient Mayan apocalypse that she herself partly and unwittingly set in motion. The story placed greater emphasis on Lara's transformation into a seasoned, but also darker and more conflicted character, who must bear the weight of her own decisions.

The game deepened the elements that made the series famous — climbing rock faces and temples, solving environmental puzzles in vast tombs, and stealthy action in dense terrain, complemented by new options for mud camouflage and underwater exploration of sprawling cave systems. On Xbox One the game excelled with dense jungle vegetation, elaborate underground complexes, and atmospheric music underscoring Mayan mythology and the sanctity of the visited sites, while gunfight sequences receded further into the background in favor of exploration and puzzles.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider was received as a dignified, if not revolutionary, conclusion to the trilogy, with reviewers particularly praising the tombs and atmosphere but noting a slower action pace compared to previous entries. The game thus closed out the series reboot on a positive, if calmer, note and confirmed that an emphasis on exploration and puzzles can work just as well as the pure action the series had foregrounded earlier, offering a more balanced conclusion to the whole story arc. The elaborate tombs rank among the largest and most inventive in the entire rebooted trilogy and alone form a large part of the value the game offers players. An optional higher puzzle difficulty setting further gave more experienced players a chance to face a genuine challenge without relying on hints, meeting the needs of longtime fans of adventure platformers built around logic.

Why play it: Thanks to the largest and most inventive tombs of the entire rebooted trilogy and a more balanced emphasis on exploration and puzzles, it's worth finishing Lara Croft's story with a calmer but honest conclusion.