Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration

Thanks Crystal Dynamics & CD Project Red. Finally, the entire Survivor Trilogy is available on GOG & DRM-free! I haven't been as excited about an email as I was about this one in a long time. I bought it immediately! For me, it's the best Lara Croft yet (the one from the bad anime does not count). I love the guerrilla gameplay and the bow-and-arrow combat.

Wow -2 Days into the GOG Anniversary and the second day of making some of my most wished for games available DRM free. Cannot wait to see what comes next! Great memories of playing all three of the updated Tomb raider games, with the latter two now available via GOG to own forever. 5 stars for the game from me..but... A huge thank you to the GOG dev's who need to work on the code to make games like this DRM free and compatible with operating systems into the future. Both Rise and Shadow hold up extremely well and are well-deserving of the GOG Game preservation seal of approval. I personally rate Shadow slightly ahead of Rise, but I could see why someone would reverse that order and not be able to argue with them! For anyone thinking of switching to Linux Gaming: Playing on Linux will add additional future operating system resiliency/compatibility for games like this through future Wine/Proton updates. It's easy to use/configure GOG games via Heroic Games launcher -just check on ProtonDB that the game is compatible first -most are/will be if they are DRM/anti-cheat free.

Fantastic game, definitely one of the most beautiful third-person adventure games of recent years! and finally DRM free <3

I'm normally not one to write reviews unless I either have some concerns or the game is excellent. This game is both; so best to make showing both positive and negative. Firstly, the actual game itself is excellent (as is for the rest of the reboot trilogy for Tomb Raider in general), with the story gripping to keep you engaged with not just how it controls; but the exploration and adventure of travelling to various locations is always a sight to behold. It also marks an improvement over the previous game as its not tied to one island, but different landscapes and terrains that really give much needed variety of locales to use, even down to exploring Croft Manor to learn more of Lara's backstory. The game also handles wonderfully, though built more like you need to be mindful of your surroundings rather than being purely action and reaction based. That's what the quick time events do. What matters most of all is that you really get the passion, yet crazed feeling of Lara traveling on this quest to find the secrets to immortality to not only prove her father's legacy, but to stop the evil corporations from harnessing such dangerous power at hand. It's truly playing through a Hollywood blockbuster and you get to see Lara grow from survivor to true treasure hunter, especially going into the 3rd game. While the game itself is excellent, there are a few notable nitpicks I have with both the graphical and technical side of things. Firstly, the environment around you is vast, but traversing through it is a bit of a time sink as you jump from tree to tree trying to get the right vantage point. The game itself leans into being a action focused game than stealth; which personally I'm good with, but I know some folks would want to make a purely stealth run of the game so its worth mentioning. The upgrade system and UI is also kind of clunky and cluttered when accessing it at campfires, where its not really intuitive on what kind of upgrades need what kind of component you need to get it done; unless you hike your way back to one, only to have to get through a bunch of menus to see it. Finally, the main reasons I wanted to write the review in the first place was to address some graphical issues to GoG directly and is really the only reasons why I gave this 5 star game a 4 Star review. If these 2 main issues said below here are addressed, I'll for sure update it to 5 stars as I bought this game 2 times already and having GoG putting it into the Preservation Program is outstanding (along with all of their work). My first issue stems from how the game's major graphical bug makes characters and environment textures turn solid black and flickering when having both DirectX12 and Tessellation on, especially in higher resolutions like 4K. I'm not certain how this works, maybe it has to do with how light and shadows glitch out when Tessellation is turned on for the model rendering; but I bought this in hopes that with it being in the Preservation Program, they addressed it, which it hasn't. Hopefully someone could look into the code to be able to fix this, just as they did working out the defunct multiplayer. (which is a godsend of optimizing the game, thank you!) The other major issue I have and it's actually more of a nitpick is needed additional controller support for DualSense and DualShock4 controllers, along with adding Playstation UI Button prompts. I mainly play with consoles and I'm used to using a controller to play my games, so additional controller supports would be appreciated; though not a major priority as I can use programs like DS4Windows to emulate an Xbox controller or even Mouse/Keyboard. Edit: Looking into past reviews, another great issue to also address is additional language support, making sure the game's various dubs and subtitles are added back into the game; from the original release. But given I only speak and understand English, it wasn't much of a big deal to me personally, but lots of others would need it considerably more; so best to address this as soon as its workable to implement. As a last positive note, thank you so much GoG for all the hard work you're doing to ensure our games STAY our games and you are a such a blessing in these unsettling times in the games industry these days. Keep up your outstanding work and cheers to all the incredible teams and members working on these games for your platform!