Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration - PlayStation 4

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2015's Rise of the Tomb Raider see's Camilla Luddington's Lara Croft return in tow with 2013's Tomb Raider stalwart Jonah (once again voiced by Earl Baylon) in yet another truly action packed game which starts off getting you used to the traversal and exploration mechanic searching for the lost city of Kitezh in the mountains of Siberia, flashes back to 2 weeks earlier in London before then plunging you head first into a genuinely stunning backstory adventure in the Tomb of The Prophet set in Syria, in which we finally come into contact with this outing's villains, the sinister organisation known only as Trinity - as hinted at in the previous 2013 game...And all this before you even set up your first base camp.Really this outing takes everything that worked in 2013's game and starts out with a battle hardened heroine already more than capable of looking after herself: everything has been tweaked, expanded and improved on - you have two main central hub areas, one set in a former Soviet era Gulag with its own gristly history to tell and the other set in a Hidden Valley - both of which require many trials and tribulations to reach and, once you're there - many, many side quests and extra things to explore, this on top of a yet again a competent albeit not quite as gripping storyline as experienced previously.My only major criticisms here is the sheer abundance of stuff you can do: it's a little distracting and often works counter to whatever imperative is set by the main game story. Say for example you're clearing the Gulag in order to get to the Hidden Valley: on top of the established hunting for parts and natural resources in order to craft things like extra weapons, there's an animal to hunt, caves to locate and explore and - after a certain point - NPC's who give you rather weak little fetch-quests to find something they NPC character can often see from their position, they're just apparently too lazy to go off and get it.This isn't too bad in the Gulag set area but in the Hidden Valley it gets way out of hand: whilst supposedly preparing for a fight-to-the-death battle with Trinity, Lara can find herself occupied with yet more pointless fetch-quests as well as exploring optional tombs, now for cash which you can then spend with a handy arms dealer to gain better weapons and equipment.One particularly hilarious such side quest has you rounding up pigs for a female resistance fighter who, despite being able to see the pigs from her own back porch, finds herself too busy to jog the 100 feet or so to where the pigs are and instead expect Lara to do the deed for her....This while supposedly preparing for a full-scale war.Obviously the intent is to make what remains ultimately a very linear game feel a little more open world and - if you've played through already - your second play through is going to be more for completions sakes rather than following the main story.Nevertheless, a lot of it is very immersion breaking and the whole point of these reboot games, as established in 2013's Tomb Raider - is immersion is this game's genuine strong point: you're in it for the action/adventure/story set in fantastic and highly detailed environments.My other gripe concerns the story - not really a spoiler but the resolution concerns, yet again, Lara running into an impossibly ancient army of undying warriors pretty much copied and pasted from Yamatai's Storm Guard, even requiring you to sneak past them unobserved while they grunt and howl and make scary noises in the periphery of your vision as you had to do the previous game.Much as I love a good call-back, there's nodding to a previous adventure and there's basically reusing it and, as good call-backs go - this isn't one and - once again - you're plunged into an environment on the one hand filled with great narrative peril requiring immediate action and, at the same time, a huge area (on a par with Tomb Raider's Shanty Town) with a bewildering amount of artifacts, relics, coins and documents to pick up and find....It's all too, too much stuff competing with what should be a compelling, forward moving plot.This being said: you can't fault either the level design, exploration and combat mechanics as well as open choice as to how to clear a combat area: now there are multiple ways to get past enemy soldiers, everything from full-on guns blazing assault to stealth, reward is also given for creative use of the environment - all of which is a fancy way of saying there are multiple ways to tackle any combat situation thus keeping subsequent play through's fresh and entertaining.This time out Lara can sprint as well as swim and an expanded crafting section allows her to now craft arrows - including exploding, fire, silent, poisonous and hulucinagenic - as well as ammunition and improvised grenades out of coffee cans.All this plus all released DLC included on the physical disc - this includes:Baba Yaga: The Temple of the WitchCold Darkness AwakenedBlood Ties as well as Lara's Nightmare.All hugely good fun plus, once you've played through Endurance Mode becomes active which involves its own procedurally generated levels and numerous survival challenges not just against wild beasts but also the freezing environment - this alone can keep you occupied for weeks and this isn't even touching Expeditions which allow you to play through already played levels with various unique challenges and rewards.All in this seriously is an enormous bundle of stuff, a little too much at times, and this is my only lasting criticism.Enjoyable as this definitive version of Rise of The Tomb Raider is - the plot often competes with all the pretty much superfluous fetch-quest stuff packed into it, a lot of which really is rudimentary - perfunctory at best - as if some executive introduced the buzz word "open world" and the developers were forced to cram a lot of this stuff in rather that it genuinely being an organic offshoot of both the environment and plot....On saying that though, chicken clay-pigeon shooting (and I kid you not, it is a thing and it's one of the awards available) never gets old - no matter how entirely pointless it actually is - it's just bizarrely funny every time you catch a chicken you can just lob it into the air and shoot it for absolutely no sane reason...All in, It's still an 11/10 for the game. The story, while not quite as compelling as the series 2013 debut, is serviceable and pitches Lara against villains worthy of any descent Bond movie.Plus, you get to take down a Helicopter Gunship....