Tomb Raider's Balanced Rise to the Top

Climbing in video games can be so different. Often, it’s just a single collision hit that is enough to automatically move up. It can be about the push-and-pull of stamina meters and weather conditions, as in modern Zeldas. Jusant turns the mountain I’m climbing into a canvas and me into a painter. Cairn makes it very, if not overly, mechanical. And Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, extremely frustrating in a good way.

But what about the Uncharted school of climbing? The one not really about climbing but about the pacing of environmental exploration? Where I’m not really climbing walls, I’m jumping between ledges? There are rarely different pathways, after all. Dangerous-looking slips and falling boulders are never actually dangerous. Push-and-pull is just gone here, it’s more or less an elaborate squeeze-through scene. Or is it?

The answer is not that simple even throughout the Uncharted series, but the rebooted Tomb Raider of 2013, one game that followed that Naughty Dog formula mostly to a tee, and Rise of the Tomb Raider, it’s more confident successor, make even a stronger case. Introducing the climbing axe made a huge difference: it’s no longer about ledges, it’s about full vertical spaces. There’s a quick-time event that makes it just a little bit risky after jumps. I choose my paths, even if just a little, and the Rise upgrades to climbing enable an even more expressive and slicker aftertaste. One area where follower is much more versatile and interesting that followee, not to mention that the pickaxe is a double-edged sword. In the sense that it’s also a weapon!