In anticipation Shadow Of The Tomb Raider being released this September on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, the good people from Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics held an event at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles where they gave journalists an opportunity to play the opening level of the game. What follows are my impressions of it.
Suffice it to say, some spoilers follow. But only some.
Originally released on Xbox One and PC, the third-person acrobatic action game Rise Of The Tomb Raider was an invigorating adventure that was easily one of the year’s best games and a worthy successor to 2013’s Tomb Raider. Now we have Rise Of The Tomb Raider 20 Year Celebration (PlayStation 4), which not only brings this game to Sony’s system, but it also includes both new and previously available story add-ons and challenge modes, making this the definitive edition of a great game.
One day, someone will write a tell-all book about what it’s like being a video game journalist. But today is not that day. Which is good because I’ve been writing about games for more than twenty years and I’m getting bored just thinking about it.
Instead, today is the day you get to read about what it’s been like for video game journalist Russ Pitts to write his second memoir, Sex, Drugs, And Cartoon Violence: My Decade As A Video Game Journalist (paperback, digital). The follow-up to last year’s Eagle Semen: The Story Of TechTV Employee Number One, the book chronicles Pitts’ ten year stint at Polygon (where he was one of the Founding Editors and their former Features Editor) and The Escapist (where he held multiple titles including Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Director), as well as his time contributing to IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku, and other gaming outlets.
While 2015 wasn’t the best year for video games, there were a bunch that I had a lot of fun playing.
Here now, in no particular order, are the best games I played in 2015.
When it came out in 2013, Tomb Raider rebooted this third-person action series in such grand style that it was easily one of that year’s best games. So it should come as no surprise that its sequel, Rise Of The Tomb Raider (Xbox One, Xbox 360…for now), largely follows the same template, and is thus not only as invigorating and addictive, but is also easily one of this year’s best games.