The Untimely Release of Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider released about 3 months ago now but it hasn’t seen the light of day since, no pun intended. In fact, about a month after its release, it went on sale! Can you imagine what had to happen for an AAA title as renowned as Tomb Raider to be put into a position like that?

Shadow of the Tomb Raider came out on the 14^th of September. Its release window was unfortunately poorly timed as Dragon Quest XI came out on the 4^th of September and Spider-Man PS4 came out on the 7^th of September. These two games basically stole the market from Tomb Raider; DQXI in Japan (mostly) and Spidey globally. In fact, going further down the month you can even find Valkyria Chronicles 4 which probably didn’t pose much of a threat to a heavy hitter like Tomb Raider but still incentivized an alternative to a game already forgotten by the masses.

I haven’t played Shadow yet but from what most people are saying, it’s a pretty decent game that could have used a bit more work. It’s definitely not bad but it certainly wasn’t life changing. This obviously didn’t help it stand out any further as news sites would write a simple review about it, probably drop a podcast about its untimely release and move on. If it was excellent, you’d find more posts detailing how gosh darn good it is all while providing free advertising for a game that would have otherwise failed in the darkness (not a pun).

Spider-Man (aka the most hyped game for that month) released and excelled past the hype! It went above and beyond! Doing that didn’t only shame TR, it completely over-shadowed (I swear I’m not doing this on purpose) the release as people were freeing their schedule just to get their hands on everyone’s favourite web slinger. Spidey was winning even before it was released!

I’ve been a fan of the reboot series for a while now. I got the first one soon after its release and enjoyed the whole survive and be stronger vibe along with the bow and arrow combat. If you must know, it came out at a time when the Arrow TV series was gaining traction and video games were beginning to show signs of trend-focused mechanics. In this case, it was the bow and arrow.

Having played and enjoyed the game, I got the second one on the day of its release after a short internal debate between getting it or X-Com 2. I loved the second one even more and thought it was a great direction to head into for a TR game. I only needed that to be bigger and have more things to do.

But when the third TR game hit, I was swamped with work, had a huge hype for Spider-Man and a desire to play VC4 after. I even considered DQXI which would have meant more internal debates on which one to get first. Ultimately, I decided to withhold on purchasing TR as I played the previous two games on my PC. Currently though, my PC won’t be able to run the third title and playing it on my PS4 just seems like a break of tradition for me.

It really is unfortunate to see all the bad Steam reviews come in just because this game went on sale too soon. I have a whole other argument against those people but perhaps that can come at another time. I will still hold my purchase for TR for now and get it sometime in the future when I finally upgrade my PC. In the meantime, I’ll see what else I can get my hands on.