8. Rise Of The Tomb Raider Successfully Combines New & Old Styles
Crystal Dynamics' 2013 reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise took gamers by storm, not simply bringing Lara Croft back to her glory days but reinventing the franchise for a new generation, and ensuring that she's never been better. Combining a Lara Croft that didn't seem quite so much a sexual object, but more a strong-yet-human character, with some immaculate Uncharted-inspired gameplay mechanics, Tomb Raider was one of the best games of 2013, and with its critical and commercial success, would lead to the snappy production of a sequel. Ignore the clunky title and there's every expectation that Rise of the Tomb Raider will build on the brilliant foundation set by the previous game. Lara is no longer the newbie she was prior, and as is necessary going by the title, we fully expect to see Lara actually exploring some proper tombs this time around (rather than the fun if piecemeal mini-games of the previous game). What we want from Tomb Raider 2 is for Crystal Dynamics to meld the new gamepaly mechanics with the adventurous explorative elements of the previous games: give us globe-trotting missions, but don't give us the irritating controls and sloppy animation of the earlier games in the franchise. We're absolutely sure CD realise that this is what the fanbase wants, and will deliver accordingly.