E3 2015: 12 Biggest Moments From Microsoft's Xbox Conference

4. Rise Of The Tomb Raider

It's only a timed exclusive, but Microsoft made the most of Crystal Dynamics' first available gameplay demo of Rise of the Tomb Raider by dropping it halfway through their conference. As you'll see with many games, it can be very hard to demo to a large audience. PR teams seem to think people essentially want to see reams and reams of explosions and epic set-pieces otherwise they might turn away - and thus Tomb Raider's demo was essentially Lara vs. A Mountainside, the victor only just barely being Ms. Croft as she got battered by a storm in the middle of some precarious rock-climbing. The things that made 2013's Tomb Raider such an incredibly underrated little gem were not in how much punishment and 'character building' the could show Lara enduring, but how you as a player got her out of it. The footage shown here was promising, but we need to see more of things like grabbing dirt to throw in soldier's eyes, the melee attack system and the various ways to approach enemy locations.