Sharpen your wits — and your sticks — in these lawless worlds
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Square Enix, Xbox One, PS4, PC)
— If you only associate Lara Croft with short shorts and a physics-defying chest, then you haven’t played one of her games since the Tomb Raider franchise got a reboot in 2013. The series’ titular star shrank in bra size and grew as a character, becoming the ultimate off-the-grid survivor. That game marooned teenage Croft on an island with the sole goal of staying alive rather than slaying Eurothugs or snatching relics. The 2015 sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, restored a crucial element lost in the reboot’s woods: tombs worth raiding. Now, Shadow of the Tomb Raider completes the so-called “survivor trilogy” by mixing Croft’s Bear Grylls-style wilderness skills with an epic quest for ancient doodads.
In this game’s jungles and tombs, we see Lara demonstrating everything she learned as an alumnus of her last two adventures. She spelunks sprawling caverns and explores hidden cities crammed with traps and puzzles that require actual cunning rather than random item collection. You have more control than ever — the best in the series — over Lara’s shimmying, leaping, and rope-swinging abilities, to the point where exploring actually feels thrilling and even dangerous. In between the raiding parties, she’s free to explore vibrant villages or go all “snake eater” in the wilderness, taking out thugs with sneak-and-strike guerrilla tactics that have become the new normal for this series.
But just as her assassin abilities peak, Lara realizes she still has some growing up to do. Deep in a Mexican Mayan tomb, she recovers an artifact with doomsday potential. Suddenly, Lara learns that her freewheeling approach to relic-hunting — grab the artifacts before the bad guys do — might unleash an actual apocalypse. It’s an intriguing twist in this trilogy’s charting of Croft’s formative years, and a strong sign that her days of mini-shorts and imperialist tomb raiding are dead and buried.
Metro Exodus (Deep Silver, Xbox One, PS4, PC)
— Good luck eking out a living in Metro Exodus’s radioactive wasteland, where you’ll find no phones, lights, or Instagram, and no remaining limbs if you’re not careful. Wield homemade weapons and skulk through ruins crawling with mutants in this nightmarish trek through postapocalyptic Moscow.
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games, Xbox 360, PS3)
— Survive off the grid at your home on the range in this lead-slinging homage to spaghetti westerns. Filled with steamboat shootouts, stage-coach robberies, and showdowns at high noon, it’s the best Wild West game you can play until the sequel launches in October.
Subnautica (Unknown Worlds Entertainment, Xbox One, PC)
— Like a videogame version of the movie Cast Away but with a sci-fi twist, Subnautica ditches players in a tropical sea on a distant planet. Scour coral reefs and deep-ocean vents for food, water, and materials to repair your ship while trying to stay free of the alien fauna’s food chain.
State of Decay 2 (Microsoft Studios, Xbox One, PC)
— GTA meets The Walking Dead in this wide-open adventure set in a zombie-infested world. Build a base with up to three pals and embark on raiding missions while managing limited resources and your own team of survivors. Just be ready to put a bullet in your friends’ heads if they succumb to the zombie blood plague.
