Rise of the Tomb Raider - First Hour

3 years of waiting - 3 months of Xbox jealousy

Many of you on PC will know our first AAA game of the year is Square Enix's Rise of the Tomb Raider -- and let me just say this game is gorgeous.

I preordered it a few days ago (for those wondering if that was a good idea, I have a post on that), preloaded it and played it at the strike of noon.

Maxed-out the settings immediately -- which you can very well do on am Nvidia 960 or 970.

If you have a 980, 980 ti or Titan X -- then beast; but definitely play this on the Nvidia 9-series if you're team green.

For those on ATI AMD, I feel sorry for you. Even though Lara's hair will look just as good.

When I launched the first level -- a snowy disaster zone -- I felt like taking a plunge off the cliff for fun, just like the original -- and Halo of course. The physics are fantastic, by the way.

The flurries fell so naturally and the footprint tracks in the crisp, white snow are better than Arkham Origins and Battlefront combined.

I really felt the biting chills as the environment crumbled into avalanche, trudging through the storm with Jonah and needing to climb up the mountains use the famous craggy wall tool, but I won't spoil anything else about that part.

Everyone thinks Lara is insane, just like her unwell Father once was.

Whether she is or isn't -- Lara's bent on finding the truth about immortality.

But everyone knows she's already found it -- Lara survives everything. Do you know how many times I've resurrected in that game?

But that's what makes it so incredible! When you're playing, you're like "How? I'm not going to survive this part" and most times you don't.

It's how as Lara trumps all odds and like many open-world games -- there's so many ways to do that.

Put simply, there are a lot of great game intros; but for me, this one is the most memorable intro I've played since Mass Effect 2.