I loved Rise of the Tomb Raider when it came out a couple of years ago, but since I completed most of the game I felt little reason to go back. However, since the game has been prominently used in Microsoft’s advertising for the Xbox One X I thought I should give it a try. Because I don’t have a 4K TV the Native 4K mode looked okay, but it wasn’t mind blowing. The Enriched Visuals mode on the other hand was a massive step up. It looked great: a cleaner picture, better shadows and lighting, and better effects. The High Framerate mode was also impressive. It was much easier to control Lara, and it was silky smooth, but it was hard give up the visual fidelity of the Enriched Visuals mode. I am not sure I am going to play much more Rise of the Tomb Raider, but it was quite the tech demo for what the Xbox One X can do, and hopefully more developers give us the type of graphical options that Nixxes did.
Next up The Elder Scrolls Online!
The Elder Scrolls online got new textures for Xbox One X and displays in Native 4K, so what that meant for me, the lowly 1080p TV user, is that it looks much crisper. The textures are all crystal clear, and there are very few jagged lines. As an MMO, this game was never pushing the boundaries of graphical fidelity, but this is a solid update for people who still play this game. The ‘just one more quest’ hook almost had me trapped for a while. It is not the showcase that Rise of the Tomb Raider is, but The Elder Scrolls Online still looks pretty good.
After playing these two games, I am hopeful that more games push out their Xbox One X patches soon because I am liking what I have been seeing!