However, if you’re short on time or not interested in seeing what extra surprises Tomb Raider has to offer, you can simply speed through the story with no hurdles. The tombs’ puzzles are challenging, but won’t take you hours to complete.

These little diversions never take especially long, but are just as satisfying as a multi-branch quest. The games manage to direct you along from story beat to story beat, but if you find a tomb you want to venture into, or a bear you’d like to tackle, you can do that, too.

This is not the case for the Tomb Raider games, though, which walk that fine line between a linear path and a true open world. Many players, for example, would find themselves seriously over-leveled after spending hours in Dragon Age: Inquisition’s starting area, rather than moving on to other parts of the game. Some games also do a poor job sign-posting which quests are truly worth your time or how many quests you really need to do to get the most out of a specific place. Many open-world games require you to complete dozens of side quests to truly explore an area, and even progress your character. 'Rise of the Tomb Raider' is sprinkled with optional tombs that provide satisfying puzzles. Because of this, Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider just happen to be the best open-world games for busy people. And while there’s an endless amount of tombs to explore and items to collect, the game is very respectful of players’ time, thanks to some clever design elements. But the maps, divided into manageable quadrants, feel huge. The Tomb Raider games play out in a single setting, for the most part - an uncharted Japanese island, a lost Siberian mountain valley. The newest Tomb Raider games strike the perfect balance between an open-world and linear game, and in doing so they’ve become some of the most economical open time-wasters today. A prime example of this is the recent Tomb Raider reboots.

There are some exceptions, though, that are a bit less demanding but just as rewarding. You might struggle to beat one of these games when you only have a few hours a week to dedicate to video games. However, these games, while wonderful, often require a heavy time investment, with some taking tens - and even occasionally hundreds - of hours to beat. After all, they give the people what they want: endless fantasy realms to explore, plenty of player choice, and a delightful amalgamation of genres (shooters, adventure, RPGs, to name but a few). Big, sweeping open-world games are here to stay.

Game tomb raider