It starts for Lara in the cold wilderness, injured, and trying to avoid confrontation with a shady organisation. This is where she grabs the resources she needs; wood to make a fire, hand in the stomach of a recently slain deer for the gut string, poking around tree stumps for fungi. There are sixteen different resources to use, apparently, each helping Lara craft different ammo types and other gear essential to survival, which she can do on the fly as she stumbles around the snowscape.

She climbs trees to get the drop on goons, swims through water to avoid conflict, crafts petrol bombs to thin out a crowd, distracts with arrows. Spirit and spit are more important here than skill and technology. Northlanders is an ongoing series written by Brian Wood and published by DC comics under its Vertigo imprint.

It is unique in that it has no recurring main characters. Each story arc is completely self-contained. The eponymous Sven of this first volume is never seen again in subsequent comics. Anyway, on with it, then. Volume 1 collects issues 1- 8 of Northlanders, encompassing the first story arc "Sven: The Returned. You'll have to return to the main room to get one.

Follow the passageway on the right side of the room when facing the wooden door. Pick up some salvage behind the ornate window grate. Then break down the crumbling wall at the end of the passageway with your axe. Swim back across the big pool to the ledge with the oil cans Climb onto the ledge above and jump to grab the horizontal beam.

We got a look at one of the first tombs Lara will explore, the Prophet's Tomb, during a recent visit to developer Crystal Dynamics. For Rise of the Tomb Raider's tombs, the studio aims to celebrate Tomb Raider's classic physics-based puzzles while wrapping them in the more modern aesthetic of the new series--and, of course, taking advantage of the new console generation's power. Upon entering this tomb, Lara paused to investigate runes cut into the side of a stone pillar.

A small icon appeared in the corner of the screen noting that Lara had gained some language experience by reading them. I adore this small additional feature, because it shows Lara progressing not only physically, but mentally; she's earning her chops as a hardcore archeologist, and with the territory comes a lot of memorization and book smarts.

So Lara's not only learning how to stealth kill and shoot straight--she's building up cerebral experience as well. Throughout Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara will continue to pick up these skills by investigating documents and artifacts, allowing her to read foreign text scattered on objects throughout areas and ultimately learn more about the world she's exploring. Environments in Rise of the Tomb Raider are dangerous.

I watched as Lara approached the tomb, balancing precariously on a thin stone bridge only to have it crumble beneath her as she neared the other side. Falling, Lara whipped out her climbing axe, snagging it on the edge of the broken stone and using it to move laterally across its ruins to safer ground. Swinging back up onto her feet, she crossed the remaining ground between her and the tomb's entrance and slipped inside.

After moving through a narrow crawl space littered with scorpions and corpses, Lara kicked through a dilapidated stone wall to reveal a small alcove. Water sloshed around her ankles. The only way out was upward, but there was no way for Lara to reach the waiting platform. After a quick look around the room, Lara took her climbing axe to a stone wall leaking water.