Written by Nathan Goufas
Tomb Raider is a reboot in the long running franchise of the same name, but don’t expect the same type of game you might have played in the past. Tomb Raider provides an exciting adventure with solid gameplay mechanics to back it up, however if the traditional style of gameplay found in past installments is what you’re looking for, you won’t find it here. Instead Tomb Raider has been reborn and remade for the modern gaming era, which is neither for better or for worse.
While not everything about the long-running franchise has been changed, the game still stars female explorer Lara Croft, you’ll no longer be just exploring tombs, finding levers to flip and puzzles to solve. The first thing you’ll notice about Tomb Raider is that it’s an incredibly linear game. From the time you start the main story, and all the way through the end, there’s always a clear path of where you’re supposed to go. Only bits of exploring are present, in fact exploring is how you find the few hidden tombs to raid, which is more or less a throwback to the classic games. However the exploration feels like it’s there just for padding. Going outside of the main path rewards you with mostly pointless collectables and experience points, with few collectibles actually proving to be useful and worth the effort.
Each section or stage of the game has Lara traversing through the environments that consists of a lot of scripted events; that includes quite a few QTEs as well as a lot of shootouts with enemies. It’s actually kind of surprising how much shooting there is in the game. More often than not when you come across a new area with enemies, you can almost be sure that you’ll be finding yourself behind cover in order to take out enemies. It’s a relief that the shooting in Tomb Raider is actually quite good, giving you a feeling of satisfaction after clearing out areas. Lara is given all the tools she needs and then some in order to make the player feel like a one woman army.
Tomb Raider’s story is probably the most memorable thing about it. Not only is it the most familiar aspect compared to the previous games, but it’s genuinely exciting and really draws you into the game. With the game being a reboot, it introduces you to the origins of a young Lara, giving us more of an insight and understanding into the character as we go along. Lara is part of a reality television show which is looking for the lost island of Yamatai. During an exploration trip to find the island, Lara heads out and becomes shipwrecked during a freak storm. Once she awakens she finds that the island she landed on is overrun with violent cult members. As Lara goes through her journey and locates her stranded crewmember friends you’ll learn more about them as the story continues, and actually start to care about them. As the story came to its climax I found it to be actually difficult to put the game down. The story and characters became so interesting and fun to follow that I wish there had been more of it.
Lara’s latest adventure is also her best looking yet. From beginning to end Tomb Raider is nothing short of a fantastic looking game. It incorporates some really well done lighting and texture work that really put it up to the top; it’s not the best looking game on a current platform but it’s certainly up there. Mix that with some really good sound design and you’ve got something even more special. Guns, explosions, fire all sound great together and really help bring the visuals home. You can tell that Tomb Raider from top to bottom is a well-polished game and that really helps make it as complete as it is.
All around Tomb Raider is a good game. It took me around eleven hours to complete so it’s definitely not a short adventure, and can definitely warrant multiple runs. It also includes an online multiplayer mode if you happen to want even more out of it. My biggest gripe however comes with the fact that Tomb Raider’s main gameplay focus can be found in other games. Everything Tomb Raider does, it does well. But other games do the same things just as well and in some instances they do it even better.
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