Despite falling just short of perfection, Tomb Raider is well worth your time.
I got my first game console when I was 12. Back then, my parents weren’t fond of the prospect of games taking up my free time. However, I was able to convince them that all I wanted for that 12th birthday was a Dreamcast and the latest Sonic games, Sonic Adventure and Sonic Shuffle (I was a bigSonic kid). For weeks after I got the system, those were the only games I’d play, but after my excitement for them had died down, I discovered that a demo disc had also come with my system. Not having anything else to play, but hungering for more, I put the disc in and booted up the first game that caught my eye: Tomb Raider. The demo started in a dark cave, and all I knew was that I was controlling a character with two guns, a relatively different gaming experience from my history of platformers and Pokémon. Now, as a gamer, I don’t typically deal well with scary, or sometimes even moody, games. I tend to mentally insert too much of myself into the game’s world and end up getting freaked out way too easily, and that’s after more than a decade of gaming. So, you can imagine how well my first encounter with Lara Croft went. The first enemies I encountered I shot blindly at, displaying the accuracy of a Stormtrooper. I was used to running fast and collecting rings, not shooting alligators in a dimly lit cave, where anything could be lurking in the shadows. Over the years I’ve attempted to play a variety of different Tomb Raider games, but have never really gotten into the series. That is, until this year’s reboot of the franchise.
In Tomb Raider, it feels like the Crystal Dynamics team took a look back at this generation of games and cherry-picked all of the best gameplay systems, forming a cohesive summary of the past 8 years of gaming while giving us a glimpse of what we might expect in the future. The game’s world is not linear, but not completely open either, opting for an almost Metroidvania-like approach to exploring and progressing through the story. Throughout the game there are parts of the map closed off to the player until they get the gear they need to open them up. The maps and areas are well designed, so you’re never restricted from proceeding through the game’s narrative and you don’t tend to find yourself forced to backtrack through areas you’ve already been through. You level up both Lara and your weapons at campsites, which also allow for quick travel around the island to places you’ve explored earlier in the story. While not necessary to finish the game, you’ll want to go back and explore the areas you’ve already made your way through if you want to find all of the game’s numerous collectibles.
The combat in Tomb Raider has been polished to the extreme, displaying a kind of care and attention to detail rarely seen in today’s games. Weapons are responsive and fun, and more often than not I found myself enjoying sneaking around and silently taking out enemies with my bow (a rarity for me, as I’m more of a charge in guns blazing kind of guy). However, when situations became more dire, I had no problem switching it up between the other weapons in the game, using a rifle or my napalm arrows to vanquish my foes in a more stylistic manner. It’s this kind of versatility that makes every item and upgrade feel useful in driving Lara toward her next target, making for a supremely satisfying combat experience. When in combat, every weapon feels unique, and the game takes one of the smarter approaches to cover tactics that I’ve seen in a long time. When there are enemies about, Lara will crouch down and draw her weapon. Moving near cover will cause her to automatically hide behind it with no prompt from the player. Once your enemies have been dispatched, she’ll stand up and holster her weapon, providing useful feedback that lets the player know that danger has passed. In addition, the game’s UI is pleasantly minimal – ammo counters and health indicators only appear when necessary in combat, leaving most of the game free of on-screen clutter. This works perfectly in tandem with the game’s art direction and lighting, which is able to create a creepy atmosphere that draws the player in and leaves them wary while not being so overbearingly frightening as to drive away more skittish players such as myself.
The game has a number of clever environment-based puzzles, found in both the story and a number of optional tombs. While these were an interesting distraction and a welcome breather between combat scenes, I felt there simply weren’t enough of them. The optional tombs were fun to play through, and gave a reasonable award for their completion, but they were far too simple, taking just a few minutes to complete and featuring only a single puzzle mechanic instead of anything more complex. Hopefully future entries in the franchise will have more of this type of gameplay as Lara becomes more the raider of tombs we’ve been used to in previous games.
The game’s story has been one of the more controversial subjects in gaming over the past few months, bringing into question how the Crystal Dynamics team would treat Lara as a character. Despite some pitfalls in the game’s marketing, the story told within is well crafted, weaving a tale of a survivor coming into her own in the most unlikely of elements. The narrative tries to do something not often seen in games: give the main character a believable story arc that leaves them changed after the harrowing events they’ve endured. In many aspects, Tomb Raider succeeds – the Lara Croft you meet at the beginning of the game is definitely not the one you leave at the end, and the character moments you get between those two points show a careful evolution of her character. However, Tomb Raider’s story often doesn’t line up with its gameplay, which tends to have the player mowing down enemies in a very Uncharted-like manner. At times this leaves the story and gameplay feeling at odds with one another, struggling to tell its story while indulging in its excellent game systems that hinge so heavily on violence. In the latter third of the game, this discrepancy between story and gameplay is less apparent. At that point Lara is far more gung-ho, driving herself through a number of insane set pieces that would give any Uncharted game a run for its money.
What’s been crafted here is a smart, mature reimagining of one of gaming’s more iconic characters
Crystal Dynamics did not have an enviable job in rebooting Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider franchise. They were coming at this project after years of Croft being the butt of industry jokes and criticism, seen as a ridiculously over-sexualized caricature seemingly born straight out of a high schooler’s fantasy. On top of that, Naughty Dog had been dominating the Indiana-Jones-as-a-game genre for the majority of the generation with their Uncharted series. Despite all of these setbacks, what’s been crafted here is a smart, mature reimagining of one of gaming’s more iconic characters, treating her with the respect she deserves and giving her ailing franchise the breath of fresh air it needed. There are definitely some aspects of the game, such as the random, overly-gruesome death animations and middle-of-the-road multiplayer, which will leave players scratching their heads at their inclusion. Still, despite falling just short of perfection, Tomb Raider is well worth your time.
This review was originally published on March 19, 2013 on Blue Sun. It's been reposted here for posterity.
