Tomb Raider

Every form of work put forth is ultimately part of the context in which it was conceived, be it some kind of artistic creation or simply something that serves a more objective nature. Sure for me video-games are, in one way or another, an art form in its own right, but that's hardly a consensus and neither should really be. The original Tomb Raider and many subsequent iterations in the series had their place in the 90's, probably the last decade in human history to be completely free of any chains of constant scrutiny, a decisive need to shape anything that might influence someone, somewhere, toward a higher cause.

Things are different now. Batman is no longer the caped walking cliché, he's a human being that's bound to reality, full of "emotions and purpose". Lara Croft made sense in the 90's where video-games had an appeal directly connected to acne-laden adolescents with hormones boiling, she would definitely have problems fitting in on the new millennium so her golden years were probably gone by then. But like all creations from other eras she was bound to be reborn, all-new and ready to take on the world like it was in 2013.

The new Tomb Raider is what you'd expect, a much more mature adventure, much more focused and taken seriously. The end-result is a pretty solid adventure that might have stumbled on a few hiccups here and there depending on how you judge gaming to be best presented, but ultimately something that deserves a go. As you're probably aware by now Lara Croft is some kind of female version of Indiana Jones. She's an archaeologist who finds adventure around the world facing ancient civilization warriors, violent tribes, mother nature, evil men with guns or whatever that might get in her way -- or quoting this very game, adventure found her.

She's part of an expedition group in search for the location of the long-lost Yamatai civilization. It's her first expedition and she manages to make the group try heading to the Dragon's Triangle, against the will of the hot-headed person in charge of the expedition, Dr. Whitman. Though based on a hunch from Lara they head on the opposite direction from where Whitman wanted them to go in the first place. The ship they board, called Endurance, gets caught up in a storm and its name doesn't really save them from getting marooned. They manage to survive the storm but Lara is separated from the group and needs to face some kind of murderous pursuer to save her life.

The whole thing unfolds nicely as they struggle to survive the hoards of madmen storming on them speaking nonsensical stories about the island being cursed by the so-called sun-queen. They capture Sam, a girl who's close friends with Lara and who was responsible for all the footage of the trip for a documentary of some sort. The inhabitants of the island believe that Sam could be the chosen one, so they plan on burning her at the stake in hopes of breaking the curse and finally be able to leave the island, a worthy sacrifice for the sun-queen.

As you control Lara trying to save her friends and actually escape from the cursed island many interesting twists in the story will happen as you advance. As far as I can judge the story is well made, not breath-taking in any way, but still manages to keep you hooked for the entirety of the narrative. Tomb Raider is an action game by heart so it's only fair that story-telling shouldn't be its primary concern. Since the island happens to be some kind of catalyst for doom, attracting ships and airplanes from as long as they existed one of the collectibles will be historical objects from several eras of history, from many different parts of the world. Certainly a great excuse to put those in, no one can deny.

The narrative is pretty personal for Lara Croft because this is meant to be a reboot in the series, so it features the very beginning of Lara, when she wasn't the raider of tombs who knows no fear, as we came to know her. The game sets it pretty clear that there's an innocent Lara, then there's Lara, and finally survivor Lara, completely immune to danger, a killing machine, roughed by her own environment and the fire of wilderness burning deep within her eyes.

As she struggles for survival her general appearance gets rougher and rougher, to a point where she could have been living in the wild for as long as she had breathed, eager to take a life when prompted by danger, a technician in wielding firearms as much as melee, not afraid to get close and nasty to an enemy. This transformation happens in front of our own eyes and feels natural. She becomes what she was meant to be step by step, brutally forced upon her by the extreme environment she finds herself into.

To take all that and insert gameplay mechanics they created two types of experience points in-game for the player to acquire. The first is the good old experience that is rewarded to the player anytime he completes some quest, kills an enemy or finds collectibles. By earning experience you can rack up skill points in order to use on new skills.

On the subject of skills. There's the survivor skills, which feature a set of passive improvements which revolve around being able to retrieve arrows from corpses, earning extra experience from some actions like headshots, having better map management or simply better results from scavenging. There's the hunter skill tree which yields better performance using the bow and other fire weapons. Then there's the brawler tree which boosts Lara's capacity in melee combat, finishing moves and health.

The other type of experience is called salvage, which is how prominent Lara can deal with the environment. She can get salvage by looting enemies' bodies after downing them, by hunting animals and then also looting their carcasses or by exploring the scenario, breaking boxes and opening crates along the way. Basically anything that can be looted by Lara, be it a dead animal or human or some kind of treasure, will yield salvage. The salvage points can be used to upgrade Lara's arsenal. All the improvements must be done at a base camp, in-between the action.

Speaking of Lara's arsenal, she's able to use the bow, which is a pretty important weapon overall, both in combat and as key narrative item. Later on the player will be able to use improved versions of arrows like fire or explosive ones for even better results at combat. There's also a handgun, a shotgun and a machine gun. The machine gun can be upgraded later on to work as a grenade launcher as a secondary function. The guns are recurrent agents on the environment through your actions since you'll need the shotgun to destroy certain barriers later on and the grenade launcher to destroy even more solid ones after.

The bow has an even more prominent role in how Lara deals with the world. She can use the bow with the rope upgrade to create paths through the mountains. The rope/bow duo is also used to pull objects and destroy doors, and if you have the chance, pull enemies off ledges for a stylish kill. Using the ropes you've set to traverse from place to place is a bit clunky to tell the truth, you don't really have a button to use it so you just need to jump toward it to engage and sometimes it simply won't register. A minor setback but noticeable from time to time.

There is some diversity in enemies you have to face during the game but they all look and work much the same way when it's all said and done. The ultimate method to increase difficulty in combat seems to be the sheer number of them at the screen at any given time and not an improved version of the foes. Later in the game you'll face better equipped enemies, that's for sure; some with improvised armors that require dodging and attacking at the right moment but nothing out of the ordinary. It seems to lack a definitive mini-boss battle to be remembered, something monstrous and twisted.

You need to know that for an action game this one really enjoys a hand-holding. Especially at the beginning of the game it feels like you're not actually playing the game, but on the contrary, the game seems to be playing you. You go from one quick-time event to another seamlessly. I'm not a big fan of quick-time events, which are moments where you need to press a button or a set of buttons during scripted scenes to dodge boulders, make critical jumps or defend yourself. The beginning of the game is infested with them, and up until the end you'll have to rely on button-pressing in contextual moments to get out of nasty situation faced by Lara. The starker amount is certainly at the beginning, but you won't get rid of them easily.

The developers really take their time with the narrative, to a point where you wish the game would just forget about Lara for a bit and just let the game flow naturally, letting you shoot some stuff without a care in the world. It rarely happens to tell the truth. That's how they envisioned the adventure so I understand what they were going for, but they still could've given the player some space in simpler moments where the story wasn't so dense.

Something they could've added in the main game was the run button. In multiplayer you can press a key/button to run for a while, in the main game the same key/button only makes Lara roll for a quick dodge. You could do that by running off enemies instead of having a button just for that. Not being able to quicken the pace makes the game feel even more constricted.

Something that I thought was strange at first but got used to it relatively fast was how crouching is handled. You don't press a button to get into a crouch position you simply get near a half-sized wall to crouch behind it. It's not always adequate not having a button to make the character do something you wish done but in this case it works surprisingly well. The aiming is pretty spot-on and most enemies can be downed with a clear headshot. Just ready the weapon and shoot; if you're using the bow you can also charge your shot depending on whether you have the skill upgrade or not.

Something awful that should be noted is how bad the save mechanics work here. I don't really know who had the idea of keeping all of them featuring only the percentage without any other kind of information about where or how it was saved, but that person should be kept away from having wonderful ideas like that. The saving system is one of the worst ones I have ever encountered in a video-game. The system where different files are kept and maintained should never be thrown out the window if you don't have a pretty good reason to do it, especially to put in something as simplistic as this. Not a game-breaker but still not ideal.

The graphics are pretty detailed and might actually stand the test of time for a while. Though its graphical prowess is clearly shown you probably won't experience slowdowns or any kind of problem even with old systems. The installation size is also pretty good for a game that looks this good, something the more recent Tomb Raider also lost touch with game sizes over 20 gigabytes. This one requires 10 gigabytes to completely install. Not bad.

Yes, the graphics are good, but the sound design is even better. This is one of the best sounding games I have ever played. Everything sounds so natural, the guns sound powerful and absolutely clear. Traversing a forest feels incredible, the effects, the animals, the voice-over. The music itself only serves its background role, but that's basically what you'd expect. In action moments the soundtrack gets a more prominent role and it shines as much as the rest.

They managed to create a multiplayer mode as well. I won't say this wasn't uncalled for but the multiplayer isn't completely useless. I actually had a few good matches here and there, though there seems to be an incredible amount of cheaters and glitch abusers that hinders the enjoyment, unfortunately. It's also pretty difficult to find a match, and when you find, it's basically half a dozen people who apparently didn't get the memo. When it comes to games like this the developers should create a multiplayer that would be carried on in sequels. Anyone playing the newer games in the reboot series should be matched together with the old ones as well. You can at least keep it alive for a while longer.

The actual multiplayer game isn't half-bad. There's ranked and casual play. Finding a game on casual is hard, finding a match on ranked is harder. There's the good old team deathmatch which will be your go-to mode 90% of the time if you choose to join a quick match. You can play as both the survivors and the islanders; in team deathmatch it doesn't make much difference. It does make a difference in another game mode called rescue where the team playing the survivors must retrieve 5 medical supplies while the islanders must down them and finish them off with a finishing melee move -- or have no one recover them after the countdown. A pretty nice gamemode to tell the truth.

There's also the cry for help mode which the survivors must send radio signals for help without letting the batteries fall in the hands of the evil islanders. Simply stand near the antenna to send the signal for long enough. The enemies can steal batteries and hinder progress. And last but not least you have the free for all mode which you need to kill as many people without dying to become the "executioner" and win the whole thing before the time runs out. Just a few gamemodes that really have place in multiplayer and hadn't this died shortly after release and eventual sequels getting released they would be adequately fun to be played.

Something that urges people to play mutiplayer even more is that it features a leveling system that yields newer characters along with multiplayer salvage and experience points to be used on newer weapons and perks for said weapons. It's nice to have a purpose for grinding in multiplayer and the abundance of achievements related to this makes the multiplayer mode a little less dead, but still highly unpopulated.

Tomb Raider manages to improved rough edges and create a game that is pretty narrative-based but still offering good moments of action. The lack of different methods in which you can take on the game might make it a little less prone to being replayed but the overall result is indeed positive. If you can't stand hand-holding you might find this one frustrating, there will be a lot of meticulous exploration and mid-paced progression. The quick-time events are indeed annoying but necessary for the story-telling, which seems costly for the developers. They made Lara emerge from a sexualized big-breasted cliché into something richer, contextualized and still keeping the gameplay interesting enough to be called a video-game. Definitely worth your while.