Tomb Raider Review
Game Emblems
The Good
A game teaching you what video games are and why sometimes video games are preferred to real life.
Tomb Raider is an exhilarating action adventure that serves as a terrific origin story for the iconic Lara Croft.
The Good
- Story believably builds Lara up from unsure academic to confident adventurer
- Fascinating setting with a rich sense of history
- Intense combat that offers a good deal of flexibility
- Controls make physically overcoming the island's terrain a pleasure
- Good assortment of tombs to raid, relics to collect, and puzzles to solve.
The Bad
- Forgettable multiplayer component
- Outside of Lara's character arc, story is predictable.
When adventurer extraordinaire Lara Croft raided her first tomb back in 1996, she brought with her an exhilarating feeling of isolation and discovery. Over the years, Lara has continued to venture into parts unknown, taking dark turns and frequently tangling with the supernatural as the series evolved alongside the burgeoning third-person action adventure genre. The gameplay of this series reboot takes a few cues from a current titan of the genre--Nathan Drake and the Uncharted series--but don't let that familiarity put you off. This origin story is a terrific adventure that balances moments of quiet exploration with plenty of rip-roaring action to keep you enthralled from start to finish.
As Tomb Raider begins, Lara is more an academic than an adventurer. But when she's shipwrecked on an island full of ancient secrets and deadly cultists, she has little choice but to learn how to survive. Lara endures a great deal of punishment early in the game, and though no small amount of that anguish is physical, it's an unpleasant moment in which a man tries to force himself on her that's most harrowing. But as unpleasant as it is, it marks an important turning point in Lara's understanding of just how hard she has to fight to survive. Rather than crumbling under the weight of her physical and emotional struggles, she emerges from them a stronger person.
It's empowering to witness Lara's journey from the understandably fearful individual she is when she first arrives on the island to the justifiably confident survivor she becomes. Later in the game, when she has proven to the resident cultists that she's not the easily cowed person they mistook her for, she turns the psychological tables on them, letting loose battle cries to strike fear into their hearts. Aspects of the story that fall outside of Lara's character arc aren't as strong; there's a twist of sorts that occurs late in the game that you see coming hours ahead of time, for instance, and the central villain offers little in the way of nuance. But as an introduction to the legendary Lara Croft, Tomb Raider's tale is a success; she emerges as a strong, charismatic and human figure, and you're left eager to see what the future holds for her.
Lara's origin story deserves an extraordinary setting, and the island where Tomb Raider takes place does not disappoint. Centuries ago, it was home to a kingdom called Yamatai. Many shrines, temples, statues and other remnants of that history remain, and often, you just want to take in these places, slowly advancing through the darkness, eager to discover what's just outside the light of your torch. The island is a beautiful place, but not every discovery is a pleasant one; Yamatai's dark history is vividly communicated in piles of bones and far more grisly things. On the PC, the lovely sights are even lovelier and the horrifying sights are more horrifying than on consoles. The PC port was handled by Nixxes, and just as their PC release of Sleeping Dogs improved significantly on the visuals of the console versions, the sharp textures in Tomb Raider's PC release make it the definitive way to experience this game.
The ancient structures of Yamatai now coexist alongside bunkers built during World War II, the wreckage of planes brought down by the storms that surround the island, and the shantytowns and makeshift machinery of the island's current inhabitants. It's a fascinating hodgepodge of the beautiful and the utilitarian; the buildings are believably nestled in their rough natural surroundings, and appear appropriately weathered, damaged, and rusty. The island really feels like a place where people have lived and where great and terrible things have happened. It's a place with many facets; it has claustrophobic caverns and breathtaking vistas, and phenomena like gentle snowfalls, torrential downpours, and fierce, howling winds make it alternately seem like a tranquil place, and a brutal one.
It's immediately clear that one thing the island is not is safe, so it's a good thing that Lara soon gets her hands on a bow. You acquaint yourself with using it by hunting animals; Lara doesn't have hunger levels you need to manage or any such thing, but the deer, rabbits, crabs and other creatures that call the island home make it feel much more alive. For reasons of their own, the cult that currently occupies the island doesn't exactly welcome you with open arms, so it's not long before you need to turn that bow (and, soon, a pistol, rifle, and shotgun) on humans. Combat is varied and suspenseful; some situations give you the opportunity to take a stealthy approach, sneaking up behind enemies to perform silent kills, or firing arrows into walls to distract them and picking them off from a distance with well-aimed arrows while their comrades aren't looking. During one particularly tense battle in a fog-shrouded forest, patrolling foes hunt you with flashlights; if you can manage to stay unseen, you can shift from prey to predator, using their cones of light to pinpoint their positions and eliminating them one by one.
Then, there are the all-out firefights. When your presence is known, enemies are smart and aggressive about flushing you out from cover with grenades and Molotovs, which forces you to keep moving and act boldly. Many enemies attack from a distance while others get in close, so you need to be constantly on your toes, switching between your weapons on the fly and evading foes who attack with melee weapons. Dodging and countering melee attacks is easy, but the savage animations of Lara's counters make eliminating those foes who make the mistake of getting too close to you consistently satisfying.
By
Carolyn Petit, Editor
Carolyn Petit has been reading GameSpot since 2000 and writing for it since 2008. She has a particular fondness for games of the 1980s, and intends to leave the field of games journalism as soon as she hears that her local Ghostbusters franchise is hiring.
61 comments
@PeterBelero about the dual wielding, she is becoming "tomb raider." Throughout the game she changes into the Laura Croft we know. It would have been lame if right after the crash she grabs two pistols and goes to work. So at the very ending of the game ((((SPOILER))))), she picks up two pistols and kills Mathias.. Its in there
I'm not impressed... She does not do any of the acrobatics she did in the previous games, I haven`t seen any dual gun shooting yet either, but I`m only 50% through the game. I mean, I used to love diving from cliffs into small openings (remember the swan dive?), swimming underwater through caves, climbing ledges and reaching the top doing an arabesque. I loved her smart mouth remarks, he tough gal attitude... Only thing I didn`t like was the huge chest (She`s an athlete for God`s sake). Now the best part of this game is Lara looks like a real human being for the first time, but she`no gymnast, she`s not graceful, she apparently grabs treasures after treasures without ever feeling the weight... It`s an tremendously unrealistic game; physics are wrong, she carries endless junk in pockets she doesn`t have, no huge environment to explore.... I'm disappointed. They used the Unreal engine for this but they should have built upon Tomb Raider Legend, in my opinion.
@PeterBelero Well, I disagree. I'm glad they made an amazing game for 2013 and not a remake of Tomb Raider 1. GotY for me so far for sure, although I haven't played Bioshock yet.
Was hugely disappointed too. Unfortunately, series degraded to a simple-minded clone of U know what game. Can't just understand the hype all over and around this game.
1 Like @124C1 What game? Have some balls and say what you mean, or don't say anything at all.
1 Like In my opinion TR is the best game of this year so far.... way better than pretty overrated Bioshock. Yes... it's too short and easy and storyof archeologist Lara who became Bear Grills is very unrealistic... but anyway the game is pure fun. Sory for bad english.
1 Like @sinatra666 Have you played one second of BioShock: Infinite? I've played both the new Tomb Raider and BioShock: Infinite. They're entirely different games, but they're superior in different categories to each other. There's a reason people praise BioShock: Infinite, and for the most part, I agree that it is a contestant for GOTY. Then again, so is Tomb Raider. But at least play BioShock: Infinite before you call it, "pretty overrated."
@Bayonetta2013 @sinatra666
Yes Bayonetta, I played and finished Bioshock Infinite even before I started to play Tomb Raider...as the matter a fact, I also expressed my opinion about WHOLE Bioshock under review of that game. I don't think that Bioshock is a bad game... it's pretty fun actually, but in MY OPINION is not that fun as those reviews said and what is most important is not that fun as Tomb Raider... but like I said, it's only my opinian... if you think different that's cool :)
Cheers
Very pretty, but too short, too easy, and too many quick time events. The duck-and-cover-heavy shooting formula is also becoming overdone.
I was happy to see that Lara didn't have massive breasts this time around- if only to dispel the notion that males are all sex crazed lunatics that prefer large breasts- but was promptly disappointed by a story with not-so-subtle feminist undertones.
1 Like A great game with stunning graphics, but if only they make the game a little bit harder or longer though..
1 Like I agree that that girl who appears on my screen isn't Lara Croft. Lara Croft used to be awesome, just the perfect warrior -archaeologist. This girl is so weak. I don't like her. I don't know why I payed for it! I'm so disappointed. I used to like the stories of Lara Croft, especially Underworld. I don't think that Square Enix is good for Crystal Dynamics. I like that in the old games you had a lot of time to explore the place, and many puzzles to solve. New Tomb Raider hasn't got nothing but shooting and blood allover the place. there is no time for you to explore at all, the next minute an enemy will appear and more shooting, again........ I was playing TR for a long time.......now i do not know if i will play ever again!
Each to his own in the end. I've been a Tombraider fan since 1996 when it came out. I becamse a game developer because of tombraider. I'm amazed you're not enjoying it. What's there not to like in the game. It has pretty much all the ingredients that make tombraider great.
By the way, it's called Origins. It's the first steps to Lara becoming what she later claims to become- a tombraider archeologist.
1 Like @UnknownTR I guess you missed the part where they told you it was Lara Croft's ORIGINS? In which she is just a scared young woman shipwrecked on an island of psychotics, just starting to learn how to become the tough, almost superhumanly competent Lara Croft: Tomb Raider?
Superman also had to grow up and learn his powers, the same is true of almost every protagonist. Think before you post, kid...
2 Like game is amazing, i'm really sad i finished it already, wish the game would just go on for weeks long. The best thing about tomb raider is that it has evolved, lara is human, lara is fragile, there are consequences, injuries, bruises, scars, she lost the "invencible" image that the older games praised.
Game has an open world, full of options, interactivity and stunning graphics, The combat system is so soft and fun and the story is awesome, i was all the time going forward to just know more of the story because it was so interesting! i give it 9 out of 10, because it's only flaw is the puzzles, they are way too simple, they need to make more complicated ones in the sequel, because i demand a sequel of this amazing game.
It's an amazing game! It really is! I must have gamed 22 hours every day since Friday, not joking.
It's amazingly fluid! Great puzzles here and there. Proper tombraiding and exploration. Artistically beautiful. I seriously love this game! I like that new spin on it.
I don't really understand all the praise for the new Tomb Raider. It just doesn't grab me. TBH, I'm bored to tears with it so far. I don't know if I'll try to keep playing or not.
Bored to tears????
How so? There's so much to do there. It's got action, hunting, exploration, obstacles. Like I'm actually amazed as to what you;d want from the game???
She's a Tombraider. She raides tombs.
HUH?
@miker00lz Bored.
Ship gets wrecked on an island and Lara gets impaled within minutes of the opening, and you're "bored to tears?"
What do your normally play, COD?!
2 Like I think you're the first person I saw disappointed by Tomb Raider, everyone loving Tomb raider including me. btw how many hours you have played ?
1 Like Why does Square Enix keep japanizing every great title of Eidose? I've had enough of this.
Look what they have done to the poor hitman, now this is Lara's turn.
@commuter1991 Crystal Dynamics developed this TR game, silly fool. They were the ones who crafted the game, Square Enix published it.
2 Like @commuter1991 What? Hitman Absolution is AMAZING!! It's not contract-based like the older ones, and yes some of the gameplay feels a little too linear but the core , trademark gameplay elements of the previous Hitman titles are there and so much improved upon that I can't even enjoy playing the older ones anymore. They feel so rough in comparison.
@miker00lz @commuter1991 Big humans like Sanchez, foes celebrating over your dead body , policemen dancing while they're on their mission, sexy nuns (what are they? any explanations?), Hitman's den being in China town, ... .
These are some features of the Japonized version of Hitman; let alone destroying his solemn character by adding some stupid compassion toward every breathing creature.
1 Like @commuter1991 @miker00lz You do realize Square Enix is a Japanese game company, right?
And since when do "Big humans like Sanchez, foes celebrating over your dead body , policemen dancing while they're on their mission, sexy nuns" constitute trademark Japanese behaviour, or preferences in media? Are you racist?
If you don't like it, don't play it. The End.
7 Like i just finished it today.
It's incredible.I mean the developers have done an amazing job with Lara.It is nothing like the previous games.The series 'gone to the next level.
6 Like Anybody else notice hot good this game looks on max settings on PC? I mean finally a game well optimized for PC DX11 GPU and multicore calculations
8 Like I never was a big TR fan, but I must say that I liked this new version of the story. I only have some minor things to point out:
The game is EASY. Even on hard setting, I never found a real challenge, neither on puzzles nor combat.
Lara is bullet proof, I saw her withstand multiple hits from a mounted machine gun and still survive. Also, she falls and take hits that would have crippled John Rambo...
How many people crashed on that island? I've killed hundred of people (all man, they keep their females locked down somewhere?) . It's unbeliveable that so many people of roughly the same age are stranded there, add the overwhelming number of bodies laying around and the numbers skyrocket... it's like a mid-sized city that suddenly disappeared and relocated to that place :D
I would have preferred a more fragile Lara confronting a more restricted number of enemies, every kill count, every combat a fight for survival...
@frank_78 People have been washing up on that island for centuries, and a lot of the people on the island have probably been there since they were in their 20s or so, given that all have beards. xD
1 Like @frank_78 It's an ACTION RPG, Frank, not a simulation of real life, in which getting shot once can kill you. Enjoy the game instead of complaining about how "unrealistic" it was.
5 Like Carolyn really has become my favorite reviewer on GameSpot. Not that I always agree with everything she writes/says, but it always comes from a place I understand and can interpret it correctly.
Most of the other reviewers I regularly think they didn't experience the game as I would have and give pro's and con's that make no sense to me.
1 Like As like mentioned in cons character is not like "Lara Croft". Lara was stronger. I do like this version but It is not Lara. Game has a charm which locking player to game. But quick-time events are totally pain. I am keeping forget which symbol was which key. I've started developing games for 2 years and I do not really understand why devs applying that mechanic to their titles. Smashing a button is NOT fun.
1 Like What is going on? Is this review being released again? I thought I just read this about a week ago.
1 Like an amazing game. was not a fan of previous TR games, but this one...Finished my second walkthrough and still feel like playing it. I really hope this will turn out to be at least a trilogy.
1 Like Good article for a great franchise. Its good to hear the rare occurance of a game franchise being respected, unlike some of EA's abominations. After reading this I am actually inclined to play it!
1 Like NICE! I just got a Playstation Network card code for FREE! :D freepsnforever[dot]com
1 Like im liking it so far but the on screen button prompts are a bit annoying. Theres no way to disable them? imo it plays just like Altaïr with a sweet @$$ and ß?ß$
1 Like Hm, anyone else think the description of the setting is a bit Far Cry 3 like?
Island, temples, WW2 bunkers, hunting, "local wartribe", ...
Not that it's a bad thing! Just sayin'
@Hotshot Soooo...any game or form of media from now that has islands with temples, WW2 bunkers, hunting, "local wartribes" etc are rip-offs of Far Cry 3?
I think you need to get out more, because the aforementioned existed looong before Far Cry 3, even in the gaming industry :)
1 Like @Hotshot Far Cry 3 borrowed the setting from the Beach I think. TR is more of a Lord of the Flies meets Uncharted/Tomb Raider.
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Tomb Raider
Not Following
- Publisher(s): Square Enix
- Developer(s): Crystal Dynamics
- Genre: Action
- Release:
- ESRB: M
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