Tomb Raider ticks off all the boxes for what a good, triple-A game should be: it's got stellar graphics (including all-new, realistic hair effects technology), solid controls, good combat, a passable storyline, good music, and multiplayer (which I won't discuss since I have no desire to try it yet). Yet despite being so solid on these fronts, it never excels or innovates. There isn't a single thing here that hasn't been done in other games, and the only thing that makes it stand out from the crowd of other solid, triple-A offerings is that this one has a female protagonist.
Yes, it controls well and has some interesting puzzles. Yes, the graphics are highly impressive (although some of the character animations are not as refined as one might expect). Yes, the combat is polished and fluid. But why am I playing this game? The core issue here is that the game itself seems undecided about the answer. Is it a gritty survival game? Yes - but then why is my actual survival not an issue, except for avoiding getting shot to pieces or falling off high precipices? Why add a hunting feature if it's not even necessary to the story or the game world? Alright then - is it a game about exploration? Yes - but then why is the world so linear, with very little incentive to leave the objective marker other than to find tombs, extra salvage (a generic "upgrades" currency) or little trinkets (almost solely for the purpose of completing a generic "challenge")? The tombs themselves are pretty cool, granted - a place where you can flex your puzzle skills with no combat interruption - but funnily enough, even though they're the most Tomb-Raidery parts of the game, they're entirely optional. So our final query: is it a game about shooting things? Yes - but then why are there so many QTEs that frequently come out of nowhere? To an extent, I didn't mind these and even found some of them thrilling. But after maybe the tenth one or so, they started getting repetitive - usually involving Lara sliding down a steep precipice, or jumping across collapsing platforms. Often there would be combat arena sequences that would appear suddenly, making all my prior efforts to stealth through an area useless. The combat itself is fairly fun, but I actually initially shunned the combat rifle because it was just so against what I thought the game was all about. This was supposed to be a game about survival, about dealing with impossible odds, about finding clever ways to be resourceful - not a game about a scared girl picking up a rifle and suddenly becoming Rambo.
I can understand why, of course, there is very little time between the "scared and innocent Lara" and the "tough, badass, murderous Lara". On the gameplay side, having realistic, methodical character development like that would be boring; imagine months of Lara hiding in caves, meekly shooting at things until she understood how to shoot properly. On the other hand, something feels a bit off in the way that Lara is constantly gunning down hordes of bad guys (and despite your efforts to proceed through an area differently, the amount of scripted combat sequences will generally result in this outcome). There were so few moments where the game is actually about surviving.
This is where I feel the game had, and missed, its greatest potential. There were the briefest of glimpses where I was reminded of Ripley in "Alien", or of the best moments in all 90s action thrillers: the protagonist hidden somewhere, stifling their breath, as some untold menace creeps somewhere nearby. The moments where Tomb Raider is silent, and Lara is creeping slowly through an undiscovered, dangerous terrain are the best moments of the game. I often found myself wishing that there was 80% less dialogue in the whole game - everything from Lara's excessive grunts, groans and moans to the bad guys' hilariously bad combat barks. I realize that the point of the dialogue is to emphasize Lara's budding inner badass, but it reaches the point of ridiculous when the bad guys are constantly yelling "Damn! She's a good shot!" or "She's tearing us apart!" It's like the game is trying really hard to let me know how tough I am, but it doesn't need to. And having Lara constantly muttering to herself about her surroundings or her next objective only detracts from the tension. Instead of making me feel immersed, I felt like the game was constantly getting in my way by its own eagerness to please me. "See?" it seems to be saying. "Look how many guys you just killed! And you're just a girl! And you're really tough! Don't you feel badass?"
At least the game errs on the side of trying to please, rather than to merely cash the cheque. You do get the sense that the game is really trying to do to the series what Christopher Nolan did for Batman. At the same time, the game is too afraid to step outside the norm of what's expected of it. I've seen indie games that are grittier and more profound stories about survival and sacrifice (see Miasmata for a real survival game). With triple-A games, we often encounter a strange paradox: you think that a bigger budget means bigger potential for re-invention and innovation, but instead it often just results in more reluctance to stray from the status quo. Tomb Raider has everything that you'd expect; just don't expect it to be more than that.