"Lara Croft" the very name reminds you of a strong confident woman who gun slings her way around all kind of enemies when she's not solving ancient intricate brain teasers and often manages to save the world. Well, this time it's not that simple.
A young Lara croft sets sail to a remote location in the coast of Japan looking for the lost island of Yamatai. In the midst of this, her ship dramatically wrecks, leaving her and her friends stranded on a desolate island.
With this basic setup, the game starts with you playing the protagonist. In the first few sections, you find yourself lurking through caves and catacombs with evidence of mysterious cult worship. At this point, Lara is still a young adventurer who is smart and dexterous but not the hero that we're used to. We are quickly shown how the basic puzzle mechanics work in the game and how Lara must use the environment to make her way out. She is wounded and is desperately seeking help herself. But from this point on, the entire game is to develop the character so that she matures to the Lara Croft that we all know.
As soon as you start playing the game, you begin feeling responsible for the young Lara. You feel compelled to get her out of this mess. Survival now becomes your top priority than Lara. Her thoughts and her monologues start to get to you. You feel happy when she makes it out of an ambush, sad when she kills first deer and responsible when she dies. You do get a sense of the emotional beat when you watch Lara make her first kill. The 'kill or be killed' emotion is clearly adapted earlier on and lasts along the entire experience. You're given the choice of using stealth or jumping in all guns blazing. Either way you choose, there's an always an adventure waiting along the next corner.
This is not truly an open world game but is not truly a scripted story line either. I would classify this as a semi-sandbox story game. You play the story mode to unlock free roaming in a particular area. You can find loots and tools to upgrade your gear, you can find hidden tombs (she is a tomb raider after all), but these hidden tombs do little to completely tell the story of Yamatai. The artifacts and items you find in the tombs barely fill in the blanks. The main story however tells you the tale of this cursed island.
The game teaches you core elements like using weapons and tools. Crafting system in this game integrates with the story pretty seamlessly. Your tools can not do certain jobs when not properly upgraded. And upgrading your tools and your skill points is a breeze. It's nothing new that we haven't seen before, but does the job right.
The island in itself is a mystery worth discovering. On one hand you have a graveyard of ships and brown rusty shores with no hope of life. The other side, you have green lush waterfalls and hints of a lost civilization with a prosperous and powerful past. The more you explore the island, the more it draws you in.
Weapons are pretty standard, from silent and stealthy to loud blasters. The game lets you choose which play style suits you and allows you to gear up accordingly. The signature bow that Lara uses is just perfect and is probably the one weapon you'll use a lot. Other weapons like revolver, a rifle or a machine gun are pretty standard. You can upgrade all of them and use them in ways you see fit. There is no perk in upgrading all your weapons, but by the time you're done playing, you'll earn enough points to upgrade most of your weapons.
A few things however could have been improved.
When telling Lara's story, they show how emotional her first kill was. The entire scene is just too dramatic. She fights for survival and has to kill the baddie in order to live. And she cries out after that, realizing she's taken a life. But soon after the said cut scene, you're swamped with a good number of enemies and now it seems like Lara has no issues killing all these men. One minute she's all traumatized about taking a life, the next, she's brutally murdering every one on the island! This didn't really sell to me.
The tombs that Lara raids have very little to say about the island or the back story. They should have given more emphasis to it.
The semi sandbox architecture of the game was somewhat of a disappointment. You have base camps to quick travel to so you can re-explore that area, but it somehow seemed like a bunch of interconnected areas than one complete island.
The soundtrack was pretty engaging. It wasn't out of the world but kept me going. The NPCs are not too irritating and don't really get in your way. This feels perfect when you're telling the story of a survivor.
Quick time events sink in perfectly. They don't seem imposed and do a good job of adding in some excitement.
Overall, I think this game did a good job of redefining the character. Towards the end, just before the final credits roll down, Lara stands straight in the iconic Tomb raider pose, holding her twin pistols. That's when I was certain that this game has done justice to this franchise.
If you haven't already, do give this adventure a go. I highly recommend it.