Tomb Raider was released on March 5th in 2013 on Windows, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. It was subsequently remastered and rereleased for the Playstation 4 and Xbox One on January 28th, 2014.
Tomb Raider was developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix.
The following review is based on the remastered version for the Playstation 4 titled: Tomb Raider: The Definitive Edition.
Tomb Raider begins with Lara Croft aboard a ship called Endurance along with her fellow crewmates. Together they are part of a crew working on a television show or television special much like we see today on the History channel or on the Discovery channel.
Their intention is to find the lost kingdom of Yamatai. As resources begin to dwindle to a dangerous low and they have yet to find anything, Lara and Dr. Whitman, the celebrity archaeologist are faced with two options.
Ultimately, Lara wins out and they head towards the Dragon’s Triangle, which is described to make the Bermuda Triangle, look like child’s play.
As they near it, a violent storm hits and the ship is snapped in half. The crew make it ashore and are separated from one another.
Lying chin deep in sand, Lara sees some of her crew mates and friends and tries to call out to them, yelling over the crashing of the waves and cracking of the thunder. Without any luck, she is then hit and blacks out. Lara wakes up hanging in a cave.
She escapes the cave and eventually regroups with Dr. Whitman but as they set out to find the others, the enemy reveals themselves: a violent cult known as the Solarii.
With the Solarii having taken her friends hostage and a curse that prevents anyone from leaving the island, it’s up to Lara to investigate the curse and save her friends.
STORY
The game serves as a reboot to the long running Tomb Raider series which means you don’t need to have prior knowledge about any Tomb Raider game to play this one.
That being said, this IS my first ever Tomb Raider game.
The story is straightforward without much confusion to be had. The story is like Indiana Jones or Uncharted in that the main character goes looking for something, finds it and realizes there’s a lot more to it than they expected.
Because this is a reboot, there’s a lot to be said about Lara because this is technically her introduction and there tends to be a paradox throughout the beginning of the game.
Lara has never killed before up until the point where one of the Solarii tries to rape her. It’s a pretty crazy scene and afterwards, she talks to her mentor saying that she killed him and she’s never killed before and that it was too easy to take a life.
But then almost immediately, when encountered with more of the Solarii she’s (or the player) can kill people with headshots, guns, set on fire and blown up and this tender moment is thrown out the window.
Yeah, it must be easy to take a life considering you’re blowing up people without a comment.
Towards the end, there is a weird little supernatural twist to the story but it didn’t come as a surprise since the game essentially begins with a hint that there’s something more to this island.
That’s all there really is to say about it. It’s straightforward and there’s no room for comment. It is what it is and there weren’t any thematic moments that taught me a lesson for real life or made me have an existential crisis.
CHARACTERS
The characters aren’t that special either. Your crew mates appear and disappear as your adventure goes on. They do have personalities but they aren’t enough to be memorable. Once they leave your sight, you forget all about them which is the complete opposite of what Lara feels. Lara has them in mind all the time.
The two biggest side characters that are important to her are Roth and Sam. Roth is this rugged Englishman that was apparently close to Lara’s father and he’s basically a mentor to Lara. He’ll support you once in the game and in one cutscene but that’s really about it.
He’ll say things that Lara will remember but nothing in the game makes me really want to know their history. He’s an army guy that shoots guns and saved our hero once, oooh.
Sam is Lara’s best friend and she too doesn’t have any evidence of that. The entire game is basically a cat and mouse chase of someone takes Sam, Lara goes after them, Lara gets Sam, Sam gets taken again, and so on and so forth.
Their conversations with each other are flat. Sam clearly supports Lara but Lara has this deep feeling for Sam and I can’t see why.
What makes Sam so special? What makes Roth so special? I don’t know.
The villain is Mathias who is just basically your run of the mill cult leader. He did get interesting towards the end but that wasn’t enough. All cult leader characters get interesting at the end of the story. Mathias was no different.
Roth’s character has been done before this game and his name is Sully from Uncharted. Sully is Nathan Drake’s mentor and at least those two have chemistry and will recall moments from the past to prove their relationship.
Mathias’s cult leader character has been done before this game and his name is Lord Saddler from Resident Evil 4. Both are essentially gone from the main character’s main journey most of the time and usually only make tiny appearances but at least Saddler had some back and forth with the main character and when he did make an appearance, it was significant.
Of course, Lara Croft takes the cake in this cast of not so colorful characters simply because you spend the most time with her and as you play as her, you can hear her side comments and thoughts.
I can easily say that her role has been filled by Nathan Drake in her absence but I actually prefer Lara over Nathan because sure, Nathan Drake sounds like a fun cool guy who has probably killed more men than serial killers in US history combined but Lara is down to Earth and always terrified.
Lara’s biggest negative is that beginning that I mentioned before. She feels awful even after killing some piece of shit rapist, but she feels awful because she took a life. And then after that, it doesn’t matter anymore. The game tried to show that killing is bad but then lets you murder and stab and devastate enemies in ridiculous ways. However, there’s a case to be made for that negative as well.
In Nathan Drake’s case, you can’t say he’s used to killing, he’s just a fun guy. Drake is essentially a mass murderer. He’ll kill hundreds of guys and then crack a joke and a beer at the end of the day.
In Lara Croft’s case, she’s stuck on this island. She looked for adventure and got something totally unexpected and on top of some angry Japanese lady with a curse, she’s stuck with a cult full of guys that haven’t seen civilization in quite some time.
She has no choice but to kill them because it’s her or them. She may be killing with ease but she takes no pleasure in it and doesn’t crack jokes at the end of the day.
Plus, she’s scared and it shows. When she’s thinking aloud or yelling someone’s name, she’s just not scared about herself, but scared for others. And yet in that fear, she acts.
To bring up that unnecessary comparison again, she screams for her life when she’s falling off a ruin that falls apart. Drake on the other hand, goes “Oh no no no no!”
Oh no no no, is something i say when I dropped a slice of pizza. Now when a ship is about to explode with me in it.
So even with that in the back of my mind, Lara Croft is almost inspirational. Almost.
Another negative with Lara is that she has no personality. There’s nothing that says, “YES THIS IS LARA CROFT.” She’s fucking intelligent and she can handle herself better than any of us in real life ever could but everyone has that one thing that makes us who we are. When she talks or partakes in a conversation, there’s no piece of Lara in there.
However, even with that said, you could also say that if you were stuck on an island like her with killer cult soldiers, you’d probably be serious the entire time too.
VISUALS
The visuals are good. They don’t hold up as well as I wish they did even on my PS4 Pro but this game did originally release in 2013.
The character models are kind of iffy but deliver where they matter, and what I mean by that is that Lara looks fucking great. You can see the emotions on her face, you can see the toll this adventure is taking on her. However, once in awhile, she gets these blank eyes like everyone else tends to have. These eyes that are super jarring to look at because it’s almost like, “Are you human or just a robot with a synthetic body?”
The environment looks decent too. No complaints. No praise.
AUDIO
The audio part of the game is good too.
The guns sound like they should, the environment makes the sound it should make like when wood falls apart under you, it cracks like it should.
The voice acting is decent. There were times where something sounded off but for the most part, it was pretty on point.
All in all, the audio is decent. No complaints but definitely no high praises.
GAMEPLAY
Much like everything else I’ve said, the gameplay follows the pattern. It’s not great but it’s far from bad.
The game is an action adventure game with puzzles throughout the world.
Lara is equipped with a bow and arrow, a handgun, an assault rifle and a shotgun. As you explore the world, you can pick up salvage which you then use to upgrade your weapons. There are also weapon pieces that lead to the next iteration of the weapon. For example, you’ll first pick up this WW2 machine gun but with enough gun pieces, you’ll have somehow transformed that weapon into an AK 47.
These upgrades are simple and are permanent. Once you increase the rate of fire on the WW2 rifle, the rate of fire is increased even when it’s a commando rifle.
The combat sequences are definitely like Uncharted in that there is a small area where you can move freely cover to cover, jump up and down obstacles and kill your enemies with whatever weapon you so choose. Your enemies follow a pattern as well. They swarm you in waves and there will be different types of them, shielded melee enemies, machine gun enemies and bow and arrow enemies.
Outside of combat, there is a little bit of free roam where you can essentially either go straight to the next objective or explore the area you're in. Sometimes, you’ll stumble upon hidden tombs and you can find out more about the history of the island by completing an environmental puzzle. These are side missions that reward you with salvage and other little items.
The problem I had with these is that I never felt the want to go do these tombs. I never felt the want nor the need. I would wander in, solve them, and go back to the story but towards the end, when I did find them, I would just leave because they weren’t worth it.
The rewards didn’t justify the means. I looted every body I dropped so I had no need for more salvage and since I primarily used the bow and arrow, I didn’t feel the need to get upgrade parts especially when upgrade parts can still be found by playing the story missions.
Those tombs felt mostly just a reason to get that 100% completion rate rather than a fun part of the gameplay.
There are collectibles in this game and while I love a great narrative and then finding out other little hidden bits about that narrative, this game’s collectibles were boring. You could find journals scattered throughout the world written by characters you may or may have not run into.
These journals are like…imagine the world’s most boring person ever. Now pretend you found their journal and read it. Sure, now you know a little bit about them, but that still doesn’t change the fact that they’re boring. That’s how I felt about these journals.
I don’t care enough about any of the characters to really care about these journal entries. Other collectibles include artifacts that you can inspect and Lara will make a comment about them. This was pretty cool but because I’m not a major in anthropology, ancient Chinese history or archaeology, they were like throwaway lines.
“Woah, this is from the 15th century! Royalty would use this to shave their toes!”
Everytime, I would just honestly look at the screen dumbfounded and move on. Like just…”Wow…I really don’t care.”
Even in the main story, there are a few moments where you have to solve a tiny environment puzzle like open this, shoot that, and pull this to open the next door. They weren’t super easy to the point where it was annoying but they weren’t super challenging to the point where my brain was melting.
They were nice and they were here and there. I liked them.
But that’s basically the gameplay. You jump and climb to your next objective, shoot a few baddies, jump and climb to your next objective.
Occasionally there were some quick time events or running from danger events like this one boat is up high and used as a base, but the cables holding it up are shot and this ship starts falling apart as you’re trying to escape. There’s a few moments like those but they feel familiar.
Let’s just say those kinds of things have been done better in uncharted territory.
SUMMARY
All in all, Tomb Raider is basically when you order that cheese burger from the dollar menu at McDonalds.
If you’re super hungry, it’ll do the job but you don’t order that expecting the greatest burger of all time but it won’t make you puke either.
Tomb Raider is the standard for average.
The story is simple and to the point. The characters are okay. The audio and visuals are decent and that’s playing on the PS4 Pro / Definitive Edition. The gameplay is good too.
My problem with Tomb Raider is that everything feels familiar and that whatever this game does, another game has done a lot better.
Uncharted has had better stories with bat shit crazy endings. Uncharted had better chemistry between it’s characters. Uncharted had better “Oh my God, this shit is collapsing” moments. Assassin’s Creed has had better looking climbing. Red Dead Redemption’s shooting feels more satisfying.
Lara Croft may have dominated as the action adventure icon back in the PS2 era, but others have come and have refined it since.
The Definitive edition offers a steady frame rate and all the DLC outfits but I’ve seen my brother play the entire game on the PS3 and there seems to be hardly any difference.
So my recommendation is that if visuals don’t matter and you happen to be content with the older generation, is that this game is probably worth it if you like action adventure games especially for the price you’ll likely get it at.
If visuals are important to you and you own a newer console such as the PS4 and Xbox One, I got this game on a flash sale on PSN for 10 and if you can find it for that price, I’d say it’s worth checking out if something like this interests you.
This game won’t blow your mind or change your video gaming life forever but it’s something to play that isn’t bad.
So with that being said, from me, Tomb Raider gets a 6.5…out of 10.