Tomb Raider

Let me start by saying I have never been a fan of the Tomb Raider series before now.

I always thought there was more they could do with the character of Lara Croft. She always came off to me as a shallow male fantasy and never betrayed her as a real person it's only now that I'm older that I can look back at the previous games with any sort of reflection.

I can see now what the entire series up to this point was trying to do it wanted to bring Pulp Fiction style Serial Adventures to gaming, which is a great concept on paper the Raiders series of movies was able to bring that to a new audience through cinema it seems there should be no problem adapting that formula into a game you would think.

The major problem with that idea is, in any of the Indiana Jones movies the character goes through a lot more than actual real human could.

Which I think is one of the definitive things about that genre but I noticed that games take it too far in some places because there's no real physical aspect it's all done through computers.

Look at the excellent uncharted games which are some of my favorite current generation titles. And you'll notice that if this was real Nathan Drake would be dead.

Even the Jones movies, eventually started to feel this way especially in the fourth one you can see it every time they use CGI instead of the practical effect. It's hard to make something feel real without going overboard.

It seem like the developer of Tomb Raider didn't know what kind of game they wanted to make one moment is a survival for life and death against the environment and the odds. And in the other it's all about shooting high action set pieces with unrealistic betrayal of physics.

All I'm trying to say is a little goes a long way to make a character more believable and that's exactly what makes the new Lara Croft special to me. To see her shiver in cut scenes after being in the rain, to feel her pain when she is stabbed with a rusty rebar through her stomach, to see her shield her face from nearby fire. These are the things I like about this game not the pier action of shooting dudes but exploring the dark twisted history of the island you're on.

The game starts with you is shipwrecked and stranded on an island almost like in the Bermuda Triangle legends honestly the game setting reminds me of Skull Island from Peter Jackson's King Kong in some ways just without the dinosaurs or the bad plot.

You and your crew are split so the only real object at first is to survive and somehow make it off the island. Now this is where I'm going to get into some spoilers so keep that in mind.

-Minor spoilers-

Essentially the plot does evolve from there into some supernatural bullshit. This is the second biggest weakness to the game all of the Indiana Jones movies and uncharted games all ended up with some sort of supernatural phenomenon towards the end, which I've always felt is there undoing. It's not fun to shoot some monster in the face for a full 5 minutes just to see him die and to fight another one right after. Nor is it fun to fight dudes wearing plated armor that take more shots than normal. Especially when the rest of the game is somewhat grounded in reality. The Uncharted series and Tomb Raider share this I think it's fine if you want to do something like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where the supernatural stuff happens around you, and not really affecting game play but when you put it in just to have a change in enemies that is why I have a problems.

To my recollection they never even explain if these Oni the supernatural enemy of the game. Weather they are or not supposed to be undead I would assume so seeing how they survived nearly a century. But that opens up whole can of worms. For the story first off why are the previous shipwreck victims being attacked by the Oni. I thought they were would be friendly towards one another seeing how they both want to see the same goal reached to resurrect their god but I digress.

I'm sure this is all explained in the games journals one of the many collectibles you will find around the island but I didn't feel the urge to find that out. If something important like that is not told through the main story then it's really not worth talking about. Speaking about the story the game will run you about 8 to 10 hours on your first play through which is respectable. After a certain point in the story Laura doesn't hesitate to kill hundreds of crazy scavengers which in my opinion comes way too soon in the story. We needed more time to feel like a survivor, not a hero which eventually the story does go into. I for one would have rather seen more character interaction with the rest of the crew and other characters on the island which at the end of the day feel one dimensional.

The bass mechanics of gameplay remind me more of Arkham Asylum then Uncharted. It gives you space to explore while restricting you from getting to certain places without the proper equipment. The sense of progression is what I like about it the most. There’s a level up system which allows you to spend perk points on abilities. There's also an aspect of salvaging equipment by finding new guns at certain intervals and spare parts which can be used to craft improvements for weapons.

Which I found enjoyable, I would've liked to seen a food system like in MGS 3 Snake Eater where you had to manage hunger to survive. At the very start of the game it makes a huge deal of killing an animal for food, I would've liked to seen that persist throughout the game. All that animals amount to is XP to your character.

For those of you wondering what system I played on? It was the PC version which for right now deserves some mention. First off as of right now the game is very unstable it was very poorly optimized. And it occasionally crashes to desktop.

It also has problems sometimes locking up for a few seconds every time it saves which can get annoying.

On the plus side of course the graphics look really good but I think it's the art style that carries it beyond that. The environment design for this game is beautiful at times and sick and twisted. Its depiction of gore goes beyond your average game and can sometimes be very disturbing. During my play through I had numerous visual bugs mainly with Laura's hair.

On the PC version there's an option for TressFX which basically simulates hair physics. I noticed every single time the game went into a cut scene Laura's hair would flip up words. And during game play and cut scene her hair would frequently cast weird shadows on her skin that being said it is very nice addition to the game it's some of the nicest hair I've seen it's just too bad it doesn't work properly all the time.

And lastly the least said about the multiplayer the better it's your typical progression style shooter that seems to style itself after uncharted. I just don't find the shooting enjoyable for multiplayer at least enough said,

At the very end I feel like this is a very successful reboot it made me pay attention to Tomb Raider finally. It’s just a shame the game doesn't have a little more thought into it and less shooting. The ideas were in the right place at some point but somehow lost their way.

★★★★ - 4/5 STARS

By Miles Pribble.