Tomb Raider, A game released in 2013, offers a decent amount of hours that pack your first play through of a story that deliver's adventure, finesse, characters that are alright, gunplay, action sequences, as well an ending that delivers a cool but open ended climax. Lara Croft has spent over 10 years of her life raiding tombs and discovering many secrets the world shadows from her. Now more than a generation later she returns in a reboot of this franchise. Lets delve in now!
The story starts with Lara on a ship expedition trying to find this island which is told to house an ancient dead queen. The island, with centuries of explorers attempting to find themselves , always end in a loss, Lara and her “instincts” point into a direction that many people felt skeptic about. Traveling to a particular point on a hunch of Lara’s, the ship is hindered by a destructive storm while traversing the sea. Lara wakes up on a beach to discover herself separated from her crew member's who are as well stranded.
After exploring a bit some random locales of the island begin to show up, acting in all kinds of insane manners that you’d might expect a stranded islander to act like, all the same Lara is confused, eventually upon later discovery she finds that the island she now inhabits is packed full of crazy men that worship this man who promises a way off the island. Demanding the capture of Lara and her crew members. Playing as Lara you’ll discover many layers to the story as you progress around the flora and fauna of this odd rock that’s full of nutty people with guns, as well some other surprises!.
The game play offers a plat forming theme that you might expect from a tomb raider game, jumping bridges that are broken, rocks from rocks, broken buildings from buildings, all kinds of areas you’ll find your self traversing through. you’ll be given the chance to upgrade Lara’s gear as well her skills whenever you come across a camp site, you’l discover many of them as you progress through the story, that’s something I notice, while feeling like your going to have an open world, the game really only delivers these some what open small spaces to explore as you progress the story. Honestly it left me desiring more. The tombs themselves are given to you as an option, note that every tomb in this game is just filled with a single puzzle, some times I’m not even sure i’d call some of them puzzles, they are very simple and leave a LOT to be desired on that front. However upon exploring some of the tombs, story elements will help clear some thoughts of your own if you begin putting the pieces together, I thought that was neat.
The gunplay in the game is solid, offering four different weapons in the whole game, you’ll be upgrading them from pieces of crap to much more modernistic weapons, which does carry a nice feeling as you continue playing tomb raider, delivering a very organic cover system that works only when enemies are around, which I oddly liked a lot. I will leave one last comment on the plat forming, I think personally it makes me wish the game was a little more difficult with that particular subject , playing the game I felt the developers pull back some idea’s in fear that perhaps someone might not want to complete the game, I can understand this, but playing the original tomb raider games, I can assure you those games were not friendly in a lot of ways, while I feel that this tomb raider game tries to be, especially when a third or more of your skills just give you bonus experience!
You’l find many items and artifacts to collect in the environment that mostly grant extra experience to you, some offer character models that you can view in the main menu I believe. I found no incentive personally as I had maxed out my Lara right before the games ending. Also you can kill animals that you find that add no negative effects what soever to you playing the game. Tombs I’ll add are optional, I suggest any that you will find, to go through immediately, they offer a lot of experience as well some back story, also I think most of the places in this game that you’l visit look very nice!
That’s for sure one pro I can really hand to this game, is the graphics, even two years playing the game late I can confidently say these graphics hold up very nicely, I enjoyed every environment as well any of the scenes the game demands you to watch, very pretty overall. Control wise the game feels great. Wrapping up this review I’ll mention some of my final thoughts. The upgrading in the game is neat, but not needed, the gunplay is awesome, but sometimes feel’s that it’s the main driving force for this title, while I personally think the plat forming should be the demand of the game. looking at the plat forming again ill say it leaves a good impression, enough to hope that the sequel will be very good, if the developers are to progress where they left off with this Tomb Raider. I recommend that you purchase this game a give it a go yourself, go in with an open mind and I think you’ll find it mostly fun! Also there is quick time event’s in the game!
Good Day!