I hate to call this a “review”… because the game came out months ago, and I just now finished it. By now, probably everyone who is interested already knows that this game exists, that it is awesome, and that it needs to be played. But we here at The Shattered Lens also exist to serve the conservative buyer, the type who wonders to themselves “Is any single player game worth $60 anymore? How much of that $60 is being taken up by a Tomb Raider multiplayer nobody asked for or wanted?” “Oh God, another Tomb Raider?” I imagine that last line being accompanied by an outward eye roll, but with a quiet inner voice whispering, God, I hope it does not suck.
Well, fortunately for that tiny segment of the population… I am here to help you. I finished Tomb Raider today, and I have plenty to say about it, some of which I’m going to truncate in acknowledgment of the fact that this take would be a lot fresher if I’d written it two days after the game came out. I pre-ordered it. Obviously, there is no excuse for my having dismissed the game for even an instant. Now, with all that preamble managed…
Let’s look at Tomb Raider.
Of olde, Tomb Raider was a PC (first) and Console (adaptations, later simultaneous releases) puzzle / platformer game that starred well-endowed protagonist Lara Croft as she went about exploring ruins of the ancient world. As with any good “archaeology” narrative, the lines between historical fact and myth are blurred, and Lara would go on to discover things like oh, I dunno, the lost continent of Atlantis. The games focused heavily on platforming with some puzzles, which had (unfortunately) been forced into a relationship with a perennially awkward and not-optimal combat “system” which allowed for varying degrees of athleticism and varying degrees of inaccurate bullet spraying.
Tomb Raider (2013) is built on a more stable foundation. The game here essentially plays like any third person shooter you know of – there are plenty of chest-high obstacles available to shield you from enemy fire, ammo can be found everywhere (I’d say there’s a real argument that the game offers way too much ammo to the player, in fact), and like any good shooter in the Call of Duty era, you have several weapons that can be aimed down their sights and fired accurately at a precisely determined target. Not bad, right? Actually, it improves from there, hybriding in several elements that fans of the wildly popular Batman Arkham: (whatever) franchise. Lara, like Batman, learns skills and acquires new equipment as she proceeds through the story. That stuff can be used to go back and open up previously inaccessible secret areas and retrieve formerly inaccessible historical relics (though, to be honest, very little serious backtracking is required even if you intend to complete 100% of the collectibles). Lara has a predictable array of athletic moves at her disposal, including running, jumping, and climbing (including climbing-with-an-axe-climbing [the axe doubles as debatably Lara’s most powerful weapon]) as well as being a 100 pound girl who also happens to be qualified to pass the Presidential Fitness Test (try to outlast Lara Croft doing pull-ups. I dare you.) The action reminds me of Batman or Assassin’s Creed in the big picture, but the devil is in the details, and those details really do a lot to differentiate Tomb Raider from the gameplay that definitely influenced it.
Tomb Raider (2013) takes place on a lush, temperate island in the Dragon’s Triangle (a real-life region of water which extends from the southeastern Japanese coast toward the Phillipines) that was home to the ancient Yamatai civilization. Things immediately go totally awry, of course, and the rest of the game chronicles Lara’s individual journey to survive her experiences on the island – something complicated by savage and seemingly malevolent storms, and the discovery of a whole nation of crazed cultists who call the island home. Your mileage will probably vary with the actual storyline, particularly the endgame where Lara discovers the truth behind the island’s various mysteries (no fear, Lost fans, it’s all spelled out in the end!), and with the supporting characters, who are pretty one-note. To be frank, the supporting characters just don’t have much to do with this story, which is all about Lara Croft.
Lara herself is characterized extremely well, both through the excellent voice acting of Camilla Luddington, as well as through her physicality. As the player acquires new skills for Lara, she becomes demonstrably more capable in the game… and also more brutal. I have heard it argued that the game is diminished by the extent to which Lara – who has a hard time with the first occasion on which she kills another human being to survive – indulges in increasingly brutal violence as the game goes on. I would argue the opposite. I thought the game was very effective in putting myself in Lara’s shoes, so to speak, from the way the camera hovers close to her to the way she talks to herself, trying to encourage herself in grim situations, and reflecting on the madness and horror in which she has become buried. Far from objecting to Lara’s thought progression – and “morality” progression, if you want to call it that – I found myself snapping earlier than she does, at one point cursing her enemies and resolving to destroy them. Perhaps all of that pales in comparison to what I think is the strongest, best, part of Lara Croft’s character, however: Lara is never a victim. During the game, she is captured more than once, and encounters a variety of terrible situations, some of which she needs a little (very little) help to escape. But time and again, Lara draws deep into her own reserves of resourcefulness and willpower and not only extracts herself from increasingly dangerous situations… but attempts to drag the other survivors of her wrecked ship, and their would-be rescuers, with her to safety.
Fans of the series who were primarily interested in the puzzle-solving action of previous Tomb Raider games are almost certainly going to find this game a bit of a disappointment. Certainly, there are puzzles around – particularly in the optional ‘Hidden Tombs’ which can be completed for a bounty of salvage parts and experience points to upgrade Lara – but they definitely aren’t the core focus of the game in the way that they have been in previous titles. Once you have learned what to look for in the environment, the method of advancing through each open-roam area should be fairly obvious – it’s simply up to you to make the necessary jumps, climbs, etc. to reach your goals. It’s worth restating that the combat is quite a bit smoother than it was in previous installments, with obvious influences from other modern shooters giving it a much more polished feel. You may occasionally find the combat difficult, however, depending on your personal ability at sneaking around the island and murdering guards noiselessly (or avoiding them entirely). I consider myself good at stealth mechanics, but that I often prefer a straightforward solution if it will save me a lot of time (this goes triple for games where I know I’m going to be running around searching for collectibles. Better to just wipe out the whole population of badguys so they can’t harass me later).
Oh, and as for those pesky collectibles? There are a lot of them, and some of them are super hard to see in the game environment, but don’t go rushing off to find a game guide just yet… The game contains plenty of ways to find them (try setting a waypoint on the object of your desire and using Lara’s “Survival Instincts” if you really get stuck!) between the treasure maps and some of the skills you can purchase for Lara.
For me, even as a fan of both puzzles and previous installments… I really loved Tomb Raider (2013). This is one of the best pure single-player experiences I’ve gone through in a while (and, it’s worth noting, the game is not short by any means, although obviously it could be completed much faster than I managed if you were avoiding collectibles and time-killing puzzles). I encourage any of the remaining fence sitters to check this one out.
Through the Shattered Lens 