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Released on March 5, 2013 by Square Enix
Europe for multiple platforms, developed by Crystal Dynamics, Tomb Raider reboots the 90's-born action-adventure series to tell the origin story of Lara Croft.
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In early 2014, my friend Daniel showed up at my door with a modded XBox
360 and 2013's
Tomb Raider reboot on a CDR and said, "You've got to play
this!" After a Tomb Raider-centric night, Daniel left, but the Xbox and Tomb
Raider stayed. Over the next week, I had a lot of fun with the game, but I soon
paid the price for playing
Tomb Raider for free. 40% into the game,
during one of its quicktime events, the burned disc glitched and would not
bring up the quicktime command prompt...meaning I could not progress past that point. I
gave Daniel his Xbox back and angrily forgot
Tomb Raider...until a few weeks ago,
when I saw it on a GOG sale. I did the processing math and realized I could,
after actually paying for it this time, play
Tomb Raider on my PC laptop.
Time to finally finish it. But was it worth the wait?
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| Insert shipwreck/lost treasure metaphor. |
I've been a Tomb Raider fan since buying the PC big box version of the original
in the mid-90's. I'd wanted a good Indiana Jones-inspired game for a while, and
here was one with a cool, new and unique protagonist in Lara Croft, who dove into
mysterious archeological sites, solving puzzles, facing platform challenges, and
blasting away dangerous creatures with a pistol in each hand. The 3D
environments were well-crafted, the game controlled smoothly, and the whole
thing felt like a blast of fresh air. Unfortunately, like most gamers, I
experienced a feeling of diminishing returns with each subsequent Tomb Raider
sequel, to the point that I gave up on the series. However, this 2013 reboot
looked promising, and I greatly enjoyed playing through the first 40% of it
before that play through's unceremonious demise. The series felt fresh and new
again...but how does the reboot play almost a decade after its release?
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| Wait, was this second paragraph just another intro? That ain't right. Lara can you find an actual review somewhere in here? |
In the original Tomb Raider game, Lara Croft is a seasoned badass, but the 2013
reboot presents her at the start of her adventures, where she's a young, eager,
and untested archaeologist, fresh out of college. She's a part of a group
searching the Eastern Pacific for the lost island of Yamatai, on the ship
Endurance. The
Endurance is caught in a storm and soon shipwrecks on the apparently very real
Yamatai, where the crew suddenly find themselves under attack by a vicious,
well-armed group of strangely white male natives. From there, Lara has to
protect her shipmates, explore the island, and get out a distress signal, all while discovering the mysteries of Yamatai, gunning down countless foes,
and...periodically raiding a tomb.
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| My favorite part of raiding tombs is gunning down countless foes with a sub-machine gun. |
There's definitely a much heavier emphasis on gunfights with this new
Tomb
Raider, compared to previous titles. This is just a part of the general overall grittiness of this reboot. Outside of raising on eyebrow at Lara's expansive
bust, my protective mother had no issues with young me playing 1996's
Tomb Raider in her house. This
reboot would have given her a heart attack. Not only is the violence amped to
11, as Lara blows bloody holes through her enemies, jams pickaxes through the
top of their heads, and dies many bloody deaths herself, but the dialogue sounds
like it was pulled from a Lenny Bruce routine. In other words, while the content
in the original game is a carefree PG-13, this reboot's is a dark and
unforgiving hard-R. This is a very "adult" Tomb Raider, but this shift in tone
really has little to do with whether or not the game works. And boy, does it
work.
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| Maybe I'm just misremembering, but I don't think Lara was ever hung up above a human abattoir in the previous games. |
Despite the fact that the tone has changed, despite the fact that the act of
actually raiding tombs is minimized a bit, 2013's
Tomb Raider just feels
right. This starts with the control system.
Tomb Raider, just like in the
original games, is played from a third-person perspective. Admittedly, the
controls could sometimes be a little stiff in the older games. This new game's
controls are smooth as butter. Lara runs fast, turns on a dime, jumps like an
Olympian, and climbs like Sir Edmund Hillary. Surprisingly, the developers
implemented what essentially amounts to a heavy parkour element into the game,
with Lara often having to run and jump up and away and onto platforms that are
crumbling and falling apart. The uniquely designed Yamatai is envisioned as a
place where dozens of cultures have shipwrecked and built on top of each other over centuries, with
diversely-constructed ramshackle structures dotting every hill and cliffside.
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| Not that different from crossing the street in L.A. |
While the game does unfortunately include the aforementioned quicktime events,
those sequences are so tense and thrilling, they're actually pretty fun, with
Lara have to grab last second ledges, dodge deadly attacks, and duck under
deadly flying debris. Thankfully, these sequences are also just a fraction of the action. The rest of the time you're in full control, doing the
aforementioned parkour, blasting foes with a pistol, shotgun, rifle, and bow, or sneaking up behind bad dudes and snapping their necks. Lara can do it all.
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| After trauma Lara endures in this game, it's a wonder she doesn't just fall asleep during the original. Well, actually, I guess that one does have dinosaurs. |
However, this isn't just a dumbed down, amped up take on the series. There's a
lot of depth here, in the form of freshly introduced RPG elements. Every time
Lara takes out a foe, she gains experience points, so that she can level up. The
cooler and more skillfully she dispatches an enemy, the higher the points she receives.
Lara also receives points for reaching certain story beats, but she receives the
MOST experience points from...raiding tombs. Yes, while actual tomb raiding isn't as prevalent in this game, it is the BEST way to receive experience points,
and consequently level up. There are roughly ten tombs very loosely hidden throughout
Yamatai. A chime rings out when Lara nears them, informing the player that they
should probably look around for the entrance.
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| If they could incorporate scents into games, you could also be on the lookout for the scent of burning candles...cuz these tombs are full of burning candles. |
The tombs themselves are pretty delightful, generally sealed off, unique puzzles
to solve in drippy, candle-lit caves. They feel like a bit of a refuge, almost like a spiritual retreat from the
rest of the island's violent madness. Solving the puzzles grants access to large
treasure boxes that are full of experience points. While it would be nice to have
more of these tombs, their rarity just makes them feel all the more special.
There are also smaller treasure chests and journals hidden all around the island, containing a collectible treasure item or passage to read(often from a series of items or
journals) that also grant experience points. When Lara does level up, the player must find a campsite, where they can save, and choose which ability they
want to either learn or improve upon. The player can also add improvements to Lara's weapons at these moments, making the guns and bow more accurate, faster to reload, etc.
These weapon enhancements are done with salvage points, which are collected from
raiding junk throughout the island, or from hunting the many animals found
throughout the game. The experience of leveling up and enhancing weapons is, just as in any
good RPG, extremely addictive.
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| They could just change the island's name from "Yamatai" to "Hell." But like a fun hell, with a beach, and you level up. |
All of these elements come together to form a game that, as I've said, just feels
right. The
tactile sensation of playing
Tomb Raider is wonderful. The production values
greatly add to this. The game still looks great, almost a decade after
its release, even if your computer is weak and you have to lower the graphical
settings. The island environment is huge, and the environmental effects: fire,
water, streaming light are all easy on the eyes. I mentioned that the island
design is unique, but the character designs, including the new model for Lara, is
also very good, as is her recasted voice-acting. I'm particularly fond of the
immersive sound effects here, from the satisfying crunch of reloading a pistol,
to wolves howling through fog, to a fiery tower collapsing. I wish there was a
little more music here, as it's mostly reined back to just a few quick stingers,
but that's akin to previous Tomb Raider games.
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| No big deal, just the stuff of nightmares... |
Overall, as far as series reboots go, it doesn't get much better than 2013's
Tomb Raider. While certain elements are quite a departure for the series,
every element comes together to form a supremely satisfying experience. The fact
that this rather green Lara is tossed into a situation of extreme duress, forced
to come face-to-face with enormous evil in a sea of wave after wave of
life-or-death experiences, feels like an authentic origin story for the cool,
experienced, and relaxed Lara who lands on that Peruvian mountain peak at the
start of the 1996
Tomb Raider. Now I just need to play the reboot's 2015 and
2018 sequels...looks like this is the start of a trilogy.
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| I'd like to now do that thing where the caption for the last picture riffs on something I didn't even mention in the review, namely that certain elements of this game take a major page from the first few seasons of the television series, Lost. You've got a large, diverse group landing on a mysterious island, trying to call for help at first thinking they are in a regular old remote place, who are then attacked by the highly aggressive, mysterious, yet very modern and seemingly out of place inhabitants of that island before then finding out that said island is most DEFINITELY not just a regular old remote place, but possibly magical, and even more possibly magically sinister. |
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