Tomb Raider Review
Tomb Raider (2013)
Twenty-one year old Lara Croft and a small group of people are stranded when a savage storm wrecks their ship, the Endurance , off of the coast of a small island in the Dragon’s Triangle. Landing on the island, Lara is captured by a savage man, and though she soon escapes and reunites with some of the survivors, the nature of the island begins to show itself. After one of their own, Sam, mysteriously vanishes from the camp along with another supposed survivor and the rest are attacked and many killed, Lara escapes capture and experiences her first taste of the islands savagery, killing a man who threatened her. Lara manages to hail a rescue plane, but when another storm suddenly rises and destroys the plane, Lara begins to realize that this is no ordinary island. Unknowingly, she has been pitched into a centuries-old cult centered around the island’s deity Himiko, the sun goddess that controls the weather around the island, ensuring that no one can ever leave. The cult has gained a new follower in the form of Mathias, a mysterious and insane man who came to the island three decades before. Gathering followers from other wrecks, Mathias rules the island with an iron fist, and believes that by sacrificing Sam to Himiko, the island may become safe to leave. Lara must set out to confront Mathias and his cult, gaining skills and weapons along the way, and negotiate the island and its inhabitants before it consumes her and what is left of her party.
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A reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, this game is an origin story for Lara Croft. Instead of beginning the game as an experienced adventurer, Croft is a simple archaeology student who is only out for the discovery of the Kingdom of Yamatai. She has limited survival training, and has never even killed anyone before. Her experiences on the island change her from the student to the raider who is the centerpiece for the whole franchise. The primary antagonist of this game is the Solarii brotherhood, headed by Mathias.
Mathias and two of his henchmen
First of all, the setting of the game is an absolute masterpiece, in my opinion. The island that the game takes place on is exceptionally well crafted to be a unique experience. The island has multiple locations, from forests to caves to buildings to even giant gondola systems. Every single location offers a variety of challenges, such as landscapes that need to be traversed, as well as enemies that need to be killed. The island is very detailed, with even things such as wooden planks on bridges given high detail. And speaking of detail and graphics, the developers really spent a lot of time developing them for this game, having perhaps the best graphics that I have yet to encounter on PS3. They really went all out. Lara even gets dirty when she falls in the blood as well as bloody when she falls into a veritable river of blood, and she can even become clean again by jumping into water.
The island is exceptionally well detailed
Movement throughout the island is indeed a treacherous venture in this game. Using something called “Survival Instincts”, Lara can often find her way out of situations. This instinct is triggered by pressing a button, and highlights enemies, animals, and landscapes and objects that can be used in a variety of colors. Lara encounters gorges, rivers, broken bridges, cliffsides, wrecks, and all manner of obstacles that hinder her. I feel the movement throughout the game is one of the games’ centerpieces, attempting to be as realistic as possible. If Lara falls but manages to catch herself, her grip will not always be as true as, say, any of the Assassins in the AC games. If the fall is large enough, or if the object she grabs is not particularly stable, the player must press a button in order to make Lara right her grip to keep her from falling. Lara also must climb dangerous cliffs (made of both rock and ice at times) with her climbing axe, or survive dangerous rivers. At one point she even has to use a parachute and glide her way through dangerous tree tops. One wrong move in many of these cases results in instant death. Finally she can use her bow to shoot arrows with rope attached, forming quick bridges that she can either slide down or climb up.
Lara's survival instincts are telling her this plane is important.
Lara using her climbing axe to climb in the middle of a large snow storm.
Using the rope the move across the terrain quickly
One interesting addition to the game would have to be the salvage and upgrade system that Crystal decided to implement. Throughout the game Lara acquires a lot of extra material from looting lockers, chests, and even dead animals and enemies. This material is known as “salvage”. Lara utilizes these scraps of material in order to upgrade her weapons. Starting out with an improvised bow, for example, Lara can use this material to strengthen the bow and the string, making it more powerful. She can also do the same to guns (when she acquires them later in the game), giving them larger magazines, improved sights, or even sturdier builds. Lara also occasionally acquires new “parts” for her weapons, which will allow Lara to completely upgrade her weapons into brand new ones, keeping the salvage upgrades and unlocking more. In the same vein, Lara gains experience by killing and looting, traversing difficult landscapes, and other things that give Lara skill points, which she can utilize to give her improved fighting capabilities, carry more ammunition, salvage skills, and more. In order to upgrade her weapons and improve skills, Lara utilizes base camps that are unlocked with each new area explored. These basecamps also function as save points. These sites can also be used for fast travel to other unlocked sites.
Using salvaged parts to improve the recurve bow.
One of Lara's many base camps
Combat is quite a large part of the game, and Crystal put a lot of work into it. Essentially a third person shooter, Lara can use a variety of weapons at her disposal in order to survive hundreds of enemies. The combat mechanic is mostly free aim, though you can lock briefly onto an enemy if they are within sight when you use the “aim” button. Though you do eventually encounter better weapons, the primary weapon you will use is the bow. From hunting to forming a rope bridge to fighting off enemies, the bow is far and away the weapon of choice throughout the game. Its ammunition is retrievable from enemies, it is quick and deadly, and you will almost always find ammunition for it. The Solarii brotherhood use a wide range of weapons from bows to assault rifles to explosives (molotovs and dynamite). Utilizing a cover system, Lara can efficiently kill her enemies with relative ease. The enemies also have a very good AI, and will take cover, reloading or preparing explosives, emerging only to throw their explosives or fire off a quick burst of gunfire or arrows (some lit on fire) before taking cover again. Lara can also use exploding barrel and other objects to her advantage in combat. Some of the enemies are exclusively melee, and will charge towards Lara. Melee combat is one of the few bad spots in the game I feel; armed with only her axe (which can be upgraded just like the other weapons just in much more limited fashion), Lara only has a few moves. Mostly when engaged in melee combat, Lara must utilize dodging and countering. This type of move set is sometimes the only way, as some enemies are heavily armored in the front or have large metal shields (and will always keep you in front of them), so you must dodge and counter them in order to get through their armor. These counters can be anything from stabbing them in the knee or the face with an arrow to shooting them in their back to hacking at them with your axe. Finally, if an enemy is down but still alive, Lara can move up to them and “finish” them with an axe to a vital part of their body. Though limited in terms of melee, Lara is still quite capable; she just cannot block attacks. Lara can also use stealth attacks to quietly deal with enemies, typically consisting of hacking into the poor souls collar bone or strangling them with her bow. As I said, the combat happens often, and the fights can be quite fun, especially the final battle.
Lara using a WWII era gun to combat her enemies.
Using the cover system.
Besides trying to save yourself and your friends while unlocking the mysteries of the island, there are also a fair amount of side things to do. Keeping with the nature of the franchise, there are several optional tombs to raid throughout the island. Typically the player must solve a puzzle before finding the “treasure”, but these puzzles are rather simplistic, yet still enough to make you think. Some of them involve proper timing, as well as a bit of luck, to solve. The tombs are not hidden…you typically run into them without going out of your way. But they are not necessary to solve in order to advance the story. There are also other things to find as well. As she makes her way across the island, Lara can find various documents and relics that are scattered throughout the areas. They provide interesting insight into the history of the island, all the way back to its glory, as well as insight into the present situation. These documents and relics are from a variety of categories, from ancient times to more modern ones, and will paint a great backstory for some of the characters, seen and unseen, providing more depth to the story as well as showing the motivations for many of the characters in their pursuits. Additionally, along with the various documents and relics, there are several GPS caches scattered throughout the island. These do not provide any sort of background story or information until you find them all, though. Typically with these collectibles, you will have to go out of your way to find them. Some you will find without going out of your way at all, but I probably found less than a quarter of them by accident. When you discover a tomb and complete it, you will have some or all of the collectibles revealed on the map, but other than that, they are hidden. However, with certain skills purchased, Lara can use her survival instincts to find them more easily, with them being highlighted in gold, and can be seen through objects such as walls. Sometimes Lara does not have the means of obtaining certain collectibles until later, with obstructions too difficult to overcome until the acquisition of a certain item. Luckily, all locations can be returned to by using the fast travel option at campsites.
One of the numerous relics that you can find on the island.
Solve the puzzle
This game is absolutely riddled with positives, as I have stated above, but the best part of the whole game has to be the story. It is the story of a rather naďve girl who simply wishes to rediscover a historical Japanese civilization who is forced to confront a dark side of humanity. A girl who is forced to kill or be killed, to watch friends as well as enemies suffer or die due to the whims of a centuries-old divine queen who once ruled the island. She is forced to mature from college student to hardened adventurer in the blink of an eye. When she feels fear or sadness, it feels so real that you can feel the fear and sadness as well. This game is just that good. Through the killing of hundreds of enemies, to barely surviving falls, near drownings, combat, wolf attacks, and even a river of blood, she becomes hardened to the world. This story has tremendous character development, not only for Lara but others as well, even for characters that are not seen (the documents). The story as a whole, I find, is not only a suitable jumping off point for a rebooted franchise, but an amazing tale overall.
From a frightened girl...
Into a fearless one.
Overall, I would say this game is among the best I have ever played. Hands down, full stop. It has a tremendous story, a fantastic degree of character development, incredible combat, and a realistic setting and style to the likes I barely could have imagined. Everything about it is great. Really. The only thing that really was bad about it at all was the limited amount of melee combat, as well as a couple small glitches that only affected one small part of one location. Additionally, were it not for the optional tombs, there would be very little “tomb raiding” I the game, but since it is an origin story, and the fact that Lara quite clearly states that she “hates tombs”, that small flaw can be forgiven. Everything else vastly make up for these small issues. Of particular note is the score by Jason Graves. Graves constructed a vital part of the game in his story, really setting the atmosphere of many of the situations, from the desperate to the intimate. In the bonus stuff unlocked throughout the game, you learn that Graves had a piece of equipment simply titled “The Instrument” that he uses for much of the soundtrack, and this “instrument” is essentially a hodgepodge of various improvised percussion devices that quite clearly form the backbone of much of his soundtrack. I honestly have a hard time of choosing a particular song to point out, but “Escape from the Endurance” is definitely an iconic piece from the game. The setting is fantastic, the score is an amazing addition, and just everything about it is right. I have heard that the multiplayer is not good at all, but I have not played it at all.
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This is an amazing game, whether you are a Tomb Raider fan or not. I highly recommend it.
10/10