The 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider and the first part of the Survivor trilogy tells the origin story of Lara Croft that doesn’t feel like an origin story at all. If they hadn’t pointed it out during the game that this is her first time adventuring like this, I wouldn’t have known for better. She’s a completely ready kick ass hero who can do it all on her first attempt. While I enjoyed playing that kick ass character, there are so many Tomb Raider games in the franchise that I wish they had leaned harder into this idea and made her less ready and complete from the beginning.
Don’t get me wrong, the game is great. It’s classic Tomb Raider: action, adventure and puzzles. Sneaking around, taking down baddies and discovering the mysteries of the lost island of Yamatai. It’s the same island that the 2018 movie adaptation happened on with a same setting and some shared characters but I like the game’s story much more.
Visually, the game looks like a 2013 3D adventure. That’s to say that the graphics haven’t always survived the time but once you immerse into the game, that disappears into the background and doesn’t bother me after the first few minutes. And occasionally, the game shows stunning views and cinematic scenes.
One of my main critique about the game is that a lot of the exciting and dangerous moments happen in short cut scenes you have no control over. Lara might be falling off a cliff but then survives it either all by her own in a cutscene or through a quicktime event. I wanted to survive them myself.
I really enjoyed the bow mechanics and other than the couple of final boss battles, I was almost exclusively using the bow to take out the baddies.
The game has a progression / skill tree system that I’m not fan of. You essentially unlock everything by the end of the game and need to unlock wide across different categories to unlock future options in specific categories.
None of the upgrades have meaningful impact. Maybe if I didn’t get them, I would have noticed it but unlocking them felt like nothing which is sad. Why give the player options if they don’t change how the game feels and you need to eventually unlock them all? I don’t think a game like Tomb Raider needs a skill tree at all.
I finished the game in around 9 hours and the game told me I completed 64% of it — the rest being collectables that I collected when I noticed them but didn’t go looking for any as they felt meaningless.
All in all, Tomb Raider is a good reboot, a very enjoyable experience and what’s more important, a start for a new trilogy that gave us Rise of Tomb Raider and Shadow of Tomb Raider that I’m playing next.