Lara Croft is back, and she's ready to take back the throne.
First come in 1996, Tomb Raider by Core Design redefined the action adventure genre and Lara Croft become the most successful video game heroine. Eight games later, Lara's fame as the greatest adventurer start to fade thanks to Naughty Dog's Uncharted series which take all the awesomeness of Tomb Raider and add it with cover based third person shooter, melee combat, awesome set pieces, and addicting multiplayer content. Now, Crystal Dynamics try to take back the throne with a reboot that tell the origin story of Lara Croft. Does this game worthy of that hard task? Let me say that Lara Croft is more than ready to take back the throne.
The Story
Tomb Raider tell a story of a young explorer name Lara Croft who's in a journey to make a documentary of the Yamatai tribe. This tribe is lead by a queen, Himiko the Sun Queen. Unfortunate to them, a storm crashed the ship and now Lara and the rest of the crew stranded in an unknown island, full with unusual bad guys. Lara, which at that time is just a vulnerable girl (who happens to know about archery, rock climbing, and extremely athletic), must become stronger and willing to do whatever it takes to save her friends and get the hell out of the island. While the core story is pretty descent, it doesn't really absorb you, the story is quite predictable and the characters, except for Lara, is not interesting. You'll find it hard to care about the other survivors, you can't grow any feeling for the enemies and the main villain too. Fortunately they show the growth and the changes in Lara's personality and ability in good way. From a weak, full of doubts, and scared girl to a strong, confident, and full of rage survivor that won't hesitate to tear apart a man's head to save her friend. Camilla Luddington as Lara mostly did a good job delivering the intense fight of emotion inside Lara but in my opinion, Keeley Hawes is still the best Lara Croft. If you find the main story is not interesting enough, you can read about the past story of the island through series of documents you can find throughout the game. These documents will tell you the story of the inhabitants of the island from different timeline such as a Chinese ambassador, a WWII Japanese soldier, and a priestess of the Sun Queen. These stories are well written and give you more information regarding the plot of the main story. 7.5/10
The Gameplay
Whether you like it or not, there is no denying that Crystal Dynamics use the same gameplay combination of the Uncharted series. Platforming, third person shooter, and melee combat are the core gameplay of this game. But of course Tomb Raider have it's own uniqueness.
First, the exploring. One thing that separate Tomb raider with Uncharted or any other Tomb Raider games is that you only have one locale to explore and they make it a semi open world game. You can travel back to any previous level during mission using the fast travel camp. You will use this feature to find collectibles like documents, relics, gps cache, treasure maps and doing challenge activities, also to explore hidden tombs in case you missed them on previous mission.
Second, upgrades. Fast travel camp is also a place to upgrade Lara and her gear. By doing missions, hunting animals, killing enemies, and finding collectibles, you will earn XP points that will open skill point which you can use to purchase new skills for Lara like higher resistance to damage or cool finisher move. To upgrade Lara's gear, you need to collect salvage points by looting it from dead enemies of tons of boxes scattered around the island. In total you have 4 weapons and each of them have 3 tier of upgrades. You will need to find weapon parts to upgrade your weapon to the next tier (3 parts for each upgrade). These weapon parts can be found anywhere from a treasure chest in hidden tombs, enemy corpse, or a simple supply box, so you will need to check them all if you want to upgrade your gear.
Three, gadgets. Throughout the game, Lara will acquire gadgets that will be useful to access new areas or previous areas that can't be reach before. Gadgets like torches, lighter, ropes, rock climbing axe, shotgun, and grenade launcher will be given to you as you progress. I like how these gadgets makes Lara's life easier, for example, at first you need to find fire source to light up your torch, later when you find fire starter rock, you can easily light your torch anywhere.
Puzzle solving are still on the game although it's not as big as the previous game. No more finding keys or logs to operate giant mechanism or open a door. This time Crystal Dynamics put more focus on small scale, physics oriented puzzles.
The cover based third person shooter mechanism works pretty well unless for the lack of blind fire, it have all the feature of modern 3rd person shooter. I'm not a fan of automatic cover like on Army of Two and Kane & Lynch: Dead Men but Tomb raider do it right.
The only thing that i miss from previous Tomb Raider game is the med kit. Usually i like regenerating health but in this game, it makes the game feel a little easy. Sometimes it feels like i'm playing Gears of War rather than Tomb Raider.
The enemy AI is pretty good, they might not too clever on using cover but they sure like to toss grenades to lure us out from cover. The enemy type is pretty standard, low armor, heavy armor, and heavy armor with extra riot shield.
Crazy set pieces find its way into Tomb Raider in this game. Running, climbing, sliding in collapsing structure, sliding away from crumble aeroplane, shooting in upside down position, or simply fall from high places are just some examples. These over the top action set pieces are just one example how Uncharted series influenced the action adventure genre. 9.5/10
The Graphics
There is no doubt that the Crystal Engine did its best for this game. The lighting is spectacular, the textures are detailed, the particle, fire, water, and explosion effects are simply great. Of course the main attraction is Lara's animation, she have tons of animations, from walking, crawling, jumping, running, taking cover, climbing, falling. Each animations look natural and fluid. Some animation like when Lara holding the wall while walking might seems a bit jittery but the others are awesome. Sometimes the animation can be too real like Lara never look straight forward wile running or walking she will constantly look the other way, sometimes looking at animals or other point of interest, sometimes she's simply just, compulsively look to the right for i don't know, admiring the scene? My only complaint is the unsteady framerate. In fierce firefight, usually when fire is involved, the framerate drops, it doesn't make the game unplayable but it just not perform as good as Uncharted 2 or 3. I also pretty disappointed when i see Lara's bow missing from her back when i change my weapon. I mean the bow suddenly become so iconic with the new Lara that when it replaced with assault rifle or shotguns, it become weird. 9/10
The Sound
The sound design for Tomb Raider is great. Scores by Jason Graves are great, love the new theme for Lara Croft. Some of the percussion scores are quite unique too. It helps to boost the mood in the game. The sound effect is great too. 8/10
Verdict
Tomb Raider is a fresh new start for the Tomb Raider franchise. It have good story (at least), great gameplay, amazing graphics, and epic scores. It might not replace Batman: Arkham City in my best action adventure list but it's enough to fight the Uncharted series. 8.5/10