Developer: Crystal Dynamics (Feral Interactive on Mac)
Publisher: SQUARE ENIX, Eidos Interactive (Feral Interactive on Mac)
Rrp: £14.99
Avalible on Steam, Uplay, and through the SQUARE ENIX Store
Shipwrecked on a mysterious island and unable to escape Lara Croft must fight to survive and uncover the secrets that keep her trapped.
I’ll start this off by stating this, I’m not a fan of the Tomb Raider franchise. I’m not saying I hate it, I certainly don’t, but I’ve never been able to get into the games. That being said, this one I liked. It’s not only looked good but the gameplay also felt more… Solid to me than previous titles.
As I mentioned previously this game looks extremely good, with wide open vistas for the player to not only enjoy viewing but exploring too. This game can be very system intensive though if your rig isn’t quite up to scratch. In my playthrough, I had it set to nearly the highest settings, only turning off the high detail hair, mostly because it annoyed me.
Once the game starts it takes a while to get into the real meat of the game, as the first hour or so of gameplay is used to set the scene and get the player comfortable with the basic controls. As you progress and level up through the game new skills, abilities and weapons will become available to you allowing you to explore previously inaccessible sections of the game.
Your progress through the game is saved at campsites scattered around the island, at these campsites you can use the skill points to increase your abilities and spend salvage that you find to upgrade your weapons. Some of these camps are also fast travel points which allow you to return to previously accessed areas of the island. A great boon for completionists who wish to collect all of the in game collectibles, or finish off challenges.
Speaking of collectibles, this game has a great wealth of them, collecting them is rewarding in a three ways. Firstly you get experience points which go toward increasing your overall level. The second reward is that most of the collectibles do something to increase the lore of the game, giving you a glimpse into why certain characters are behaving the way they are. Lastly picking them up also unlocks concept art and character models that are accessed through the main menu.
Before I continue into this review though I must warn any would be players that this game has moments that are quite visceral in its depiction of violence toward women. I’m not stating this as a feminist or misogynist statement but more as a warning for those who may be sensitive toward the subject. The violence is in context, but still quite graphic.
Combat, this is the bit I’ve been dreading writing about… Personally I found that the combat flicked between rather dull cover based shooting and irritating quick time events (QTE’s). The combat mechanics work but I had hoped for more acrobatics and less hiding behind chest high walls. That isn’t to say it’s not challenging at times, I just had hoped for something different and could have done without the QTE’s.
Unfortunately QTE’s don’t just affect the combat, they also affect the climbing, exploration and more than a few cutscenes too. Usually it’s mash a button to pry open a door or box, or press X not to die. This wouldn’t have been so bad but I found the visual cues to be confusing, as they use the same symbol each QTE. Admittedly they have minor differences that are animated that tell you whether to hold a button or mash it, but the text that you need to read to know which button is rather small and hard to read in the middle of a scene.
The single player campaign in Tomb Raider little to no replay value, as the game is extremely linear, I’m stating this not as a criticism but as a statement of fact. The events of this game will unfold in one way and your equipment and skill upgrades will unlock at set periods. Admittedly you have control as to which skills and upgrades will unlock but there isn’t a ‘skill tree’ as such.
I finished the story arc of this game at a overall completion rate of ninety-five percent, having missed only a few minor challenges. This was done in just over twenty-two hours.
