PixlBit

Well, the weekend is upon us once again. And despite the fact that I have a biology and government test to study for, this weekend will once again be devoted to gaming. I promise, my priorities are in order.

I acquired the new Tomb Raider last Thursday, and once again, my gaming intuition was right on the money. It's really, REALLY freaking good.

Take all your preconceived notions, and toss them out the window, because I'm pretty sure this game is nothing like what you expected it to be. Also, forget all the comparisons to the Uncharted series. As an action adventure game, there were bound to be similarites. Doesn't make either one better or worse than the other. After all, is Final Fantasy automatically worse than Dragon Quest because it borrowed pieces of the formula? No. Building off of previously founded ideas is what keeps this industry from stagnating. And if you really want to go there, we could make the argument that Nathan Drake possibly never would've existed if not for the road paved by Lara Croft.

With that being said, although Tomb Raider takes many of the genre tropes of popular action adventure games, it stands out as a unique, standalone experience. I've stated previously that I've never been a Tomb Raider fan, but all that changed within an hour of playing this game.

Enter the young Lara Croft. She's somewhat of a burgeoning adventurer. A newcomer, looking for her first score. As an up and coming archeologist, she's part of an expedition to discover the mythological island of Yamatai, believed to be led by the Sun Queen Himiko. After no leads are discovered and they find their funds dwindling, the crew decides to follow Lara's gut feeling and head into the interesting, but intensely dangerous Dragon's Triangle south of Japan. As expected, the infamous storm stories of the Dragon's Triangle turn out to be true, and the crew becomes shipwrecked. Lara is seperated from the others, and here is where her story begins.

It goes without saying that the presentation of this game is phenomenal. Every environment, character, and cutscene is shown a level of care that is best described as scenic and detailed. Every major and minor event is accompanied by a masterful score composed by Jason Graves. Each track seems to have an emotion tied to it, changing from fearful to determined in an instant, so you feel exactly as you should with each corresponding event. Voice acting is defintiely a plus as well. Camilla Luddington does a great job of bringing the young Lara's fear and courage to the surface, even if there is a lot of screaming going on, and the supporting characters hold their own quite well.

Something I found especially interesting is how unafraid this game is of making you cringe. Lara comes across some pretty gruesome encounters, including falling directly onto a sharpened human bone, getting bludgeoned by large rocks, shattering her foot in a bear trap, and lets not forget that sharp spike through the chin into the back of her head. All in HD. Not pretty.

But the thing that really won me over with this game is of course, the gameplay. True, there isn't much here that you haven't seen before, but Tomb Raider is special in that what it lacks in originality it makes up for in enhancement. Stealth, cover based shooting, a variety of weapons, all of that is here, but they are implemented in some interesting ways. Cover in particular, has been streamlined into an extremely fluid and elegant automated system. Gone are the days of your character's poor decision making, of clumsily hiding behind an incredibly fragile plant when there is a perfectly suitable wall less than a foot away. Lara is smarter than that. Inching against a protective barrier prompts her to automatically take cover. Instead of hindering player integration, this actually does wonders for the fluidity of the control scheme.

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Weapons too, have been streamlined and mandated a more efficient role in gameplay. Lara starts off with a simple bow and arrow. Sure, it gets the job done and guides Lara through a number of tough fixes, but soon your simple bow and arrow becomes so much more. Through some island salvaging and the incredibly easy to use skill development system, Lara can upgrade her bow with a number of capabilites. such as shooting napalm arrows, which can be used to set enemies ablaze. 

Although simple, these weapon upgrades do a lot for the overall efficiency and immediacy of combat. Throughout her adventure, Lara obtains three weapons: her bow and arrow, a handgun, and a shotgun. By limiting her to these three weapon types, it becomes easier to customize her arsenal to your liking.

If I had any complaints with this game, it would be the implementation of quick time events. This game is littered with QTEs. That's not a bad thing by any means, my only issue is that there are a lot of them in quick succession, one right after another. In addtion to frequency, there is very little room for error. You've got to be on your toes at all times to succeed.

Granted, this is nitpicky. I just can't find much to fault this game for. It's an ambitious, intriguing origins story that will keep you just as invested in the gameplay as it will the plot. I highly recommend picking it up if you can.