“I hate tombs!” Or so our reluctant yet iconic hero Lara Croft would have you believe in the latest installment of Tomb Raider. This title marks the ninth game in the franchise and comes five years after the release of the last entry. I’ll be attempting to bring to you a review of the PC version of Tomb Raider (2013), as that is the platform I ended up going with, and I must say, I am most pleased with my choice of platform to take this adventure.

Adventure. That is most certainly the absolute best word to describe Tomb Raider (2013). From start to finish it was a very high paced thrill ride of an adventure. From the opening sequence of act 1, the exciting revelations of Act 2, on through the spectacular finale of Act 3, it was a non stop adventure that made me feel as though I was watching a story unfold, not just blindly smashing buttons in a typical hack and slash shoot’em up style game. No, what this was, was a very well written, well voice acted story that I was getting to direct through my mouse and keyboard.

Tomb Raider does bring with it plenty of cut scenes and cinematic moments that happen quite frequently while our adventure unfolds. Perhaps for some people, they will not enjoy those elements. They perhaps instead prefer to remain in complete control of our beautiful protagonist. I on the other hand enjoy getting to see the story unfold in scripted cut scenes. I reveled in the change of the camera angle to pan out for a better frame of the shot so to present something more appealing as well as better visually show us the story that we are working to unravel. As wonderful as the backside view of Lara Croft is, it was a delight to see the action taking place in a more cinematic experience.

With those dramatic cut scenes and camera changes come quick time events. QTE’s have a very polarizing place in video games. Some people love them, while others despise them. I myself am largely indifferent to them as their own entity, instead opting to save my ire or my praise depending on how they are implemented into the game itself. Tomb Raider did a fairly good job at their implementation. You were given free reign through the combat, allowing the player to pick and choose what weapons they unleashed carnage with, how they went about dealing with enemies or skirting past them, whichever the case may be. It was only when the game dialed up some very special choreographed action sequences or intense struggles that we saw quick time events make an appearance into the game, and for the most part I thought they worked fairly well in delivering some bone crunching finishes, along side of heart pounding escapes to keep the action at a high level.

Sure, some people would rather finish off a tough opponent with perhaps just a random pistol shot to the head after they had chipped away at the health of the big bad. I on the other hand feel much more satisfied when a game gets it right, and you get to over come some big nasty baddy in a very cool flurry of action. It just seems far more visually appealing to see Lara combo through flesh ripping strikes until finally being able to sink her climbing pick into the back of a skull and gouge it out like an over stuffed hamburger filled pinata. But sure, I will admit, some people would prefer to just keep mashing left clicks until the big fight is over. To each their own I suppose.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give pause to voice my first criticism with the game, and it is related to the quick time events, despite how well I thought they performed and added to the adventure. When playing on the PC version with mouse and keyboard, early on I had quite a bit of annoyance with how they were presented to you as a player. They opted for symbols to represent what button you were intended to push instead of simply displaying what key stroke they required from us. Often times flashing an exclamation point or an image of a hand. Occasionally they’d not show us anything at all to indicate what we needed to be pressed. While others would only flash at the very last half of a second, causing you to have to redo the quick time event now that you know what it was they wanted you to press so that you could strike down your furious key stroke before even being asked for it. A scene early on in the game stands out as the most frustrating QTE for myself. A scene where you are pulled out of hiding and choked. It took me quite a few tries before I was able to figure out what key was required and how the timing was intended to work. Admittedly, I may have missed prior instructions or tips on what was required of me, but I certainly don’t recall seeing any. It is easy to get lost in the beauty of the world when playing on PC with ultra settings. I could very well have been distracted early on in the game when this information was presented. I understand that those who play through the PC version with an xbox controller, had the indicators color coded for an easier execution.

Without spoiling the story for you, I greatly enjoyed the pacing throughout the game. This is a true rebirth of the franchise. This title did not start you out with Lara Croft being a well versed bad ass ready to take on any tomb she may stumble across. Instead, you got a look at the more innocent Lara Croft as you guide her through a thrill ride that would see her begin to grow into what we all knew her to be from years gone by. There never seemed to be any lulls in the storyline which, for someone like me, was a welcome presence in the game. I don’t need time to settle down or chill out between my exciting moments. I don’t need long and usually uninteresting and even pointless lines of dialogue back and forth just to help give a break in the action. Every bit of my game time was spent either digging through the optional hidden tomb puzzles, or pressing forward on our journey to continue putting more pieces of the puzzle together.

Throughout that action, I was quite pleased by the combat mechanics. The weapons all handled very well, and felt fun to use. The shotgun felt exceptionally rewarding to use in combat. Perhaps I’m too used to the standard competitive FPS titles that are required to neuter the power of a good shotgun for balance issues, but not here. In Tomb Raider, if you fire the shot gun, you feel like you just fired a freaking shotgun all over somebodies face. I spent ample time with each of the four weapons, having periods throughout the game where I felt each weapon was well versed for different parts.

Something I had not known about the weapons going into the game, was that each of them, the bow, shotgun, pistol and rifle could each be upgraded based on salvage currency and weapon components you could uncover hidden throughout the world. Feeling your weapons become more deadly by your own decisions was very fulfilling. The added flame to the bow, silencer on the pistol, or the drum magazine for the shotgun, definitely left an impact on how you proceeded with your reign of terror upon the island.

Another key feature to the game play mechanics was that you gained experience for the actions you performed out in the world. Whether it be exploding a barrel for an environmental kill, a well positioned head shot, opening various crates and chests, or even hunting and butchering wild animals, you were gradually gaining skill points that could then be spent on customizing how Lara performed. You might opt for a special counter attack move, or perhaps instead aim for maximum ammo carrying capacity and recovery. Though one key part of this seemed to be abandoned throughout the game. Early on you were required to hunt a deer for food. Also to that point, several trait customizations exist that related to the hunting and harvesting of animals for food. Yet there was never any clear benefit of doing so. Perhaps this is evidence of an abandoned mechanic that had to be scrapped along the development process?

If one were to discuss the visceral and well functioning combat found in Tomb Raider, you’d be remiss to avoid mentioning the absolutely highly functioning cover system. It felt as though it was like a smart cover. You did not need to push a button to dive in or out of cover. You did not need to really approach it from the proper angle or side. Instead, Lara seamlessly glided in and out of cover as needed, precisely when you needed it the most. I did not experience a single time where I went into cover when I did not intend to, nor any scenarios where it in anyway fouled up my blood thirst desire to split skulls. It was a cover system that worked amazingly well an seemed to perform exactly how you needed it to do so, leaving you to expertly duck and weave amongst the environment while you conducted your symphony of destruction. Color me impressed!

Another point that is sure to be of concern for some players, though not all, would be the difficulty of the game. For my part, I played the game on normal difficulty and can very easily see myself turning the difficulty up and playing through again. Though that mainly contends with the combat. The thing that may draw some concern is that the path to getting through a typical scene is very clearly laid out for you. Essentially, if something is painted white, that is the way you are intended to go and what you are expected to climb atop of, leap from or zip line to. The game itself has a special vision mode that you access via a quick press of ‘Q’, it reveals things in a gold glow that you are capable of interacting with. I most commonly found myself using this vision to figure out which bodies I hadn’t looted just yet.

While I understand the existence of the white markers, they serve their purpose very well in ensuring that the player finds their way forward. I personally would have preferred if they did not show up to the naked eye, but instead were reserved for when you pressed the vision key. This for me would have allowed me to put a bit more thought into the path I had to take, a little more trial and error, and should I ever get truly stuck, the option to help more clearly find my way would be available to me. Though I would add that I certainly would not have minded a few more puzzle type moments added into the core campaign. The added bonus tombs were fun and quite good, but I’m perhaps greedy in my thirst for more of them.

On the flip side, I can just as easily argue against myself for why the white paint guidelines were valuable to the games enjoyment. As far as I’m concerned, I was playing a $45 interactive video game story. Part of what kept me on the edge of my seat was the pacing of the game, and that is undeniably aided by the path markers to help keep you flowing through the progression. My thought is that they intended for you to focus on following the story, not get stumped on simply what ledge you were meant to jump to, what wall you could double jump up onto and which post you were capable of using for a zip line anchor. The intention should have hopefully been to help keep the pacing of the game exciting, while increasing the likelihood of its player base to actually finish the game and seeing the conclusion to the well crafted story that is being presented to you.

The game length clocked in at just under an action packed 9 hours for my play through. Though I have seen reports of some completing it in roughly 7 hours. Perhaps I’m more of a take my time kind of gamer these days. Some will undoubtedly scoff at the 7-9 hour campaign, but I would say that would be a mistake. Provide me with an intense, action packed thriller of a campaign that had no fluff, no filler, no boring side missions or useless backtracking any day of the week. I will admit that when Tomb Raider first caught my attention, I had hoped for an open world, FarCry 3 style campaign, but with open world, comes a lot of filler content and busy work that is frequently unrewarding. I think the best decision for what they hopefully intended the experience to be is what won out in the end.

Tomb Raider did not implement very many if any ground breaking game mechanics. They borrowed heavily from other titles of its genre quite well. I could best describe this game as one part original Tomb Raider, one part Uncharted 3: Drake’s Fortune, with just a touch of God of War and Red Dead Redemption thrown into the mix. The pieces it combined into the game was executed amazingly well. Each element felt very well polished, from the weapons, the cover system, the camera controls, along with most other pieces. My minor issue with the quick time events introduction aside. I feel very confident that the developer delivered quite successfully on their goal of rebooting their franchise and securing a loyal fan base for the undoubted sequels that shall follow. Along with giving a new generation of gamers a chance to get in on the ground floor of the amazing character that is Lara Croft that so many of us grew up with.

Like the previous three titles, Tomb Raider (2013) was developed by Crystal Dynamics, who seem to have the tender love and care of one of gaming’s most beloved franchises well in hand. But perhaps more importantly, the PC version of the game was ported over from the console version by Nixxes Software BV. If that name seems at all familiar to you, it might be due to the fact that they are also responsible for the exceptionally well done PC ports of Deux Ex: Human Revolution as well as Hitman: Absolution, in addition a host of other excellent games including past Tomb Raider titles.

Stepping into the boots of Lara Croft is the up and coming talent Camilla Luddington, who provided both voice acting as well as motion capture for many of Lara’s in game animations. You may recognize her from a brief stint on HBO’s True Blood and currently in the role of Dr. Jo Wilson on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy. For my money, I felt as though her voice almost perfectly captured the spirit of Lara Croft that was established in my mind throughout the franchise. She excelled at breathing believable life and emotion into the world renown character. In a video game world where it is increasingly more and more rare to see strong female lead characters, let alone a title character of an entire franchise, it is my belief they made an exceptional choice in their casting decision.

Though the return of Tomb Raider was not without some controversy and issues. Some felt uncomfortable with the idea of watching a woman being beaten, and make no mistake, throughout the game Lara certainly takes a monumental beating and is often caked in blood, dirt, sweat and with a wide variety of wounds peppering her stunning figure, but there was never anything that I personally found uncomfortable to play through. Perhaps on the flip side, it might make some narrow minded people feel a touch uncomfortable to see a woman be capable of kicking so much ass and dishing out far more than she receives. As for the technical side of things, there were a couple of issues that were causing crashes for folks with the Nvidia 600 line of GPU’s. Luckily this is one of those times where I’m glad I’m still sitting on my MSI 570. Though at the time of this writing, a patch has been pushed forward to clear up the Nvidia crash issues.

To wrap up, if you’re looking for an exciting, fast paced action adventure, this game is certainly for you. There is very little if any filler to get in your way of playing out the well written, exceptionally well voiced and excitingly directed visual story that plays out in front of you. In a reasonably rare occurrence for me, I did feel a sense of emotional attachment to several key characters and was reasonably invested in seeing how their stories played out. The enjoyment was only multiplied by the combat maintaining that deliciously evil visceral feeling along with a highly effective smart cover system to keep you bobbing and weaving your way through the fire fights. It is my sincere recommendation that you find a way to take this ride with Lara however you can. Whether you buy it now at full price, snag it on a later steam sale or pick up a used copy for one of the consoles, this is certainly a game worth experiencing.

8.5/10

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*Images captured myself running on Ultra graphics on an i7-2600k CPU & MSI 570 GPU.