I was hesitant to play this for years because I'm really not a fan of the Tomb Raider franchise. The first game pissed me off so bad i thought it sucked, and I played a few others such as Anniversary and that sucked too and i dropped it halfway through. Those games had shitty controls, and I would describe them as 'Puzzle/Adventure' with a very light touch of action.
Luckily, with Tomb Raider (2013) its kind of the opposite. I would describe it as Action/Adventure with very light touches of puzzles. Instead of the boring and convoluted puzzles of the previous games, Now you have constant gunplay that has a lot of impact in a very satisfying albeit generic cover based shooter format. Gone is the crap 'lock on' aim system of the old games.
As the game progresses you get put up against more and more varied types of enemies with more and more armor. which keeps the pace fresh and interesting.
There is an skill system, that gives you as expected perks to help with the ramp in difficulty. There is technically only 4 weapons but you can find weapon pieces around the game to 'upgrade' them into different weapons of the same category. I found it satisfying to unlock new guns and put attachments on them. There's 3 difficulties and I played on Normal so the game never really felt difficult at all. I would wager even on the hardest difficulty it would still be quite easy due to the nature of the mechanics. You can hit "Q' at any given time to highlight every single enemy on the map in red and you can see them through walls. As well as the game going in slow motion. This alone makes the game pretty damn easy, and I would argue should have just been taken out entirely or at least locked behind hard to get perk.
The game is extremely narrative driven, and you will constantly be watching cutscenes and be taken out of the gameplay with each new piece of screen you discover. Which is kind of a negative, but the pacing of the game is very solid and you never really feel bored or like you're wasting your time. There are also tons of quick time events, something I'm never a fan of. It is kind of overdone here, but it does help the narrative I guess. There are actually some quicktime events that I enjoyed like the one where the guy tries to rape you. That was pretty intense. The story is serviceable but pretty generic. You find yourself trapped on an island and you cannot leave due to some ancient Japanese curse. that's pretty much the story. The characters are interesting and the voice acting and dialogue is pretty solid, but its nothing that will stay with you or anything.
There are some pretty frustrating and bullshit climbing sections that are totally trial and error. Not because of a lack of player skill, but because of a lack of identifying what the hell you're suppose to be doing. It uses the kind of modern style 'scripted platforming' method where its not what I would call true platforming but more like hit the 'Jump' button on the correct area and it locks you into a scripted animation to progress.. its done better in this game than most, because of the smooth animations and solid controls.. but there are segments where it is unclear how to progress because the area is not identified with anything and you'll die over and over guessing what the actual correct place to jump is.
My favorite moments in the game is when it just swarms you with enemies and you have to kill them all and find cover and dodge their explosions. The AI is pretty solid as they flank you and constantly are chatting among themselves calling out their actions in a realistic squad fashion. You can press a Dodge button to roll all around and bash them with your axe while dodging their gunfire and its just a very satisfying combat loop. Swapping back and forth between the weapons executing headshots, swapping to the Shotgun and blasting shield guys or heavily armored guys hearing the meaty sound effects.. its pretty fun. Also there are some truly gruesome and dark almost horror style moments where you're crawling around dungeons full of decapitated bodies and looming insane cult murderers wandering around and I found these moments really sick and fun, a real edge.
Sometimes you come across a puzzle and at most I got stumped for 10 minutes but its never over-complicated like the previous games. I enjoyed some of them and they're often physics based. You have a lot of tools for traversing the environment like a bow that shoots ropes and your axe that you climb with, and you often use these to solve puzzles as well. You're never left wondering what to do because you can hit Q at any moment to see an arrow pointing to the objective and it also highlights all relevant objects in the environment required to progress. Which again, really helps the pacing. The best things about this game are the pacing, the combat system, oh and the graphics are pretty solid too.
You can 'free roam' kind of, and fast travel to find optional unlocks and do optional short tombs for rewards but I never really felt the need or desire. I was never struggling with the combat as its kind of skill based and I don't need a bunch of easy perks from optional exploration, and by the end of the game I mostly had everything unlocked anyway. At end credits it said I only had 64% of the game technically completed, but it just means I could go back and free roam after the story mode to collect all the little trinkets and audio logs and stuff like that... things I don't really see the need for but its an interesting inclusion if you want to spend more time with the game.
Really, Tomb Raider (2013) has exceeded my expectations because I never had any. I came in expecting the worst because I kind of hate the whole franchise, but I was happy to see that this is an entire rework of how the series is. I know some people might not like the new direction and they liked the older more puzzle based games more, and that's fine. Those older games aren't for me as I don't like overly complex annoying puzzles and I much prefer action combat and traversing big open wide environments. My main critiques are how the game is at times more like a movie than a video game, you'll be constantly in a scripted sequence where you just have to hold Forward to progress where Laura will be talking to herself or observing things, like a movie. Sometimes I would just like to actually control the game for 30 minutes straight without interruption you know? well its not that big of a deal, it does keep it interesting by constantly developing the story so its a trade off.
It only took me 7 hours to complete the story and see end credits and I never felt bored or pained throughout it, except a few bullshit trial and error climbing sections I rather enjoyed myself. If this is an indication of how the franchise is going I will happily play the next games too.
7/10
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