Tomb Raider: Review
Today is the release date of the latest in the Tomb Raider series, simply titled: Tomb Raider.
My preorder came through in the post yesterday (a day prior to launch date, thanks www.shopto.net) so Mrs Sam pulled out her book and said, "Go on, then." I have been very excited about this new instalment, developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix (developers of the Final Fantasy series). The storyline has actually been written by Terry Pratchet's daughter, Rhianna Pratchet, bringing a fresh, emotive angle to this title.
The story is actually a Lara Croft origin one; a young, fresh-faced and ambitious Lara assembles a team and sets sail on a voyage aboard the 'Endurance' to make her first major archaeological mark, setting the coordinates for the Dragon's Triangle, a group of islands south of the Japanese coast. Unfortunately the ship is struck in a violent storm, ship-wrecking and scattering the team on a hostile island populated by dangerous wildlife and inhabitants.
Lara manages to scurry to land only to be knocked out by a sudden oncoming fist, waking up dangling upside-down from a damp, dark torch-lit cave. It is at this point that you take control of Lara, escaping from capture and setting out to escape captivity. What makes all this very special is the emotion and the fear in Lara; her fear seems real, we believe that she is petrified, convinced that she genuinely cannot believe what is happening to her and she is desperate to get the hell out of this situation. There has been so much attention given to the emotive aspect of this game and Lara is vulnerable and scared, a far cry from the Lara adventurer that we all know from the original Tomb Raider video games and the tragic Angelina Jolie portrayal from the Hollywood movies.
The elements of the game are all in there; scaling rocky terrain, balancing across planks and branches overlooking treacherous drops, taking out deadly wildlife and dangerous humans before they take you out, and of course, raiding the odd tomb here and there to collect ancient artefacts. Lara is just as limber as she grabs ledges and jumps from one cliff to another, however there is a sense of deliberate clumsiness and awkwardness to her movements (she's not done this before, remember?), not only portraying her desperation, but also her inexperience. The first weapon Lara arms herself with is a wooden bow, and this is for the purpose of hunting deer in order to eat, as this is one of the new features in the game. Eventually she has to kill her first human before she ends up as worm food herself, and this all contributes to the future 'hardened' Lara that we will come to be so familiar with. Another addition to the game is the 'salvaging' system, whereby you collect 'parts' that can be used to upgrade Lara's weapons, and there is a levelling up system (like any RPG game) so that points can be allocated to improve Lara's survival skills (such as hunting, improve salvaging, marksmanship, etc.). Lara can also use her 'instinct' to gain a sense of what direction she must take to reach her objectives.
Briefly playing the multiplayer mode, I am not proud to say that I had my ass kicked immediately, probably by some 14 year old American kids that all want to shag my mum, but never mindThis mode splits players into two teams, the survivors and the natives. The natives have to collect supplies and take them to certain locations on the map whereas the survivors have to take out as many natives as possible. First to achieve their goal wins. There are other different gaming modes, such as 'every man for them-self' whereby I received said 'ass-whooping'
I was surprised to see that Lara isn't actually one of the default characters for the multiplayer option, but she can be unlocked by collecting salvaging points, so I had to play as 'Alex', a geeky looking dude from Lara's crew. To be honest, I wasn't overly keen on the multiplayer option because the characters can die too easily, and probably because I will never be at the skill of some people that have never even kissed a girlThis was an incredibly brave move from Crystal Dynamics as there has never been a mulitplayer option on a Tomb Raider game, and to be fair, I'm not really into multiplayer games (unless it's Gears of War, so kudos to them.
All in all, a fantastic game. The environments are dirty, gaudy and grimy, making them realistic and hostile. There is a bit more sense of an open world and when Lara reaches a camp, she can fast-travel to anywhere already visited on the island to find missing artefacts, documents and to complete mini-challenges.
This needs to be a frog rating out of ten!
Nine out of ten frogs!
Brilliant game
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Originally Posted by PeepingTom
