Tomb Raider is a game about a woman who keeps standing on rotten planks
of wood and falling down. It is a game about a woman who is always
sliding on her bum, muddily, confidently towards her next adventure. It
is a game about a woman who keeps going into rooms that are not properly
affixed to the Earth, and then there is an explosion or a rumble or
something, and then the room becomes unmoored and begins to lurch
sideways and off the edge of a cliff or a waterfall. It is a very good
game, full of exciting things to do with falling, and I like it.
My point is, unlike what most non-gamers believe, Tomb Raider isn't
famous solely because of Lara's much-publicised assets. A generation of
gamers has grown up genuinely enjoying its phenomenal level design and
meticulously-crafted puzzles on a scale that beggars belief even after
16 years. Although I will have a soft spot for the original games with
their clunky grid-based level design, the video game industry has
evolved much since the first Tomb Raider was released. Despite all its
cinematic flair and successful modernisation of the control scheme, Tomb
Raider: Legend still didn't have all the new-fangled bells and whistles
of contemporary games..
The narrative is multilayered and incorporates the essence of Tomb Raider by basing the plot around the real-world myth of shamanistic Sun Queen Himiko and her supernatural army of shogun warriors. This is bolstered by incorporating a parallel arc involving several generations of shipwrecked survivors adding that many layers of history, ranging from the Japanese feudal period and the remnants of the Japanese and American strife during World War II to settlement comprising of Russian scavengers who have formed a cult practicing human sacrifice. Although it may seem modern and distant from the traditional Tomb Raider game, it still manages to capture the essence of what a Tomb Raider experience is supposed to be. My only complaint is that while Lara is fleshed out well, the supporting cast members aren't as memorable and only serve as fodder for plot progression.
It took me about 14 hours to finish Tomb Raider with something around a 60% completion rating, though I might've spent a load of time on the menu screen while I was in the shower or making sounds at the cat who lives outside my window. So let's say 12 hours on an average playthrough, with a few more on top if you decide to go back and find old tombs you missed, which you should. I haven't played the multiplayer because that ain't my bag, yo. It runs well enough on my mid-range PC, as long as you turn off fancy hair, but I did have some odd graphical glitching caused by post-processing being switched on, meaning I had to endure a fairly flat looking version of the game for the most part. Driver updates and patching should hopefully fix this right up.
Tomb Raider is the best videogame about shooting things and falling over I've played in quite some time, better than at least two of the Uncharted games and better than at least a dozen other Tomb Raider games. It's refreshingly well-written too, deftly rubbishing the expanding polygonal tits and arse of old Lara Croft to make way for a new character entirely, one who can innately side-step the bullshit two-dimensional machismo that plagues the form to become, by contrast of her own violently framed vulnerabilities, one of the strongest characters in games. Genuinely.
The narrative is multilayered and incorporates the essence of Tomb Raider by basing the plot around the real-world myth of shamanistic Sun Queen Himiko and her supernatural army of shogun warriors. This is bolstered by incorporating a parallel arc involving several generations of shipwrecked survivors adding that many layers of history, ranging from the Japanese feudal period and the remnants of the Japanese and American strife during World War II to settlement comprising of Russian scavengers who have formed a cult practicing human sacrifice. Although it may seem modern and distant from the traditional Tomb Raider game, it still manages to capture the essence of what a Tomb Raider experience is supposed to be. My only complaint is that while Lara is fleshed out well, the supporting cast members aren't as memorable and only serve as fodder for plot progression.
It took me about 14 hours to finish Tomb Raider with something around a 60% completion rating, though I might've spent a load of time on the menu screen while I was in the shower or making sounds at the cat who lives outside my window. So let's say 12 hours on an average playthrough, with a few more on top if you decide to go back and find old tombs you missed, which you should. I haven't played the multiplayer because that ain't my bag, yo. It runs well enough on my mid-range PC, as long as you turn off fancy hair, but I did have some odd graphical glitching caused by post-processing being switched on, meaning I had to endure a fairly flat looking version of the game for the most part. Driver updates and patching should hopefully fix this right up.
Tomb Raider is the best videogame about shooting things and falling over I've played in quite some time, better than at least two of the Uncharted games and better than at least a dozen other Tomb Raider games. It's refreshingly well-written too, deftly rubbishing the expanding polygonal tits and arse of old Lara Croft to make way for a new character entirely, one who can innately side-step the bullshit two-dimensional machismo that plagues the form to become, by contrast of her own violently framed vulnerabilities, one of the strongest characters in games. Genuinely.
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