I've never played any of the prior iterations of the Tomb Raider/Lara Croft games. It's a series with a long history--the first game released in 1996--and has expanded to film and comics. So starting Tomb Raider I wasn't sure what to expect. What I was not expecting was a game that felt like an Uncharted ripoff.
That sounds like a slam--and for all I know, prior iterations of Tomb Raider were like this enough that Uncharted is really the game that's a ripoff--but I love Uncharted, and Tomb Raider is so fun to play that I'm not even mad.
Croft and her crew (well, not her crew--just the crew she's a part of) are on a boat to find a lost island with a lost civilization who worship a lost god. But when a storm shipwrecks them, she finds herself alone on a dangerous island trying desperately to save her crewmates and herself.
I could probably copy-paste a lot of my review for Uncharted here. You're doing the same basic stuff, and even the plots play out very similarly. Adventuring. Indiana Jones-style treasure hunting. Puzzle solving. Light platforming. Some gunplay. A weird supernatural element to the plot/foes that gives off a Resident Evil 4 vibe.
As I say in just about every review I write here, I am not good at video games, so I don't want to say Tomb Raider was easy because I didn't feel like I was cakewalking it. But at the same time, like, I wasn't dying over and over. The only times I was getting frustrated was a few "interactive cinematics" sections where you need to guide Croft (down rapids, on a parachute, that sort of thing) and there is a specific path that results in death if you deviate from it. But the paths aren't marked, really, so it's a lot of trial and error (and then once the path is known, just pure execution of the maneuvers). Those were frustrating, but also rare enough to not impede enjoyment much. But, like, the shooting mechanics feel good, ammo is in regular supply, and enemies aren't absurdly spongy--most of them go down with a few well-placed shots. (I suspect that players who are more used to shooters--and are looking for a challenge with gunplay--will find this unsatisfying.)
Weapons mostly feel really good. You start off with a basic bow with some arrows (one of the best early skills to upgrade is the ability to loot your arrows off corpses, or you'll be scrambling for arrows during some of the beginning stages of the game), then start finding guns. You won't have to worry about dropping guns--there's only three guns types and a weapon slot for each; once you find it (which happens at specific points in the plot), it's yours to use or ignore as you wish. You also get to choose how to upgrade your weapons with scrap you find (the in-game currency). They make the bow a very appealing weapon, and a viable alternative to guns, although you'll complete your loadout with a pistol, riffle, and shotgun. The bow, pistol, and riffle are all good and make sense in different contexts. I never found a great context for the shotgun--it's range isn't great and by the time an enemy is that close, I found scrambling away to use a different weapon to be more health-efficient than fumbling with the shotgun. Honestly, they could have made the whole game pistol/bow and I would have been happy as a clam.
The puzzles feel like naturally overcoming barriers to be able to advance, rather than the Resident Evil style "complete the lock" keycraft. They're about making use of the environment and your skills. They're not the most intricate--or even elegant--of puzzles, but they're satisfying because of the way they're integrated into the game. Some of the puzzles are optional (side "tombs" you can raid for--well, mostly fun, although each has a collectable or two to procure that are really only crucial for people trying to 100% the game, but they're satisfying and fun--and I appreciate how the optional tombs don't have bad guys to shoot through, so they're a good chance to take a breather), others are necessary to figure out in order to advance the game.
I can't wait to play the sequel.
