Tomb Raider (2013)
About
A cinematic revival of the series in its action third person form, Tomb Rider follows Lara in her least experience period of life – her youth. Heavily influenced by Naughty Dog’s “Uncharted”, the game is a mix of everything, from stealth and survival to combat and QTE action scenes.
Young Lara Croft arrives on the Yamatai, lost island near Japan, as the leader of the expedition in search of the Yamatai Kingdom, with a diverse team of specialists. But shipwreck postponed the successful arrival and seemingly forgotten island is heavily populated with hostile inhabitants, cultists of Solarii Brotherhood.
The game will be graphic at times, especially after failed QTE’s during some of the survival scenes, but overall players will enjoy classic action adventure, reminiscent of the beginning of the series. This game is not a direct sequel or continuation of existing sub-series within the franchise, but a reboot, setting up Tomb Raider to represent modern gaming experience.
The game has RPG elements and has a world, which you can explore during the story campaign and after the completion. As well as multiplayer mode, where 2 teams (4 scavengers and 4 survivors) are clashing in 3 game modes while using weapons and environments from the single-player campaign.
System requirements for PlayStation 4
System requirements for PlayStation 3
System requirements for Xbox 360
System requirements for macOS
System requirements for PC
- OS:Windows XP / Windows Vista / Windows 7
- Processor:1.8 GHz Processor
- Memory:512 MB RAM
- Graphics:3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 9
- DirectX®:9.0
- Hard Drive:2 GB HD space
System requirements for Xbox One
Where to buy
Tomb Raider (2013) reviews and comments
Tomb Raider was the first game I completed (100%) on my Xbox One in 2015. It was a pretty good experience, and I've beaten it multiple times after the first playthrough. This time, I played it in 4K Ultrawide, and holy shit, this game is already cinematic, but with more FOV and letterbox, it gets flawless. The action sequences, destruction, and cutscenes just got to another level. If you can play it on an ultrawide monitor/TV, you should definitely give it a chance.
The story is good, and so are the graphics, but I keep coming back because of two reasons: Gameplay and atmospheric scenarios. I love the island, and killing enemies feels so damn good - even on a controller, which is a good complement coming from a former Competitive FPS PC player. That happens because this game can be challenging sometimes, which requires good aim to get headshots, arsenal understanding, and fluent movement to not get flanked. Otherwise, at higher difficulties, one miss can result in you being killed.
I'm excited to replay Rise of The Tomb Raider now.
Let's move away from the Uncharted comparisons and speak on what the game does. Gameplay is split between traversal and combat. For traversal, all you do is wander down often linear paths with minor platforming challenges and easy puzzles. Combat has two approaches, stealth and guns blazing. Both of these styles of combat are marred by very poor AI. AI are often comically oblivious in stealth and during a gunfight, enemies will often exit cover and walk in a straight line towards your position. Gun-play is also nothing to write home about and stealth is way too shallow to even bother with. Even with all these complaints, I still enjoyed my time during battles. They were like junk food, fun but nothing special.
I'm not sure if this is an apt comparison, but the story gave me heavy Indiana Jones vibes which I like a lot. The story was an enjoyable action filled romp. Although the beginning of the game makes you expect something more gritty but then turns into something more akin to Uncharted (I'm sorry for bringing it up again). I'm not very good at critiquing narratives as I am easily pleased, so I will leave off saying that I simply enjoyed the story.
Lastly, my technical experience was fairly good. The game ran amazingly but had issues with the UI. Certain UI elements that flashed on screen when going near an interactable or trying to grab ammo that you are full on are cut off at the top left of the screen. Thankfully nothing essential was cut off but it was still annoying nonetheless. Also, voice audio and sound fx audio were combined in settings for some reason. Music was not thankfully, but sometimes sound fx drowned out dialogue which is somewhat remedied by subtitles. Other than those issues, the game ran extremely well with no noticeable frame drops or crashes.
tl;dr Tomb Raider is definitely worth playing because of its fun narrative and enjoyable albeit easy gameplay.