1. ezioauditore

   9

   As a die-hard Uncharted fan I can easily say that this game is a game to be reckoned with and to boast about. Crystal Dynamics has done a great job in terms of storytelling and especially gameplay, with the bow and arrow being a pleasure to use. It's Naughty Dog's turn now, hopefully if they release Uncharted 4 they will have the Tomb Raider standard to have to top.… Expand

   • Helpful? 22 of 31 users said Yes.
2. wesker2012

   8

   This is a great reboot for the Tomb Raider Franchise. I rate it a high 8. Everything in the game is well done. The island is very atmospheric with its awesome weather effects. The controls are solid. Tomb raider takes pretty much something from every triple A franchise before it and implements it into its own design just as well as those franchises did. There's stealth elements that feel like your playing a Splinter Cell game, combat and climbing that feels like Uncharted, bonfires from Dark Souls, brutal kills from Gears of War, etc. Everything is incorporated brilliantly while allowing Tomb Raider to still feel like its own game. The game starts off like the typical action adventure that you have played countless other times, but as you progress further and further into the game, the adventure starts opening up and throwing more variety and twists and turns at you. The game gets better and better as you move further into the adventure. An interesting note to make is that in relation to previous Tomb Raider games, this one is a lot more combat/action oriented than puzzle solving. This helps keep the games pace up, but old fans might be disappointed. The tombs are nowhere as cool as Uncharted's, but still a nice break from all the action. Also, finding the collectibles in the game adds a nice bit of challenge and reward for exploration. The reason, it doesn't get a 9 from me is that it never really does anything totally new or had me saying holy that was awesome! For every cool moment, there usually would be countless annoying deaths that followed which would mess up the feeling of excitement. And that's another big con for the game, there will be parts in this game that will piss the out of you, you will want to hurl your controller at the screen. The game starts off relatively easy to moderately easy but near the end gets annoyingly difficult and sometimes it's difficult to tell where to go or Lara just won't do what you want her to do. But overall, it's a huge accomplishment that the game is able to implement so many different features into its design so well for the first time and I'm looking forward to see what Crystal Dynamics can do with the next game.… Expand

   • Helpful? 12 of 24 users said Yes.
3. thegreatsage

   6

   I just finished Tomb Raider and felt like I had to write something about the game as I feel I disagree with a lot of the gaming websites positive reviews. My experience was really all over the place with Tomb Raider, I felt the game had little to no identity of its own. Tomb Raider is like playing Uncharted, Assassins Creed & Arkham City all in one. The game play itself is nothing new although there can still be a few fun moments in this game. Raking up head shots with the bow and arrow was a highlight, I used this for the majority of the game and found some of the other weapon options fairly pointless until very late in the game. Being a big fan of the both Tomb Raider and the Uncharted series I was really excited for the release of this game and it was disappointing that for the majority of the game I felt like I just wanted it to be over. Unfortunately they made Lara a whining cry baby who moans and makes painful noises when you do basically about anything in this game, apparently this is to show her emotional side and her struggle but instead just gets really annoying. Tomb Raider has a dull story line filled with unmemorable characters who add no substance to the experience what so ever. The majority of the characters are only introduced to you for a few seconds leaving you with no attachment or understanding of their characters at all. So when one dies, you seriously couldn't care less. Another thing that irritated me with this game is Lara’s face… It may as well have had no eyes or mouth on it at all, it remains plain and expressionless for the entire game and any close ups leave you wondering why they didn't put more detail into the main character.
   
   It may sound like it but I didn't really have that bad a time with this game, I just wish they had put more emphasis on the storyline, It just left me feeling like I wasn't doing anything with purpose in the game and instead was just jumping around from ledge to ledge picking up bits of wood to upgrade my weapons. If you are however into picking up lots of useless stuff in games, this one is for you. The tomb puzzles were fun but could have been a bit more complicated and longer.
   
   Again I just felt like the game was lacking its own identity, I can see how people would enjoy this game but it just wasn't for me. If you can borrow it over buying, I’d go for that option.… Expand

   • Helpful? 7 of 13 users said Yes.
4. HDFR

   4

   For a game with so much hype surrounding character portrayal the supporting cast is weak. Sassy black chick serves as the critical voice to all the Lara’s concerns over the islands supernatural qualities. Cute Chinese girl functions as a plot device by being kidnapped like that guy who always disappears in The Hangover films. Large framed and even larger hearted Hawaiian guy keeps everyone’s spirits up while the island’s indigenous shower them all with fire based projectiles. The supporting cast is a too wide and nobody gets enough screen time or engaging dialogue to make a real presence, the main protagonist included. Lara isn’t well fleshed out either. She displays brief turmoil following her first kill, but she soon goes on to find new and outlandish ways to expose the inner craniums of hundreds more men without showing any further remorse or having the excuse of being drugged up to the eye balls like Far Cry 3’s Jason Brody. The writers attempt to book end the narrative with mournful references to her dead dad, but everything in between reads like the script of your average cookie cutter action flick.
   
   A lot of the narrative’s credibility has been tied to the portraying of Lara in a vulnerable light, but this doesn’t instantly make for thoughtful characterizing. If someone rewrote Mansfield Park and recast Fanny Price as a busty gun toting whore I doubt it’d be met with such appraisal, or perhaps it would; Pride and Prejudice and Zombies did alright, but I digress. While we’re talking literature, it’s worth mentioning that Tomb Raider attempts to embellish it’s narrative with collectable diaries and documents la Bioshock, but they don’t embellish it so much as contain every scrap of what could have made this story interesting. Additionally they’re so monotonously voiced and lengthy that players are like to harvest them for xp and swiftly move on. In further regard to the vulnerability aspect of Lara, it’s a tone that fails to resonate when she’s brushing off twenty foot drops every few seconds like some sort of human bouncy ball.
   
   Average writing aside game play isn‘t particularly jaw dropping, not to say that it‘s altogether poor as it functions fluidly, but remains uninspired. The box art is tag lined “A survivor is born” although survival elements are sparse. An opening tutorial has Lara murder and cook Bambi for nourishment. Later a heavily injured Lara has to abandon aggressive modes of combat, instead making use of throw able objects, bow kills and takedowns. However such scenarios were gimmicky and fleeting when instead they could have been more intricate and permanent features.
   
   More often or not oppurtunities to employ stealth are scripted and conclude with forced fire fights in which players need to hunker down in the same spot to pick off foes from behind cover. You can’t give a player the option to approach combat in their way for so long only to snatch it away. That’s like being invited to a dinner party where the first two courses are comprised of lobster and caviar, but turns out that desserts a massive un-optional sandwich.
   
   A.I isn’t too intelligent, take out one enemy by yanking him with rope and arrow from a platform and his buddy two feet away will assume they’ve went for a spontaneous paraglide session. Enemies endlessly gravitate towards flammable barrels like they were full of winning lottery tickets and the island’s rigged with more explosives than a Wile. E. Coyote cartoon so combat soon becomes pretty, but stale.
   
   Environments make impressive use of vertical spaces, but routes for dispatching enemies are persistently linear. Camera angles are occasionally an issue in woodland areas resulting in the player’s view being obscured by more shrubbery than if they were being tea bagged by a tree beard from Lord of the Rings. Woefully enemies can make better use of the vertical spaces than the player during combat and anytime the opportunity to perform impressive manoeuvres arises the game has the nasty habit of cutting to a cinematic or QTE, alarmed that the players satisfaction levels may be spiking.
   
   Out with combat, tomb raiding is optional activity and when the ’tombs’, read ‘small caves’, are encountered they’re usually preceded by long needless crawls towards an area containing remarkably simple puzzles. The purpose of these is supposedly to give the player a long look at Lara’s arse so there goes you feminist angle.
   
   The undeniably present lack of free will displayed in the game’s set pieces leads to the theory that it may have been Crystal Dynamic’s wish to produce a Tomb Raider movie. The abundant use of slow motion, cut-aways and the way the screen goes film noir when Lara takes damage would certainly suggest so. This in mind here’s the alternative to buying the game. Watch one of the old Angelina Jolie films with controller in hand and press the trigger every time Lara wastes some guy.… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 0 users said Yes.

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