Tomb Raider Review

by Iain Lowson

Right, while we're on the subject of hideous, powerful ancient mummies with rabid and unreasoning followers...

(SPOILERS, for those of you who give a monkeys...)

Finished Tomb Raider last night. While I was very impressed, I can't say I actually enjoyed myself. It's a bit like watching Jacob's Ladder, or The Machinist; you can really appreciate the skill and passion on show, but you're not necessarily convinced you'd want to do it all again.

Tomb Raider is a genuine survivor's story, or as genuine as video games can manage at the moment. It's as visceral and brutal as it needs to be to handle the subject matter, even with that fantasy edge that TR games need to have to, well, to be TR games. I was genuinely uncomfortable at times, and that is a good thing. It's just not a nice thing.

Starting it, I complained a little bit that it didn't feel like a TR game; more like a brutal, edgy Drake's Fortune game. By the end, though, it had transformed into a TR game, much as Lara transforms. The Lara we encounter at the start is not the one we stand with at the end. She is changed, and is stronger in herself, with a better understanding of her father's obsessions. You're just not sure that she's a better person for it all.

I love that. I love that you change with her. I'd say that I was reading too much into this but for a stand out moment right at the end that I won't spoil, save to say the return of some old friends is a serious, fist punching the air moment of celebration. It's also the moment you and Lara are utterly united in (necessary) brutality that, after the event, should make you ask some questions of yourself.

It's also a moment that could only ever be delivered in a video game, and I love the medium for that. Ok, so it's not up there with 'that' moment from Spec Ops: The Line, but it's very close. It's also in a game that will be bought by far more people, though how many get the point is never worth worrying about.

There are issues with TR, of course. For the main part, the quick time events really were too much. The majority of the first hour of the game was pretty much a cutscene, with QTE's in there to make you think otherwise. The platforming wasn't always helped by a camera that struggled with the scenery in jittery movements that occasionally made me nauseous. Jittery-cam was much in evidence in cutscenes, and again I felt a bit bleargh at times.

Combat was alright. Got a bit miffed at being given a scoped rifle, but no chance to pick of enemies before the heavily scripted fights. If the bad guys are there, they are there. Having them pop in as you zip line down to something just makes mockery of the survival emphasis of the plot. Why risk close quarters fighting when you have weapons that can knock a seagull out of the air from half a mile away? Even in close combat, precision is rewarded and easy to achieve, even for this cack-handed crumblie old gamer.

I rarely ran out of ammo (save on the machine gun), and never really felt threatened by enemies. Death came from stupid tactical decisions on my part, usually caused by my getting cocky and wandering into kill zones. Or being blindsided by enemies appearing behind me from areas I'd thoroughly cleared out before progressing.

TR has some minor issues with locked doors you can't open looking exactly like ones you can jimmy. There are platforms that you can land on or climb up that look exactly the same as those you can't, with such discoveries usually leading to a splat and a quick reload. Some of the environments only make sense as puzzles, not as the real places they want you to think they are, and guards appear in some locations to leave you wondering if they were dropped there by a bloody helicopter you somehow didn't see. Those are issues every Tomb Raider game has had since Tudor times, and there's a familiarity to them that almost raises a smile. Almost.

So, yeah, quite an experience. For every sucky QTE. there's a frantic run through a burning, collapsing, exploding building while being shot at and attacked by irate swallows that you will somehow breathlessly nail on the first pass and will make you feel like a god of gaming. For every dingy, ink-stamped corridor or tunnel, there's a sweeping vista that will take your breath away. For every crashingly irritating game message that appears to remind you it's just a stoopid game, there are delicate environmental details that you stumble on that make it all beautiful and real.

For every bad guy you leave choking in his own blood from the arrow you helped Lara ram through his throat, there's the genuine moment of wondering what kind of monster you're creating.

Tomb Raider, the Queen of Gaming, is dead. Long live Tomb Raider.