A Reboot done right! Well mostly.

Tomb Raider (2013) is a full-on Reboot of the classic Tomb Raider franchise and serves as the origin story for Lara Croft on her first real adventure on the lost island of Yamati in the middle of the Dragons Triangle.

Gameplay: This is a 3rd person shooter, action thriller game with a semi open world map. The game follows Lara as she is shipwrecked on this mysterious island with her friends and fellow explorers. The gameplay has some Stealth elements but switches between high paced action and puzzle solving. The Puzzles involve a lot of climbing and platforming to find or move switches and platforms, explore environments to figure out how to get from point A to point B and collect artifacts, collectibles and upgrades. All of the gameplay and combat is pretty fluent and satisfying though I will say a few of the areas and puzzles I had to Google to figure out. Most of the gameplay involves you fighting enemies with guns, undead creatures and animals. Speaking of animals, there is a hunting mechanic in this game where you can hunt animals like deer and wolves for materials and then go to one of the many firepit locations around the map and save, craft gear and upgrades. The map is mostly linear but there is a back tracking and open world element to the Island which allows you to go back and solve puzzles you could not figure out before. The whole gameplay loop is pretty solid and fits in well with the idea of what Tomb Raider was all about and is probably the most successful element to this reboot.

Graphics, Voice acting & Music: This game graphically looked great for 2013 and still doesn’t look half bad at all in today’s day and age. The environments all look and feel very realistic and spooky with ancient caves, a shanty town made out of shipwrecks and the large cave and mountainous regions all fit well with the theme. The new cast of characters all sound fantastic, Voice acting from everyone around the board is smooth and give great performances though I will say a few of the NPC enemies have the same voice from time to time and I wanna say whoever that voice is also voiced Cyborg in Teen Titans but I could be wrong just sounds a lot like him. The music and environmental themes are all pretty great but also isn’t anything too amazing either, but it certainly fits and gets the job done.

Story/ Minor spoilers: The story is another fairly strong point for this reboot as it sets up this universe and gives us a more realistic version of Lara Croft. What they did here reminds me of how the Resident Evil Remakes changed those characters. We see a human and not over sexualized version of Lara and I know a lot of people didn’t like this approach and I am usually against making changes like this, but I actually found this version of Lara great and really didn’t have an issue with it at all. Lara is younger and less experienced here and I could totally see them doing an adult Lara trilogy where she is the dual gun slinging Lara people are used to in time. Basically, in this story we see Lara and her colleague exploring this mysterious island with savage and crazed survivors, mysterious ghostly ruins and undead phantoms of ancient Samuri and the inclusion of an unsolved mystery involving a sun queen and a supposed curse. All interesting stuff that I think worked super well for what it was. I don’t want to spoil anything about the story because it was all pretty solid and works well. Overall, I really loved this reboot, had great gameplay, a fresh take on Lara, good characters (for the most part, some of the side characters were a little one dimensional and cringe but they don’t take up too much plot for it to be a problem for me) and a good map and story, lots of replay value. It’s not a perfect game and I know this is a version of Lara that’s a bit more grounded, but I personally found it very enjoyable. 8.5/10

Off the bat the production value for this game is gorgeous with stunning environments and incredible setpieces. The action in this game for me was mixed, on one hand the weapons are fun to use and it's satisfying to get headshots and take out entire camps while being stealthy but on the other hand it was way too easy with the upgrades I got along the way feeling useless even on the hardest difficulty. The grounded nature of the game does make things feel limited in terms of abilties too.

While I praised the production value and set pieces earlier, the automation it gives you to feel more cinematic can get overdone sometimes, taking away a lot of interactivity from some segments and giving an illusion of player control for segments that could've easily had more player input. Also while the story has a lot of bright spots and is acted well, it is paced really weirdly with Lara's transition to a frightened survivor terrified of her first kill to a hardened killer happening way too quickly to be immersed with it, some of her crew had their moments but they did fall flat at times.

The tombs were also kind of disappointing, way too short with really simplistic puzzles.

I am not an OG of the Tomb Raider games but I can see how this game or reboot revitalized the iconic franchise, delivering heart-pounding action, breathtaking exploration, and a compelling origin story for our beloved Lara.

With stunning visuals, (even with today's standards) intense gameplay, and a strong emphasis on survival, this game redefined what was it like to experience the original, I believe.

Linear and story driven but not that bad.

Este fue mi primer juego de PS3 y mis padres no me dejaron jugarlo porque era muy violento pero tampoco me dejaban comprar otro juego porque ya acababa de comprar la PS3.
Jugué poco y a escondidas, y algo más según fui creciendo. No recuerdo demasiado de mi experiencia y no entendía muy bien los sistemas porque era pequeña pero el multijugador me flipaba porque era asimétrico, tenía varias clases/personajes, el equipamiento era chatarra, era en tercera persona y tenía pocos mapas pero muy interactivos con palancas, botones, puertas, tirolinas, paredes y edificios escalables, y me flipaba.