Over time I seem to have compartmentalized how this origin story needlessly brutalizes its characters, sometimes in service of the hackneyed narrative but mostly in an attempt to slather Lara Croft's journey from wide-eyed idealist to hard-edged "survivor" in a layer of faux maturity that pokes at ultra-violence with all the gravitas a triple-A adventure of this scale can muster. It will never not be ridiculous that this game features a cutscene where Lara breaks down after shooting a man's scalp clean off his dome only to immediately turn around and clear out a shooting gallery of nameless crazies without batting a teary eye. Ignoring all narrative context, however, Tomb Raider is a bop. Uncharted-lite gameplay with a large focus on bow and arrow combat (as was the style at the time) with aesthetic flourishes ripped directly out of The Descent. Not super complex, not super challenging, just the right amount of levity in gameplay that is severely lacking in its overwrought story. Square Enix are cowards for not making Sam and Lara a couple. Lara literally bridal carries Sam down from the top of a goddamn mountain. Cowards.