Review - Tomb Raider 2013

It's not often that a game truly lives up to my hopes.

My expectations are another matter. There are plenty of games that provide the sequences that they display on their trailers, along with the overall story and experience that is advertised by the increasingly terse blurb on their box covers. But with playable demos becoming increasingly rare, it is less and less common for me to buy a game because I've already played the entire first level and I want more.

In this environment, the game I actually buy is often one of several possible ideas of the game that I've got floating around in my head after absorbing the promotional material. Inevitably, there is a favourite amongst them – the version that I would have made if I'd had the opportunity to run with the concept the adverts are pitching at me. Often, this isn't the one that actually got created.

With Tomb Raider, I knew exactly what I was hoping for. I wanted a gritty game that focused on story. I wanted that story to be based around the development of the lead character. I wanted that development to show the transformation of a normal person into a full-on action hero without ever losing our initial empathy for the ordinary person we were presented with. Finally, given what we were seeing of the character's experiences, I didn't want the increase in power to be treated as 'empowering' by the character. The game that I got ticks every one of these boxes.

Tomb Raider 2013 is very much a linear story-based adventure game. Navigating your way to the objective will often trigger a cut-scene or extended set piece, the climax of which often serves to relocate you to a new area or at the very least provide you with pressing business at the next waypoint. This may bother some fans of sandbox style gameplay, but I found many of the set pieces to be far more exciting and engaging than anything the normal game AI could have served up from the default third person view.

I was initially disappointed at the lack of dialogue trees in the cut-scenes – having just played through the Walking Dead, I wanted to be forced to make the harsh survival choices myself. In the end, though, I came to accept the benefits of the less interactive approach. Lee Everett is a perfectly good character, but he basically became a mouthpiece through which my own views were expressed as I played Walking Dead. Having Lara declare what she wants to do and then having to go through with the result provides the character with a specific defined identity that you get to know over the course of the game.

You can explore most areas with some degree of freedom as you head toward your objective and a quick travel feature eventually becomes available to return to previous areas. Lara's level of agility is pleasing, but slightly dependant on whether a path is intended to be taken. Compared to the things you scale in the course of the adventure, the obstacles that can defeat you seem pretty minor if they aren't designed to be climbed. Each type of climbable surface always looks the same, so pathfinding is not a problem – although sometimes you feel a little led by the nose.

I found the story so engaging that I didn't use quick travel until after I'd completed the plot – going back to dig up artefacts and other items never seemed as pressing as the next objective. I did then take the time to achieve 100% completion, which also made narrative sense – the game even includes a final journal entry that only unlocks when you begin post-game play. Interestingly, most of the game's puzzle tombs are optional side areas that can be returned to in this way. This pleased me a great deal, since it meant that being stumped by a tomb didn't lock away the whole rest of the game for me. Although I was eventually able to solve them all, it was nice to be able to walk away after I got bored of missing the same jump and come back later after more practice.

Continuing the subject of traversal, Lara lacks a 'stealth crouch' which makes you feel awfully vulnerable when trying to sneak past enemies. This is perfectly appropriate when you consider how over-generous many games are regarding the invisibility this supposedly brings. Unfortunately, she also lacks a proper sprinting speed. It's undeniably impressive that Lara can keep moving at all after the punishment she takes, but I did sometimes wish she would amble toward cover a little faster when the air was filling with death. It's also unnerving to take such an unhurried run-up before jumping – but the reduced need to do so makes the jump puzzles far less frustrating.

Combat is satisfyingly bloody and vicious, with the regular foes being smart and tough enough to be scary at first and fragile enough to rack up a terrifying body count when you get your hand in at head shots and close combat kills. An obvious problem with portraying Lara's gradual evolution is that the player is probably already quite good at this. Lara might cry and puke the first time she kills someone, but once the gamer gets control of her she instantly becomes lightning fast and terrifyingly accurate.

The main way in which this is addressed is via the voice acting. Lara speaks quite often, and the gradual evolution of what she says does take much of the game. While an early game Lara says things like “please, you don't have to do this!”, a late game Lara says things like “that's right you bastards, I'm coming for you all!” The verbose enemies also become increasingly scared and desperate as the game goes on, displaying little of the suicidal misogynistic optimism of Catwoman's foes in Arkham City or the enforcers facing Nilin in Remember Me. I especially enjoyed hearing the last few enemies in a lengthy combat-filled level expressing dismay that I must have already killed everyone between themselves and the entrance. This in-game dialogue does a lot to limit the inevitable dissonance between play and cut-scenes.

The second technique used to portray the gradual rise in deadliness is the purchase of increasingly merciless skills with Experience points. Lara doesn't even get to hit people with her climbing axe until you reach tier two. Kneecapping someone with a held arrow before forcing your shotgun under their chin and pulling the trigger is very much an endgame move. The only thing I disliked about this progression was that (on the PS3 at least) new moves tended to overtake the key assignments of old ones. Burying an axe in someone's brain might be a lot more efficient than slinging grit in their eyes, but I still missed doing it.

Narratively, the game very much keeps to a lone character approach. Whilst several other crew members survive the shipwreck that strands Lara on the island, events usually conspire to split you up by the end of each shared cut-scene. I found the main character arc to be pretty satisfying as a heroic origin story. The first main area of growth lies in her responsibility toward the others – moving from miserable guilt and begging for aid to assuming leadership and acting as a defender. Indeed, her frequent moves to rescue the others instead of just looking out for number one stand out as the main thing that differentiates her from the head of the enemy cult. The second field of change lies in her attitude to the supernatural – initially dismissive, Lara gradually comes face to face with the kind of ancient magic that has always been a feature of her previous incarnation's adventures. The mix of these two elements alongside gradual toughening up provide the script with enough material to sustain the story. The final conclusion also provides motivation for further adventure – which thankfully doesn't come down to a need to repeat the adventurous thrills or make use of her new-found power.

Visually the game looks great. The graphics aren't quite as sharp as they look – hit pause and you'll see a fair few jagged lines in the frozen image – but are pretty effective when in full flow. For those of you with a PS4, an otherwise identical 'definitive edition' has recently been released with graphics upgraded to the specs of the new console. More importantly, the designers have faithfully adapted the distinctive style of the concept art to produce a recognisable style.

Unlike the previous Tomb Raider games, the protagonist isn't really presented in a sexualised way. Lara is still beautiful of course – and her voice is exquisite if you have a thing for posh British accents – but her clothing is pretty modest, her proportions realistic and the camera angles keep their mind on the job. Gradual model changes do cause her clothing to get torn to pieces during play, but this isn't done in a titillating fashion and is accompanied by subtle but copious scarring on the exposed skin.

It's not a perfect game, of course. The opening sequence is a bit disjointed and the game doesn't immediately hit its stride. Keep Lara separated from her companions limits the development they receive – each is distinctive but they don't really get to progress beyond one-dimensional stereotypes. Regenerating health undermines the grittiness of the violence, with damage only being consequential for a few seconds outside of plot-related injuries. Plot injuries are quite lasting, but being a Croft somehow seems to confer immunity to internal bleeding and infection. The decision to capture both motion and sound from Camilla Luddington's performance makes Lara's heavy breathing a little intrusive during arduous physical manauvers and the phrase 'I can do this' gets rather over-used in early voice-overs. Thankfully it largely gets phased out as she starts to actually believe it.

Some players may be displeased that the strong female lead spends sections of the game taking direct instructions from a male leader/father figure over her radio. On the other hand, this kind of voice in your ear feeding you objectives is perfectly normal for an adventure game and is less intrusive here than in many cases. Frankly the game probably needed a strong positive male figure somewhere – for various plot reasons almost all of the enemies are male.

The relentless suffering of Lara has also prompted some to question if the game is guilty of gender-inspired sadism. When you think about it, however, most action games consist almost entirely of being targeted for personal violence and struggling out of harmful environments. The difference here is that Lara reacts emotionally to these ordeals. There aren't many games out there that portray so much fear, anguish and uncertainty in a male lead – but it'd probably be better if there were.

Another possibly legitimate criticism is that this game isn't really a true successor to the Tomb Raiders we've seen before. Most of the tombs are literally optional side areas, the protagonist isn't there to titillate and whilst the game is in theory a prequel it is also a reboot that doesn't really work as a warm-up for the later games as they stand. However we might feel about these changes, it might be fairly complained that this game should have been an original title rather than cashing in on an existing brand name by paying lip service to it.

On the other hand, having a sense of where we are going really helps this origin story feel like it has direction – much like the reboot Batman Begins probably wouldn't work so well if we'd never heard of the guy. In particular, a couple of references to Lara's old twin pistol style give a sense of impending destiny that wouldn't exist otherwise.

DLC for the single player game is pretty limited. This probably speaks well of the basic game's story – it would be very hard to produce a story module that would plug in wherever you happened to be in the game at the time. I'd have liked to see a parallel story module covering the rest of the survivors, though. Available DLC consists of an optional extra tomb (which took me 40 minutes to strip at a very leisurely pace, including the extra 'this is DLC' loot-fest at the back) and six purely cosmetic extra costumes (each focused on one aspect of the character and all at least as modest as the default). These don't get damaged over play, but are otherwise fully integrated into the cutscenes. If it bothers you that Lara never loots a coat, get one of these. Oh, and you can also pay money for a limited selection of weapon upgrades and skills that are otherwise earned through salvage and EXP expenditure during play. If you really have no shame.

The game also has a multiplayer mode, which follows the common formula of using the game engine to run team deathmatch in a fashion that has changed little since the days of Quake. It's quite clever and pretty as such things go, but I really don't get why people value this part of these games as much as they do. Annoyingly enough, the multiplayer mode DOES feature croutch and sprint buttons that only work in this section of the game.

Some of the bad guy skins technically count as spoilers, so I wouldn't recommend going online until you've finished the single-player experience. If you're riding high on the feeling that you've survived all to emerge as some kind of invincible apex predator, a few rounds of multiplayer ought to kill that feeling for you nicely.

DLC is far more plentiful for multiplayer, consisting of new skins, new maps and (in a weird piece of market synergy) the weapons from Hitman: Absolution. Clearly, what the new Lara really needed was to be pointlessly associated with this:

Of course, no review of the game would be complete without mentioning the scene that attracted so much pre-release comment. Although barred by her NDA from attempting to cut in on all the free publicity, script author Rhianna Pratchett (the first woman to get the lead on a Tomb Raider game) has since made it clear that the scene is not intended to be about sexual assault, but entirely about the act of killing. Although there is an undeniable air of sexual menace to the sequence, failing any of the button presses appears to result in an immediate death by strangulation (the attacker has previously given the order to 'kill them all'). Succeed and the scene's lasting image will be how the man spends several seconds alive and trying to speak AFTER you blow a hole through his head (which funnily enough was omitted from the trailers).

Pratchett naturally wasn't too pleased about producer Ron Rosenberg's comments regarding the scene. She has stated that she absolutely didn't intend for the sexual assault element to be a pivotal moment in Lara's backstory – or she'd have made it worse. In her words, “if I felt that a female character needed sexual assault or rape as part of their backstory, it would be in there fully. Not as something you might see on Eastenders of a weeknight."

Final Score: 9/10. This game will likely remain one of my long-term favourites.

Best line: (Lara, dismissing supernatural myths about the Sun Queen) “A woman wields that much power, sooner or later someone will call it witchcraft.”

Worst line: (Excerpt from a found journal by another survivor) “I wish I could be more like Lara... she just blows me away. Not only is she brilliant, she's also an amazing ass kicker.”