Review: Rebooting "Tomb Raider" at the right time

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By Dan Robinson

SPECIAL TO GRIZZLY GAMING

Before playing the recent “Tomb Raider” reboot by Crystal Dynamics on the Playstation 3, I had only ever played one title in the series. Not being a big fan of the series, I wasn’t too sure what to expect from the reboot, but overall I feel it’s a fresh new take on a classic series.

“Tomb Raider” is a third person action game that tells the story of lead character Lara Croft’s first journey into the world of tomb raiding. Lara is taking part in a documentary voyage when her ship crashes, stranding herself and the crew on a mysterious island somewhere off the coast of Japan. Once on the island, your time is split between exploration, combat, and rescuing friends. This aspect of the game, searching for lost friends, has been done before and feels stale. This mechanic is very similar to another recently released game, “Far Cry 3.”

Speaking of “Far Cry 3,” overall this game came off as a mix between “Uncharted’s” third person action and “Far Cry’s” open world, jungle environment. However, “Tomb Raider” isn’t a strict open world game, like “Far Cry,” but rather the island is split into various areas connected by a central hub location
The missions of this game were challenging and offered a variety of side missions to keep you interested in the world around you. These side missions feature most of the tomb raiding you’ll be doing and breaks up the main missions and combat nicely.

Overall, the combat is solid but a little boring. There are only a handful of weapons which can have various upgrades applied to them which you get for looting and completing special tasks. As this is a game about Lara’s origins, you can earn skill points which turn her into a more competent explorer and fighter.

I really appreciated the fact that “Tomb Raider” is a big budget game that features a strong, female lead character. Not many games these days put women in the lead role and it’s great to see that Lara Croft is still a relevant character today and popular enough to warrant a serious reboot.

With all the areas of the island to explore, things to collect and side missions to complete, “Tomb Raider” has a lot of replay value. It can be a challenging game at times, but not enough games offer a high level of challenge these days so I definitely appreciated it. With all the reboots and remakes on the market these days, “Tomb Raider” sets the bar very high and hopefully this is only the first of many new games in the series.