Kevin's Watch

Just completed the main storyline of the latest addition to the Tomb Raider Games series and wanted to share a few observations. The story takes us back to Lara's origins as, fresh out of college, she embarks upon her first (and formative) adventure against baddies and ghoulies, both living and dead. Shipwrecked on an island held in the thrall of a mysterious Sun cult, she must battle to save herself and her team (some of whom we know from 'later' games) and escape the islands deadly grip. The youthful Lara is much more innocent than the hardened 'tomb raider' she is to become and we witness her first forray into killing, both animal and human, as well as her development (through fear) into the skilled climber/acrobat of later games.

The tone of the game is much darker and the violence is graphic and unsparing. The game is visually stunning and much more 'realistic' in appearence than previous games, but in saying that, it has in some way lost that almost cartoony feel that made the earlier revamped games so cool to look at. The terrain is interactive, and although the central quest is pretty linear, the set Lara is given to play in is pretty wide within that linearity. Some people (much younger and better gamers than me) found the game difficult. I didn't. I found that by using stealth and my head as opposed to brute force and ignorance, I could for the most part progress without difficulty. (nb I was however on the easy setting). Use of the weapons and fighting etc was relatively easy to master and although some of the major set piece fights were hard to get through, I've experienced much harder in earlier games. The game felt smaller than previous ones and certainly I got through it faster. The 'video' sequences were not too frequent and easily skipped even in the first encounter. Saving is frequent and automatic so that, on Lara's death, you are never too far from where you were killed - good if you don't like repetition.
I was dissapointed with the lower level of climbing and puzzles in the game; the climbs when you got them were spectacular and terrifying, but way to few of them. The game is essentially a third person shooter/adventure, in that the tombs/puzzles have been effectively removed and placed as optional matereal to encounter while exploring the island after having completed the main quest. All in all a good few days gaming once you have got over the initial loss of the old style Tomb Raider; how much fun there is to be had exploring the island and 'doing' the tombs after the main quest is over - well that remains to be seen. Watch this space!

Really enjoyed this game a lot, particularly the visuals in the various environments. There are some really stunning action setpieces, so long as you accept that you're not so much playing it as experiencing it.

Criticisms would be that it's a little repetative on the combat side, a lot of the game is on rails (see above about the setpieces), and there's this whole thing early on teaching you to hunt animals that never has any relevance to gameplay whatsoever.

Hi Murrin. Glad you enjoyed the game. I did as well, but did miss some of the 'grandure' [odd choice of word I know but I struggle to think of a better one] of the tombs and climbs of previous games. I returned to the game to search out the tombs I had not completed in the main game and finished them in a jiffy. When I think back to the size and scope of the tombs in earlier games these seemed trivial in comparison. Also I way prefer having the tombs in the actual main game - I makes the whole thing more interesting and complicated to play. This, as I said earlier, is essentially a third person shooter, albeit a very good one. Once completed however, I found traipsing round the island looking for GPS locators a bore and soon gave up on it. Also all those 'back story' tapes and journal entries and stuff. You could go round em up and put them all together to get the full picture - but do you really want to. Bring back 'Tomb Raider Revalations' is what I say

Bad news, everyone: The sequel to this game, Rise of the Tomb Raider, is exclusive to XBox. Which essentially translates to "this series has been cancelled for PS4 and PC players".

I'm guessing it will only be available on the new xbox as well which counts me out for a while at least. Is this like a 'tit-for-tat' thing over 'The Last of Us' only being available on PS consuls? [Really miffed at not being able to play that game as well!]