Sentinel Reviews

Tomb Raider was possibly one of the biggest franchises on the PlayStation era. Some of it’s more recent additions have been met with a mediocre reception at best. Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix have brought their Reboot of the series to the Xbox one and PS4.

 

Firstly you need to know that I haven’t played the Xbox 360 or PS3 version of this game so I can’t draw a comparison between the different generation versions so I’m just going to review this on its own merits.

 

Tomb Raider Definitive Edition is a visually impressive game. It looks amazing and the lighting effects bring a stunning quality, from rain slamming into Lara to burning embers floating in the night sky.

 

Character animations are, for the most part, very good. There are a few animations that looks out of place but these are few and far between.

 

There’s a pretty decent levelling system where you gather “Salvage” and use it to upgrade your weapons. As you complete challenges you can unlock skill points that can be used to upgrade Lara’s abilities with things like increased health, ammo capacity and melee attacks.

 

Controls are solid and responsive although on occasion jumping to a ledge can be somewhat fiddly, this can lead to some pretty frustrating situations.

 

And here we find the first problem of the new Tomb Raider. The puzzles that made the older games so successful have been dumbed down. Instead of any kind of thought process to figure out how to solve the puzzle the game places in front of you the formula boils down to – “look for the thing to shoot/activate”.

 

And that’s the main problem with Tomb Raider. It’s formulaic. After the first fifteen minutes of the game you have basically seen everything it has to throw at you and you spend the next ten hours or so simply going through the motions.

 

There are also far too many Quick Time Events. In my playthrough I felt like I was constantly being prompted to complete a QTE and I found this taking me out of the moment.

 

This brings me to my biggest problem with Tomb Raider. I felt more like I was watching the game rather than playing it. You have very little control over what is happening, there’s not even a crouch button, Lara will simply crouch down whenever she decides to. The majority of the game, no matter how pretty it is, will boil down to you walking forward, with nowhere else to go.

 

Even in its more ambitious moments when explosions burst around you and massive cave-ins are falling around your head, it’s still the same formula. Run forward, jump over the gap, wash rinse and repeat. I think that the developers tried to make such a cinematic experience they forgot they were making an interactive game.

 

Personally I didn’t like this aspect and it turned me off of the whole game.

 

That being said it's just my opinion. There are plenty of good aspects to the game but I found that I had to look for them.

 

The combat is pretty repetitive but solid enough. Once again after the first few encounters the formula became clear. Take cover, kill everyone and move to the next cover. All it takes to for you to be taken down by a group of enemies is for you to miss one finishing move or mis-time a dodge. It can be frustrating at times but it does add some weight to your actions.

 

Tomb Raider Definitive Edition isn’t a game that I enjoyed but I feel like this was more down to my preferences rather than it being a bad game. It is a fresh reimagining of one of the PlayStation generation’s most beloved franchise. It is drastically different from its predecessors with a more human and vulnerable Lara and a storyline that, while still well within the “fantasy” genre, is engaging and heartfelt.

 

This isn’t a game for everyone. If like me, you are more interested in feeling like you are choosing your actions rather than going through someone else’s script then this one is probably worth missing but if you like fixed cinematic action sequences and the pretty colours then you should probably get yourself a copy.