Earlier in the week, I discovered something that made me very happy. The new Tomb Raider game—a reboot of the series that came out a few months ago—has been nominated in a number of categories for the Spike TV videogame awards. Best of all, it’s one of five nominees in the “Game of the Year” category, which I personally believe is an award it deserves to win.
Now, the Spike videogame awards (now named “VGX” for that extra edginess) are by no means an effective commentary on the state of the games industry. They tend to limit the majority of their coverage to popular, big-budget titles and don’t really accommodate the stream of smaller games that really try to do something different and push the industry in interesting directions. That said, the awards are very much focused on catering to a very broad, very mainstream audience, and this is part of why they’re important—because they’re fantastic for exposure. And the more people that know about Tomb Raider, the better.
Tomb Raider is my favourite kind of game—one that doesn’t shy away from being “gamey” in lieu of being an interactive movie instead. A game that’s a “game” first and a “story” second, but still manages to combine the two into an experience that is both fun and makes you feel like you’ve witnessed someone grow into the person they’re going to be for the rest of their life. Tomb Raider is a game that throws you into a virtual playground and showers you with places to explore, collectibles to find, and interesting puzzles to solve. It’s the kind of game that’s fun, replayable, and will make you want to come back to it again. At the same time, it’s also the story of how a girl went from being a bright, young university student to genius archaeologist and hardened adventurer.
As pretentious as it sounds, calling Tomb Raider a “game” doesn’t quite do it justice. If I were to discuss the game with a friend that wasn’t into videogames, I would tell them that Tomb Raider is like a rollercoaster ride that cycles between exploration, action and feelings of “HELL YEAH!” It’s what they call an “experience,” but one that doesn’t abandon its videogamey roots in pursuit of this achievement.
Tomb Raider’s story starts out with a search for an ancient civilization out in the middle of the ocean. For years, researchers have debated the legend of the ancient country of Yamatai, home to Himiko, the sun queen. No one has ever found Yamatai, but that hasn’t stopped people from searching for it. The latest expedition that has set sail to track Yamatai down includes a bright university student named Lara Croft as part of its crew. In fact, Lara is one of the reasons the expedition is on track to make a discovery at all, where others have failed. Her mentor and teacher—a man by the name of Conrad Roth—believes that Lara, like her parents before her, has the instincts and thinking of a natural explorer, and so, when Lara suggests that their ship alter course during the expedition, Roth obliges, believing that Lara’s gut feelings are worth chasing after.
Unfortunately, things go wrong as they’re wont to do, and the expedition ends up caught in a massive storm. The ship is tossed about like a salad and ends up broken in two, resting on the shore of a mysterious island infested by bloodthirsty mercenaries and an even more bloodthirsty cult of religious fanatics. As luck would have it, this is Yamatai, and Lara and co. are stranded here. Or rather, to put it more precisely, most of the crew is captured or on the run, while Lara herself is separated from the rest and nearly drowns to death. Following a close shave, she manages to take possession of a radio and begins to make her way up a mountain forest in the midst of a raging thunderstorm, in the hopes of reuniting with the crew.
Tomb Raider sets itself apart from its predecessors right away. Were this the old Tomb Raider, scaling a mountain in the midst of a thundershower would be a walk in the park for Lara Croft. But it isn’t. This isn’t Lara Croft, accomplished archaeologist and scourge of the underworld. This is Lara Croft, accomplished university student with a passion for archaeology and a part-time job waitressing at a bar. Tomb Raider starts over entirely from scratch—it throws the old storyline into the trash bin along with any preconceived notions you may have had about Lara Craft, with the intent of showing you how a regular girl with a love for digging up things becomes a hardened, confident adventurer.
As the old saying goes, adversity builds character, and luckily (or unluckily) for Lara, there’s a lot of adversity to be found. As she makes her way through the mountain forest, Lara runs into her first real threat—wolves. Hungry and territorial ones. Co-existing alongside a camp of trigger-happy mercenaries has probably given these guys good reason to feel threatened, and they aren’t taking any chances. The go for the throat, literally, and Lara’s first encounters with a pack of wolves leaves her bloody and wounded.
The wolves are just the start of her troubles, though. As she tries to re-unite with her crew, unwittingly stumbling into all sorts of places she isn’t welcome, Lara is put through the kind of hell that one can only imagine. She’s bitten, stabbed, axed, shot at, drowned, burned, and even thrown off a cliff.
Not all of this torture is enforced upon her by the island’s evil inhabitants. In fact, a lot of it is simply down to surviving in the wilderness and trying not to succumb to the natural environment, which isn’t welcoming in the least to human visitors. Luckily for Lara, she’s amassed a wealth of theoretical knowledge in her preparation for expeditions such as these, and it’s finally going to be of practical use. She knows how to use a firearm, but the island makes her use them for self-defense. She’s used a bow-and-arrow, but the island makes her hunt for food. She’s familiar with the basics of first-aid, but the island makes her treat broken bones. She’s always had the makings of an adventurer and survivor, but now she has to be one.
Tomb Raider is incredibly good at building a realistic premise for Lara’s adventure on Yamatai. How does she survive? Well, she’s always been a smart cookie. Throw in a little bit of fear and adrenaline, and it really isn’t very difficult to believe some of the things she does.
As the game progresses, so does Lara’s confidence, and the environments you explore reflect this as well. In the first 30 minutes of Tomb Raider, you’re scrambling through a forest, hunting deer and trying to get your bearings. By the halfway point, you’re walking across tightropes and using a pickaxe to speed down ziplines. At points in the game, Lara even leaves her fear behind entirely, in brief moments of awe where she discovers some sort of ancient trinket or the other, hidden away in the many tombs and caves scattered across the island. Her eyes light up, and a faint gasp of admiration escapes her lips as she examines her new treasure, often even dropping little bits of knowledge on the item she discovered, and the role it likely played in the ancient civilization you’re exploring. It’s a wonderful sight to behold, these brief moments where she forgets her troubles and turns back into the curious, young university student, fascinated with ancient history.
And this is the best part of Tomb Raider. It’s always giving you something new to do.
Tomb Raider's environments are designed very much like a Metroid game. Areas on the island are interconnected with one another, and you’re constantly discovering new shortcuts and routes that take you between them. There’s a constant sense of discovery, not just in terms of items you find, but the island and its sights, too. What starts out as a struggle to get your bearings eventually turns into a dance of sorts. A well-practiced routine where you challenge yourself to play the game as elegantly and stylishly as possible, jumping, climbing, zipping and shooting all over the island without getting yourself killed. Once the island becomes your playground, Tomb Raider turns into the kind of game you never want to turn off, simply because the act of moving from one place to another is so much fun in and of itself.
And then there’s the fact that if you’re ever lost or bored, you can always stop what you’re doing and work on a different aspect of your exploration. Tired of trying to figure out how to open up a route to that cliff far off in the distance? Come back to it later. Give your mind a break and try to track down a few of the dozens of trinkets and collectibles in the areas you’ve already visited instead. Each time you revisit an older area in Tomb Raider, new secrets show up on the map, along with a handy completion percentage for the obsessive explorers. Hitting 100% completion in any area is one of the most satisfying achievements in the game. You don’t really get anything for it, but just the satisfaction of realizing that you’ve mastered the area is incredibly satisfying.
I could go on and on about Tomb Raider. I could talk about how fun it is to try and forego using a gun, and instead use Lara’s pickaxe to defeat enemies up close, without getting hit by their bullets. I could talk about how satisfying it is to clear a series of tricky jumps and obstacles in one go, taking no damage in the process. I could talk about what a thrill it is to tackle a series of complex ziplines to make your way down from the highest point on the island to an abandoned mining town below. Or how empowering it feels when Lara decides she’s tired of being shot at, and picks up a grenade launcher, finally abandoning any last semblance of sympathy she may have felt for her assailants. There’s a lot to talk about. And really, that’s what makes Tomb Raider such a special game—there’s so much about it stays with you after you’ve completed it. So many moments of discovery, of thrill and of joy.
Prior to the game’s release, I would have counted myself among its most vocal critics, having been onboard with the series since the very first Tomb Raider back in the ‘90s. A younger Lara? No more backflips and somersaults in her arsenal of moves? A different title theme? And where were her sunglasses and dual pistols? This wasn’t my Tomb Raider!
No, it wasn’t—I’m happy to say, it actually turned out even better.
[Note: As an aside, I played Tomb Raider on the PC, in stereoscopic 3D, and it looks incredible. If you happen to have a 3D-enabled PC or console setup, I would highly recommend playing the game that way.]
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