The Tomb Raider reboot hits store shelves on March 5.
This will definitely be an interesting year for gaming, which was down in 2012, yet somewhat bolstered by Halo 4 and Call of Duty 2 Black Ops. Will it also get a boost from the new model Tomb Raider?
The first review we ran on TG was very positive indeed, with the game racking up a 90% action adventure rating, along with a 95% visuals and graphics rating on GamesMaster. Now that the reviews are piling up, how does the new Tomb Raider size up with the fans? Apparently very well, at least so far.
According to a review roundup on Yahoo, the Raider reboot is “a triumph.” The Escapist gave it 5 out of 5, and Game Informer rated the game a 9.25 out of 10. As Informer notes, “Tomb Raider strikes a near-perfect balance between traversal, exploration, and combat, and it does so by letting players set that balance themselves. In big and little ways, Tomb Raider embraces the joy of discovery, and the player can’t help but be pulled along for the ride.”
So far, it looks like many of the reviews are in the 9 out of 10 range, and the game has shown a deeper story arc than before. As Tech Hive writes, “It’s beautifully crafted, both technically and narratively, but most of all, it’s just plain fun.” It’s always cool when a game can deliver thrills and good character development, but the first primary objective should indeed be fun. As Hive continues, this is the first “Tomb Raider game that actually treats Lara like a human.”
To be sure, this Tomb Raider is an origin story for Lara, and the Telegraph writes that the “handling of Lara as a character, as well as that of the other survivors, is masterful.” As Cinema Blend points out, the game has also gotten many comparisons to Uncharted in terms of action, and while the reviews so far are mostly positive, there are a few reviewers who weren’t nuts about the violence of the game.
As the folks over at Kotaku opined, “The game unleashes truly gruesome death scenes – which, yes call back to previous Tomb Raider games – that turned my stomach no matter how often I saw them.” The site Game Trailers also headlined their report, “Talking Tomb Raider: Shipwrecked By Violence?”
As the report continues, “Why does violence have to be associated with a ‘mature’ game? The potential to tell an involved, emotionally engrossing tale of personal evolution that would shed light on the events that transformed an average adventurer into one of the world’s premier Tomb Raiders seems to be lost on an attempt to cash in on a craze of mindless, violent mayhem.”
Yet so far overall, it looks like Lara Croft is back, bigger and stronger than ever. With the gaming season just getting started this year, it will be interesting to see how the new Tomb Raider factors in with everything. Will it be a big hit that will keep the gaming market strong? And will today’s gaming audience cotton to the new model Lara? We’ll be watching closely, stay tuned for further developments, but so far it looks like Lara’s off to a strong start.
