The story, too, still has power the second time around, despite the weak supporting cast and not-entirely-welcome supernatural elements. The Enhanced Edition gives you plenty of opportunities to admire the island from cliffsides, misty mountain outlooks, and precarious climbing ropes, and it really makes me feel like an explorer when I crest a hill and look down on a complex nest of ancient buildings and forest paths, or when I’m climbing a mountain towards a far-off signal tower. It really is stunningly beautiful, too, and even more so now. This time around I enjoyed it from the start, spending much more time exploring them for trinkets before moving on with the story’s agenda. The first time I played Tomb Raider, it was only when I went back to these areas without the story pushing me through them with a pistol in the small of my back that I appreciated how well designed they are. Each area of the island, from mountaintop village to forest to flotsam-littered beaches, is an adventure playground littered with hidden treasures, constructed for climbing and jumping and lateral thinking. The clever environment design distinguishes Tomb Raider from the linear action games whose set-pieces and tropes it borrows (see: the escape-from-a-burning-building sequence, sliding-down-a-slope-or-waterfall interludes). I dearly hope we see more of this in a sequel. As much as I love Tomb Raider as an action game, I miss it as an explorative puzzler there’s not much actual tomb-raiding in this origin story, but the secret tombs hidden around the island show that Crystal Dynamics still has great talent for environmental puzzles. We see flashes of her genuine nerdy passion for archaeology, too, as she marvels over artefacts and ancient structures. It really is all about Lara - she’s vulnerable here, but never disempowered, and never less than totally capable in the face of extreme danger. Tomb Raider reconnected me with Lara Croft, adding a new emotional dimension to one of gaming’s great heroines. This is done so well that the forced linearity is easy to forgive. The opening hours still feel self-indulgent, relying a little heavily on carefully planned cinematic moments, but it’s all for the sake of setting up Lara’s character. The linear story pulls you through at breakneck speed, taking Lara from frightened castaway to hardened survivor. These new control features and DLC don’t add anything to what was already a smooth, satisfying, genuinely thrilling action game, held together by an iconic, sympathetically written main character, fast-paced and varied combat, and some breathtaking action set-pieces. The last new addition is the ability to use Kinect to physically grab and rotate the artefacts that Lara finds, or lean left and right at cinematic moments to change the camera angle I much prefer doing that with a control stick, considering it’s already in my hand. Enemies’ shouts also sometimes seemed to activate voice control, though I’m reluctant to blame Tomb Raider for that so much as Kinect itself. I did actually start using that last feature, until the Kinect interpreted the sound of my kittens having a playfight on the carpet as me saying “bow” in the middle of a shootout with three men with assault rifles. You can say “show map” to pinpoint your location or name a weapon to equip it.
#TOMB RAIDER GOTY EDITION PC REVIEW PS4#
More interestingly, the Definitive Edition employs voice and gesture control on Xbox One and PS4 (if you have the camera add-on). It still isn’t worth much of anyone’s time. The rest of it is either superfluous weapon attachments or multiplayer maps and items, and sadly the multiplayer hasn’t magically gotten better over the course of the past year. The only significant single-player DLC is a single extra secret tomb, those little self-contained tributes to Tomb Raider’s puzzle-driven heritage. The Definitive Edition comes with all the DLC - though this isn’t as significant and addition as you might hope. (Assuming you haven’t already played on the great-looking PC version, that is.)
#TOMB RAIDER GOTY EDITION PC REVIEW 1080P#
The question for you, then, will be whether you fancy playing through it again and marvelling at a 1080p version of its stunning setting and resilient, likable heroine. It’s still an excellent cinematic action game, up with Uncharted at the peak of the genre. Realistic mud and sweat is not the next-gen revolution that gaming has been waiting for - but happily Tomb Raider doesn’t need extra special effects to make it worth playing.
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