Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition Review | Backlog Breaker

Lara Croft has a very special place in gaming history. She’s a character that’s revisited every few years with a video game or movie. In terms of sales, the original trilogy of Tomb Raider games (released yearly from 1996 to 1998) was a huge hit, going on to sell a collective 20 million copies. Since then, the games have tried to recapture those numbers with limited success. While some, like Tomb Raider: Legend in 2006, did come close to the sales of Tomb Raider 1 and 2 (which each sold around 7 million copies) by selling 6.4 million units across PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Game Boy Advance, Xbox 360, and more, most titles averaged between 1 and 3 million.

Over on the movie side of things, in 2001, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie, hit theaters and pulled in a total of $274 million at the global box office against a $115 million budget. The sequel, released in 2003, did not replicate that success either, garnering a total of $160 million on a $95 million budget. The reason I go over all that is because this was the state of things for Lara Croft when Crystal Dynamics began work on a new vision for Tomb Raider. A reboot that starts the Survivor trilogy. A series that would go on to sell over 34 million copies, receive critical success, and inspire a live-action movie of its own.

It’s easy to assume that the 2013 third-person action-adventure game would be similar to Naughty Dog’s hit Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune; however, Tomb Raider sets itself apart right away. The game wastes no time in establishing the hook that Lara doesn’t find adventure; adventure finds her. The first hour of Lara’s origin story sees her nearly drowning in a storm, getting knocked out, getting impaled by a rebar, being hunted by humans, and having her leg caught in a bear trap. This early torment that Lara pushes her way through at the start sets up the stakes for the rest of the game. That at any moment, something terrible can happen. And oftentimes they do.

The part of Lara Croft that is excited for an archaeological expedition barely surfaces for the majority of this game. Instead, her attention is on protecting her crewmates and surviving the island that they’re stranded on. The plot line isn’t all too surprising, but it’s taken seriously. Lara gets beaten, battered, and bruised, and she doesn’t make quips about it. Sometimes that can work against the game, like how you witness Lara kill a human for the first time at the start of the game, and then it becomes a pretty routine activity by the end, but it works more often than it does not. That’s not to say there isn’t any excitement in the game either. There are a number of large set-piece action sequences that are fun to play through in between the scrappy surviving.

Bringing the writing to life is a cast of solid characters, headlined by Camilia Luddington as Lara Croft. She is a perfect fit for this specific variation of the character, and she captures the way Lara grows over the course of the game nicely. Part of the tone shift in the game is also reflected in the visuals and music. The game has a muted color palette that covers the island in dull greens and stormy greys. Pops of color are saved for select sequences. The cutscenes and animations aged fine, with lip sync being the main issue. Interestingly, similar to the last Backlog Breaker I did, Wolfenstein: The New Order, the cinematics in Tomb Raider are made to look handheld. While in Wolfenstein, the style is used to establish a dreamlike narrative; in this game, it mimics found footage movies. As if it’s shot on the very camcorder that they were using to film Dr. Whitman’s show. The soundtrack, from Jason Graves, is fittingly more dramatic and suspenseful than a globe-trotting adventure like Indiana Jones.

Tomb Raider takes place over the course of one day on one island that opens up as you progress. It’s a constrained open world similar to Batman: Arkham Asylum, and while it’s at outs with the “race against the clock” narrative structure, it lets you experience the game at your own pace. The gameplay is a mix of shootouts and puzzles with platforming in between. The puzzles are satisfying to complete. They are both hard enough to require some thought, but not so difficult that they become frustrating. For players wanting to raid more tombs or upgrade their gear, there are also secret tombs hidden across the map to discover. These were equally satisfying and rewarded lots of salvage for upgrades.

Let’s get to the action. Being a third-person action game, Tomb Raider gives Lara four weapons (a bow, an axe, a shotgun, and a rifle) to defend herself. Being a survival game, there isn’t ample ammo, and enemy encounters usually require either quiet bow takedowns or using a mix of the arsenal to clear the area. Both make the combat generally engaging, and mechanics like throwing sand in enemies’ faces during combat make Lara feel scrappy. And when she’s outnumbered, surviving through a combination of potshots, bumrushes, and close calls, it shows you how much the odds are stacked against her.

All that really helps sell the survival aspect of Tomb Raider. Lara is pretty much the underdog in every fight she gets into, and it’s through sheer perseverance (and meaningful upgrades) that she’s able to win. The open world is littered with campfires to rest at. These allow you to upgrade skills and gear or fast travel. The upgrade menu itself is pretty unremarkable, but the upgrades are thankfully not. As you play, weapons will have a faster fire rate, deal more damage, and Lara herself will gain new abilities that increase her survival rate. Accompanying the campsites are narrated journal entries to check in with Lara and make the menu navigation a bit more engaging.

I’ve been pretty positive about the game so far, and rightfully so, but there are a few gripes I have with it. For starters, I enjoyed the game’s story, but it does go on for a bit longer than I think it needs. The game sort of builds up to the climax three times, and I think removing the middle one would have improved the pacing for me. Additionally, the game has a bit too many quick-time events. Not only are there dramatic ones, where you have to save yourself from falling or in combat to deal a deadly blow, but Tomb Raider also requires you to spam a button to open the numerous blocked pathways with Lara’s axe, and that can get tiring fast. These are the sort of things I look forward to seeing ironed out in the sequel. The performance of the Definitive Edition was good on the PlayStation 5, with minor visual bugs to report and one crash.

Now, I can’t end this review without talking about the voice control. Tomb Raider contains a voice control feature, and on the DualShock 4 or DualSense controllers, you can say things out loud like “Open Map” or “Use bow” to trigger in-game actions. This really caught me off guard, as most modern games don’t even have that implementation. Now, while it is cool, I will admit that the novelty wore off quickly. The voice commands were not very accurate, and leaving it on meant that I would do unintended things, such as accidentally pausing the game every time I said “ou” for some reason.

Looking back, it’s clear why Tomb Raider was the best-selling Tomb Raider game of all time. (With the next two being its sequels.) At the heart of this reboot is the new Lara Croft. This was not Crystal Dynamics’ first Tomb Raider game, and by the time they decided to reboot the franchise and give her a new origin story, the team had a clear understanding of what that entailed. They took an infamously sexualized character and grounded her by placing her in a brutal storyline. They don’t hide her sexuality, I mean, she’s in a low-cut tank top for the whole game by default, but on an island full of dangers and with the threat of bodily harm at every corner, it’s the last thing you focus on. Tomb Raider is available on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. The Definitive Edition is also on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Google Stadia.