The original Tomb Raider from the mid-90s has that special place in my gaming history. My sister got me a copy for my PC and she had a copy for her PlayStation at her condo. At first, it was a weekend activity. When she came home to visit, we’d play together on my PC for a little bit. Then, being the impatient child, I eventually started playing on my own with my sister mirroring my progress on her PlayStation (or, vice-versa where she would get ahead and I would play catch-up). In a sense it was still “playing together” but not quite.

I remember tumbling around Lara’s new house practicing various moves. I remember Lara’s “signature” pullup from a hanging position to being able to swing her legs up onto a ledge. And who remembers the step-forward, step-back, turn three times one way, then turn three times the other and do a back flip cheat to get all of the weapons and ammo? I remember doing all of those annoying block puzzles that were part of what defined the game, aside from Lara’s cleavage and generally being a female protagonist in what was/is a male-dominated genre.

When I heard about the reboot for the series, I was both excited and skeptical. The intro cinematic promised a lot, but would it live up to it? I kept up with the reviews, many of which were positive and, of course, with the comment on Lara’s breast size being within reasonable size (for once). I was most skeptical about block puzzles, which were predominant in the previous game, but thankfully not so much here.

Needless to say, it was the first game I played and completed on my brand new gaming rig and I have to say, it was a good choice for breaking it in. Aside from the consistent battle with nausea while playing the game and some other issues, I was fairly impressed with all aspects of the game.

I like to think of this “reboot” of Tomb Raider as the prequel to the ’96 game. After all, Lara is considerably younger and inexperienced. You “stumble” upon artifacts (all of which are, for some reason, kept in very similar looking boxes) which Lara pockets for her collection. No doubt contributing to the many boxes in Lara’s house in the ’96 game. Maybe even some were unpacked in display cases. I don’t quite recall in that detail.

The reboot also defines the Lara that we are familiar with – the strong, independent, intelligent, double pistol-wielding woman who has no issues shooting down enemy looters. We see the people that help shape her from her mentor and stand-in-father Roth, who is consistently giving advice to Lara, to the archenemy Mathias, who provides challenges and obstacles for her to overcome.

We see Lara dealing with the grief of losing her comrades. We see a young Lara trying to establish herself within this group, to be heard as a full member of the group rather than a junior member taking orders from a senior. We get a sense of her solitary nature and independence that becomes cultured through her trials. Even when she is reunited with her shipmates, she is still venturing off on her own, insisting in a roundabout way that the best place for her shipmates to be is covering her own tail and staying out of her way.

The story is rich and well done. There are a few things that you have to gloss over to maintain the suspense of disbelief, such as, with all of the artifacts that Lara picks up between save points (campfires), where does it all go? She picks up larger items like vases and helmets, which she certainly doesn’t wear. And you don’t exactly see a bunch of boxes being loaded on the boat at the end.

I also realized early on when Lara picks up in her weapon variety, they don’t all show on her model – just the pistol strapped to her leg and whatever weapon is active. When you take into consideration all of the movements Lara is doing, climbing a rock wall, sliding down a dirt tunnel, it’s a miracle the weight and bulkiness of the larger weapons (bow, rifle) don’t hinder her. For that matter, I am still amazed that she was able to get through everything with her tank top not in tatters.

Another point that had me scratching my head was when Roth, who has a leg mangled by wolves, move from point to point for part of the game. Lara leaves him at a campsite, then a little further on, he’s providing support for her on a cliff or in a shantytown structure. How does he get up there without drawing attention?

I found the attempt to blur the line between cinema and gameplay was shaky at best. The worst part of it was the camera bob when Lara is moving. Others have commented on this “feature” which you are unable to turn off. It was also the cause of my nausea/motion sickness. While I was eventually able to play for sessions longer than 15 minutes (the average time it took me to get to the next campfire), I was still bothered by the camera bob even at the end of the game, some ~16 hours in.

The camera bob and general shakiness is good for cinema/TV. I believe Firefly was the first to employ this technique purposefully and quite frankly, I didn’t notice it at all until I watched the commentary. That’s the key difference – on a noninteractive screen, I couldn’t tell the camera was shaking perhaps because I was drawn into the illusion of standing on a unsteady surface. While I was playing Tomb Raider, I was all too aware of the camera bob as if I were not playing Lara, but the camera man. In first-person.

Not to mention, there are narrow passages and the camera becomes increasingly restrictive in positioning. While the camera didn’t have a lot of moving in and out because of collisions with objects like Guild Wars 2 did, there was a similar effect which led to more nausea. Even panning the camera around in a more open space, the camera wasn’t entirely steady.

The cinematics were supposed to be my break from camera bobbing, but I often found it seemed even worse when watching them. At least I could take my eyes off of the screen and focus on something else for a few seconds.

Another issue I had with blurring the line between cinema and gameplay was it was often difficult to tell when the cinema ended and gameplay began. An old technique was to add the top and bottom black framing bars during a cinematic, then remove them when control returned to the player. I would have preferred use of this technique rather than leaving it to the player to figure out when control returned to me. I would spend a few seconds trying to figure out if the cinematic was over or keep thinking it was still the cinematic when suddenly I was asked to hit a button.

Which brings me to my next point of gimmicky “Mash E!” and “Hit F” controls. My first experience with this was with God of War on the PlayStation 2 and given I have never owned a PlayStation console, all of the “Hit Square!” and “Hit Triangle!” keys had me mashing a key at random. While I clearly know my way around the keyboard, mashing the E button is not easy with my middle finger. So I’d use my pointer finger. Then it would ask me to “Hit F” and of course I don’t have time to reposition my hand on home row. Again, it was hit or miss. tl;dr, I don’t care for hitting a specific button at a specific time to do something that my character should be fully capable of at my time of choosing.

There are at least two instances of “boss fights” in which this timing was necessary and I never quite figured out the whole ring thing. Is it like Torchlight fishing where I’m supposed to hit the button right as the animated ring matches the static ring? Hm…nope. Maybe I’m supposed to hit it when it’s inside the static ring? Maybe? I dunno. I got mixed results.

I figure, if you’re getting hit by a shotgun at point blank range, you ought to be in pieces. Which did not occur very often at all. If ever.

Frustrating gameplay issues aside, I was not too terribly hindered by other things like enemies spawning out of thin air or boars disappearing through walls. There were a couple of choke points that took me several tries to get through, but the frequent auto-saves helped keep that repeated frustration down to minimum.

However, back to the cinematic point, the game did play as if it were on rails. There wasn’t a lot of space to explore (and if I could get over my nausea, I would have been clambering all over that island). Often, the only way to progress was to follow a prescripted series of events like running through the remainder of an airplane, which topples beneath you as you jump and, time slows down for you to… “Press E!” to cling to a rockface. This wasn’t an uncommon occurence and really highlighted the sense of “playing through a movie.”

Dying in spectacular ways, like impaling Lara on a piece of driftwood while going down a rapid or falling off of a cliff because you missed a jump (okay, maybe this isn’t so spectacular), was like the game’s way of admonishing you, the player. “No, no. Lara doesn’t die like that. She has a destiny in this game. Try again.”

There was a paper I read while I was in grad school that mentioned something along the lines of the holes/chasms in the original Tomb Raider were spaced just right for Lara to be able to make the jump. Everything that occurs in the game, from debris falling and just missing Lara, emphasize this sort of destiny-driven feeling.

That said, the sense of Tomb Raider as a game wasn’t entirely lost. Lara has exceptionally good aim and if even a part of the enemy model (like the top of a head) sticks out in your viewsight, it’s getting hit. This makes the shooting part fun until the scripted enemies aren’t killed a certain way and you are overwhelmed by armored opponents and machine-gun wielding cronies. Luckily, this didn’t happen often, and while the words “Oh, come on!” did emerge several times, I never did come close to bringing a sledge hammer to my new computer.

I actually found myself playing Tomb Raider a bit like Assassin’s Creed. Lara’s body language provides hints as to what Lara is feeling. Even if you (as the “camera man”) can’t see the enemies, Lara knows they’re there, like it’s her 6th sense. She will crouch, and stay crouched, until the last of them are killed. Sniping is quite fun.

Unfortunately, unlike Assassin’s Creed, there are no hiding spots. Once one enemy knows your position, everyone knows your position, even if you are on a cliff (or tree ropewalk) above them, out of their sight. They just don’t lose interest and it’s either all of them, or just you.

The upside to playing a 3rd person shooter is you can see the body language of the character. The developers really did well on this point. I think the bond you have with Lara becomes stronger as you see her interact with her environment. Not just with enemies, but also when she holds up her hands when she gets close to a structure fire, as if trying to fend off the heat. Or when she is rubbing her arms in response to the cold.

Again, there are moments where the illusion is shattered. Why aren’t her hands all torn to shreds, or for that matter, why isn’t she covered in frostbite as she makes her way up this windy, snowing mountain and climbing ice walls in a tanktop?

So, there are issues with believability throughout the whole game in various aspects, but for a franchise that has done so well establishing itself, it’s not a stopping point. Curiosity drives you around that next corner. What will I be smashing next? What are these oni that Mathias’s cronies keep yelling about (how difficult are they to kill and can Lara even kill them)? Is there an artifact in that dark corner of the room?

It’s difficult to cover all of the aspects of this game and I am aware of my ranting on the problems of the game. However, I think this game has lived up to the hype and the very first game. I am hoping the sequel will be just as high quality as this one, preferrably with less camera bobbing.