Advertisement

Article

E3: Lara’s back in an all-new Tomb Raider

Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

  • Updated:

We got to see the upcoming new Tomb Raider demoed at E3 this week. A reboot to the franchise, it sees a 21 year-old Lara Croft on her journey to becoming the tough action character we know today.

Lara will suffer a lot in this game, more than Nathan Drake, and I mention him because the parallels between this game and Uncharted are obvious. It’s a cinematic action adventure game, from the same perspective, although Tomb Raider does seem grittier. The amount of punches, injuries and falls Lara suffers borders on the ridiculous, and you’ll have to get used to her cries and screams. It will be interesting to see how her character develops as the game progresses.

Tomb Raider is billed as an pseudo-open world game, but what we saw featured a lot of scripted moments. The levels do seem big, and have multiple paths, but the overall direction of the game look set.

Like Uncharted, this new Tomb Raider looks to be more about being an enjoyable adventure rather than a tough game, with little of the tense atmosphere and puzzle solving of the original game. At times it feels like Far Cry with less freedom.

Lara has to learn to survive on the island she is shipwrecked on. She’ll hunt deer, make campfires and have to develop her skills, improve her powers and instincts, and so on. Tomb Raider’s graphics are impressive, with excellent animation, and beautiful finishing touches like rainwater on the camera lens. The production values cannot be questioned, it looks genuinely fantastic.

This retelling of the Lara Croft origins story looks promising. Tomb Raider is undoubtedly visually impressive and exciting, but we hope it’s sufficiently challenging too. We can’t wait to play through the whole game and find out! It is slated for release on March 5th 2013 on PC and consoles.

[via OnGames]

Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

Latest from Jonathan Riggall

Editorial Guidelines