Checkpoint Breached: Tomb Raider: How Are You Not Dead Yet?

Gamers are growing up. You can feel it in the wind, or you can look at the lineup of "M" rated games that are being released to record sales and critical acclaim. And here sits Tomb Raider, with a 92% completion as my first run. I sit here in awe, in contemplation and in nostalgia in the wake of my play through, attempting to gather my thoughts into something coherent.

Rebooting a series is risky. Rebooting a beloved franchise is beyond risky. There's a small number of people more opinionated and or blinded by nostalgia than gamers. It's not enough to say that the games we played as children were a part of our experience growing up. The games we played defined our childhood. We gamers sit in a strange new dawn of reconciling our love of the past with the frightening prospect of the new. Sometimes things work out for the better. The new Mario games are generally good, the franchise has evolved and gamers seem pretty receptive of that change. Sonic, however, is dying a slow, painful and extremely public death in the third dimension.

For every series that gets a successful reboot, and I would define those as those in a new series that weren't immediately shit on by gamers, there are many that died on the path. To say that Tomb Raider has succeeded in this quest is a rather gross understatement.

That's new

In a small amount of preparation for this game, I loaded up Tomb Raider 2 for the PSX in an attempt to grab a comparison, however fair you may feel that is. That idea was a bad one. I was never a big Tomb Raider fan growing up. I'd chalk at least 80% of that up to having an N64 growing up and the last 20% to it not really being my genre. Exploration/Platform games on the PS1 were bad, really bad. I can't even play my beloved Syphon Filter anymore because of the horrifyingly bad controls. I have this problem a lot when I go back to play games I loved growing up. Call it being jaded or callous, but the controls were seriously bad. I do not like the original Tomb Raider games, at all. They're oddly designed, plagued with bad controls and an even worse camera and lack a lot of focus that was needed in older games to thrive.

But this new one, I'm not even sure how to begin, it's enthralling. The game makes a whole lot of really good decisions and has some of the best game feel in a long time. I'm always wary of third person games and my reasoning behind that is how it confines movement. Cameras are hard in third person games. You have two choices, let the player control the camera, which never has the right sensitivity, it's too high for aiming and far too low for looking at stuff, or you set the camera yourself, at which point you will infuriate about 80% of people who play the game because it's not perfect for them. And this problem doesn't just pertain to the camera, player movement is an issue as well. Modern third person games almost marry themselves to cover based shooting. And while a lot of people shit on cover based shooting, it's really the only viable option for this view. There's always something a bit hard about aiming in third person and if you don't believe me, go play Resident Evil 4, arguably the best over the shoulder shooting game out there, go ahead, I'll wait.

Done? Okay, see how long it took you to get the hang of the aiming? That's what third person does. It's a disorientating viewpoint to use. But Tomb Raider hits it right. Fairly solid camera controls and nice aiming. I thought about this point a lot when I was playing as it was not as easy as I expected to nail every head shot first time when I realized that the level design was actually what was making it difficult and not the aiming. And thus I found something more enthralling than, "This good game" to harp on about. Scale and confined exploration, some of the best I've seen.

Do you see that level? That's the game, you're about to spend the next 20 minutes climbing all over that. The scale in this game is unmatched. The levels feel genuinely massive and it's not a gimmick. Tomb Raider has an extremely good handle on the Z-axis in it's levels. Vertical scaling goes a long way to making things seem huge and Tomb Raider does not hold back. The areas themselves are actually rather tightly confined. There's unpassable walls, things to fall off of and insta-gib but you won't feel it. The word, "epic" is vastly over used in modern language, but this is what it should truly mean, the levels are epic. Truly noteworthy pieces of design. Unless the game was trying to be claustrophobic, which is does exceedingly well, you would never know. The areas are vast, incredibly varied, and interesting to explore.

But now is the time to migrate into story land. I rather liked it. A lot of AAA titles these days tend to feel the supernatural is a bit childish and is often forsaken in lew of a more "realistic" storyline. I'm not sure I like that. I'd vastly prefer a good story to a realistic one and while a lot of people felt the Tomb Raider storyline was a bit over the top, I feel it sits nicely in a spot between realism and supernatural. The characters are rather self aware and it makes the game that much better. It plays the card of, "We know this is absurd and so do the characters, but that's the story." But I liked playing straight man to an absurd world. It explains why these people are opposing you and explains why you're even bothering to play along. It's a simple story on the surface, but a bit of exploring writes a really nice undertone of, "We get this is absurd, but here's how it is" sort of slant to it. It's an appropriately complex storyline given the context of the game.

And as I delve into the story I must again commend the game for it's mature theme. "M for Mature" is a pox on the gaming world. That mark means that it's violent or, god fucking forbid, it has some sort of sexual content to it, it speaks nothing to the actual content of the game. Tomb Raider tells a stark tale of perseverance and growth. It does have the occasional gory scene, like these

It's not over the top, seriously. It's not just some gimmick to land itself an "M" rating.

But the last part that truly impressed me, something that I didn't know I was missing until it was laid out in front of me, progression. In case you missed it, this is the most hidden version of a Metroidvania game I've ever seen, and I'm ecstatic that it was included. There's a progression to the items that allow you more exploration. Items get upgraded in a timely fashion to allow exploration. You aren't given the rope arrows straight away, you aren't given the accender, you aren't given more than half the abilities from the start. You must earn these items and then use them to explore further. It restricted the game in a nice way and makes you feel as though you're actually making progress. I feel as though it's one of the strongest parts of the game. Exploration is rewarded without being forced on you. It's up to you whether to get damn near everything in the game and for people like me, that's just what I'm looking for.

Before I post all my random screenshots, I feel somewhat obligated to say that there may not be some posts for a while. This month I'm slated to go through no less than four very extensive dental surgeries and as a result I will be strung out on prescription pain killers for the better part of a month. My plan, as I can not work during this period, is to play a lot of my backlog. And while there may be some opiate induced posts, I can not guarantee the quality nor the frequency of posts. I hope all 100 and some of you subscribers won't be overly disappointed. Now for random screen shots.