This is one of those rare games where I'm forced to award a neutral rating because I’m ambivalent about it. When it’s fun, it can be really fun, but then there are moments when it’s not much fun at all. With lengthy cutscenes and numerous quick-time sequences breaking up the otherwise entertaining exploration bits, it’s like developer Crystal Dynamics couldn’t decide if they wanted to make a movie or a video game.
I’ll mention the story first only because it’s so forcibly thrown in your face. Anybody who has read my other reviews (and thanks to all two of you) will know that I don’t hold video game stories in particularly high regard, and Tomb Raider is no exception. At best, it rises to the level of a second-rate Hollywood action flick -- you know, the ones starring some B-list actor that go straight to DVD -- and it’s really not worthy of the amount of time lavished on it. The cutscenes themselves are rendered in-engine and look decent enough, and the voice performances are generally good, but the story they convey is so cliche and uninteresting that I just wanted them over with as quickly as possible so I could get on with actually playing.
The gameplay is where Tomb Raider has a chance to shine, and it’s a shame these portions are so frequently interrupted by the cutscenes. You of course play as Lara Croft, and controlling her character feels really good. She’s nimble without it being exaggerated, and she has a real sense of weight as she climbs over, under, and through various obstacles. In classic Tomb Raider fashion, you generally have a good sense of where you need to go but not always how to get there, and you often have to solve a number of environmental puzzles in order to navigate from point A to point B. The levels are quite large and exquisitely detailed, but there is always a golden path you have to follow, so there’s really not a lot of room for creative thinking or unconventional problem solving. And being a modern action game there are, naturally, lots of secrets to discover and “off the beaten path” bobbles to find. As you progress, Lara will acquire new tools and abilities, so you'll probably want to revisit earlier levels if you want to find secrets that were previously inaccessible.
The combat is quite well done, too, with weapons having a satisfying heft, and both Lara and her adversaries being vulnerable enough to make fights feel immediate and brutal. You won't succeed in combat by taking risks and expecting Lara to just soak up the damage because she isn’t a classic bullet sponge, but neither are even the toughest enemies who can be quickly dispatched with the right moves. You do have access to a variety of ranged and melee weapons that can be upgraded throughout the adventure, and each one has its use depending on the situation and player preference.
Tomb Raider offers a nice mix of exploration, puzzle solving, and combat. Unfortunately just as I found myself starting to have fun, the game would wrest control away from me and force me to endure the aggravation of a button-mashing quick-time event or an interminable cut scene, and this really kills the flow and momentum of the experience. Oddest of all are what I can only refer to as “interactive” cutscenes where you regain control for a few seconds to prompt Lara to climb a ladder, or clamber along a ledge before the cutscene takes full control again. I suppose Crystal Dynamics did this to keep the player engaged, but that could have been better accomplished by simply eliminating the cutscene altogether and letting us actually play! Look, I really don’t mind a ham-handed story or cheesy cutscenes in a game, but it’s not necessary to make them so numerous and lengthy. (And I do have to mention the absurd amount of physical abuse that Lara endures throughout the various cutscenes, from bone jarring hits to falls from impossible heights that would maim or kill any ordinary human being. It all becomes a bit silly after a while, and one wonders if she is harboring a secret identity as a superhero.)
Then there are those instances where the player is stuck on rails with Laura running through an action set-piece, and it certainly looks very exciting with explosions going off and platforms suddenly giving way under our heroine’s feet, but it’s actually not very engaging because all the player is doing is pushing forward on the controls and occasionally tapping a button to perform a scripted action. This isn’t gameplay, folks, it’s an interactive movie (and I use “interactive” in its loosest sense). In fact, the more I progressed through the game, the more I realized just how scripted it all really is. Earlier I mentioned the “golden path” through each level. Well, that’s the whole game! You’re rarely asked to do any creative thinking because everything is fairly well spelled out, and “gameplay” devolves into the player mindlessly responding to prompts in the environment. Basically, if you’re not sure where to go, look for anything white which indicates objects that Laura can interact with -- a white railing, a white wall, a white pipe, a white post, a white bundle of rope, etc. -- and that’s exactly where you’re supposed to go without variation or deviation. You don’t even have to think about it, and once I realized this, the less enamored I was with the whole experience. Worst of all, it seems that Crystal Dynamics ran out of novel gameplay ideas long before they ran out of story, but instead of trimming the needlessly bloated narrative and ending where it made the most sense from a gameplay perspective, the developers push on ahead with their silly, cliched, action movie script that wore out its welcome several hours earlier. I’ve often noticed that a good game will always feel too short, and a mediocre game will always feel too long, and Tomb Raider is certainly an example of the latter.
On a positive note, the presentation is terrific with great looking environments, lighting, and lifelike character models and animation. While the Linux performance was originally not that great, Feral Interactive did release a patch that significantly improved things, moving it from merely playable to actually smooth. Yes, they should have released it like that in the first place, but they did resolve the issue in the end, so I’m not going to complain (too loudly). I’ve been playing using the Steam Controller (left touchpad to move, right touchpad to aim) and it has been working great. Seriously, guys, get yourself a Steam Controller. You’ll never touch a 360 gamepad again.
After careful consideration, I have to give Tomb Raider a rare thumbs down. I wish I could give it an enthusiastic recommendation because it really is quite slick, but there are simply too many fun-killing cutscenes and quick-time events, and not enough novel gameplay concepts to take it the distance. Maybe in the future Crystal Dynamics can dispense with the narrative and just give us Lara Croft in a large open world full of tombs to raid. That's the game I want to play.