Tomb Raider (PC, 2013) Review

January, 2017

Pros:

• Superb game engine

The game is technically polished. No engine failures, no crash/ freeze even on Linux (Steam client). Environment is very well-designed. Decals and particle physics are immersive. Fire plays an important part in the game, and looks original. Puzzles and environment physics are very realistic. It has good hairworks for a 2013 game. No scene is out of place, though the vertical limits may seem a bit off sometimes. Also, blood splits and gore might look artificial.

Also should be applauded Feral Interactive, the developers who brought this game to Linux along with some of their other accomplishments like Dirt Rally (2015), Grid Autosport (2014), and Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016).

• Decent high level narrative

It serves as a prequel to Lara Croft’s adventures. It attempts to ‘evolve’ Lara from a quiet, just-graduated girl to one reckless and fearless (although through too many kills rather than exploration for a prologue).

• Good action sequences and parkour

The game is semi-open world with lots of vertical movement. Rock-climbing with ice ax, ziplines, split-jumps, wall break-ins are plenty. The setting in a remote Japanese island with local culture references look authentic. Combat with bow is very satisfying, especially headshots.

• Elements of RPG

The game includes RPG elements without making the player think too much about leveling (thus get distracted from main playthrough). Though eventually the player will acquire all skills (the leveling system is not like a proper RPG – enough points are given for every activity so the player is never short of them), some skills are indeed helpful and required for later levels. There are no micro-transactions (something which should be mentioned in a contemporary review).

• Puzzles

The puzzles, though scripted and linear, are good. Sadly, puzzles are mostly in the “optional” tombs which yield insignificant reward at the end. There should have been proper incentive for exploring them – like say Lara gets a special power at every tomb. Some puzzles can also be frustrating since the “window” of opportunity (literally) is very less.

• Steam Sale

This literally was the reason for me to try the game. At $1.5, it is a steal.

Cons:

• Worst keyboard controls

Every “special” action requires “mashing” a key or two – this is ok for gamepads, but why the same for keyboard? Clearly there was no UX testing on PC. The original publishers designed the game for consoles (it was a XBOX exclusive for first few months), then released a port on PC for the $$$ without valuing the PC gamer at all.

During Quick Time Events (QTE), the precision of keys are further restricted so that you cannot maneuvre the same extent. For example, you are running across a collapsing bamboo bridge. There are gaps across the bridge already, so you have to move zigzag. You will find that the feedback of left and right movement keys have suddenly reduced. This will cause you to miss for no fault of yours.

In another sequence, you are suddenly facing the camera and must move forward; you’d think forward key should be pressed. But no, you have to press the back (S) key to come closer to the camera, even though from Lara’s perspective, she “is” moving forward. So, are you the actor or the director at that point? This is a big deal because the non-intuitiveness would fail you several times with awful shrieks accompanying it (more on that later).

The game should be played with a gamepad.

• Quick time events/ scripted sequences

There are too many of them, and they frustrate the player more than entertaining because of the bad controls. Also, too many things going on at the same time on screen breaks focus.

They should have made all quick-time events slowed down (the irony is not lost) like Bullet Time of Max Payne – indeed few events are like that. When you finally pass a section after several attempts, you do not know how different you played to win. An otherwise scripted linear corridor game (during a given sequence) tries but fails to be anything more. There was absolutely no sense of any accomplishment at the end because everything is scripted. You will be tired by the time you reach the final level, and would want it to end soon.

• No arbitrary saves

The game saves only at designated checkpoints which are not enough to spare the player from frustration. For example, in a corridor you fight around 10 enemies with almost 3 attacking you simultaneously while you are struggling with the controls and reduced precision, at the end of which comes a mounted machine gun dude you have to kill only the one way it is scripted as, and if you try to be creative you die and have to play through the entire horde again.

They should have at least put a checkpoint at the end of every QTE. But on a few occasions, a sequence of QTEs must be passed before the game saves. When you know what you have to do, but are compelled to do it again and again because of stupid game design (controls, AI, movement, camera), it not fun anymore.

• Poorly designed, hard-coded AI

Enemies immediately know of your exact position the moment you kill one of them, even if the ones not killed cannot see you and the victim did not get to warn them. Everyone and their dog then starts firing/ running at you. As an epic fail, enemies stealthing towards you will not fire until they are within a radius, even if you are exposed completely and within his range, but their friend would accurately throw a molotov although you are not in his line of sight. You can only be sure an enemy is dead when you see the XP counter on screen. Anything other than headshot will surprise you about the enemy’s endurance.

You cannot pick up assault rifle from the enemy that you killed using your bow, because the “time” for you to collect that gun has not come yet (though you can salvage the corpse). Boss fights are made “tough” by scripting their deaths. There is no creativity and you will feel stupid with all the levels and stats that you gained so far.

Mouse precision reduces during aim, so what would definitely be a headshot in another game would hit the neck or go above the head. This is another debt of a console-first design.

Melee attacks are another joke. Somehow Lara cannot procure/ make a knife and drop enemies silently. She cannot snap neck from behind or even a sandbag to render enemy unconscious. Not that her character does not have the strength, because she can pull and crash wooden ledges with a rope easily. If you approach from behind, you will have to “mash” a key until the enemy dies. So it is not “stealthy” at all.

Large number of enemies are there in an adventure game. They tried to engage the player more by giving more enemies to kill than tombs to explore. This is supposed to be a Tomb Raider game, but by half-time you would have killed enemies statistically equivalent to a Far Cry game. Out of the 15-20 odd hours that you give the game, 60% would be killing enemies, 20% retrying the same f*ing scripted sequences, and 20% exploration. A typical Tomb Raider game should have had these reversed at the minimum.

• Story and gameplay design

The design falls short of logic at several places. A few examples:

1. One “friend” gets fatally stabbed to protect Lara when he runs out of bullets, only to pull out another gun (out of his a$$?) moments later to shoot the stabber.
2. Lara tells herself that she should not make sound and aware the Stormguards; the next instant she calls out loud her captured friend when she sees her amongst them.
3. Lara is unable to move forward by the force of wind, but the enemies can still throw grenades (which are much lighter than Lara) at her with pin-point accuracy.
4. She says sorry to the first deer she kills for food. But subsequently, the game encourages the player to hunt for skill points. She kills ruthlessly, then suddenly becomes hysterical for losing a friend. All her shrieks and cries seem too artificial.
5. Lara can jump 20 ft between two ledges but cannot jump 5 ft across a fence, just because that other side will be “unlocked” by a scripted blast/ event.

Due to contradicting emotions, Lara’s character is not believable at all. There is too much blood and gore to justify it as a juvenile game if at all it was meant to be. Tombs, cannibal dungeons miss any horror moments. There was huge potential in them that could have increased gameplay to at least double.

Not all exploration elements are worthwhile. What is the significance of GPS caches? Why were the journal entries voice-acted? In FC3/ Doom 3, voice-acted journals made sense because the material was a record/ tape. The producers spent more time/ money on insignificant things rather than putting immersive elements to explore. Also, exploring tombs give you a map of items in that area, but tombs are usually at the end so you would have already explored what is in the map.

The climax is the worst I have seen in any AAA franchise – and it is not about the plot being full of superstition. There are games like Skyrim which used myth and magic without making it unbelievable. This one is so bad that the publisher actually “thanks” the player for sitting through (the torture), as the credits roll. I doubt if any PC gamer would ever want to play the boss fights again.

• Presentation

There is an immersion-breaking difference between the concept art of Lara (also on the box cover) and the actual face in the game. The woman in the concept art is more matured, sharp, and aggressive. Instead we get a younger, meek, and too artificial character. It is not that the concept art was too complex to implement; we did get that exact art face in game in the sequel.

Even the main antagonist is not impressive; he fits into an action movie for children. Not much is revealed about him and how he managed to control hundreds of mercenaries. In FC3, the protagonist was not impressive much, but we got the badass antagonist Vaas. No such luck here.

Voice-acting is awful and repetitive. Every time Lara misses a ledge and falls into oblivion (or gets killed), she shrieks “like a virgin”. Her shouts and excitements fit a C-grade Hollywood movie, (sadly) from an AAA publisher. Even animations are repeated more often – all animations when Lara opens the final chest in all tombs are the same.

Subtitles are rainbow-colored. Why should it penalize the player by f*ing up the immersion if it is turned on? In a forest at night suddenly flashes before you blue, green, and pink with font size as large as 5% of vertical resolution. At least give an option to configure opacity if you already spent too much time on it.

Final verdict: 6/10

The game has its moments, and environment/ setting/ tech is a full 10. It is definitely worth the $1.5 on Steam sale, but I shudder at the thought of buying it at full price or even 50% discount.

In a PC gaming world with GTA IV, Skyrim, and Far Cry 3 released at least a year before, Tomb Raider fails to keep up with the standards of an AAA release (apart from the superb game engine). Worse is that it tries to be more like Far Cry than a Tomb Raider, so turns out to be neither.