This might've been the first Tomb Raider game I ever finished. Before I would eventually play the earlier games later on, this was more or less my introduction to the franchise. I've beaten it 3 times now. This being my 3rd playthrough and even with TR being the long running franchise that it is after playing the prior games, I'd still consider this to be one of the better games in the franchise. There's been a fair share of duds this series has produced with the prior one being Underworld and because of that, it had to be rebooted...again. This time however it borrows from different games and media of the time. The tone and idea being similar to Batman Begins. The premise being like Lost and Far Cry 3 while borrowing gameplay ideas and mechanics from Uncharted and Batman Arkham Asylum.
Story of the game is interesting in that this might be the most interesting Lara Croft ever was a character as far as the TR games are concerned. Her arc is one of the more acclaimed aspects of the story where she starts off as scared and helpless but slowly throughout the game she starts to become more confident and more sure of herself after being tested by the hardships the island puts her through. Lara said she wanted to make her mark at the start of the game and she pretty much did. Her arc can surprisingly feel gradual and over the half way mark, she's inspiring fear into her enemies. Lara up before this point was just a generic action movie hero that never really did much of anything to stand out other than being an early popular female game character. She was never the reason why I enjoyed some of the early Core Design games.The side characters can feel on the underdeveloped side. Roth and Grim being the best. The latter I wished had more scenes due to how cool he was taking out the soldiers before dying. Mathias is more of a weird foil for Lara in that he's how Lara would've ended up if went crazy insane by the island. There are some contrived moments here and there like her not using guns during some story cutscenes. Still the story was surprisingly decent.
The visuals are an interesting point of note because in many ways, this game was the earliest example of visual fidelity in games reaching the point where they won't be outdated in 2-3 years but can still hold up even now. The environments and textures can look sharp even now and the opening shot of Lara getting out of the cave can still be poignant even now.
This now leads to the next point and this can be an issue for many that persists even now that due to TR 2013 being high in visual fiedlity that it is you now have to create ways for the player to know where to go. One way was through the Detective Vision Batman Arkham had and another way was through painting everything interactive in white. This can be very on the nose and also a downgrade from the original game considering in that game, Lara can climb on anything due to it's consistency with the grid based design. Now, it's "it's not white or not a climbable rocky surface, you can't touch it". I don't mind it too much in the moment but it does go to show how much this whole thing persists even now due to the issues high visual fidelity can create.
The exploration borrows from Batman Arkham Asylum with the Island of Yamati being like the Asylum where in points of the story, the setting will loop back inself where you can get different gadgets and upgrades to unlock new parts of the map to get more scrap.
Scrap currency is where this game surpasses the Uncharted series since now, you have a reason to look around every knook and cranny to buy weapon upgrades and get skill points instead of just mindless walking around until the next platforming section.
The action is also an improvement. You can hold all your weapons, there are alt fire modes on each gun, the cover system isn't sticky and is seemless, damage animations feel a lot better and there are more variety in enemies. You got enemies who melee, use shields, throw molotovs, armored enemies and they actively get you out of cover where you have to deal with close and mid range enemies.
You could argue this emphasis on shooting and fighting hitscanners isn't "true" to Tomb Raider but TR2 already did this and was handled worse in that game.
Stealth is in the game and a rather infamous aspect about it is that it's a red herring. You can sneak around but due to the lack of awareness indicators and enemies seemingly able to see you from out of nowhere, stealth becomes a game of slowly picking off enemies until you inevitably get the alert.
The set pieces are a carry over from Uncharted and I just sort of tolerate here even if I always found this sort of thing obnoxious due to how limited interactivity here is. They do have a little more going when you have to time shotgun blasts or climb axe latches.
Overall, TR 2013 was is a very good game in a series I just tolerate to varying degrees. It's one of the franchise's better made games.
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