Tomb Raider - Review

In the early days of this site, reviews were not as common as they are today, publishers were not throwing codes at me like candy. Tomb Raider was one such game that I never got the chance to review when it first came out, though I did review Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The circle is now complete as I have a review for the title that kicked off the Survivor trilogy. Is this Switch 2 port worthy of completing my review saga, or is it nothing more than a relic of a forgotten age?

This is a reboot of the Lara Croft story, so players coming in for the first time won’t feel like they are missing out, but hey Aspyr have already brought Lara’s first six adventures to Switch. Lara and her friends are venturing to the island of Tamatai, in search of some mysteries and as they get close a terrible storm causes their ship to wreck and the crew is throw upon the island, some hurt quite badly. While there is a lot going on, the story here is the same that first came out in 2013, so if you remember that you are not going to see anything new. A lot of the story comes from Lara’s investigation into the events taking place on the island and interacting with the various members of the crew. If you spend time talking with the crew you can learn even more about them, which helps enrich that connection, but is not required. As this is considered the Definitive Edition, it does also come with the prequel comic that was released after the game, which shows how the crew came together. This was not something that I had seen before, so it was great to get more context as to why some folks were acting like they were.

In the past games from Lara, it was all about exploring finite locations, with a few secrets in each spot. This new game takes place within one location, and yes, it is a large island, but it is all interconnected. As you follow the path set before Lara, you will get the chance to learn how to survive, early on that means hunting deer and other animals, later on it means hunting man. From the outset Lara has all the abilities she has by the end, but as you progress through, you will start to unlock new tools and weapons, more on those in a bit. The tools are what give this a Metroidvania flavour, as you will often come across doors that you can’t open yet, but will soon find the right tool to make it possible. When you are not obtaining items, you are often climbing, turning levers and even ziplining around the place, even more so if you venture into the hidden tombs that dot the island. The gameplay was solid when the game first released and now 12 years later it feels just as great, which I was happy to see.

The weapons available to Lara are fun, because while she has a number of them, she is not Rambo, ready to slaughter everyone in the jungle. As you explore and find upgrades, you can make the weapons more powerful, but if you opt not to spend any time upgrading the pistol, because you have a shotgun, that is entirely you choice. Lara herself can earn new skills and abilities like being about to counter larger foes or scrounge up more supplies from fallen enemies. Again, the choice on how you want your Lara to be comes down to the choices you make and it offers a fun reason to revisit the game a second time.

Now as this is considered the Definitive Edition of the game, it does have all the post release DLC, which mostly just means costumes. Yes, there is multiplayer in the game, but that is not something I worried about in great detail, a few rounds was all I wanted to play. Where this falls short though as a Definitive Edition is that there are no quality-of-life updates to the gameplay, namely being able to just press and hold a button instead of mashing it. Honestly, I figured that it had to have been added as the games post this one did get those functions, but I was not able to find anything. The game also supports gyro controls, or so it says, as the only time I was ever able to get anything like that to work was in the menus. I played through on the Nintendo Switch 2 and it does support mouse-con, but its again in menus and with the map, nothing that impacts the playing. I can understand not wanting to change the experience from what the original developers envisioned, but there are ways to improve things without breaking things.

Speaking on breaking things, well not in this case, is the presentation, which is honestly pretty damn impressive. Now again, I played on the Switch 2 version which has a bit more power than the Nintendo Switch, so I was expecting some fancy visuals and the game delivered. Lara, Roth, Jonah and all the other members of the crew all look great, even the baddies look good. Lara’s journey is made the more impressive as you see her look evolve over the course of it, unless you start swapping outfits at camp and undo all that work. Those times when she is brutally damaged by man or nature, still feel visceral, even more so when you do something silly and it leads to her death, those still hit hard. Where the visuals have issues is with the shadows, now there is also a lot of pop in, more so in the spaces that are devoid of trees, you will see cloth and things pop in. But the shadows, those are either great or busted, with very little room between the two of them. There were countless times when the shadows would gain holes in them, and if I moved the camera around, those would move like they were part of a kaleidoscope, it was very weird.

The audio is mostly great, but there are some weird things that happen. The great is that the amazing voice work by Camilla Luddington still sounds impactful, more so when she gets frustrated and the rest of the cast still shines. Where the weird happens is that there were a number of times when the audio lines were being played at odd volumes, there was one instance when I went into a room and tried to take down an enemy and failed. So upon reloading, I had to go back into that room and the speech that was said mere moments ago, was now about 4 times as loud, but the moment I entered the room, the volume dropped to normal levels. This was really noticeable as it happened midway through someone speaking.

Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for Nintendo Switch 2 is a fantastic way to experience this game all over again. If you have never played it, and you are a fan of the other games, then you should really play it. The choices you make can impact how your Lara does, but the story is fixed, so you won’t need to worry about making bad choices. The lack of accessibility updates is disappointing and while gyro is supported, it is not in the game itself. Aspyr have done a fantastic job bringing this first game of the trilogy across and now I hope they do the rest, as having them all on the go would be great.

The Score

8.5

Review code provided by Aspyr

The Pros

Still plays amazingly well, though the gyro controls are not for gameplay it seems

The extras included make this the complete version of the game and the prequel comic is perfect to help expand the story

The Cons

There being no accessibility options is just weird, more so when the sequel games added them

There are a few visual and audial issues that pop up, which do break the experience