Tomb Raider review

Staying in the shadows lets you get the drop on your enemies

Lara has been created in equal detail and is far more life-like than previous iterations. She’s not bulletproof, and gains a nasty collection of cuts and scars over the course of the game, but her more practical outfit and realistic appearance helps players sympathise with her more than in previous outings. The technology used to render her individual strands of hair is so revolutionary that the developers even gave it a name – TressFX was created with AMD, and is as impressive as it is taxing on modern PC hardware. If you want to see Tomb Raider at its best, you’ll need a very powerful graphics card.

If you just concentrate on the main storyline, Tomb Raider should last around ten hours, but if you want to collect everything and upgrade all of Lara’s skills and weapons, you’ll be looking at over 15 hours of gameplay. There’s also a competitive multiplayer mode – a first for the series – but the few games we played didn’t have the same responsive feel of either Uncharted or Gears of War. It’s a shame that Crystal Dynamics has committed to multiplayer-only DLC, as we would happily pay to explore more areas in the single-player island.

Lara only has one pistol throughout the game, rather than her trademark twin guns

An origin story that takes Lara in a new direction was exactly what the Tomb Raider series has been waiting for. The open-world gameplay, combined with a superb storyline and visceral combat sucked us in, and we’re convinced it will do the same to anyone that picks it up. Fans of the previous games will love uncovering all the hidden secrets and trying out Lara’s new abilities, while anyone unfamiliar with Tomb Raider will discover an absorbing adventure that’s better than anything of its kind we’ve played recently. Uncharted‘s Nathan Drake had his moment, but the original tomb raider is back.