Gameplay

The gameplay in Tomb raider is much of what we have come to expect and love from the series. There are plenty of weapons and enemies to use them on. There are also tons of tombs to explore and treasures to shove greedily into your pockets. Another interesting addition this time around was journals. The journals are just books that you can locate and collect around the world that come with audio clips and text attached. Each person’s journal has several entries scattered around the ruins of Yamatai. Each entry reveals a little more about that persons personal story and a little more about the overall story of the game.

There are a few different things that this Tomb Raider game has to offer that I haven’t seen previously. The first is the fact that the game is entirely open world. There is a storyline, and you do have to follow it, but you can go back and explore previous areas to get ahold of artifacts or journal entries that you didn’t have the tools to get ahold of previously. Another new addition has to do with the open world part of the game as well. The game now has a built in salvage and upgrade system. The salvage system just allows you to gather parts as you explore the map and loot the corpses of enemies, and the upgrade system allows you to use these parts to upgrade your weapons, and tools to help with doing more damage and being able to get your hands on things what were previously out of your reach.  The final addition is the skill points that were added. The skill points can be used to upgrade one of three different talent trees to help with different things ranging from survival to weapon deadliness.

There are both things I wish there were more of and things I wish there were less of in the game. The things I wish there were less of are the quick time events and the silly cut scene events where you must hold forward to progress. I will cover these both a bit more later on in the review. The thing I wish there were more of is puzzles. Puzzles are what really make the Tomb Raider franchise one of the greats. The stories are all fine, and the gameplay as far as gunfights and jumping around is fun enough, but I want more puzzles! There are plenty of puzzles hidden away in the form of tombs to explore, and with the open world format of the game, you can easily stumble upon these at any point while playing, but I want more puzzles in the game. Make me work for the story. I can appreciate that it isn’t too difficult to just progress in the story, and someone who isn’t particularly interested in puzzles can progress without encountering many (if any, I don’t know I haven’t completed the story yet) puzzles. Like I said though, puzzles are an integral part of the franchise and I feel that introducing people to them, even just the tiniest bit throughout the story would make them fall in love.