Tomb Raider

The 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider is an immersive adventure game in a jungle setting. Tomb Raider has been a popular adventure franchise since it first appeared in 1996. Lara Croft’s latest adventures do not disappoint. You will learn her origin story as she explores a mysterious island fighting enemies, solving puzzles and searching for treasure.

One of the important differences between this reboot of the Tomb Raider series and previous versions is the way Lara Croft develops as an adventurer during the game. She does not begin as a full-fledged athlete but as a researcher on a team searching for the lost kingdom of Yamatai. As the game progresses, there are ways to update the hero of the story, improving her abilities and the weapons she can access. Like other role-playing games, you get to decide how to distribute trait points that will unlock special skills.

Fans of the original games may be disappointed that there are fewer puzzles to solve in this version of the game. The developers opted to make the reboot more of an adventure than a problem-solving game. There is plenty of territory to explore and enemies to fight, but you progress through much of the storyline by managing to make your way to a new location and defeating a powerful boss.

This design points to one of the weak spots of the game. Some players find that it relies too much on cutscenes to move the story forward. For a series with a tradition of puzzle-solving, there may be a bit too much time spent watching the game rather than playing it.