TECH-BASH: Review :Tomb Raider 2013 + torrent for download

Tomb Raider occupies the same space in video games as Casino Royale inhabits in the film landscape. It’s essentially a gritty reboot of an ailing franchise brought on by the rise of a snotty upstart that re-wrote the rulebook – and, by extension, the audiences’ expectations – for its genre.

Just as Jason Bourne necessitated James Bond’s transformation from a suave jack-a-nape into a scowling blunt instrument, so the rise of the Uncharted series has prompted Crystal Dynamics to ramp up the action quotient for Lara Croft’s latest outing.

PLOT

There is, it seems, some reason for all of this madness. As the gaming medium begins to mature and players notice that the protagonists from action games they loved for so long are, in effect, psychotics, Tomb Raider’s origin story begins to make some hideous sense.

After all, someone who can take life as pragmatically as Croft has in past games in this series has to have been through a particularly trying time at some stage, and the story of Tomb Raider is certainly that.

The action kicks off as Lara Croft is shipwrecked with a group of friends on an island in the South China Sea, while they were all on en route to archaeological dig. In short order Croft and her friends find they aren’t alone on the island, and are soon at the mercy of its current inhabitants – a group of cult-like castaways armed to the teeth with knives and guns.

Croft escapes her tormentors and sets out to radio for help. As she makes her way deeper into the island, she begins to uncover a terrifying secret and finds that the cult of maniacs she encountered earlier are the least of her worries.

GAMEPLAY

The structure and mechanics of the game plug right into Croft’s twin identities of action hero and explorer. In combat, she’s not an invulnerable killer, forced to juggle four different weapons with varying range effectiveness as a rather decent AI alternately flanks and rushes her. In hand-to-hand battles, timed attacks and dodges are more effective than trying to take opponents down head on.

These encounters all feel perfectly balanced; every fight feels like it exists on a knife-edge no matter how many weapons and skills the player has unlocked.

Away from the gun-battles, players are encouraged to explore every inch of their environments, which are filled with salvage (for weapons augments), collectibles, mini-quests and, yes, tombs filled with puzzles and treasure. A quick tap of the control pad bumper activates the game’s Instinct mechanic, highlighting points of interest and hidden items on the map.

The player earns XP for everything they do, which can be used to unlock a series of skill trees at Base Camps that serve as save points. It’s here they can also use salvage to augment Croft’s weapons, making them more effective, deadly and less cumbersome to use.

They can also use the Base Camps to fast travel to any areas they’ve unlocked on the island and rinse them for content. It’s worth it simply to wander through the environment a second time; Tomb Raider pushes the visuals hard and even though there’s a dour pall to the proceedings, this game is one of the best looking offerings on this generation of consoles.