Tomb Raider explores the intense and gritty origin story of Lara Croft and her ascent from a young woman to a hardened survivor. Armed only with raw instincts and the ability to push beyond the limits of human endurance, Lara must fight to unravel the dark history of a forgotten island to escape its relentless hold.

he game begins with Lara setting out on her first expedition aboard the ship Endurance, with the intention of finding the lost kingdom of Yamatai. By her suggestion and against Whitman's advice, the expedition ventures into the Dragon's Triangle, east of Japan. The ship is struck by a violent storm and shipwrecked, leaving the survivors stranded on an isolated island. Lara is separated from the others and captured by a strange, savage man. She manages to escape while her captor is killed as the cave collapses due to her actions. As Lara tries to locate the other survivors, she finds more evidence that the island is inhabited, such as strange carvings, dead bodies, and animal sacrifices. She eventually finds her friend Sam and a man called Mathias, who claims to be a teacher who was shipwrecked on the island. As Sam tells Mathias the legends of Himiko, Lara passes out; when she wakes, Mathias and Sam are nowhere in sight. When Lara regroups with the other survivors, Whitman decides to go with Lara and search for the still-missing Roth, while the rest of the group (Reyes, Jonah, Alex and Grim) set out to find Sam and Mathias. As Lara and Whitman explore, they discover that the island's inhabitants are worshipping Himiko, confirming that the island is Yamatai. Upon discovering a shrine erected in Himiko's name, they are captured by the islanders and taken to a settlement along with several other survivors from the Endurance. When the survivors attempt an escape, the captors turn on them. Lara is separated from Whitman and tries to hide, but is found by one of the islanders and forced to kill him. She fights off the remainder of the attackers and reunites with Roth, saving him from a wolf attack. Lara manages to activate a radio tower and call for help, but the plane that answers the call is struck by a freak storm, and Lara hears a mysterious voice saying "No one leaves" in Japanese. Unable to save the surviving pilots, Lara is contacted by Alex and Reyes, who reveal that Sam has been kidnapped by the islanders, a violent cult known as the Solarii Brotherhood. Lara tries to rescue her, but is stopped by Mathias, leader of the Solarii, and ordered killed: she is saved by an attack from samurai-like Oni. Escaping the ancient monastery where she is taken by the Oni, she hears from Sam that Mathias is going to put her through the "Ascension", a "fire ritual" to find the next Sun Queen that will burn her to death if it is unsuccessful. Lara follows them to the Solarii fortress and is aided by Grim. The Solarii take Grim hostage, but he sacrifices himself so Lara can escape. With Roth's aid, Lara infiltrates the fortress and sees the ritual begin. When the fires are lit, a great wind blows them out, showing Sam to be the next Sun Queen. Lara escapes again and reunites with her friends, forming a plan to rescue Sam and escape. Aided by Whitman—who has managed to negotiate some degree of freedom with the Solarii—Lara returns to the palace to rescue Sam as Roth commandeers a helicopter to get them out. Lara succeeds, but persuades Sam to escape by land when she sees another storm gathering as the helicopter approaches. As Lara tries to force the helicopter pilot to land, they are brought down, with Lara nearly dying. Roth revives Lara, then takes a fatal blow from Mathias meant for Lara. While mourning Roth, Lara accepts that the storms are not natural, but are somehow connected to the Sun Queen and designed to prevent anyone from leaving the island. She meets up with the other survivors, who have evaded the Solarii long enough to secure a boat for escaping the island, provided that it can be repaired. They are joined by Whitman, who claims to have escaped, though Lara begins to suspect him of working with the cultists. Lara and Alex find parts for the boat in the wreck of the Endurance. They come under attack by the Solarii and Alex triggers an explosion, sacrificing himself so that Lara can escape with the tools. Finding an account of a World War II-era Japanese military and Nazi scientific expedition to the island that sought a way to harness the storms as a weapon, Lara decides to explore a coastal tomb, where she finds the remains of a samurai general who committed seppuku. It is revealed in a message he left that he led the Queen's Stormguard, the Oni that defend the monastery, and that the Queen's successor took her own life rather than receive the Sun Queen's power. Lara realizes that the Ascension is not a ceremony to crown a new queen, but rather a ritual that transfers the original Sun Queen's soul into a new body; the Sun Queen had learned to become effectively immortal by transferring her soul into a young girl's body each time she grew old. The last priestess' suicide had interrupted the ritual, and left the Queen's soul trapped in her old decaying body, and Himiko's spirit has wanted to escape that corpse ever since. As a descendant of Yamatai, Sam is a viable candidate, and Mathias plans to offer Sam as a new host in exchange for his freedom. Lara returns to the survivors on the beach to find that Whitman has betrayed them, abducting Sam and handing her over to Mathias. Lara, Jonah and Reyes give chase, heading up a river to the monastery, with Lara arriving just in time to see Mathias trick Whitman into approaching and speaking to the Oni: the Oni kill Whitman. After fighting her way through both the Solarii and the Stormguard, Lara arrives at the top of the monastery where Mathias is performing the Ascension ritual. Lara fights her way to the central platform, and after a struggle, knocks Mathias off the platform to his death. Symbolically, she does so using both her pistol and his in a dual-wield style that will later become one of her signatures. Despite Mathias' death, the ritual is already underway, with Himiko's soul starting to pour into Sam, but Lara then destroys Himiko's ancient remains, saving Sam and dispersing the storms. Lara, Sam, Reyes and Jonah then leave the island and are picked up by a cargo ship: as they sail home, Lara realizes that the mythical stories her father told her were more than stories, deciding not to return home just yet, and the screen fades to white with a proclamation of "A Survivor is Born."

Survivor Trailer

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Reviews

aleks-predator

2 months ago

Lara Croft Reimagined I've played a number of other entries in the famous tomb raider series — an interesting and varied experience overall. But this 2013 game I went into knowing nothing about it beyond the fact that it was another Lara Croft title. It was only during play that I realized it was a reboot. And everything the game has to offer works in its favor, quite literally reimagining the series. This is a genuine leap forward in both graphics and gameplay. The story kicks off brilliantly. The heroine is shown young and uncertain of herself — someone who asks questions, a more human kind of person. She's intelligent but trusting, attractive yet dangerous, hungry for mysteries and exploration, yet always ready to help those in need. A wonderfully compelling character, free of the pomposity and brashness of earlier incarnations. I took to her completely. Yes — Lara has been rebooted here. Understandably so. The very first game came out some twenty years earlier; by now she'd be a grown woman, but the game gives us a young and inexperienced tomb raider. The character is appealing — simply more like a real human being than the previous version, who dispatched everything in her path with cool superiority and quotable one-liners. The game makes a significant leap forward in graphics, gameplay, and story. Visually everything looks what I'd call modern and cinematic. I found myself constantly admiring the island views, of which there are plenty. The graphical improvement is palpable. The framing is beautiful and well-composed, the camera behaves like something out of a high-budget blockbuster, and the audio is excellent — complementing the game and helping create an atmosphere of genuine adventure. The gameplay decisions are smart. The controls are comfortable and contemporary in a way the older entries sorely lacked. The camera frequently draws attention to important story details — a cave painting, something similar — that the player needs to notice while moving through a location. And the special mode that highlights interactive objects and spots at the press of a button significantly eases navigation. The story is great. An expedition team — I'll call them that — ends up on the island of Yamatai, located somewhere in the Dragon's Triangle near Japan. There the characters face the raw forces of nature, dangerous supernatural phenomena, and cultists who worship a figure named Himiko. Keeping track of the plot's threads is fairly straightforward, but the main thing to remember is simple: anyone running at you with a weapon or shooting at you is your enemy, and they need to be dealt with — sometimes quite harshly. Lara won't stand on ceremony here. But she won't revel in brutality either. Lara has a solid array of survival tools at her disposal: a bow and arrows, a silenced pistol, an ice axe, a torch, a submachine gun, a shotgun, and more. Each proves useful at one moment or another. The puzzles are decent — not as complex or mind-bending as they've sometimes been, but still give your brain something to work on. Occasionally you need to explore, jump around, and run about before figuring out how to get through a particular spot. As for realism — well, I'm playing a game about a tomb raider. She may be a far more grounded character here than in previous entries, but she'd still have broken countless bones doing everything she does throughout this game. I'd wish everyone that kind of health and those indestructible bones, muscles, and tendons able to withstand everything the heroine's body is put through. The weapon and equipment arsenal expands throughout the game, and all of it is useful, interesting, and important to use. I caught myself wanting to try different weapons against enemies. I also found constant satisfaction in the need to explore the surroundings in search of useful items — something that didn't quite feel the same way in the older games. It wasn't until near the end of the game that I truly discovered the pleasure of hand-to-hand combat. At times it becomes an impressive spectacle, with Lara managing to deliver a serious beating to the villains. The finale is suitably grand — with all the trappings of a project of this scale. Dramatic, memorable, vivid, and predictable in the best sense of the word. Yes, from the standpoint of realism — how many times and in what manner Lara Croft falls from great heights, plummets through multiple floors, and absorbs bullets and worse — the game is of course fantastical. But that's exactly why we play games like this: to feel the epic scale, the intensity, and to enjoy the cinematic sweep of the story. In short, "Tomb Raider" 2013 impressed me enormously. It's been a long time since a game did that. For me, everything here is balanced: graphics, mechanics, gameplay design, music, visuals, the ability to shoot, fight, explore, and solve puzzles of moderate difficulty — not the brain-breakers from earlier entries — that don't demand too much time yet still give your logic a workout. This game has a place in my personal top tier. 10 out of 10