User Review : Tomb Raider

Honest opinion from a non fan.

So I finally beat Tomb Raider after a year of being out. And I have to say, it was a very......average game to say the least.

For starters, the story was unbearably boring for me, I just wanted it to end so badly that I did a lot of speed jumping and whatnot. A very bad story that really didn't have much effort put into it, with characters that are unimportant and very uninteresting.

One big issue I had with the game aside from the dull story and characters however, (and not that this is bad, but it's not what I thought the game was at first), was that it was too "video gamey".

What I mean by that is, I feel that upgrading weapons and finding collectibles and parts and getting XP etc.. Just didn't fit at all.

Now again, it wasn't a bad thing, but it differed from my expectations of what I thought was going to be a more realistic, gritty survival game when the game was first shown off years ago. So this made me enjoy it a little less.

I still think the upgrades themselves were cool actually, like the flaming/grenade arrows, fire shotgun etc. But these things just don't fit the game, let alone make any sense. Meaning that it doesn't make any sense that we are able to craft grenade arrows, fire bullets, rapid fire mods etc.. When this girl isn't really experienced yet.

I remember a system in The Last of Us that made sense. Joel was very rusty with weapons, and that actually showed in your aim and skill. And you would slowly get better by collecting parts.

Instead in this game I was able to pull off headshots nearly every time, and take on dozens of enemies. It just isn't proper in something I thought was supposed to be a survival game. Hell even the end quote of the game says a survivor is born. I felt more like god.

Now, I also feel the game relied too heavily on collectibles and upgrading/XP, that they put less work into the story. I beat the game with 68% completion, with a decent amount of collectibles and maybe 3 or 4 tombs.

Take that away and I can take a guess that my game completion without collectibles would have probably been close to 50%. So the collectibles are close to half of the game? Just too much collecting that I didn't care for at all.

I didn't have any interest in listening to the collectibles I found either because I didn't care for any of the characters at all. I just backed out of them and tried to finish the story quickly because I was bored.

So with all of that, it turned out to be a very disappointing experience from start to finish. I think at the end of the game there was some nods to the old games and fans of the series, but having not played them I am not entirely sure.

I also did not play multiplayer because I wanted to forget about the game rather quickly, and I hear it was bad and tacked on anyways. Some more resources they could have used for a better story perhaps.