4/5 ★ – AzulAzuril's review of Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider was one of the first big triple AAA titles that I ever played, and it’s always stuck with me since. This reboot of the series is incredibly action packed, and you can tell that the game was designed around having as many action set pieces as possible. Frankly, there’s no realistic way that Lara Croft should be able to survive this adventure, but if you suspend your belief, there’s an incredibly fun adventure to be had. The plot is relatively simple, as Lara and her crew have been stranded on an island and are trying to escape, but the simple premise helps make it more memorable. Lara favorite moments is the game is the climb Lara makes to the top of the cell tower- even just as player, the heights that Lara climbs to made me nauseous. Lara’s willingness to be brave in the face of so many struggles makes her an incredibly likeable and endearing protagonist. Gameplay wise, climbing and exploring is incredibly smooth. You feel super zippy jumping from one obstacle to the next, almost as if Lara is a parkour star! I really like that the game was semi-open world, with the game segmented into different regions each with their own collectibles and objectives. Getting new tools and exploring old areas in new ways was a fun way to make use of the environment. The action-based gun fights are pretty good, but they do get relatively samey over time and some fights drag on a bit, particularly towards the end of the game. This first game also really doesn’t have much in the way of “tombs” that you raid or any puzzle solving like the older games in the series. For a reboot of a franchise though, this game is a great starting point, and I think it establishes Lara and the Tomb Raider franchise quite well.