Back in 2013 developer Crystal Dynamics finally gave the Tomb Raider series a much needed second reboot with the aptly titled Tomb Raider, which took one of videogaming’s most popular characters and put her in an action-oriented open-world adventure that had some surprisingly good ideas. After two sequels and with the unfortunate state that the franchise currently is in, why not relive one of the highlights in her career, now on Switch 2, in order to brighten things up a little in regards to Ms. Croft?
Tomb Raider rewinds the clock back to when Lara was just starting out. Barely out of her teens, she’s a plucky adventurer who ends up shipwrecked off the coast of the Japanese archipelago and now has to fend for herself as mercenaries, the local fauna, and a touch of the supernatural are out to get her. The latter would be considered a spoiler, but hell, the game is more than 10 years old, so I guess it’s okay.
Anyway, for what it was back in 2013, Tomb Raider was a good shakeup for the tired action-adventure genre. It had a more cinematic presentation that made use of tried-and-true quick time event mechanics that were infamous for killing our poor girl in all sorts of gruesome ways, but most importantly, the game featured a fun character progression system that allowed you to custom built your own Lara Croft to tailor your playstyle. And like any adventure game of the last decade and a half, of course, there’s plenty of crafting thrown in for good measure.
It’s no surprise that this one runs so well on Switch 2, but it’s still worth pointing out how cool it is to be playing a game that put my PC to shame back when it was new on a portable system with such a nice screen like Nintendo’s newest console. There are no drops in performance and visually, it loses nothing to the upgraded build that people have been enjoying under the so-called Definitive Edition. This is by far the best running out of the two options available on Nintendo systems, so if you haven’t played Tomb Raider before or are itching to crawl through it again, Aspyr’s port is a very good option for you.
Following Square Enix’s selling off of properties, Aspyr has been hard at work at making pretty much all of Tomb Raider available on modern systems, and to all accounts, a darn good job all around, with collections of some of Lara’s oldest releases that were reviewed a while back over at the site. Surely, those games play differently from this reboot given how much more the action is a priority in the 2013 version leaving little room for the more puzzle-oriented nature that the series built its fame upon.
Still, as a whole, Tomb Raider managed to come full circle with the reboot, and admittedly, with its sequels, it looped back into the ridiculousness. All bets are off in regards to the upcoming and as of yet untitled new release, but for now, Tomb Raider: Definite Edition is reason enough to dust off your machete and get your tetanus shots in for another adventure alongside young Lara.
