First Look Preview: Tomb Raider

Since the original team at Core Design abandoned the Tomb Raider franchise, Crystal Dynamics has been at the helm of the brand.  Beginning with Tomb Raider Legend through to Tomb Raider Underworld, the series has continued on with a degree of critical and commercial success.  Slated for release in 2013, this newest installment (simply titled Tomb Raider) seeks to reboot the franchise and re-establish Lara Croft to the lofty heights of gaming culture she once occupied.  

Web Wombat was recently given the chance to have some hands on time with preview code, and from these early impressions it seems Crystal Dynamics are on track to release their best Tomb Raider title yet.

*Owing to two of us sharing a controller whilst interviews were happening, audio was set at a very low volume - so certain points relating to dialogue and characterisation required a small amount of guesswork.

First and foremost, you know all that Lara Croft history you are familiar with?  Forget all of it.  Save for the name, it was immediately apparent that we are dealing with a much different character to the composed, always in control Lara in days of yore.  This time around, Ms Croft definitely doesn't seem to be the kind to casually take out a legion of enemies without batting an eyelid - in fact, the first enemy we eliminated in our playthrough seemed to really do a number on Lara's psyche.  Whilst players will invaribly be taking out enough enemies to make for more than a few legal issues over the course of the game, Crystal Dynamics seems to be really trying to emphasise the character's vulnerability, and off the evidence we saw, it looks to be working.

From what we could ascertain, our time with the game began with Lara and her compatriots abandoning ship for a nearby island.  From the moment we gained control, our focus was on finding our crew mates in a very unforgiving environment, with respect to wildlife, enemies and even the weather.

It is almost inevitable for a player to think of the Uncharted series in terms of basic gameplay (although, to be fair, that series itself pretty much owes all of its conventions to earlier Tomb Raider titles, making for a pseudo chicken/egg situation) - exploration of the island, combat (with both the native fauna as well as hostile humans) and lots of climbing and environmental traversal are the main prongs of Tomb Raider.  The Uncharted comparisons are immediately brought to mind via the parts of the island we saw - lots of foresty areas with the occasional signs of human prescence scattered throughout.  Even the elements of the environment that Lara can grip onto seemed to have a subtle pop to them, allowing players to see where their likely route of traversal will take them. 

Visually, the game looks great - whilst we are not talking about a new graphical standard in the vein of, say, facial motion in L.A. Noire, Tomb Raider is defintely a few steps up in it's animation compared to the prior games.  Environments and weather/lighting effects are all quite impressive, although I am hoping to see more environmental variance in the full release.  Whilst we did not ourselves make it all the way through the preview code in the time available, I did happen to notice one of the other screens a little further on showing off a snow covered area that looked even better than anything we saw.  If Tomb Raider can mix up its visual signature a little in the full release, all the better.

For combat situations, we managed to get our hands on a bow and arrow as well as a handgun further on.  The bow can be utilised to silently take down an enemy with a well placed headshot, and also doubles as a makeshift garrote if Lara is able to stealthily approach an unaware person.  When we came upon the handgun, aiming seemed a little shaky initially - given the context of how Lara comes into possession of it, I assume this was a deliberate move on the developer's part to highlight Lara being in a very unfamiliar (and stressful) situation.  As one would expect, headshots are the optimal way to go if one commits to getting involved in combat, as shots to other parts of the body will drop enemies much slower than the ol headbuster.

A tool which we came to use frequently was Lara's torch (not the flashlight kind - think the fire one).  By approaching a source of flame, players can hold a button to ignite the torch and both provide additional lighting, as well as a means to burn away flammable parts of the world.  Another piece of kit we got to toy with was a pickaxe Lara aquires early on - after upgrading said pickaxe, we found we could take running leaps at vertical craggy walls and slam the pickaxe into it, allowing us to scale otherwise unconquerable heights.  Speaking of upgrades, Lara has the ability to improve her kit via certain points scattered about in a light RPG-esque sytem of progression.  However, these will often require the use of particular materials (or even animal hides), so it often pays to explore your surroundings thoroughly. 

Tomb Raider also grants Lara a kind of 'sense ability' which will highlight points of interest in her immediate vicinity by holding a button.  When this is triggered, the visuals wash out into a greyscale look, with certain features standing out in colour.  This proved to be a very useful addition, albeit I couldn't help but feel the greywash effect lasted just a little too long after the player had released the button before reverting back to all its colourful glory.

After our playtime, two particular parts immediately took root in memory: one - soon after aquiring the bow, we found ourselves snared by the leg in a trap as a pack of wolves moved in for the kill.  Players will be taking aim with their new toy whilst watching the surrounding foliage for signs of movement as the lupine threats suddenly leap towards you...time is briefly slowed whilst the wolves are in mid leap, and you must quickly and accurately take them down lest your throat get ripped out.  Truth be told, we actually got killed a few times in this sequence, but those were purely attributable to player error on our part and no fault of the game systems.  

The second part that immediately comes back involved Lara trying to sneak through an encampment of hostiles, in an almost "stealth game" manner.  Whilst the option to fight was there, the game seemed to be illustrating to players that combat may not always be necessary.  Here, we were introduced to the idea of firing arrows at the environment near patrols in order to get them to investigate the sound and hence turn their backs.  Whether this turns out to be a viable option throughout most of the game remains to be seen, but at least here it certainly opened up an alternate method to get by a gauntlet of enemies.