izigame.me

This game is enjoyable if you A) expect a mindless platformer and B) don’t value realism. If you want a more immersive and polished experience then you need to know these main faults:
Nothing is realistic. Flammable objects burn down in seconds, animals have terrible AI, and the landscapes all have the same obvious signposting for jumping, climbing and grappling. This isolated island is absolutely filled with skeletons, still-lit lamps, and wreckage. Many of the baddies have bows, for some bizarre reason, and ammunition litters the map in a quite preposterous abundance. Curious string bags can be found regularly and they must be set on fire in order to get the ‘salvage’ from within. Why these bags couldn’t just be opened with our Lara-hands is beyond me.
‘Salvage’ is a form of currency used to, somehow, upgrade your weaponry and it can also be found in random crates and, um, in animals. Yes folks, that means you can innocent deer and use the body parts to make a better receiver for your automatic rifle. How? Don’t know.
The game is over engineered in many parts. The shaky camerawork is unrelentingly present, even in cut-scenes and there is simply too much freaking weather on some maps. The camp menu, which you’ll be using a lot, throws pointlessly exaggerated animations and sound effects at you every time you navigate through it, and I hated it. This menu is where you spend your experience to choose new skills and where you spend your salvage to upgrade your weaponry, and there aren’t many options in it but every damn one of them requires several grades of navigation. Please just show me all the skills on one page and all the weapon upgrades on another without the special effects and flashes and booms and swooshes and beeps—it’s like Michael Bay directed the flipping thing.
Strangely, I have seen other reviewers praise the characterisation and the story but I warn against believing them: Lara has no arc at all, starting out as a tough cookie who says she hasn’t a clue but then adventures away with ease; and ending as a tough cookie who, well, adventured away with ease. It’s all tell with opposite show. The story, too, is pretty silly (the big, bad cult leader wants a woman to sacrifice in order to revive a goddess, the protagonist fights through endless lesser baddies to save the woman who we barely know) and it is entirely superfluous with minor, pointless exposition happening through books you can find on the map. None of this really matters, none of it affects the gameplay, and we don’t care enough about the lesser characters to feel any bond to them. Lara could have shot the antagonist many times but the game decided, for no reason, that his death must be saved for the final (disappointingly easy) showdown. Only someone that thinks action flicks are deep or who skips the cut-scenes in RDR2 or The Last of Us could admire the writing in Tomb Raider.
But there are positives: it is a decent game with graphics that still look good in 2022 and the weaponry is fun to use. One thing that I really appreciated was Lara Croft’s appearance. While she is still an attractive representation of the traditionally female form, she is no longer overtly sexually portrayed and there are menu options to have her clothed in more practical attire than the skimpy vest she begins with. She is well acted too, with some genuinely memorable lines.
If you want some mindless fun then get the game; if you want a cerebral or powerful gaming experience then look elsewhere.