

Whether trying to hunt down medical supplies, capture radio towers or just have a higher team kill count by the end, most of the maps successfully push the opposing factions into meeting points that quickly become a source of non-stop bloodshed. The latter pulls together many of the best traits of the current generation of game design the former, many of the worst - specifically, shoehorning in multiplayer where it's not needed.ĭeveloped separately by Eidos Montreal, Tomb Raider's various multiplayer game types pit survivors - using models from Lara's crew of castaways - versus scavengers in the form of the various enemies encountered in the single-player game. Tomb Raider's multiplayer mode is a strange inverse of the single-player.

I stumbled into an addictive loop that had me combing every inch before I could move on.
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Every side path, every lone faraway cliff has some bonus waiting - salvage that can be used to upgrade Lara's weapons, boxes that give experience points or short diary entries that help you piece together the history of this strange place. You can breeze through the game, quickly going from objective to objective, but exploring pays off. Each major location has multiple zones, most of which are wide open for Lara to explore however she wants.
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The Dragon's Triangle isn't an open world exactly, but it's far from a jungle-themed series of hallways. That freedom is provided within a location worth exploring. Instead of constraining the player's path in the interest of movie-like storytelling, Tomb Raider is confident enough to let players go where they want. Even with the equipment-based "gating," I suspect there's room for sequence breaking to be discovered.

Outside of scattered setpiece moments, the closest Tomb Raider ever gets to funneling players down a single path is blocking certain areas in ways that can't be cleared until Lara has found the right gear upgrades. She doesn't run into invisible walls preventing her from climbing any higher. Lara isn't magnetized to grab nearby surfaces when she jumps near them. Tomb Raider still employs some of the cinematic touches popularized this generation, but their execution doesn't limit players. The speed of these changes makes Lara's animations look awkward and unnatural, but it feels right. Likewise, you can leap between locations - say from sliding down a rope to climbing up a rock wall with your pickaxe.

This air control sits at odds with the emphasis on realism found in Tomb Raider's presentation, but it makes the platforming less linear and demands more from the player. For example, after Lara makes a deliberate jump in one direction, you maintain the ability to change where she's falling in mid-air.
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Tomb Raider becomes less narratively unique - it's not long before Lara is running through a village of enemies, guns blazing, screaming, "I'm coming for you!" like a blood-soaked action movie star - but the clichés serve the gameplay.įew action games come close to the level of control that Tomb Raider provides. As Lara's arsenal grows and as she moves from fighting wildlife to fighting people, the pretense of her weakness drops away, outside of a handful of cutscenes and one particularly brutal (and effective) gameplay sequence.
