Tomb Raider First Impressions

Earlier this week we learned about the revival of the Tomb Raider franchise at the Microsoft press conference. Today, we had a chance to see it in action for ourselves as we stopped by the Square Enix booth for a detailed demo featuring two different gameplay options: first, we saw a smart and resourceful Lara, followed by level featuring dynamic, traversal gameplay.

Our demo started off with what will be the beginning of the game once it ships. Lara is 21 years old and is fresh out of college. This is her first big adventure and things have gone horribly wrong. She has shipwrecked on a mysterious island and has been captured by what appears to be some unknown (maybe even cannibalistic) foe.

The game begins by introducing a vulnerable and terrified Lara in a terrible situation. She awakens in a dark, mysterious cavern and finds herself dangling upside down, bound in some kind of a strange, ritualistic cocoon. You immediately get to experience some of the game’s physics and puzzle solving concepts as your first goal is to free Lara from the trap. As you begin to swing back and forth, you realize that you can free her by doing the unthinkable; swaying Lara until she comes in contact with fire thus setting her bounds ablaze and freeing her. As Lara falls to the ground she is impaled by a stick, shrieking in a great pain. The developers really want you to connect with Lara’s experience, fear and pain and I think they do a great job at that.

Once she recovers, Lara grabs a torch and you continue to guide her through the caverns, slowly unraveling the mysteries of your captors. You can’t help but feel scared together with her as you come across others who have already fallen victim to whomever is trying to keep Lara here. As she tries to make her getaway, Lara is ambushed by a dark, male figure who grabs her leg and attemtps to pull her back into his hideout. The “LS” button pops up on the screen, hinting that you must wiggle it back and forth in order to escape.

As Lara makes it out to another flooded cavern, we are introduced to a new puzzle in form of a weird metal contraption, which must be solved in order to get out. Here we get to see Lara’s survival instincts which can be used to highlight and point out objects that can help you with solving puzzles and moving forward. By exploring the cavern, Lara will find ways to solve puzzles using skills she already learned before, like using fire to burn ropes, releasing the contraption.

This part of the demo wrapped up in a very intense and a dramatic action sequence as the caverns began to crumble around Lara and she had to run, jump, crawl and avoid huge tumbling boulders in order to get out. The ordeal ends with Lara emerging into the world above and getting her first look at the mysterious island as Tomb Raider is written on your screen. I must say I was on the edge of my seat most of the time. The voice acting was very convincincing, the action was intense and the adventure was thrilling and very cinematic. There are still a few kinks to work out with some of the controls and animations, but the game is still very early in the development.

In the next part of the demo, the development team wanted to show us a bit more contrast to the small, claustrophobic places that we just saw. At this point we jumped ahead in the game, to an open-world level which features more of a dynamic, traversal style of gameplay. By now Lara has come across another survivor from her shipwrecked vessel, named Roth. She finds him injured from a recent wolf attack and he reveals to her that the wolves got his pack which contains all of the medical supplies along with a radio transmitter, essential to their rescue off the island. As Lara tries to help Roth, he passes out due to shear pain and she has no choice but to go into the wolfs’ den in order to retrieve his pack.

Here we get to experience how open this level is. The degree of exploration is astonishing, as everything you see around Lara can be reached. This, for example, includes a tower on a distant mountain range, which will actually be a focal point later on in the game. The environment around you is very interactive as well. There are multiple ways of reaching the wolfs’ den, it’s all about giving player a choice. Lara’s survival instincts will guide you in the right direction by allowing you to see things such as wolf tracks on the ground if you so choose. We follow Lara as she jumps from rooftop to rooftop and in case you fall, you’ll always find another way up. There is a very fluid movement system, allowing Lara to correct and adjust herself throughout her jumps.

As Lara finally climbs her way up to the den, the gameplay gets more intense turning into a psychological thriller of sorts. Lara hears the wolves howling near by as she navigates through the dark cave. Then all of the sudden a shadow… something runs right by her. The game does a good job at keeping you on the edge of your seat. As Lara retrieves the items and tries to get out, she is attacked by a wolf and your actions must save her once again. In this game, Lara doesn’t kill for sport. But she must do whatever it takes to survive and she is actually quite apologetic after killing the wolf, saying “Sorry, it was me or you.” as she walks off.

Lara proceeds to make her way back down to Roth. She is able to patch him up, and he’ll eventually regain conciseness to tell her that she must go up to the tower and install the radio transmitter as he is in no condition to climb (surprise, surprise). “Yeah, I was afraid you were going to say that” says Lara. We see her struggling with her own self doubt. She needs to learn to believe in herself before she can become the true hero we have come to know.

As our demo wraps up, we are told a little bit about the concept of “Basecamp” where we have options such as Lara’s survival skills, which she’ll be able to upgrade over the course of the game. A fast travel system that will let you revisit some of the previously played areas at your own pace and a salvage system which the developers will reveal more on in the coming months. Needless to say the game is shaping up quite nicely and we really liked what we saw. There is a good balance between open world environments, exploration and intense, action-packed, cinematic events. With a release date set for sometime in 2012, I’m sure we’ll learn quite a bit more about Lara in the coming months.