The Tomb Raider series has been a huge success since the release of the first game, Tomb Raider, in 1996. Developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive (now Square Enix), the game was released on the Sega Saturn, PlayStation and MS-DOS and has sold over 7 million copies worldwide, single-handedly accounting for over 11% of the franchises 63 million global video game sales (as of December 2017). With so many films, books, comics and spin-off titles, Tomb Raider and the series’ protagonist, Lara Croft, have become pop-culture icons in the gaming community and mainstream media alike.
After the success of Tomb Raider II in 1997 with over 8 million copies sold, Core Design decided to make Tomb Raider an annual release, choking the series and crushing staff under the pressure to make another game in the year. Following the critical failure of Core Design’s final Tomb Raider game, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, Eidos Interactive passed development of the series to Crystal Dynamics, the current developer of Tomb Raider to this day.
This brings us onto the 2013 reboot, also titled Tomb Raider. The game tells the tale of a pre-cave-diving Lara Croft, travelling to the mythical island of Yamatai to continue her father’s research. Tomb Raider is just one of the origin stories of Lara Croft, a different story is told in Tomb Raider: Legends. Playing in 2017, Tomb Raider was, and still is, one of the best games I have ever played, among the likes of Portal and, well, little else. I have a mere 15 hours in the game, but I completed the main story with only a few collectibles left. The story, mechanics, graphics and even gunplay are some of the best I have experienced in any single-player game, perhaps ever, but this isn’t a review. The game has an impressive list of awards, including Digital Trends’ Best Action Game of E3, GamesRadar’s Most Valuable Game of E3 (for 2 years), and was nominated for VGA’s Game of the Year award, losing to Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V, with many more nominations. The game achieved an 85 out of 100 rating, or higher, from Metacritic in all releases of the game.
In 2018, the Tomb Raider film was released, featuring Alicia Vikander as the iconic heroine herself. The film was based largely off the story of the 2013 game of the same name (someone really needs to come up with more titles than just “Tomb Raider”), with some alterations to make the theme more realistic, presumably for more mainstream audiences that are perhaps more reluctant to suspend their disbelief. After watching the film, I really wanted to play Rise of the Tomb Raider, the sequel to the 2013 game, this time with a more creative title (thank God). RotTR was nominated for even more awards than its predecessor, and with 7 million sales as of November 2017, this one is just as big as the game that started it all back in 1996. Like Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider has very good Metacritic results, scoring 86 out of 100 or higher on all reviewed platforms and yet despite enjoying the first game so much, I still haven’t played this one.
Since playing through Tomb Raider, my interests in gaming have shifted. Once a single-player gamer, my gaming habits have become more social than before. Many of the games I play are online games or games that can be shared with others, like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege, Rocket League, PayDay 2 and more. I gaze across at my “Stories in Progress” category on Steam, seeing the games started, but not finished. Skyrim, Bioshock: Infinite, The Elder Scrolls Online and The Walking Dead, all destined to be one day uninstalled and forgotten about. And it’s not even that these games are bad, in fact, they are all considered successes and have won awards, I just don’t seem to have the time to play them anymore. And this is where I am with Rise of the Tomb Raider. I am afraid, afraid to start a game that I know I will love, simply because the way I play has changed and morphed into something I can’t say I’m happy with.
The third game in the reboot trilogy, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, is due to be released in 2018. We currently don’t know much about the game, prior to the full reveal event set to be on April 27th 2018. I’m looking forward to the release in September, but I fear I won’t have played Rise of the Tomb Raider in time to play at launch. Maybe a launch play through is what I need to get me fully invested in single player titles again, but only time will tell.
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