It has been about five years since voluptuous British brunette adventurer Lara Croft has been on anyone’s radar. With the reboot of the once popular franchise imminent, the trailer has been making its rounds on the web. Yet the skeptics want to know how she plays.
Square Enix finally lets us put our hands on the controller and move Croft around the gorgeous rainforest.
Tomb Raider’s preview demo lets you dredge through ravines, navigate luscious jungles and climb an abandoned plane which hangs on jungle vines each on the verge of rusty dismemberment at any given point. This isn’t the norm in tutorials, but it does the job here.
The controls come off smooth and crisp, even with an injured Croft. As the buxom adventurer jumps from cliff to cliff and navigates hanging obstacles, the action flows seamlessly. Within minutes of holding the Xbox 360 remote, the player is climbing cliffs, scaling ledges and hunting with a bow and arrow.
Quick-time events flow seamlessly into the story and actually add to the immersion rather than break it. Croft is up a creek without a paddle and even in the demo she is constantly beaten up by her surroundings.
The camera zooms and retracts based upon angles of Croft’s movements. When an injury occurs, colors change and emphasis on pain is felt in the character as well as the player.
If the release version of Tomb Raider is as good as the demo, we are all in for a big treat. Ms. Croft has waited to make her resurgence from obscurity; no one was expecting that her coming out party would amount to this much hype and anticipation.
Check out some gameplay footage of Tomb Raider below:
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