Hello, long time no see! Lots of crazy things happen in the last two-three months, from a period when I had 2 jobs at the same time (full time and one part-time) and I've spent a lot of time on my college diploma, but that's enough about me, this post is about Tomb Raider.
I purchased this game back in 2020, played half of the story before deleting all the games from my computer in crisis regarding college exams, but I managed to finish the story now, and my achievement grinding ego was attacked when I discovered that this game had somehow a multiplayer mode, which is long dead, buried and forgotten.
The game was produced by Crystal Dynamic, and why is that important is the fact that the game has a lot of combat, for a game that it's in his essence about exploring.
This game combines some things that I love in single-player games, progressive skills and upgradable equipment.
The equipment starts basic, with a bow and arrow, my favourite weapon since you can go in stealth, planning the next kill while others have no idea what's going on.
Next you will get a pistol, shotgun and a rifle, that later in the game can have a grenade launcher attached. You can switch easily between them with the left controller buttons, and yeah, I'm recommending a controller for this game even through I only play on PC.
As I was saying, every weapon is upgradable, the upgrades are based on scrap parts, that you can gather some boxes placed around. You can grind a little if you want them upgrades before passing to the next level, with a certain skill, gathering scrap parts from the animals you hunt, but what do you want from me, I didn't make the game, I'm just writing a review, 8 years after launch...
Anyway, the skills' system is based on skill points, which you will get by levelling up by hunting, progressing and exploring tombs. You can choose which skills you will prioritize, but if you grind the same as I do, by the end of the game the skill tree is maxed out. But don't worry, as you can see in the map screenshot, you can fast travel between location. "Why do I need fast travel in a story based game?" are you asking right now because this doesn't make sense, but the answer is that there are some items from the first levels that you can get with the skills unlocked at least after the half of the story.
An interesting mechanic that will help the greed of collecting everything is "the survivor instinct". A skill that can be activated only if you're staying still, making everything grey and highlighting the objects of interest with a golden shade.
An interesting mechanic of the game that said "LOGIC=-1" is the concrete breaker, made from a rope and an arrow that's really not strong enough to break a wall, but add a rope ascender, and you're Hulk. At least attach the damn thing to something, otherwise it's the same thing with the empty rope.
The story is interesting, but predictable, in the sense of if you gather the collectible, most of which tell a part of a story related to the island, you can figure it out how the game will end. But the story is still interesting, despite the obsession of the developers of stabbing, hitting, smashing Lara with every chance they got. Except for that, I don't want to give any spoilers if someone wants to play the game, I don't want to ruin their experience.
Still, I need to call these for home decorations, except for Lara's boobs from the previous image which I know you will look at, there's a lot to see, all the locations have their own atmosphere and the level design is not at all repetitive, especially the tombs, and some locations that will make you say "Really, I actually have to go through this level", which, if you will fail, there will be a nice cutscene of Lara's death, again with the hate against Lara developers have put in.
Besides the multiplayer mode, that from my research made on YouTube videos, and the menu from the last screenshot, they took the characters from the game keeping the same sides with the Solari fighters and the survivors, using basically the same mechanics, from the inventory and weapons to the movement of the character. To put in short terms, everybody wanna be Lara Croft.
I think this game didn't really need a multiplayer, lesson learned also by the devs, because later games didn't even try again. The interesting fact about this mod, I discovered when I was actually writing this article. Even through it's dead, the servers for multiplayer are still up, like, Square Enix is still paying to keep this alive. And there's a way to farm the achievements, and this is by starting a match alone or with a friend and gather resources. It sounds to boring for me to do it, but if you want to, keep in mind there's still a way to perfect this game, I would recommand to look on the internet for details.
Even through it's already 8 years old, this game still looks gorgeous in my eyes, maybe I need to see more games, or I simply have bad taste, but I don't really care because I can see the passion that formed this game, with the small details that most of the players are missing, but without which the game wouldn't be the same. I recommand this game since you can find it at 75% of every sale, and if you will play it, I really hope you will enjoy it.
All of the images were captured by me during my play.
Great guys on Hive: 
Cheers,
