MeekinOnMovies On….”Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition”

Lara Croft is her boobs. Seriously. I don’t mean to be this guy, but if you’re a gamer who was around to play the first “Tomb Raider” or to hear about the first Tomb Raider, the first thing your subconscious brings to mind – most likely – is Mz. Croft’s green tank top, and those not-quite-round polygonal, boobies. Heck, the second game had a level where Laura runs around in a bathrobe shotgunning dudes. Much like how Indiana Jones *is* the hat and whip, Lara Croft is her sex appeal.

Which in today’s day and age, is kind of a problem. After numerous sequels, sidequels, and puzzle games that have attempted to turn Tomb Raider into something a little more respectable, it looks like the 2013 Xbox360, PS3, PC reboot “Tomb Raider” did just that. So it’s a bit ironic then, that one of the first major releases for the sexier hardware of the PS4 and Xbox One is a remake of that reboot, “Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition”.

The setup finds Lara and a team of multicultural-in-skin-tone-only scientists and boat crew stranded on an exotic island where mysterious and potentially supernatural storms begin to pile up, preventing ships from leaving the island and planes and helicopters from landing. Toss in a mysterious, gun-wielding, American-accent having, ‘sun goddess’ obsessed cult, and it’s up to Lara and her trusty bow to uncover the mystery and get as many of her crew members off the island as possible – before it’s too late.

Thus we have yet another entry in the ‘stalk your prey’ video game sub-genre made popular by Assassin’s Creed III, Splinter Cell, Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, and even the “Batman: Arkham” games. The genre is popular for a reason of course, as exotic locale + stealth + enemies = thrilling satisfaction with every completed objective and silent kill. In “Far Cry 3” you could take out every command post silently with your bow and a variety of other weapons and tools; landing headshots, distracting guards, and unleashing wild rabid animals to do your bidding. “Splinter Cell” encouraged both silent and deadly playthroughs, where encounters felt more akin to a life-and-death puzzle than a shooter or action game. Even “Crysis 3” with all it’s super-powered nano-suit glory, presented a half dozen tools and weapons to make stalking and killing your enemy satisfying.

However “Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition”’s doesn’t quiiiiteeeeee reach that level due to gameplay schizophrenia. The game is broken up into ‘stealth’ sections where Lara uses her bow to pick off foes, occasionally run up behind an enemy and take them down with a pick-axe to the dome, and ‘action’ sections where you’re required to shoot, dodge, melee, and kill until the game decides you’ve downed enough bad guys for a given set-piece. There’s also environmental puzzles to solve that have a sort of “Legend of Zelda” vibe to them, light platforming and spelunking elements, and an upgrade system that’s pretty much standard for the genre.

Unfortunately any time you’re forced to shoot frantically against waves of enemies, you’ll contend with iffy aiming and a camera that goes on vacation any time you want to dodge an oncoming grenade or melee attack. When stealth is an option the game handles itself far better, though some weird checkpointing hiccups will cause you to repeat large sections of a given objective over again if you die.

The whole thing just feels…perfunctory.  Gameplay wise, “Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition” brings nothing to the table in regards to new and innovative gameplay features, and worse, is missing a couple of things that have become staples of the genre. There’s a lack of verticality. There are no trees to climb, or cliffs to dangle off while waiting for an enemy to walk by for air assassinations, and once detected, it’s seemingly impossible to hide again, as enemies seem to know where you are immediately, even after dying and restarting.  

But instead Crystal Dynamics punted the ball, and not in the Chris Kluwe way, either, instead content to present a decent plot without much meat on the bone when it comes to subtext or themes or emotional takeaways.

Outside of the way the dialog of the enemies you kill changes from “It’s just some girl?” to “oh no! it’s the girl!” as the game progresses, there’s nothing presented in “Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition” that speaks specifically to Lara’s femininity or the specific challenges and dangers and threats a woman in this kind of environment would face.

Maybe that was the idea. To essentially palette swap a typical male protagonist for a female one and see if audiences react differently to a lady going through all the gruesome death scenes and violence and murder a male protagonist would. I know I did. I was embarrassed to play this game in front of my parents, worried they’d wonder what kind of crazy person wants to see a girl get decapitated, impaled, bitten, shot, drowned, and splattered for 16 hours?

Then again, maybe I’m old fashioned. On one hand it’s great we have a strong female protagonist in a game who isn’t wearing two pieces of tape and a cork as an outfit, but on the other hand, it feels like an opportunity not only lost, but deliberately buried.

There’s nothing special about Lara here aside from the fact she’s a girl! Which isn’t enough, especially considering 18 years ago her claim to fame was was being a girl! She’s pretty, well mannered, smart as a whip, endlessly agile and adaptive, and there’s absolutely nothing about her that makes her relatable or interesting. There’s no depth. No flaws, even her skin is silky smooth and her hair stays flowing majestically throughout the entire game.

Imagine for a second if Lara was someone like Abby Wambach, or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, a bookish lass without an assertive bone in her body. Someone a little left-of-center when it comes to the typical mind’s eye view of what a woman is or should be. We could understand her struggles, how her crew and friends can’t relate to her despite her *lack* of femininity, then come to respect her throughout the adventure. Instead from the start Lara is brave, passionate, willing to stand up to authority, and everyone looks to her for guidance despite her perceived lack of experience due to this being a reboot. She’s a Barbie doll with a beretta. It’s not enough.

Thus if you haven’t guessed, “Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition” left me cold. It’s a quality piece of entertainment, the graphics are beautiful, the gameplay is solid if you like combining stealth and action and puzzle solving and don’t mind having the game dictate to you when you’ll be doing each. On it’s surface, it’s a really well made game – and succeeds in making Tomb Raider about a little more than just Mz. Croft’s endowments. But when you think about the game on a critical level, it kind of falls apart; a ‘modern’ reboot stuck in the proverbial past, content to deliver decent gameplay perpendicular to a largely forgettable narrative and largely forgettable characters – which you’ll mostly enjoy if you are willing to turn your brain off long enough to ignore the mountain of missed opportunities scattered all over the floor in an effort to make Lara Croft something more than her sex appeal.