Tomb Raider 2014: PS4 Style

Lara Croft is one of the video game’s most iconic characters. Since her 1996 debut on the Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn and PC, it has been a love or hate relationship. Core Design’s adventure series had a strong start with Tomb Raider 1 to 3. The original trilogy featured fun, high adventure galore from battling dinosaurs to entering the depths of Area 51. Then things started to go downhill after that. Their final 3 Lara Croft adventures just plain sucked. Oh, we’ve had our ups and downs with Croft, but the ups have been very positive recently thanks to Crystal Dynamics.

They rebooted the franchise once already, way back in 2006 with the delightful Tomb Raider Legend. I loved that game. I played the crap out of it on my Nintendo Gamecube, Sony PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable. The story, characters, gameplay, music, everything came together with an explosive satisfying experience. The team would make two other entries, an anniversary remake of the original adventure and a direct sequel to Legend entitled Tomb Raider Underworld. A solid adventure but felt a tad bit underwhelming (Ha! See what I did there!) compared to the new kid in town, Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series (dun-dun-duuunnnnn!!!!).

So, Crystal Dynamics rebooted the series once again in 2013 with a game simply titled Tomb Raider and what a spectacular adventure it is. They took everything awesome about Tomb Raider and ramped it up. They also didn’t piggy back on Naughty Dog and simply rip off their great ideas of action-adventure-Indiana Jones things and stuff. Featuring action and adventure galore of course, but this new Tomb Raider emphasised on a fairly addictive and enjoyable “survival game” experience.

Now in 2014, the next-gen Tomb Raider experience happened on the PlayStation 4 and X-Box One. I recently finished the game on my PS4 with an 80% completion file (Must… work... towards 100%). Damn, what a great game to have at this point in the early, early days of the next-gen consoles. It looks phenomenal and plays sweet.

I especially love the way the game utilizes all of the PS4 control inputs. You use the touch pad on the controller to navigate the game’s in map and look at collected treasured relics with relative easy. If you purchased a camera, one can use voice commands as well. This game is probably the best way to show off all of the new extra bells and whistles of the PS4’s controller experience. Very nice indeed.

This game is simply incredible. A fantastic reboot made better on the PS4 with full 1080p and 60fps. The old love is back again and better than ever.