Was Tomb Raider Ever Good?

 

Obscenely late to the party once again thanks to my insanely large backlog, I picked up a cheap copy of the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot on Steam and finally started playing it not too long ago.  It's a painful "OK" game, competently made and fun to fiddle about with for 30 minutes to an hour at a time but nothing special.  It's the gaming equivalent of eating a piece of plain bread or a bowl of plain, unseasoned rice with no side dish.  Not terrible enough to really complain about but not something you'd want to consume regularly.

The one thing that keeps going through my mind as I'm playing it is "why does this exist? we already have Uncharted".  Everything that set Tomb Raider apart back in the day when Lara had a lot more polygons and significantly stiffer movement is completely gone in favor of making it just Uncharted if it was a semi open-world game.  The problem with it being so similar to Uncharted is that it sucks at being Uncharted and it sucks at being a semi open world game.  The Japanese island that Lara runs around on in this game just isn't an interesting location and I find myself sort of glazing over as I'm playing.  The only real interesting thing about the game is how much effort went into the animations for Lara getting beaten up and killed and quite frankly I don't get that much enjoyment from watching game over screens and Saw-Lite levels of gore.

But here's the spicy hot take from the title, was Tomb Raider ever really good? 

I know there are plenty of people that claim to like it, it was a hugely popular franchise for a while and triangular tittied Lara Croft was and still is a video game icon but the games are just So. Fucking. Boring. I remember when I first got my Sega Saturn that had a playable demo of the first Tomb Raider game and I fired that thing up and prompty put it down.  At first I chalked it up just to being too young to "get" it, so when I was older I gave the classic Tomb Raider games another shot and gave up a few stages deep because I was so painfully bored.  The sequels I also gave a fair shake too but didn't fair any better and then as the series moved to the PS2 I feel everyone came to their senses with Angel of Darkness because I've never seen anyone defend that game. 

Then the reboot comes along with is bombastic cinematics and modern gameplay but still sufferes from being just painfully fucking boring.  Only this time instead of stiff movement and boring levels it's generic gunplay and boring semi-open environments I'm expected to scour for trinkets.  At time of writing this post I stand by the idea that Tomb Raider is, by far, one of the most boring franchises to ever exist in the history of the medium.

Granted I've not finished Tomb Raider 2013 and what it does have going over the original games is that I do feel at least somewhat motivated to at least get to the end, which is a huge step up from the original games.  Also I'm not sure how far into 2013 I am, I'm trying to fix a fuse box on a radio tower or some shit and maybe in a few hours more the game will get really good and my opinion will completely change.  The other thing I'm willing to consider is that maybe I'll have a lot more fun with the later games in the reboot series, Shadow and Rise of the Tomb Raider.  Maybe I'll come back after playing those games and have a completely differernt opinion and gush endlessly about what a masterpiece of gaming they are....

But I fucking doubt it