Game review: Tomb Raider

Welcome everyone to my blog, especially to my readers of the video game community #hivegaming and the entire platform in general. This time and changing a little of the genres of games that I usually bring you, although my favorites are racing and role playing games (RPG), this time I bring you one of action and adventure, called Tomb Raider. This game was developed by Crystal Dynamics for Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Steam OS, Mac OS, nvidia shield tv and Google Stadia platforms; while its distribution was in charge of the company Square Enix. Its official release to the market was on March 5, 2013. A game that I find quite entertaining so I decided to talk about it. As I am not a professional in these game reviews sometimes I usually miss some aspects that may be important to determine and define if a game is good or not, however I try to do my best, where I touch points such as gameplay, game modes, mechanics, characters, graphics and sounds, plus any other point that helps us to improve the understanding of this publication.

Crystal Dynamics es una empresa estadounidense desarrolladora de videojuegos, fundada en 1992 por Judy Lang, Canepa Madaline y Dave Morris. Fue adquirida por Eidos Interactive un video editor de juegos británico, en 1998 y, tras la adquisición de Square Enix de Eidos Interactive en 2009, es ahora una filial de Square Enix.

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Story

"Tomb Raider tells the story of the origin of Lara Croft and her transformation from a young girl to a hardened survivor", says the description of the game. And that's as far as we can read, because anyone who knows the franchise at least minimally already knows what awaits: adventure and action from start to finish, in addition, with high graphics.
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The story of this game made me a little difficult to understand at first, but as I was playing the game I understood little by little about it. In general terms, it seems to me a story that usually catches you, to the point of wanting to play for many hours. A game where in the plot we see how our main character Lara is a girl who goes through many things while trying to survive, either hunting to eat and fighting against the enemies that we are presented in the game, that's what the story presents us, however it is not necessary to feed to increase our life, something that I did not like so much of the game, as it would have been great that health increased to feed our character, so that the game was more real in this aspect.

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As for the gameplay, the game presents us with several things that are interesting as I mentioned at the beginning. Our character in addition to fighting must hunt animals, but it is important to mention that it is not difficult to do so, these animals are put more to have a little more fun. Among the animals are deer, wild boars and birds. Now, the combats that I think is the most important in action and adventure games, are quite frequent so we will not have time to rest, which induces us to play many hours and actually I think it's good because players like this, but of course, as long as the game catches us. One of the things that disappoints me a lot is how basic is the AI of the opponents (Artificial Intelligence), so much so that even in the most difficult level is very simple, however and because the game has a great variety in terms of gameplay and go beyond the shooting and fighting, this weakness of the game does not detract much from Tomb Raider as it can happen in other video games.

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Another thing that is important to mention is that we must move through many places, specifically 13 where the level varies as we advance. In these scenarios we will find many things, ranging from documents, GPS treasures and relics, in addition to the other common things we must do as hunting animals and confrontations with the enemy. The easy and intermediate levels of the game I can tell you that it is very simple, which will not represent a challenge and in the difficult level it gets a little more complicated but nothing that is really impossible. Another thing I want to mention is that the controls are simple to set up and control, however we must have a lot to work due to the variety of things we have to do in the game.

The game has several game modes, which are Rescue, Team Duel, Call for Help and All Against All, in addition to the game mode that can never be missed, the multiplayer mode. In the rescue mode, the main objective of the player is to collect objects of interest, since this game is about survival, in which the main thing is to obtain food and medicine. The second game mode that this game presents is team duel, which as the name says are battles between teams until there is a winner, this mode is the one that I like and I enjoy the most because cooperation is of utmost importance to me. The distress call mode that in this mode the player must activate radio transmitters while the enemies steal the batteries to avoid communications. This last game mode was the one I understood the least. Finally we have the duel mode all against all, where the player must kill the most enemies to be the winner and obviously without dying before doing so.

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Its graphic section stands out among other titles for its great visual quality in terms of landscapes and backgrounds so vivid, full of a high range of colors and textures. It is worth mentioning that the graphic animation of the characters is excellent and consists of an incredible color palette and visual modeling that make the game even more realistic in terms of visuals. The visual effects are really good as expected for the time, as it provides a great composition in the environment and highlighting even more the incredible scenes that we all love and highlighting the incredible visual effects of this franchise, which show us incredible things, especially in combat. In the meantime it highlights the fluidity of the game on consoles and on pc as long as the necessary parameters are met for the game to work in a correct way.

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As for the sound and its sound section, it was somewhat low with the translations into other languages, changing in many ways the voices of the characters in addition to their good pronunciation of the words, leaving that small failure highlights the incredible soundtrack, the quality of the themes and the variety of them, plus they are according to the game and the time we are living. Its sound effects are out of series, with shocking and clear sounds, are very consistent with the recent times and the type of event that is occurring in the game, its realism in terms of explosions, screams, landscapes, shots, among others, is excellent and very good to hear.

In conclusion, we are in the presence of a very good game, which can amuse and entertain us quite a lot. The gameplay is good in terms of game modes and the variety of things that the game presents us with, such as combat, hunting and the different resources that we see in the game and we have to grab. While the weakest are the AI because of how basic they are but as I said the game goes beyond the shooting and combat as we have enough to do. The levels are fairly simple rather than all the easy and intermediate, since the difficult one presents us with a greater challenge. Technically the game is a success beyond some shortcomings that may have both in graphics and sound, but overall it is more than fine. For all these reasons, I recommend you to try this game and share your experience with us.