LARA CROFT GO

The true ‘20 Year Celebration’ game

Rise Of The Tomb Raider was billed as Lara’s 20th birthday bash, was it? Poppycock. It was a fantastic title, sure, but this enhanced port of the isometric mobile puzzler that won Apple’s iPhone Game Of The Year award in 2015 is a much better ode to classic Tomb Raider. Play Hitman GO? The building blocks are the same: you press up, down, left and right to navigate Lara around nodes in cleanly-designed levels. Moving into creatures from the side or behind sees Lara gun them down, but carelessly wandering in front of their eyes turns our intrepid explorer into lunch.

Just don’t be fooled into thinking it’s a reskin of Hitman GO. Basics aside, the two titles are vastly different to play. Where Hitman was a selection of isolated mathematical route-planning puzzles disguised in Agent 47 gear, Lara Croft GO’s all about the full adventure.

It’s about journeying deeper and deeper into tropical jungles. About exploring ancient cave systems and crypts. About venturing into Earth’s darkest recesses purely for the thrill of uncovering ancient relics. These were the hallmarks of the Tomb Raider I grew up with, and these are the reasons why, despite being turn-based, Lara Croft GO is the most faithful Tomb Raider in years.

Gone are Hitman’s board game aesthetic and the checklists that ask you to finish levels in the lowest number of moves or without killing. In their places? Dynamic worlds and hidden pots of treasures, collected either by moving a cursor around the screen with the right thumbstick on PS4, or by tapping on the hidden jars with your finger on PS Vita.

CROFT CONVERSION

Given the game’s mobile origins you’d think the latter port’s the optimal one, but it’s not: long load times and an intermittent graphical glitch taint it. Thankfully, the PS4 game’s sublime, and Cross-Buy and Cross-Save means you needn’t commit to just one. As a bonus, we PlayStation players even receive a brand-new chapter, Mirror Of Spirits.

For series veterans it’s extraspecial. The radial main menu’s a throwback to Lara’s backpack inventory system circa 1996, and the sound of scooped-up collectibles is simply the first game’s secret area audio ping ripped out and reused. This is how you properly honour the First Lady Of PlayStation.

VERDICT

A short but sweet turn-based nod to the original games that ends up celebrating Lara’s heritage even better than Rise Of The Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration. Matthew Pellett