Lara Croft – she’s a gaming icon, isn’t she? Back in the 1990s, her popularity seemed instrumental in establishing the PlayStation – and, by extension, computer gaming in general – as a mainstream cultural force. It’s charming, then, that developer Square Enix Montréal has seemingly worked to replicate much of the ethos of the early Tomb Raider games with the puzzle adventure game Lara Croft GO.
This approach extends to the successive gorgeous playing environments and even the opening menu screen, as you can see above. However, unlike those early PlayStation games, Lara Croft GO has a wonderfully intuitive control system that feels pleasing to the fingers. The player can make the alluring British explorer walk along paths, climb up and down walls, attack snakes and spiders and complete even more actions simply by swiping in the desired direction.
Naturally, however, the meat and potatoes of the game is the puzzle-solving – which certainly isn’t for the impatient, tending as it does to become quite elaborate in places. Meticulous thinking is frequently necessary for navigating mazes of ledges, switches, exotic creatures and more beside – but this should leave many people, especially fans of the game’s spiritual predecessor Hitman GO, in their element.
A number of collecting side-missions also contribute to the good replay value, helping to make the game’s $4.99 price look like a small one to pay for hours of fun and largely frustration-free tomb raiding.
