Tomb Raider: Survivor

Lara Croft: Born Survivor

The hugely anticipated, latest instalment of Tomb Raider is due out in early March. As you can see from the image above, taken directly from the tombraider.com website, Lara looks a lot different than in previous games.

Then again, the entire story is different. Square Enix, who now publish the franchise, have taken a different spin on the life of Lara Croft. No longer is she the hardened adventurer that you experienced in previous versions. In the new Lara Croft, she's a fresh adventurer, new to the field and rearing to get going. Unfortunately she gets herself into a right pickle and has to learn how to survive, and how to do it well.

The story on the official site explains how the game explores Lara's origins and how she must adapt in order to survive and become the veteran she is on previous titles. The developers, Crystal Dynamics, have really thought through this one and the trailer makes the game look incredibly enticing. I know this is the sole purpose of a trailer but I don't know, with this it's different and obvious that a lot of time has gone into it. I mean, we've been waiting since 2008 for another instalment. I genuinely thought they weren't going to reboot the series.

Many people have already jumped the gun and criticised Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix of creating an aura of sexist fantasy amongst male gamers. The most informative article I found that tackles this topic was from The Guardian. You can read the article here. In my opinion, Tomb Raider has always been targeted more towards the male gamer. Why else would they use an athletic, fearless and strong female lead who hardly wears any clothes and has larger than average assets?

A multiplayer mode has also been confirmed. I wonder how this will turn out, and what is planned for it. What types of game modes will see, weapons, maps. Building a multiplayer platform is just as important and requires the same attention to detail as the standard single player mode. It is being developed by none other than Eidos Montreal, the developers responsible for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, so I have my fingers crossed for something at least half decent. It also pleases me that the studio developing the multiplayer have a link to the franchises old publisher, Eidos Interactive.

Price wise, it marries up nicely to other high end games of this modern day. There are 3 separate packages for sale: Standard, Collectors and Survival. You can pre-order them now from Game UK for the following prices:

Standard: £39.99

Collectors: £74.99

Survival: £54.99

It is worth noting that, with the collectors and survival versions, you get some rather nice additions. The collectors additions comes with an 8" Lara Croft figurine - great for all those die hard fans who want good old Lara in their display cabinet. There's also a map, art book and a "survival tin" that the game rests in. In-game content wise, you get a weapons DLC pack (presumably for the multiplayer aspect but can't confirm) and a 10 track score (not entirely sure what this is).

The survival pack is very similar to the collectors, although there is no figurine  and the game packaging is different. You still get the map, art book and in-game content however.

Personally, I won't be pre-ordering a fancy copy. I'll go to the shops on release day and purchase a standard copy instead. I cannot justify the massive price hike, sorry.

Tomb Raider: Survivor is released in the UK on 5th March, 2013 and will initially be for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. I reckon it'll play better, or at least feel right, on the PS3 because the Playstation is Tomb Raider's roots - where it all began. I'm not sure if they'll release a Wii version, but there's no sniff of speculation about it so I can't see it becoming a possibility.

You can view the latest trailer below.