At base camps, Lara can huddle by the fire (she really did this in the demo) in Tomb Raider. While resting and recovering from wolf attacks, Lara can also enhance her abilities. A menu pops up with options like salvage, which is essentially Tomb Raider’s form of crafting. Crystal Dynamics explained items will be limited and Lara will have to utilize everything and anything she can scrounge from the ground.
Another option called fast travel allows players to revisit areas without backtracking. Tomb Raider takes place on an island, but Lara will not be able to explore the entire area right away. In the demo, Lara stumbled as she leapt from roof to roof – a far cry from the finesse heroine in the previous Tomb Raider titles.
Lara learns survival skills and these upgrades allow Lara to reach new areas. She also gets tools, like a broken axe from Roth. Once she has the axe, Lara can climb by pressing the X button, a necessary tool for reaching a radio tower – one of the mission objectives in Tomb Raider.
When you’re not sure what to do or where to go in Tomb Raider use survival instinct. This highlights cues like wolf tracks leading to wolf den where Roth dropped his radio. Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics said during an E3 presentation, this game would have more puzzles than previous games in the series. Just in case you missed it, we covered the prologue puzzle where Lara uses a torch to move and ignite exploding barrels.
Tomb Raider is slated for release in 2012 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.
