With its stunning visuals/animation and it's nearly perfect soundtrack, Soul (2020) showcases an existential exploration with incredible grace (and soul).
The reboot of the famous video game heroine is here, with it being five years since the last Tomb Raider game was released-discounting the spin-off Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. This goes right back to the beginning, with a young Lara, who is lovable as the protagonist, on an exploration voyage with a crew. They get caught up in a storm though and end up on a mysterious island, and it goes from there.
Playing this game I could see long time Tomb Raider fans thinking that the series has moved too far from its origins. It isn't a maze of an adventure game with puzzles to complete with the occasional animal to shoot like the older games. It has become a mixture of Prince of Persia, Uncharted and Far Cry 3-it's odd how similar some aspects of the game are to FC3 considering how close their releases were-with shooting enemies taking up a lot of the gameplay, a few relatively easy enough puzzles with a lot of climbing and platforming aspects. I haven't completed all of the side quests yet, but going through the main missions, there was only one puzzle that took me quite a while to work out. Personally I would have liked a bit more of this. To be fair though it has been moving this way since Tomb Raider: Legend.
The plot, although a bit repetitive-there are a number of times where Lara has the chance to rescue someone, but then something collapses or blows up obstructing her path-is entertaining, the characters and voice acting is first class that we see in games these days. The graphics aren't top of the range, but work perfectly with the environment, that is extremely detailed, together with great character animation. There is a bit of QTE is the game that I'm not the biggest fan of and as mentioned I would of liked the implementation of more puzzle aspects, and a bit less third person shooting, but overall it is a well made game that any fan of action/adventure gaming should enjoy. I look forward to the sequel that the end of the game gives hints to. 4.5-4
Gameplay 4.5/5
Graphics 4/5
Sound 4.5/5
Difficulty 5/5
Originality 3.5/5
