Virtual Lara's Thoughts

A Virtual Lara Review of Tomb Raider Reloaded

24/5/2023

Tomb Raider Reloaded is a free to play mobile game (and Netflix too), developed by Emerald City Games that was soft released in 2020 to certain countries. A soft release allows the developers to beta test the game and fix bugs or serious issues that arise before a worldwide release, however the game files made their way onto the Internet, allowing the most determined of players to download them and join in on beta testing.

A cinematic teaser trailer was shown in November 2020 and in the following months, the then Marketing director of the game, Ed Perkins, teased character models, additional voice overs from the previous Lara voice actresses and even some concept art. This game was teasing a lot of elements of the early games.

The game finally released worldwide on 14th February 2023, after missing its original estimated release by 2 years to mixed reviews. Magazine critics pointed out the high volume of microtransactions whilst fans of the franchise loved the Tomb Raider twist.

We've played the game since it's worldwide release and as of today, our stats are:
Player level: 86 | Attack: 12907 | Max HP: 63155 | Preferred Outfit: Classic, level 38.
Gear: Legendary Dual Pistols, level 37 | Legendary Long Range Ammo, level 31 | Legendary Anti Ground Ammo, level 32 | Legendary Fire Bracelet, level 38 | Legendary Lightning Strike Mask, level 35 | Legendary Light Supplies Backpack, level 39 | Legendary Precision Amulet, level 40.

We'd like to point out that this loadout is pretty much the exact same that we've used since release, apart from the odd ammo swap and the upgrading of the Gold Dual Pistols, but we haven't put coin into upgrading anything else.

We have collected all the relics, and have almost levelled them up to 15 out of 30, with a couple of exceptions. Right, let's get into the pros and cons:

Just an example of the pretty artwork and cute little icons which would make lovely pin badges

POSITVES:

Looks pretty, the colours are bright and the art style and UI logos are cute.
Fun little game to play. Easy to play, simple controls.
Gives the feeling of being rewarded, note, only gives the feeling.
Good soundtrack and good sound effects.
The story, even if it is brief. Loosely follows the story of Tomb Raider (currently).
It is nice to see the use of TR Anniversary bosses and relics; it's a nostalgic little nod for those who have played the game.
Crafting system is fun.
Whilst there is a microtransaction system (hey, what doesn't have it these days), it's not too in your face, so it's not forced upon you.
Stages within the Chapters are randomised, so the order that you play is different each time. Reduces the repetitiveness, but you will start recognising stage layouts, and sometimes play the same stage twice in a row.
The variety of enemies. There are familiar enemies, such as the rat, bat and wolf, as well as new ones, and they are location based too so that you aren't fighting the same ones all the time.
The Tombs, an extra challenge where you play through a smaller amount of stages for extra rewards but against higher difficulty enemies.

NEGATIVES:

A whole lot of grinding. You don't progress very quickly, especially in later levels where the difficulty spike largely increases and cost of upgrades increases greatly.
Game doesn't reward you enough Coins to counter balance the grinding in later levels.
A lot to upgrade. It's too much when there are 26 individual pieces of Gear (Backpack, Amulet, Bracelet, 2 Types of Ammo, Mask, Outfit, Weapon, 18 individual pieces of relics) to spend your currency on. That would just be your current loadout, without swapping pieces out. It's too much. For example, at level 32 on an ammo type costs 24500 Coins. You have 20 Tickets to play with and depending on the chapter you play without Scrolls, you may earn enough to do this one upgrade. To illustrate this point further, to level up Lara's classic outfit to level 39 of 99, it costs 47500 Coins. I cannot imagine how much it will cost to reach level 50, let alone level 99. That's one piece of ammo and one outfit.
A lot of bugs, lagging, long loads, menu input lag, items that randomly dismantle, ads not working due to "device's low memory", when this isn't the case. Not being able to watch an ad (for revival, for Winston's ability and the Special Wheel, not to mention the free coins and free crate in the store) inhibits your progress. It isn't funny when you die at the final boss and are not able to revive without having to use gems.

How? I was holding the same device, playing the exact same game session when this popped up

Events are messy and lazy. Whilst it is fun to have things to do, they end earlier than stated, they can need a lot of time and effort to get any decent prizes, they add to the lag, they are repetitive, very copy/paste - one event would be a 7-day objectives based, the next will be a reach the number of Event points to get an item, and then it swaps back to the objective based event. Doesn't feel like you earn enough stickers for some events. You're told that you'll earn more Rare Stickers if you fight the harder enemies, but you don't, it's randomised whether they will drop or not, and more often, I've found that I've earned more Rare Stickers replaying Chapter 1, rather than Chapter 8.
Communication from the developers feel poor and lack of acknowledgement of bugs add to that. No easy way to learn if there is a game update because the devs/ game doesn't have social handles. A game like this should have an account on Twitter but it doesn't. The ingame mailbox is not used.

Stats change without any warning, which is probably like many mobile games, but this game was announced in 2021 and had a soft-release for well over a year, therefore, these things should have been decided already and set in stone on release.
Outfit pieces are very, very limited. Events don't give out enough to even do a Rank 1 upgrade. The next event then gives pieces for a different outfit, so don't expect to be able to rank outfits up quickly. Also, at time of writing, there is a bug where ranking an outfit up will waste the outfit pieces and not upgrade at all.
Epic and Legendary Blueprints have not yet been given out at all. It feels like the game is purposely holding you back so that you are being led towards paying for gems to advance your progress.

Characters (such as Kurtis) was teased in official artwork but he's not yet in game. If he does appear, what will his role be? We already have Winston, Anaya and Von Croy popping up in levels, all offering abilities, so he will probably have the same role, which to me is pointless. Anaya is seen frequently throughout a chapter run and Von Croy appears if you can complete a stage flawlessly. How would Kurtis be of use?
4 months after release, there is no new Chapter to play. This is felt more so when an event requires you to replay constantly to earn Stickers. Depending on how far you've gotten in, you might only have six Chapters open, when there is 9 in total. Whilst we wait for a new chapter to play, we're all upgrading and levelling up, so the difficulty for chapter 10 and onwards will hike severely to counterbalance.
Was teased that the Classic Lara voice actresses have recorded lines back in 2021, but these were not available at worldwide release. Even if they were released and if you've completed the 9 Chapters, there is no way to hear the recorded voices as the only time that Lara talks is in the 2 location cutscenes and these are not replayable. Who really wants to regrind all of this, just to hear a minute or 2's worth of audio? It should have been available from the start.

This was a helpful feature: rewarding players with outfit pieces and larger sums of Coins for 'exploring' the chapters

It's hard for new players to catch up. For example, if a new player joins in the middle of an event, they likely won't complete the progress bar and collect all of the event-exclusive goodies. And then, when one event ends, another quickly follows, so they don't have time to simply play to level up Lara or their gear enough. What I think would help this a little would be if there was a week between one event ending and another beginning. This would also be beneficial to other players too, since leveling up anything requires a lot of coin, which personally speaking, I find it hard to gather a lot of for it to be of much use.
This is a deceiving one - any tips or tricks that we've seen fans mention on the official Discord for this game, tips that admittedly make the game easier, are quietly "corrected" by the developers. Example 1: replaying chapter 5 gave the highest return of rare Stickers for the quickest play time. It used to give out x2 rare stickers. When this was mentioned, this was changed. Example 2: a fan mentioned how it wasn't worth buying the 'Incredible Crate' for 2800 gems as you were most likely to get uncommon gear (this crate gives out 1 epic and then 9 rare or uncommon gear). It was more worth while to spend those 2800 gems on the Ordinary crate priced at 30 gems to receive 93 pieces of uncommon gear instead of the 10 pieces of gear. This crate, which is also the one that you can claim for free every so many hours, has now been removed from the store without notice.

IF WE HAD CONTROL OVER THE GAME'S DEVELOPMENT:

Stop events until all important bugs are fixed. This includes fixing the ad issues and any others that halt players' progress. Make features within the game work properly.
Reduce events to max 2 per month. It would make them more worthwhile to play. Spice the events up with different tasks/rewards. I don't know how it could be done but the same two types are tedious. Maybe just reward the Event Points instead of Stickers; that way, you earn for the time that you put in.
If events have to stay as they are, extend the time limit so that they last 10 days. Or have a week in between events so that it gives players a chance to upgrade gear and play through the Tombs, which become redundant during the Stickers Events as you're too busy playing to gain Stickers.
To counterbalance the grind, either keep upgrade prices at the same for each 10 levels (ie, levels 1-10 at 2500 coins, levels 11-20 at 5000 coins, levels 21-30 at 11000 coins) or increase the amount of coins earned.
Add a new chapter every 3 months to help keep interest in the game. This would include the levels of Tomb Raider 2 and Tomb Raider 3; we can't see the game's story going further than that as a long string of Egypt levels will become repetitive.
Collect a relic as a single piece, not as fragments, and then have the relic focus on one perk. This could extend the release of new relics with new perks, where as currently, it feels as if there isn't any purpose to new relics being added as they already benefit everything - Ultimate, Lara's attack speed, damage resistance to enemies, healing, etc. It feels like we are at a dead end with them now.
Do something better with time-limited weapons (such as the Snowball in the Winter Event). Currently, we have a Rare Snowball and an Uncommon Snowball, uselessly sat in the inventory, until it's possible appearance in winter 2023. You couldn't really add an ability to buy it as it would make earning it through the event practically redundant. Same kind of goes for the Gold Pistols, as you currently cannot earn enough (without waiting for future events or exploiting bugs) to create a Legendary pair of pistols.
Add a daily wheel spin option on the world menu screen that offers out a larger sum of Coins or Gems, larger than the Special Wheel spin. This will benefit new players, helping them to catch up whilst older players are stuck with the expensive upgrades. This or maybe just increasing the rewards given out in the daily calendar prize, which strangely, only lasts 28 days.
Add in the option to buy all types of Blueprints with Coins or Gems. It couldn't be too cheap as it could make the game easier, but if it was with Coins, you'd have to choose whether to use Coins in the store or for upgrades.
Have an official Twitter account for the game, where monthly fixes are mentioned, developers can note the current bugs in the game, show off new artwork or announce new content.
Add in the option to switch Lara's voice actress like we were promised, and have the ability to re-watch these cutscenes.
For a little bit of fun, have some TR Reloaded merchandise, such as the amulets as wearable necklaces, or have the iconography as pin badges. The art style is cute enough to lend itself to merchandise. We have seen fans ask for artwork and the soundtrack to be released, so I would make this happen, either physically or digitally.

And so to conclude...
We aren't big players of mobile games; we only play the Tomb Raider ones, so maybe we're not all too experienced in that genre of gaming, but I'm curious to know what this product's life cycle is. How long can it last in its current state? In its basic form, it is a series of chapters with a certain number of stages, but how long can the developers just keep adding more chapters with more stages in? It would be almost identical to the mobile game 'Candy Crush', where more levels of the same task is added. Then there's the events, which most of the time repeat every 2 weeks, giving out virtually the same rewards; how long can this pattern be kept up before people lose interest entirely? Without any big changes or special rewards, I can only see this game lasting a year.

This was supposed to be a 25th anniversary gift for fans and yet, two years after that franchise milestone, this game doesn't quite feel special enough. Perhaps it was teased too early. Despite this, I'll still carry on playing it as it is fun if you don't take it too seriously. We only play in dribs and drabs and won't dedicate hours and hours to playing it. I believe that casual mobile gamers would find it hard to progress or achieve much, and maybe not even participate that seriously in events, and I feel that you are expected to put hours into it if you want to do well. I also believe that this game is intended for the Tomb Raider fan rather than the general public, as they will be more willing to grind and put the effort in. Do we prefer Lara Croft Relic Run? Yeah, I think we do, because it felt more complete and how you progressed depended on you learning the obstacles, not on the lack of good enough gear and grinding to get the most basic of gear to upgrade. Would we recommend this game? Only to Tomb Raider fans, not to the general public, but I have read of even TR fans uninstalling this game due to bugs and lack of fresh content. If this wasn't a Tomb Raider game, would we still be playing it after 4 months? Maybe not, as I think we will have noticed that the pattern of gameplay is repetitive. However, we are not yet at the stage where we no longer want to play, perhaps working on this website keeps us coming back to it as we want to keep others as updated with it as we can, but I do know that I like the art style and the sounds. Also, it is the only new Tomb Raider content we have as we aren't interested in most of the crossover events that have happened this year and the last.

But regardless of all the negative points, we'll still be here, writing it up for the website.

Official Render or No?

10/5/2023

This blog post will try to delve into the history and the origins of the below image, providing pros and cons for whether this image is an official render, and allow you to make your own decision on it. We'd also like to state that we have not found this image on any 'official' TR page, nor have we found it to belong to a certain person or to have a certain name attached to it; we simply want to talk through our thought process on what we make of it.

Now that you've had the chance to see the image, let us begin with how we came across it.

Many years back, whilst going through old fansites, we once came across an image of Lara that we had never seen before. This was back when we hadn't seen the official Style Guide or the official wallpapers that were given out. This was also back when we were younger fans who saved everything that was Lara Croft (we must add that as we have gotten older, we decided to keep mainly anything official and the odd fan thing that we liked). Then sometime later, we had found this it again, and this time, we took the weblink of the fansite that we had seen it on.

This render shows Lara happily in a state of undress. It is a rather risqué type of image, and obviously brings Lara's feminine features to the forefront. Images like this weren't too uncommon in the marketing side of Tomb Raider, where they would show Lara wearing little whilst she was still covered or hidden in the important places. We have seen two versions of the same posing: one on a green background where Lara has a plait over her left shoulder, and one on a white background where Lara is either wearing her hair in a bun or the plait is hidden out of sight. We're not sure which image came first; they both are seen on websites that date to around 1999. We think maybe the green background version came first as the Lara on the white background seems to have a greenish glow on her left side. If this is true, then someone must've altered Lara's hair and added in the skin over her arm and shoulder. Looking at these places, it looks really well done - no sudden colour difference, no obvious repainted marks, the shape of the arm looks good, and the hair fits the orientation of the head well too. Maybe this could mean that both versions were real. The version with the white background has a noticeable mark that doesn't appear on the green background image, which can be seen on the lower right portion of her hair, around by her jaw; a white line that could've been added in when the person added this section of hair.

We personally think that it is official as the quality of the model used is really good, and we believe that some old fansites back the theory (See Link 0 and Link 4 below), however we don't have a reason as to why it would've disappeared like it had. Maybe it was too suggestive and that it conflicted with the cease and desists of 'Nude Raider' content that Eidos was handing out to fansites promoting nude Laras; Eidos couldn't be seen as being contradictory to their lawsuits, so it was removed. Maybe, the speed in which it disappeared is also why there are few instances of this render being shown and why it isn't available in normal sizes at the time. We also wonder if this image was repurposed into other Lara renders as she poses very similar in other renders.

Here are some fors and againsts that we've been mulling over as we tried to work out the legitimacy of the image.

For:

We know that the developer/publisher made 'nude' models of Lara for various other renders, so one more wouldn't make a difference. These are just some official examples.

A fansite that we have found it on: (LINK 0), collected wallpapers, purposely separating the official wallpapers from the fan made. This render can be seen listed on one of the official wallpapers pages. The website also mentions how a lot of fans didn't like it when it "came out, just like with the scandal wallpaper".
A few other fansites also have the render; some list it alongside fan made renders ( LINK 1 | LINK 2 | LINK 3 ). However, the most noteworthy of these other fansites is 'Unofficial Tomb Raider Gallery' (LINK 4), which said that "it is simply a collection of wallpapers from the Tomb Raider Archives". We'd like to point out that when they say "Tomb Raider Archives", we believe that they are referring to the 'archives' buttons that were found on the wallpaper pages of official Tomb Raider websites (Lara's World & TR4). Looking at the gallery page, you'll see only official wallpapers.
There is a wallpaper listed on the official 'Lara's World' wallpaper archive page whose download had gone missing entirely. (LINK 5) This image, called '8bitv3.zip.zip' (available in the size 640x480 only, Group 3) cannot be found anywhere on those official pages and the file doesn't exist in the Archive.org URLs. Could this be that missing image, that was taken down due to its risqué nature and possible fan backlash.
The Croft Times and PlanetLara, two of the biggest fansites of the time, had this image. These websites were pretty much 'Nude Raider' free, so the only suggestive artwork that would feature on these websites would be official images. Also, when The Croft Times uploaded images, they'd put their watermark on it. Fan art on their site would have the Croft Times logo as well as the artist name. This image on their site only has the Croft Times logo - no artist name.
The fact that this image wasn't given out on the official style guide isn't enough reason to believe that it is fake as you can find many official renders that weren't available through those disks.
The logical reason why there are two versions of the render would be that one is official and one is fan-altered - or maybe not, as the blue background render below has two versions, both of which are official.
The model used in the render looks really well made. Remembering back to fan made imagery at the time, we can't recall any that used a model/lighting that looked this official. This Lara is a TR3 render style model. If it had been photoshopped anywhere, you couldn't tell; the way the head fits the neck, the finger tips, joints, lighting in general, all looks pretty smooth. The face of Lara is pretty spot on to other renders of the time, and her expression has similarities to several others. The body shape and positioning too is similar other renders. We've put a few examples below.

Head shape, eye brow placement very similar...

Similarities: Placement of her right arm, body shape- if you rotated this image anti-clockwise, her pose is similar.

Against:

The most obvious point is that it cannot be found on the official websites through the Web Archive. Either it didn't exist, as in it wasn't official, or it had been replaced (same link but different images).
Not many fansites had or have it, though this could mean nothing as not many old or current fansites write about the Times Exclusive story or official Flash games such as the AoD platforming game or the "Challenge Lara" Lucozade game.
It can be seen on some fansites as a little GIF that promotes that it is a 'Nude Raider free' fansite. This would imply that this image could've been found on the nude raider website. When the GIF was made, it used an image from the NR site to say that you won't find that sort of material on certain sites.

These are just a handful of points that we've come up with. It would be fantastic to be able to find the original source or the original artist so that we can know for sure, but somehow, I don't think either will be possible. With the current rediscoveries in the past month or so, who knows, this could be another.

Sources

April 2023 Website Updates

6/5/2023

April was a quieter month on the website but there were still plenty of pages and updates. Let's get right into them.

New Pages:

We created new pages for several games, called 'Fan Corner', where we featured recreated box art covers by Stjb17, and also classic fonts created by Arsunt. The box art recreations were for the GameBoy games Tomb Raider (GBC) and Tomb Raider: Curse of the Sword, Tomb Raider: The Prophecy, and Tomb Raider: Legend, and the fonts are in Tomb Raider 1 and Tomb Raider 2.
A 'Misc Videos' page was created to point to videos that couldn't be categorised under a specific game/movie.
We also continued work on the comics section of the website, tackling the Dark Horse comics. We have almost completed it; there is text there but we are yet to add pictures. You can still view it though as it will probably take us a little while to take pictures and edit them for use.

Updates:

The wallpaper pages for the games The Angel of Darkness, Legend, Anniversary, TR2013 and Rise of the Tomb Raider were updated so that the imagery now open in their full sizes.
Rediscovered eCards for the movie Lara Croft Tomb Raider were added to the downloads page, and we also added the source to the original page at the bottom.
A couple of trailers and promo videos were added to the Tomb Raider 3 Videos page.
With the 1999 Times Exclusive newspapers coming to light, the 'Down Among the Dead' story page was finally completed, and we added the additional newspaper pages to the, well, Newspapers page on our website.
We added a Japanese screensaver to the Tomb Raider Chronicles Downloads page.
As we progressed in the Tomb Raider Reloaded mobile game, we have been able to keep you updated on events, abilities, gear, etc. We even added a 'Tips and Tricks' section to the 'How to Play' page with advice and help for new players or those who are new to mobile games.
We put out a blog post that linked 8 renders to the Times Exclusive story 'Down Among the Dead'.

One last thing to mention, we have been trying to figure out how to make our website look good on mobile devices. We still haven't been able to fix the home page sidebar (which looks squashed) but we have managed to move the content section back up to the top of the page so that it sits underneath the navigation bar and beside the sidebar. We've tested this with a mobile device held landscape. Hope this helps a little to make the site better to view and use, and we will continue to look into it again.

Thank you for visiting our website and take care all!