Lara Croft GO: Can Tomb Raider Turn Me Into a Puzzle Gamer?

I'll admit something right out of the gate, though returning readers will probably know this. I'm not much of a puzzle game guy.

It's not that I hate them. I can appreciate a well-designed puzzle as much as anyone. But if I'm sitting down to play a video game, my first instinct usually isn't to ask myself, “How many steps ahead can I think?”. I'd much rather be exploring, shooting, fighting, or getting lost in some wonderfully designed world. And if I am doing any puzzle work, they're Resident Evil style puzzles that don't require too much of my brain to work through.

So why did I give Lara Croft GO a shot? Two reasons, actually.

First, I'm a fan of Tomb Raider and Lara Croft. Been a while since I've played a Tomb Raider game, but I have much love for the series. Second, I'd already played Hitman GO, and surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. (Check out my review here if you're interested.) If Square Enix could take Agent 47 and turn him into a fun little puzzle-piece figure navigating dioramas, surely Lara Croft could do the same thing and do it well.

And ultimately, she did. For the most part.

A Different Kind of Expedition

Lara Croft GO takes the familiar Tomb Raider formula and strips it down to its most basic components. There's no third-person shooting. No elaborate platforming. No giant environments to explore. Instead, Lara moves from space to space along predetermined paths, solving environmental puzzles, avoiding traps, occasionally battling enemies, and collecting artifacts.

It's a clever interpretation of Tomb Raider. Rather than trying to recreate the traditional games on a smaller scale, Lara Croft GO understands what makes Lara recognizable and builds an entirely different type of game around those elements. There are traps. There are snakes, spiders, lizards, and other creatures waiting to ruin your day. There are switches to pull, obstacles to manipulate, and plenty of ancient ruins and caves to make you feel like you're on another Lara Croft adventure.

It doesn't necessarily play like Tomb Raider, but it certainly feels like Tomb Raider. And that's a big reason I stuck with it.

Traps, Treasures, Trial & Error

In each level of the game, you need to get Lara to the end of the level. Getting there can be a challenge as there are obstacles, creatures, and other hazards in your way. Each step you take with Lara on the gameboard moves time forward. Think of it like making one move on a gameboard. If a creature on the board can move, it moves a space after you do. If an obstacle moves, it makes a move. It's a simple concept once you get going.

But, here's where my personal relationship with Lara Croft GO gets complicated. I think the puzzles in this game are very well designed. Even though I'm not particularly fond of puzzle games, I can recognize when a developer has put considerable thought into constructing one. Lara Croft GO gradually introduces new mechanics and challenges you to understand how everything interacts without overexplaining everything. I liked that.

The problem is that I never really felt like I was discovering multiple solutions to these puzzles. Instead, I felt like there was one specific answer the game wanted from me, and my job was to figure out exactly what that answer was. That led to quite a bit of trial and error.

Sometimes that works just fine. You make a mistake, realize what you did wrong, restart, and execute the solution perfectly. There is satisfaction in that. Other times, especially for someone like me who isn't naturally drawn to puzzle games, it can feel less like solving a puzzle and more like trying to figure out what the person who designed the puzzle was thinking. I know it can be fun for others, but for me, that sort of gameplay only satisfies me for so long.

Puzzle fans will probably get considerably more enjoyment out of this game than I did. But even as someone who isn't particularly enthusiastic about the genre, I have to give the developers credit here.

Agent 47 Has Some Competition

Having played Hitman GO before this, I couldn't help but compare the two throughout my adventure. And here's where I have to disappoint Lara:

I liked Hitman GO better. That doesn't mean Lara Croft GO is a bad game. Far from it. I simply found Hitman GO's particular blend of strategy, movement, and puzzle solving more satisfying.

Perhaps some of that comes down to the characters themselves. Agent 47 is almost perfectly suited to a game where you're methodically figuring out enemy patterns and determining exactly when to make your move. Lara, on the other hand, has traditionally been about exploration, acrobatics, discovery, and a little bit of combat. Turning Lara into a puzzle-solving figurine is clever, but there's something about the Hitman formula that felt more natural to me.

Still, Lara Croft GO does something Hitman GO can't: it feels unmistakably like a Tomb Raider adventure. And that carried me a long way.

My Vita Wasn't Feeling Very Adventurous

Unfortunately, my experience with Lara Croft GO was also affected by the platform I chose to play it on: the PlayStation Vita.

The load times were just absolutely brutal. Dying meant waiting. Moving between levels meant waiting. Using the Hint system meant waiting. And when you're playing a game built around solving puzzles through experimentation, having a lengthy loading screen after a failed attempt can become especially frustrating. Trial and error is already part of the experience. Making me sit around after every mistake doesn't exactly make that process more enjoyable.

The controls also occasionally got in my way. Movement is handled entirely with the Vita's thumbstick. For the most part, it works just fine. But there were occasions when Lara didn't seem to move in the direction I intended, putting her directly into harm's way. When precision is so important to the gameplay, and one wrong move can lead to disaster, those moments are incredibly frustrating. I could see myself seething as I saw my own reflection in the Vita's screen while waiting for the game to take its time loading up the level again.

If you're interested in playing Lara Croft GO today, I'd recommend the PS4 version over the Vita release, at least based on my experience.

Into the Croft

Interestingly, the game's difficulty didn't really become a problem for me until just before I finished the main adventure. Once completed, the additional levels you have access to are considerably more challenging, and this was the point where I finally found myself reaching for the Hint system. Using a "hint" in the middle of a level will actually restart the level and the game will give you step by step instructions on how to solve the level. It's more like a "solve" button. It's nice the option is there, but man did I feel dirty using it.

Maybe that's a “me problem.” Maybe I simply reached the limits of my puzzle-solving abilities. Either way, I appreciated that the game continued to challenge me after the main adventure was complete. The difficulty spike might not be for everyone, but it gave the post-game content a legitimate reason to exist beyond simply being more stuff to collect.

The Final Challenge

So, did Lara Croft GO make me a puzzle gamer? No, it did not. But she came close at times. My biggest frustrations came from the Vita version's agonizing load times and occasional control issues, while the game's reliance on finding very specific solutions didn't always click with me.

I went into Lara Croft GO with two things working in its favor: my love for Tomb Raider and my positive experience with Hitman GO. While I ultimately prefer Hitman GO, Lara's adventure still managed to hold my attention despite my general lack of enthusiasm for puzzle games.

That's probably the biggest compliment I can give it. Lara Croft GO is a clever reinterpretation of Tomb Raider that understands how to preserve the spirit of the series while completely changing the way it plays. Its puzzles are thoughtfully designed, its presentation is charming, and there's even a collection of alternate costumes that provides some genuinely fun rewards as you complete levels and find hidden treasures.

But maybe that's the beauty of it. You don't have to love puzzle games to appreciate a good puzzle. And that's why I think Lara's little expedition is still worth taking.