The Tomb Raider Dream Lives On With The NVIDIA Shield TV

The last time I really played Tomb Raider, was WAY back in the day with Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation.  I enjoyed the game, but I was no good at it, and eventually gave it up.  But just because I gave up on the game, doesn’t mean I gave up on Lara Croft or Tomb Raider.  Like every other adolescent boy, I went to the theaters to see Angelina Jolie and her take on Lara Croft.  The movies were disappointing but part of the allure hung on.

Just to clarify, it wasn’t just the chance to see a sexy female Indiana Jones, it was also the chance to be part of a dream.  Every young boy wants to grow up and find buried treasure, climb mountains, sail across the ocean and fly their own plane.  The allure of Lara Croft and Indiana Jones is that they give every young child what they want, the opportunity to go on epic adventures.  Now, thanks to NVIDIA, I can relive that dream with a young Lara Croft as she begins her life of adventure and becomes the Tomb Raider.

I’ve played the game for about an hour now and have had a lot of fun.  Playing as Lara, you are marooned on an island after a big storm. You are then assaulted and hung upside down in a creepy cave.  To escape you light yourself on fire and end up partially impaled on a piece of rebar. You then wander through underground caverns to find your way out.  You swim, you climb, you jump caverns, you run away from scary men who attack you with pickaxes and more!  Needless to say, I died.  A lot.  But I am getting better!

Despite the fact I died quite a few times, the game was very forgiving with lots of restore points.  Generally, the restore points only require you to repeat a minute or so of your last actions and you quickly get right back into the swing of things.

Tomb Raider was previously available as part of the GeForce Now catalog of games, but this release is coming through the Play Store.  Instead of running on a server somewhere and streaming to your Shield, you play it locally.  Other than the initial download, there is no need for an active connection.  The game is a full port of the original reboot of Tomb Raider, released in 2013.  It is designed specifically for playing on the NVIDIA Shield TV.

It is immensely fun and worth every penny of the $14.99 it costs.  If you have a NVIDIA Shield TV, around 6GB of space and $15 to spare, go download it now.  Fair warning, it is dark, has some language and can be quite intense.  I would not play it with young children.

Play Store Link: Tomb Raider 2013