Thank you to Aspyr for sending us a copy of this game!

The Tomb Raider series is long and storied, spanning decades of gaming and numerous consoles. I actually had never played any of the old games in the franchise. In fact, I have played exactly one entry before now: Tomb Raider (2013), which I played on PC a few years after it launched. The Definitive Edition then launched in 2014 for the PS4 and Xbox One with all of the DLC (downloadable content) included. This mostly included extra costumes for Lara Croft, the series' female protagonist, and extra maps for the multiplayer mode I never bothered playing.

Now, Nintendo has had a habit during the Switch era of taking very popular games that are old enough to finally play well on their graphically-inferior-but-incredibly-popular hardware and port them long after the game was relevant. Queue a rerelease of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, over 11 years after it first first came out.

Given that the original release is some 12 years old, that the DLC of the Definitive Edition doesn't include any new moral content, and we already did a review of the 2013 release, this, like my other Switch 2 reviews so far, will just be from a gameplay and performance standpoint. Please see the original review for information on the game's more troublesome aspects. As a final note, I was given the Switch 2 code for review; I cannot speak to the game's performance on the Switch, though it is available on that console as well.

I may take jabs at Nintendo's 3rd party release timing, but Tomb Raider is definitely a fun game. It combines the over-the-shoulder, 3rd person gunplay from Resident Evil 4 (an absolute favorite game of mine) with a much larger emphasis on exploration, platforming, and spectacle. I don't know if there's a term for a story protagonist defying death repeatedly, falling from heights that should absolutely induce broken bones at the very least or coming away from explosions without so much as a first degree burn, but that is Lara Croft's experience throughout this entire game. It constantly challenges your suspension of disbelief, but it also keeps the pace and adrenaline up. The combat gives you options for stealth, melee, and a variety of firearms, and Lara can take a lot of punishment before dying. In short, it's a good time.

With a game that has its pace set to "sprint" at all times, decent performance is a must. Nothing would immediately hit the brakes on the high-octane experience faster than constant stuttering or frame drops. Fortunately, the Switch 2 is more than up to the task. In both handheld and docked modes, Tomb Raider runs at a butter-smooth 60 frames per second (fps). No matter how many enemies I faced, how many explosions were erupting, or how quickly Lara found herself sliding down some steep embankment to her doom, the game never so much as hiccupped. This excellent performance carried over to the multiplayer mode. I have no idea how popular this game's multiplayer mode is, but it did take me a few minutes to get a full lobby for a single "quick match". Also, I thought the Switch 2's new "chat" feature would have allowed for in-game chat with the other players, but that's definitely not the case. (Just another Switch 2 feature I completely misunderstood until I actually tried to use it, but I'll save that for an op-ed.)

The graphics themselves haven't been altered in any way since 2013/2014. The cutscene graphics are pretty good, with detail that would have seemed hi-definition a decade ago. The synchronization of mouth movements to spoken dialog is just as bad as it was then, too. The first time the graphics switched from the cutscenes to proper gameplay, the downgrade in fidelity was jarring; I was very worried that the graphics had been downgraded to play on the Switches. However, once I was playing in earnest, the overall experience was much more enjoyable and the graphics were fine. And, outside of the mouth synchronization issues, the dialog is clear and well-acted. The sound effects all across the board are clean as well. Similarly, the music is unobtrusive: it enhances the mood without taking you out of the moment. It isn't anything memorable, nothing you'll be humming to later in the day, but it works well in the game.

One of the things I was looking forward to testing out were features the Switch had that my original PC experience didn't: gyroscopic control, touchscreen control, and the new Switch 2 mouse. Unfortunately, I found all 3 to be disappointing. When I saw in the menus that there was "Gyro Control", I was excited. I play video games almost exclusively from my couch, and there is just no easy way for me to play with mouse and keyboard. For games which require precise aiming, using the right thumbstick alone to aim is difficult at the best of times. Many consoles have begun introducing gyroscopic aiming, where the player can use the right thumbstick for larger movements and fine-tune their aiming by tilting the controller itself. But in Tomb Raider, the 'Gyro Controls" only applied in tilting the screen around when navigating the menus at camps or when investigating the relics occasionally found around the world. In other words, they are essentially useless. The touchscreen controls are identical, only applying in menus and relic investigations. They genuinely would have been better off not bothering to spend the time on these features, unless their only goal was to get people's hopes up to increase sales.

This leaves the Switch 2 mouse. (A word of warning: when you're using the Switch 2 joy-con in mouse mode, never forget the little plastic strap piece. There are pads on it which smooth out the mouse movement and protect the controller from getting scratched.) When first enabling the mouse and testing it out from within the menu, there was noticeable lag between the mouse movements and the cursor on screen. This lag was much less defined while in gameplay, but it did give me an initial fright. That being said, the Switch 2 joy-con doesn't exactly sit in the hand comfortably while holding it sideways. I would say that it's better than nothing, but I also found I had trouble making very small aiming adjustments, arguably the one reason you want a mouse instead of a controller. In a previous Switch 2 review I did on Cyberpunk 2077, I discovered that game supported both the Switch 2 mouse as well as external keyboards and mice. This was not the case with Tomb Raider; it's the Switch 2 in mouse mode or nothing.

As far as stability, I did experience one bug where Lara got stuck in a crouching animation while walking around in an open platforming area (so not somewhere where she would be crouching to avoid enemy detection or going through a narrow passage). The camera was stuck at a weird angle, and I couldn't perform actions like jumping or pulling out weapons. I dropped off a nearby ledge and that fixed her, for some reason. Minor, but worth noting.

In short, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition is the popular franchise reboot from 11 years ago finally ported to the most popular portable consoles of the modern era. On the Switch 2, it performs spectacularly, with smooth frame rates and clean graphical presentation. If you've never played Tomb Raider (2013) before and are a Switch 2 owner, Definitive Edition is only $19.99, a worthwhile cost for how fun it is. Just don't expect it to take too much advantage of the Switch 2's more modern hardware features in a meaningful way.

-maestro_dana