A fresh-faced archaeologist named Lara Croft is shipwrecked on Yamatai, a mystical island strewn with millennia-old ruins and boxes of spare gun parts. Cold and hungry, Lara is forced to hunt a deer to survive. As she prepares to cut open the carcass, she feels a sudden twinge of regret. "I'm sorry..." she says to the poor creature, "please forgive me for returning you to the warm embrace of Mother Gaia." The next morning she casually stabs a bunch of brainwashed cult victims in the face.
We learn that nothing on Yamatai is connected to anything else. The only route from point A to point B is a across the precariously perched wreck of a World War II fighter jet, or down a raging river lined with spikes, or through some other gauntlet of pain. Bridges exist only to snap when we're halfway across them. Trails exist only to dead-end at cliff edges. We wonder how all the men who live on this island could possibly get around. But of course they don't get around; they just stand in their predetermined places, waiting for "the outsider" to come up from behind them and shove them off a ledge.
At one point our heroine sees some of these men up ahead and asks, "How many of them are there?" The answer: there are around five hundred, and Lara Croft will kill every single one of them. She will also have the option of raiding a few tombs.
—Brendan Patrick Hennessy, 22 April 2013