At Summer Game Fest 2026, Keith Mitchell and I were able to get some time to play the reimagining of the first Tomb Raider game, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis. The team behind it didn’t want to call it a remake or a remaster, but a reimagining, and after getting some hands-on time with the game, it makes a lot of sense to call it that.
We were able to play through two sections of the game. The first section was the puzzle section. It forced us to be next to a waterfall as we are trying to open up a door. Lara can jump, climb, run, and flip to locations. It required us to find three gears. One thing to note is that there is no random yellow paint around in the game. So if you were worried that they were adding that to help you see what you needed to see, nope. Instead, there is now a little scanner you can use. This scanner will highlight important objects. You can use this to find what objects are interactable as opposed to just being part of the environment.
This specific door required three gears to be put in place, so when you activate a pillar, it starts the contraption that opens up the door. In Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, not only do you need to find the gears, but you also need to open up pathways for the gears to fall into the water where they need to stay. Finding them is just one part of the puzzle. Lara Croft can use a grappling hook to tear gears from higher places and attach the hook to the gear to pull it closer to her.
This spot lets us feel the gameplay of traversal for Lara. Ultimately, traversal felt rather polished. Running, climbing, and using the grappling hook felt intuitive. Using the scanner was also helpful to discern what gear you found was the actual gear you needed, and which one was set dressing. The only sour spot in traversal for me, at least, was jumping. Jumping felt oddly janky. Sometimes, if you jumped on the right spot, Lara would climb like she was supposed to or find the spot to attach a rope. Other times, you would jump, and Lara would just miss the spot entirely. Even if you were right next to where you needed to be, Lara would jump and be too high over the climbing spot, so she would bounce into it, fall, and land somewhere else.
Once we got all the gears in place, we could get behind the bar to turn the totem pole in different directions. Turning it all the way to the right opened the door, and Lara went inside. It then skipped around to a section later in the game where Lara hears something and moves fast to meet some velociraptors that you now need to fight. Dinosaurs are back, baby!
Tomb Raider: Legacy Of Atlantis Combat
This is where combat comes in with the Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis preview. Lara has her guns, and she needs to reload once you fire at the dinosaurs enough. You can dodge out of the way of attacks. You can also look around and find hills that give you a bit more control over the layout of the land. Getting some elevation means they have to take a few extra seconds to get up. Those extra seconds mean more time for you to shoot at their heads.
One of the best things to do in the original Tomb Raider was to jump backwards, do a backflip, and shoot at the same time. Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis lets you do that with the focus mode. Lara does her backflip, but this time, time gets slowed, and you get more time to shoot all the bullets out of your gun while your enemies are stuck in place. You increase your focus mode gauge by shooting enemies and dodging attacks successfully.
Combat feels pretty fun and satisfying. I will admit there is some jank in the dinosaurs’ behavior where they try to jump at you. Though they can get stuck, or they can get you stuck, and you have to find a way to defeat one of them to open up a spot to move. Either way, though, it was fun to play! Even with jank, it didn’t turn me away from the satisfaction of shooting some dinos!
The final spot in the preview we got to play was a chase scene. Lara meets up with a T-Rex and it wants to eat her, or maybe it’s a little love bite. Little love bites kill from that mouth, though, so Lara runs in front of the screen as you are watching the giant dinosaur try to come after you. As you get closer to jumps and more specific obstacles, the camera will shift behind her, and then you can grapple, jump, dodge, and weave.
Tomb Raider is Back…. Again!
The goal of Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog was to make a Lara Croft that feels similar to the reboot survivor series and still feels like the Lara Croft of the original Tomb Raider games. In that aspect, I think they nailed it. The vocal performance of Lara Croft was good, the game was fun to play, and we got dinosaurs back in Tomb Raider! I do think some more time to polish how the jump mechanics feel, and maybe some of the jank of the dinosaur behavioral AI is needed. They can absolutely hit this game out of the park. I am excited to see more about Tomb Raider and to see the direction they take Lara Croft.
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is set to launch on February 12, 2027, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, and Nintendo Switch 2.
