Tomb Raider Reloaded Arrives February 14

It’s been so darn long since we last had a Tomb Raider game that we’ll take whatever scraps we can get. A tie-in with a pressure hose washing simulator? Fine, about time. And Tomb Raider Reloaded, today’s subject, may be a mobile game, but it looks competent enough to scratch the snarky British heiress-shaped itch we have.

Reloaded is a roguelike, that hip genre that half of all indie games these days are based around. But the genre seems like a smart thing to fit Tomb Raider around — it’s about venturing into booby-trapped dungeons and seeing how far you can get. The further you survive, the better treasure you can pick up. We kind of wish a higher-budgeted TR game was devoted to this concept. But at least it exists in some form. And it has the original green-shirted Lara, whom we love and miss.

This is the first post-Square TR title, but Tomb Raider Reloaded was actually put into development while Square still owned Lara. A much larger, more traditional TR game is in development at Crystal D, to be distributed by Amazon Games. Despite what some people are baselessly claiming on social media, Amazon does not OWN Tomb Raider now. They are licensing the property from Embracer Group, the current owners. The deep irony is that Amazon is paying more in license fees than Square charged for the entire property itself.

Tomb Raider Reloaded will be released February 14 for iOS and Android. If you subscribe to Netflix you’ll be able to play it on their app, which will probably be the best version since there are no extra fees there.