It’s easy to throw around the word ‘classic’ when talking about games, but 2013’s Tomb Raider stakes a solid claim to the label. This is the game that reinvented Lara Croft for a new generation, setting in motion a great trilogy of action games, while also inspiring a new cinematic outing for the British heroine.
Some 12 years later, that original title has finally raided its way onto Nintendo’s consoles for the first time, for both the Switch 2 and the original Switch. Returning to the game in 2025 reveals just what made it so special, though you may want to experience it on the Switch 2, rather than its older sibling.
With the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 release, Aspyr has ported across the Definitive Edition of the game with all of its original DLC, scrubbing the game up and enhancing it with a few Nintendo-specific bells and whistles. In 2025, it is definitely showing its PS3 and Xbox 360 origins, but that doesn’t diminish its status as one of the best action-adventure games of all time.
To be honest, just the fact that Lara is listening to wired earbuds in the opening cutscene is enough to date Tomb Raider, but her shipwreck and subsequent kidnap have lost none of their initial impact as she’s separated from her friends amidst some truly terrifying iconography.
The Nintendo Switch 2 version of the Definitive Edition is certainly crisp and sleek looking, and while the textures are showing their age, it’s still an eye-catching game, all these years later. It’s also running at a locked 60fps, making it feel as smooth and responsive as you could hope for a 12-year-old game. The original Nintendo Switch version sticks to 30fps and a lower resolution, but it’s otherwise the exact same game, just losing some of that sense of immediacy.
I’d forgotten just how brutal Tomb Raider 2013 was. Lara is impaled within the first five minutes of the game, she spends most of her time screaming, grunting, or dying, while she’s surrounded on all sides by dead bodies, walls covered in bloody smears and flickering candles.
Admittedly, most of the dead bodies here are of Lara’s making, and as a Lara Croft murder-simulator, Tomb Raider Definitive Edition is visceral, painful and without mercy. She is, of course, fending for her own life, and those of her friends, while trying to escape from a cursed island full of cultist soldiers, but at least once or twice you’ll likely wince with the impact of a few of the blows.
So much of what we think of in terms of the modern action-adventure was in place for Lara’s 2013 outing, and while some of the gameplay elements are definitely of their time – hello split-second QTEs with instant death for failure – there are other aspects, like the life-like climbing and clambering, dual-path skill tree, stealth kills and kinetic bow and arrow action, that remain as of-the-moment as anything else released this year.
The Rihanna Pratchett-penned tale also ekes out plenty of drama from the proceedings, and manages to make Lara feel both vulnerable and terrifyingly strong and single-minded. It’s been long enough since my last playthrough that I’d forgotten many of the story beats, and I was easily wrapped back up in the island of Yamatai.
Aspyr have opted to include some features that are exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game, but… well, they’re not especially useful, or impactful. First up are motion controls. ‘Great! That’ll work really well for lining up those head shots or hunting a deer’ I hear you say, but wait! These motion controls are only for spinning around artifacts that you’ve discovered, which isn’t particularly useful.
There’s also mouse controls, which is great when a lot of developers seem to have forgotten that they exist. Unfortunately, they’re so sensitive as to be completely unusable in their current form, which makes you wonder how much testing Aspyr put into them before launching the game. Perhaps the shadow launch was also a surprise to the development team?
Sarcasm aside, both of these things can be easily fixed with a patch or two, which I hope Aspyr will be willing to put the time into, and neither is integral to the experience. With the game sitting pretty in second place on the Switch charts right now, I’d hope it’s worth their while to finish things off.
A big part of that draw will be the budget pricing, with it retailing for a very reasonable £16.39, plus a 10% launch discount to knock it down to £14.75 on both Switch 1 and Switch 2. While the Switch 2-specific features offer literally nothing as it stands, it’s a great game to return to once more, and it still holds up visually, particularly on the smaller screen.
Impressively, Aspyr have even fired up the multiplayer servers, and while many players won’t even remember that Tomb Raider had a multiplayer mode, it’s here in its entirety, letting you sneak around, finishing off other players with abandon. Thanks to the game’s popularity right now, there’s also plenty of players to face off against, so if you fancy a spot of 2013-centric Lara Croft multiplayer, you can.
Tomb Raider Definitive Edition may offer returning fans a nostalgic run through one of Lara Croft’s best adventures, but in 2025 it’s still a remarkably solid experience, especially on the Nintendo Switch 2.
