I enjoyed a couple of Lara's older adventures back in the late 90s, but wow did they make a jump into the present with this new release. Mind you, I've never played the Uncharted games for lack of a PS3, but that's how I always imagined them to be: like an interactive Indy Jones-esque film you experience yourself.
There is so much on the plus side:

• the animated sequences flow perfectly into the gaming and vice versa. There are basically no loading times.

• the landscapes, buildings, bunkers and ruins on the abandoned Japanese island are breathtakingly beautiful.

• (at normal setting) the difficulty of the fights and riddles is never a piece of cake but also never frustrating.

• the story is interesting and fun to follow as it slowly unfolds.

• the motivation to find all the hidden graves, geocaches and relics is high because you want to explore all of this world.

• Lara is a great character. You actually care for her and the shit she has to go through. Kudos to Camilla Luddington (Grey's Anatomy) for her motion capture performance. See the link below for an interesting look at her work on this. Oh and her fellow characters are cool, too.

• when you think you're in a really fiery showdown it turns out you're only halfway through the game.

• the automatic loading points (the bane of part 3 back in the day) are really fair and plenty here.

• the action is sometimes batshit crazy but so much fun to watch. Lara takes fall after fall and wound after wound and she looks it, while the player goes: Whoa!

• it is surprisingly gory and bloody. When Lara starts striking back, there is hell to pay!

• you just wanna keep playing and playing.

I can't think of a single bad thing to say about this game. Some may find it a tad too easy, but in my book it's a good thing when I don't have to check the internet for riddle solutions all the time or replay fights that I constantly die in.

If you're even remotely interesting in this, go get it. You won't regret it.