Tomb Raider: the Reboot

[Mercurial]

I played it on hard and I don't remember how long it was, but it was comparable to Uncharted in length I guess. It's mostly about exploring and you can stealth some bits more or less, but there are a couple of areas you have to all out fight. 

[Waldorf and Statler]

So if it's Uncharted length on hard... what would that make it? I mean it can't possibly be 10+ hours unless you completely marathoned for like 1 day.

[TheMightyEthan]

I mean it can't possibly be 10+ hours unless you completely marathoned for like 1 day.

 

Yeah, cause no one here's a big enough nerd to do that.  

[Waldorf and Statler]

I mean shit, I could do that. On a weekend. But thinking about it yeah you could do it with good time management with a job.

[Mercurial]

Vacation.

[TheMightyEthan]

I, for one, have certainly never taken off work to play a game at launch.

 

<.<

>.>

[Mr. GOH!]

It's funny. I just got the first gun in this game. Four years ago I would have beaten it by now. I guess that's the difference between being a student and being fully employed.

 

Ethan: aren't you a litigator? How can you take days off for gaming if you have court dates?

[TheMightyEthan]

Conveniently due to my court's schedule I almost never have court on Tuesdays.

[deanb]

Two interview pieces up on PAR with Rhianna Pratchett

 

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/tomb-raiders-writer-discusses-the-press-gender-and-lara-crofts-body-count

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/tomb-writers-writer-talks-impalement-downtown-abbey-and-whether-were-revisi

 

Interesting on the whole gun aspect. It's something that popped up on here with Watch_dogs too.

[Eleven]

Edit: Oh yeah, the death scenes are extremely brutal. If you are disturbed by gore, this is not the game for you.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QOTW0cH9a7Y

[Waldorf and Statler]

I might be a horrible person but whenever I'm playing this game I'm thinking to myself "the things I would do to LAURA Croft mm mm"

[deanb]

 

Duck Duck Duck Duck Duck Trousers.

[NeoStarr]

I might be a horrible person but whenever I'm playing this game I'm thinking to myself "the things I would do to LAURA Croft mm mm"

I can't find the image for the life of me, but I remember when I was a little kid (prolly around 10 or so) and Lara appeared on the cover of PC Gamer in a black bikini. Bought it with my own allowance but my parents took it away almost immediately. Being the huge Tomb Raider fan that I was, I begged for like a month to get it back. They let me read it with supervision. I immediately start going though the article and at one point I'm like "Oh my god, mom! They finally have the technology to make her PONYTAIL! They say it's gonna bounce around and everything!" (this was actually a huge thing at the time; in TR 1 Lara's ponytail is tucked into her shirt because processors couldn't manage it). They let me read the magazine on my own after that. Years later my mom told me that for a while my parents thought I was gay for going on about her ponytail so much and not swooning over the cover.

[Waldorf and Statler]

DAT 3 INCH WASTELINE

[Eleven]

So I finished it yesterday and I wanted to write some of my thoughts about it... so I will!

 

EDIT: Man, that was long, didn't notice that. TL;DR: Great game. Liked graphics, combat, story and QTEs. Didn't like only being in the jungle, optional tombs a letdown.

 

First of all, great game! I've really enjoyed playing this. It took me about 14-15 hours to finish the main game, since I spent some time going through the optional tombs and doing other stuff. Gameplay is not really original, feels very much like Uncharted, even though the story isn't really like Uncharted as Lara is not really looking for treasures here.

 

I liked the QTEs here, especially on the life/death situations. It's also not hard to do, (unlike God of War, which some QTEs could be random sequences) it's basically just "Y", and sometimes the left stick, and "X" for holding on to ledges. That's why I liked it, since it keeps me involved in those set scenes without having to dread pressing the wrong button.

 

The story is fine, I guess. I did kinda see it coming, and sometimes I wonder why Lara couldn't figure out what's happening. I read the same clues as her as everything happens in her perspective anyway. But it's not bad.

 

I liked the combat. TR finally has good combat! There are only a few instances where you could use the environment against your enemies (like exploding barrels, or fiery lamps), I wished there was more.

 

Some not-so-positive comments: It's a Tomb Raider game, but it's really not. It's just a Lara Croft game. Platforming is there, but puzzles, which are a defining feature of past Tomb Raider games, is limited to optional Tombs, which contain exactly 1 puzzle each. I was expecting something like AC2's optional dungeons where there is a lot of platforming involved. So it's a bit of a letdown. I'm not that much bummed about the puzzles but I wanted more platforming tombs.

 

Also there's only 1 locale. It's the island jungle. Past games had you traveling to places. Uncharted also had you traveling to places.

 

So I guess on their next game, what I want to see is better optional Tombs. Maybe some required tombs to get some required artifact. And more locales! I liked it when I was in Venice in TR2, or in that city at the start of AoD. Actually, I want a city map. Not sure how that would work, but hey, Venice worked.

 

Overall though, really enjoyed this.

Edited April 1, 2013 by eleven

[Waldorf and Statler]

I mean the "only the jungle" setting comment is kind of unfair considering there was a Shanty Town area, a mountain area, a beach area and a snow area. Not to mention they're trapped in the island so they can't exactly escape. That was entirely a design choice as making other locales would've been as hard as having a cutscene of her going somewhere and then saying "she's in the snow area now". As to the optional tombs I agree. They were extremely disappointing. Only one puzzle gave me problems in the game and it was in the main game (something dealing with a dangling cage you need to swing)

[Eleven]

You're right, it's unfair. Uncharted did it like you said. It's just that it didn't give me a feeling of being in an adventure, but I guess the game isn't about an adventure, it's about survival. I guess I was just looking for something else.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Next game should be about an adventure. I mean the Lord of The Rings was about an epic war and all this hyper mature stuff when you compare it to the really light hearted hobbit. We can't have LotR w/o the Hobbit so let's just be glad the game sold well (according to everybody besides Squeenix) and let's see what the sequel will bring

[Hot Heart]

OK, now that I have 100%ed the game (though, it doesn't want to accept that and is stuck at 99%) I figure I may as well share my views.

 

Overall, I really enjoyed it. I said it a while go: it's essentially a Tomb Raider version of Arkham Asylum/a Metroidvania game. And I love the Arkham series.

 

For me, I loved the actual pacing of everything, which I think is a hard balance for a lot of games. There are moments where maybe a few too many enemies are thrown at you, but the combat can be such a riotous mess than I don't mind.

 

And I think it nails the combat really well. The cover system is amazing, and works for keeping things frenetic without overdoing it, and the dodge works because it's a desperate scramble that fits the character. I like that you get these 'scenarios' where a little exploration or planning helps get the drop on guys, and you feel like a total badass if you nail three headshots in quick succession...and then two attack wolves after that, just as one is jumping right at you. Or dodging a shield guy and thwipping an arrow into his head straight away. The gameplay is bolstered by the animation and the little things, a lot of which can be taken for granted. It allows you to feel powerful without being overpowered (unless you upgrade the rifle enough) and there's a real 'joy of movement' thing going on.

 

The environments are also really nice, and I made sure to take lots of screenshots. The shipwreck beach, in particular, is an astounding feat of design because you can see this whole landscape which you will eventually traverse, one way or another. It was also fun exploring them to find all the secrets.

 

As for the bad, well there were still too many bugs. I had to restart the entire thing because of one right near the end (that's how much I enjoyed it) and there have been a few crashes since the last couple of patches. On the plus side, the major bugs don't appear to be PC-exclusive, and since Nixxes are responsible for the port (and PC patching is free), they are keeping it updated and working on all the issues.

 

The story itself is 'functional', with a few great moments (usually embedded in the gameplay). It does a fair job of showing this transformation in Lara (that first kill QTE section portrays it well), but the actual gameplay glorifies and glamorises the violence a little too often, so that it ultimately falls flat.

 

tl;dr: I liked it. A lot.

[TheMightyEthan]

 

Subtle.

[Hot Heart]

What? It's only showing that you can get more junk in the trunk.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Dee had a picture of Nathan Drake's ass for the longest time, so there must be something about these games and people who like them being...

 

[TheMightyEthan]

I loved it.  Much better than the Uncharted series in pretty much every way, but the combat especially (I know that in some ways it's more similar to a game like Arkham).  At no point in this game did I feel the need to look up how many chapters it was because I felt like it was dragging, but I did that in all four Uncharted games.  I said this in the Games You Beat thread, but at no point did the combat devolve into wave after wave of bullet sponges.  Even at some points  where there were a few waves of guys they all went down with a reasonable number of bullets aside from a handful of mini-boss-type characters.  My only real complaint is

can we please stop having there be supernatural forces at work in these ancient cities?  I know it's an Indiana Jones archetype, but seriously taking the supernatural stuff out would have changed almost nothing about this game, just make Mathias be crazy instead.  All that does is make me roll my eyes because it's so formulaic.

 

 

It's possible they've patched it more, because the only two bugs I ran into were one BSOD when I alt-tabbed out of the game and in one spot the beacon for one of the collectibles was in the wrong place (but the map marker was in the right place).

[Waldorf and Statler]

Without the supernatural though, we wouldn't have Supernatural.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

 

I actually enjoyed the supernatural forces part. And I thought that was fairly well-established in the series (though I wasn't a fan of the older Tomb Raider games).

 

 

I'm only about 50% into the game, but I'll agree on the part of the combat: the game is much better. I typically use my bow or melee, and it feels good to twang enemies to death. That they actually die when I shoot them in the head, too. Certainly better than Uncharted in most respects.

Edited May 8, 2013 by Saturnine Tenshi