tomb raider games s&d

Plus of course never play it on a PC unless you've got a game pad for it.

I liked the baddie character, she looks like she should be playing in dimmu borgir

Has there ever been a game where the cutscenes aren't ridiculously pompous (GTA excepted) I wonder.

I meant to get a copy of Legend, the smoothness of the motion in the demo was actually one of the appealing features!

I think I mentioned this review here before, and it still makes me want to play Legend:
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/tombraiderlegend.html

FWIW, there is a set of mp3s of the little music stings from the first TR game here:

http://gh.ffshrine.org/soundtracks/1205

really nice, some of them.

I'm kind of freaked out by eidos pulling core design off TR, and replacing them w/another games developer, when core had actually created the game in the first place. It seems to me to be somewhat like a record company looking at some band who've seen better days, so to speak, and sacking the members, to replace them with some other guys. It seems sort of wrong and back-to-front on some fundamental level.

The games industry appears to be a bit backward w/r/t creator's rights vs work for hire to me generally, though.

Anyway, on the way home from work last night, I figured I'd probably get 3.99 worth of entertainment out of the "Angel of Darkness" plus tbh I was curious about exactly how bad it was, based on what I'd read online. Based on playing it 'till 1.30am last night (!) I think if I'd been a fan of the previous games, and was expecting some kind of return to form, and had paid full retail for it, I'd have probably wanted the developers to suffer horribly. As it is, for 3.99, and with 0 expectations, it's actually been very enjoyable so far (ie, I was up till half one playing it, and I wasn't tempted to switch it off and go back to GTA:SA once - though the fact that I'm stuck on that fuck-awful mission where you have to get aboard the plane carrying the mafia hit team might have something to do w/this). On the downside, the character's moves are all very sluggish, and not always predictable, the game is obv unfinished - there's a parisian cafe where the interior isn't rendered from the outside and you can see the backend of other buildings through the window, some of the npc's animations aren't completed so when they speak, occasionally they don't move. At one point the icon for a nearby pickup came onscreen, so I pressed the action key, and Lara walked through the wall of the upstairs she was in, walked through the air, into an adjoining building, and picked up a 9mm clip from the floor there, wtf.

On the upside, the little character is still as cute & charming as in the 1st game, despite being much more detailed. The animation of Lara's face in the cutscenes is very well done. The best thing about it is that the general atmosphere of the thing is heading in it's inept way towards something quite surprisingly grim and almost thrilling. In the first few levels of the game, I'd had Lara sneak up behind a gendarme and break his neck, then kick a guard dog to death! In her interactions with the npcs, for all the spoken pieces are a bit corny, she nevertheless comes across as quite sinister and menacing. After escaping from a murder scene at the beginning, she winds up sleeping rough in a derelict tram car, and the first people she interviews in the shitty area of Paris she wakes up in include a couple of down-and-outs, a drug dealer and a streetwalker. The story of the thing so far, for a videogame storyline, is somewhat intriguing.

In all, it's the worst kind of artistic thing that sucks - the sort where it could obviously have been great, but it's been fucked up in ite execution. All the way through playing it, I was thinking "this could have actually been awesome, if..." Even based on the first 5 levels, I get the strong impression that if they'd actually done this thing right - specifically if the character's moves hadn't been so sluggish, if the scripted interactions with npcs had been done better, if the thing where the more hard graft she does, the stronger she gets had been implemented in a less crappy/jarring way, it would have been an absolutely great game. How can people fuck something like this up so badly?

TR4 was worse - instead of "Lara's House For Noobs" you had to go through all the cut scenes with that annoying twat telling you how to run and jump.

http://s87.photobucket.com/albums/k155/slayer_333_2006/?action=view¤t=07-bridge.jpg
http://s87.photobucket.com/albums/k155/slayer_333_2006/?action=view¤t=06-parisian__missing_bridge_area.jpg
http://s87.photobucket.com/albums/k155/slayer_333_2006/?action=view¤t=TRAOD_P42006-10-0316-52-37-681.jpg
http://s87.photobucket.com/albums/k155/slayer_333_2006/?action=view¤t=TRAOD_P42006-10-0316-52-11-071.jpg
http://s87.photobucket.com/albums/k155/slayer_333_2006/?action=view¤t=TRAOD_P42006-10-0316-47-27-531.jpg
http://s87.photobucket.com/albums/k155/slayer_333_2006/?action=view¤t=TRAOD_P42006-10-0316-47-12-601.jpg

These are all screens of parts of the Paris level of "Angel of Darkness" only accessible via using a flying cheat. A couple of the above locations can be seen in the background when playing the game, but you can't actually get to them w/o cheating. The accessible part of that part of the game has several streetmaps in it which are viewable, and the impression I get is that the playable area is at most one fifth the size of the entire map. I've had a couple of games where bits have been removed, leaving a ghostly trace in the game - the ghost tower in Vice City and the missing red light district in "Dun Darach", but nothing like this. I read on some forum that if you get the version of the game as released, which is like version 39 or 42 or something (mine is version 52), there's something like 250 character animations that don't appear in the game, as well as the extra map bits. This one, which some dude extracted and placed in the game:

http://tombraider.central-game.net/lacek/aod/bin1.avi

..appears to show the character scavenging from a garbage bin. WTF at that.

Once you get past the Paris section, it gets back into more I suppose "classic" Tomb Raider territory, hopping from platform to platform in huge underground vaults. It pretty much totally lacks the free ranging exploration thing that I remember enjoying in the first game (and that I also really dig in the GTA games), but most of the platform puzzles are at the right level of difficulty, there's been a couple of thrilling bits as well, where they added a bar so that when she's climbing walls or shimmying from ledge to ledge, she only has so much endurance, and a couple of the bits you have to traverse cut it pretty fine. The main thing it has going for it are the levels themselves. There's probably lotsa games out there with graphics that are "better" by some standard, certainly by any standard of "realism", but some of the locations in this game are absolutely gorgeous, a few are the best I've seen, actually. A fair bit of it, w/all the graphic options roofed, is like inhabiting a really nicely styled bande dessinee comic book.

The missing stuff does my head in, though. I feel like I've bought the computer game equivalent of "the wicker man" (cut version), eh. Def. a deal at the price, I've had hours out of it.

http://bulk2.destructoid.com/ul/189062-croft.jpg

wait a minute....

http://www.thedailyinquirer.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sandra_bullock.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN7_8Yholm4

Huh, nobody talked about Guardian of Light? That was some great co-op, actually good enough to get me interested in Tomb Raider again.

I was excited by this too but on my 26" TV Lara was about 2 microns high

anyone get this? planning to? i'm tempted, it looks ok

My buddy has it and we're planning to play next week. Supposedly quite good.

keep us posted!

it looks good, will grab later this year on sale for sure

This is pretty rad. Hopefully i can play this a bit this weekend. The world looks gorgeous and Modern Game As Movie Cutscenes isn't all that intrusive. I really hope I can avoid the more gruesome deaths cos that stuff really isn't appealing to me. The first puzzle where you burn that one thing and burn the other thing and push the thing etc etc was pretty satisfying, i hope there are plenty more puzzles to come.

Oh yeah, i got the first game cos i had a PC when Mario 64 came out and i was way more into TR than Mario. Never played much of any of the other games.

I read some criticism that went 'this doesnt feel like Tomb Raider, where are the tombs?' and playing this game, the very first thing you do is escape your own tomb.

i raided the first optional tomb, it was pretty fun if kinda short. i got it for like $20 on pc and am perfectly happy with it. dunno if i'd drop $60 for the console version.

i bought this, it's great, i'm impressed.

funny how closely the plot & setting track with far cry 3

of the recent shoot-dudes-with-a-bow games this is my favorite by far.

what are the other shoot-dudes-with-a-bow games? is that a thing?

far cry 3 and crysis 3 are both bow-intensive

You can play Skyrim that way as well.

OK i finally got this to stop crashing. At first it would crash kind of randomly shortly after exiting the intro cave, then it would crash without fail at a waterfall inside that cave. I have an ASU EAH6850 graphics card. So i downloaded 13-1_vista_win7_win8_64_dd_ccc_whql.exe, which is an older Catalyst driver that fixes the bugs. Now it does not crash! BUT! I have to re-install these drivers every time i reboot my system, before i play TR. Yeah, kind of a pain in the ass but what are you gonna do?

This game is pretty great. Last night i was shooting wolves w arrows which was pretty fun. The more narrative pace of this game is a little limiting, but i think the narrative is decent and the cinematic way everything plays out more than makes up for it. First encounter with the wolves is a great example. You are supposed to get caught in that bear trap and have to sit there and face them off and it's such a tense and awesome moment that would be way harder to pull off if the player had lots more freedom.

That said, i hope there is plenty to explore here. The island look so amazing, it's sort of sad when i get to a cool interesting new place and then wander around and find nothing but dead ends and one direct path to the next narrative-driven moment. Controlling Lara (jumping, zip lines, bow-and-arrow, gymnastic swings, etc) is a piece of cake and has been flawless so far and probably the only reason the linear nature of the game is upsetting is the control is so rad you just want to go off-map.

There's a graphic brutality to the melee violence(and overall shitstorm) that both happen to and is employed by Lara that I'm wondering is necessary.

Like, I understand what they're trying to go for narratively and with her character act, but it seems that there's a visceral grisliness that goes way above and beyond what you need to communicate the character/emotional/narrative emotion.

Come to think of it, it's like a Stephen King novel, where not only does plenty of horrid shit happen to our protagonist, but also you're gunna hear about it in graphic detail.

Much like Lovecraft protagonists are little more than a set of sense organs to experience the horrifying shit for the reader, SK's protagonists can be just a corpus upon which the meat is torn apart and destroyed in detail.

In other words, Lara would need a full set of hockey pads and caged helmet to survive the concussions, contusions, and trauma(blunt force and otherwise) visited upon her.

Game is awesome and beautiful, tho. Wish there were more fiddly puzzles of ancient technology to bang on.

There's a shot stolen straight outta Apocalypse Now

due to a lazy hungover weekend and an impromptu day off work with a rolled ankle, i got through this. it's really good but i have trouble assessing whether i thought it was short or not. definitely seems to... accelerate near the end.

stuff that's good: the movement, the AI, your increasingly ragged and beat-up look, the long off-screen tease of the supernatural, the characterization and v/o, the gameplay balance (pretty much even between puzzles, exploration, stealth, and open fighting), the set pieces are all unique and fun and there are lot of them.

stuff that's bad: idk, not much! the gun sounds are really anemic (this seems like a common problem these days? FC3 too). also, it's a real design feat to make 3d platformer puzzles that also look and feel like real built or natural spaces; at times i was like, uh ok this is a game, especially with the porous climbable walls.

i played through on hard, which i recommend. some of the combats are just devilish.

there are tombs to explore but they are short. effective, but short. it's basically one trick/puzzle to figure out an then you get the reward.

sorry to bring up far cry again, but the layering of architectural elements is exactly the same: you have mountainous jungle land, with ancient asian ruins, plus abandoned ww2 japanese emplacements, and then modern shanties slapped on top of it all.

Yeah im thinking of switching to hard. I should really just play all games on hard. I'm naturally good at videogames. At most in combat i die maybe 4 or 5 times before figuring out a section, and i think I'm on normal right now. The biggest problem was the (first?) insta-kill stealth section w the flashlights but damn that was fun and intense.

I agree w all that stuff. Gun sounds are whatever, the bow and arrow is where it's at. Maybe my bow skills are at a higher level than my gun skills, but when I'm entering a combat zone, I take cover and then knock them all out w head-shots. Here's a little aside on videogame violence: I was showing a friend this yesterday, went into a camp and had a real intense battle, shot about a dozen or so baddies, plus a few deer and rabbits on the way out. He commented "Wow, you're just killing everything". We finish that up and try out "Nintendo Land" on Wii U and are playing through games and the favorite ends up being this one where you throw ninja-stars with the touch screen in a shooting-gallery style game. After killing several hundred ninjas we realized this game by Family Friendly Nintendo has a much higher body count than Gritty Tomb Raider Reboot. It's just the ninjas look like adorable paper dolls that explode into confetti, and I suppose that makes it much easier to accept.

Anyways, I found the first tomb, or it was probably the DLC tomb, with the crashed airplane and that destroyed temple. It was pretty amazing. I think this was shortly after i learned how to climb rock walls, which was also fucking cool. Jumping from rock wall to rock wall is so much fun. The design of this game is GREAT and i'm discovering more and more little things to keep my eye open for, like Buddha statues or dream catchers or whatever. I want to complain about it being too linear but I really enjoy all of the puzzles and dramatic moments. Like when you carefully walk across a log high over a waterfall and the camera shifts up, it really tries to get you on an instinctual level and succeeds. Parts of this game are nice, safe, and serene, and parts are really thrilling.

probably the DLC tomb

uh ok i guess i need to check through the menus a little better

Tomb of the Lost Adventurer. I mean, it was really only one big room with one puzzle, but it was a nice design, and it took me a good half hour or so of jumping around, exploring, figuring out ways to light the stuff on fire that was holding up the plane, etc.

tempted to pick up either FC3 or TR - I have the impression FC3 is more of a free roaming while encountering weird stuff game while TR is more platform-ish??

yeah exactly.

FC3 is open world and TR is more linear. TR does that metroid thing where you can return to cleared areas with new equipment to get at places you couldn't the first time through.

they also both have a core story of a normal person who learns to survive and kill in a hostile landscape (with skill and equipment upgrades to match) but far cry's is about 1000% more annoying and unbelievable, if that matters to you

i just finished FC3. i got to a pretty happy place of just doing the things i liked in the game (stealthily capturing outposts, climbing towers, doing the Wanted missions) and ignoring the stuff i didn't (path of the hunter missions, looking for all the letters/tchotchkes/etc). the story and 'boss fights' are super dumb but avoidable for long stretches of time.

nothing i've seen of TR so far looks exciting for some reason, probably because they show all the really linear setpiece moments in trailers? you guys are making it sound great though.

Parts of this game are nice, safe, and serene, and parts are really thrilling.

this is a good description of what i loved about the first tomb raider

i loved having the time and space to match wits with ancient, long-dead prankster architects

a bit turned off by the descriptions of gruesome gore, though :(

TR's not really platformish so much as it is an uncharted-style highly directed modern action game that has a few slightly open areas to mess around in.

far cry 3 is a big empty world with a reallllllly dumb story. i had a few fun moments of "emergent gameplay" but mostly it's walk walk walk cutscene walk walk walk shoot a dude. also it's one of the easiest games i've ever played. headshot after headshot, standing in the middle of the road just slaughtering dudes. like a more racist version of commando.

imho tomb raider is way more fun overall

yeah it can be pretty gnarly but i kind of appreciate it. the stakes are high!

there's a repeated trope where you clutch the spot of a bad wound you get in the opening sequences.

xp

i don't know, the outposts in FC3 were reasonably hard for most of the game, but i was trying to be a slick stealth dude and would let myself die if the alarm got pulled or if things got too messy.

Yeah i really don't care for gore. I think that stuff is a little hyped tho, it's a good way to promote the game as modern. I mean, the #1 complaint of past Tomb Raider games have been that they're for the most part just stuck in the 90s and retreading old ground. But playing the game it doesn't really come in too much. I've died a handful of times inbetween action setpieces, and they haven't been particularly gruesome. In the very first game you can die by drowning, getting mauled by mountain lions, impaled on spikes, etc. all that stuff it's just there was a lower poly count back in the day so it was less shocking. The tombs themselves, or the caves, or whatever, are decorated pretty gruesomely, lots of skulls, dead bodies, blood, etc. But it just feels like this is just like an ancient tomb being filled with skeletons and mummies, only it's recent cos there are cultists still using them. If i were watching a movie with this stuff maybe i would get squeamish, but here it's okay, it totally still looks like a computer game, just with really fancy graphics.

This game is not a horror movie, don't listen to videogame thinkpieces or whatever. It definitely has some 70s horror film atmosphere thrown in simply because teenage girl running scared in the woods. Only thing is, that teenage girl turns out to be a combo of Indiana Jones and Rambo.

The beginning of the game is misleading w the QTE, you think the whole game is gonna be like that, but once you get out of the first cave it's a good mix of cinematic sections and player-controlled ones. The thing about the QTE's is that they for the most part seem to take the place of what could be completely non-interactive cutscenes. You never really feel like you are sitting watching a movie unfold or anything.

i tried the multiplayer for a few rounds. not impressed.

i don't know, the outposts in FC3 were reasonably hard for most of the game, but i was trying to be a slick stealth dude and would let myself die if the alarm got pulled or if things got too messy.

i admire this approach. i always try it but devolve into a grenade-tossing, assault-rifle wielding terminator by the 3rd mission. also i think playing FC3 on mouse+keyboard kind of fucked the difficulty as it was probably designed with a 360 controller in mind, aiming-wise.

Once I got the silenced sniper rifle in FC3 I had a lot of fun setting up a position just out of sight of the bad guys at outposts then picking them off one by one with headhots. Most of the time I could take them all out before the alarm sounded but occasionally they'd send out guys in jeeps looking for me and I'd silently murder the driver and passengers from the safety of the underbrush. Shame the rest of the game wasn't nearly as much for (though killing sharks by running over them on a jetski was fantastic).

I've got the new TR ready to play at home tonight - really looking forward to getting stuck in. I loved the first couple of Playstation Tomb Raiders.

my method is to snipe the snipers > sneak in and turn off the alarm, maybe take down a straggler or two > run back out and snipe everybody else.

one of my friends has been raving about TR so i guess i'll give it a shot.

This might be better than Uncharted 2. More fun as a game anyway

The climb/explore/find shit/arrow-to-the-head-of-feral-island-dudes sections of this are WAY more fun than the run & gun thru burning corridors parts.

I like the Arkham-style tracking of character/game progress of costume modification, but the default BDUs for Lara are a tank top, so she get mad scarred as you go on. Burn marks and wounds and slashes accompany her/your strapping-on tools as your character model evolves.

Also, it's been remarked before but the setting of this and FC3 are almost identical, with the exception that the island's natives here and the banditos are one and the same, and the Japanese soldiers who occupied the place met far grislier ends. Same increasing encroachment of paranormal bits, too.

To its credit, FC3 has the two best secondary characters(even if it gives them unsatisfying resolutions), but everybody else is bleah and its dudebro protagonist is annoying as fuck.

TR is far better written, and handles its secondary characters better.

FC3 has the two best secondary characters(even if it gives them unsatisfying resolutions)

i can't imagine who you mean. german spy dude?

An interesting contrast is that the most grisly, brutally graphic bits of FC3 are the dudebro hero patching himself up or tearing out shrapnel on the run, vs the violence done to and doled out by Lara.

Also, I find it interesting that our discussion of the games quickly switches from 2nd to 3rd-person depending on the camera mode used in the respective games. Thief 3 and Deus Ex:HR(done by the same studio, I think?) were primarily played FP but could cut to an external camera when you needed to. TR is always 3rd-person, FC3 is always 1st.

Yeah, I really liked the German dude and Vaas

i kept wondering if they were actively trying for a christoph waltz vibe with the german character. probably, given all the shoehorned-in references (30 Rock etc).

There are alot of criticisms this game is getting that are wrong. One thing is that the story is dumb and you don't care about the other characters. If you want a story then read a book.

Another is that the tone of Lara's character during the cutscenes is vastly different than the tone of her during gameplay. That during the cutscenes she's vulnerable and frightened, and then during play she's some po-faced action hero killing hundreds of dudes. This is also false. She does not kill hundreds of dudes, and the sense of danger does not suddenly vanish during regular play. I'm about 25% of the way through and the last encounter i had was with 3 guys who i came upon randomly after climbing up a rock wall and hearing talk to each other before i hoisted myself up. As soon as i heard them i stopped and just waited for them to split up and continue patrolling. I took out two of them while taking cover and making a great effort to not be seen, and the third guy disappeared on a zip line.

The QTE's are pretty entertaining and very well done imo. The only other game ive played with them has been Dragon's Lair, where you hit left when left flashes on the screen and the character does some crazy jumps and attacks that have nothing to do with what you just pressed. Here, it feels contextual. To attack during a QTE, you hit the attack button. To escape an enemy's grasp you toggle left and right. It's pretty intuitive and doesn't break immersion at all.

I have to say the cinematic sequences in this are breathtaking. The physics are super realistic-looking, when you are escaping from a collapsing ancient wooden South Pacific temple compound, and there is wind blowing up sand everywhere, and pieces of the building are just tearing off and swinging past you. It looks really really good, way better than any game I've played previously, way better than most movies. That this is accomplished purely with the in-game engine, while you are controlling the character, is pretty spectacular.

There are far less drug experiences in this than FC3... (the natural gas level aside).
Also less clumsy attempts at teh sexiness.

If you want a story then read a book.

haha what? i wonder where this would leave opera... "if you want music then go to a concert! if you want acting then see a play!"

I got this. I have a few thoughts on it but keep in mind I'm a guy who plays like one "real" game a year.

- It's weird to see a game that essentially created the entire action/adventure genre from scratch basically borrowing from all the different AAA offshoots of that genre that have sprouted up in the long wake of the original TR. Red Dead Redemption, Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid, it borrows from all of them. But it does a really good job of it!
- It also weird to see Lara Croft being anything less than a total badass. I get that she's young and they need to rope in some vulnerability in order to develop the sort of narrative they want to but still. I prefer Lara as an ice-cold wolf-pluggin bitch
- Speaking of wolves I LOVE how they crop up at the beginning, and how frustrating they are, and how vulnerable they make you feel; fucking perfect, basically
- I give precisely 0 shits about finding "relics" or discovering obligatory backstory that nobody gave a shit about even in the software developer's team meetings "diary entries" (I felt the same way about collecting Riddler trophies or whatever the hell those were in Batman) but I enjoy the optional side tombs; it's nice to escape the action for awhile and puzzle out some jumps
- The general feel of it, the balance of action and exploration, feels right, very Tomb Raider-y
- Have not encountered any Spielbergian "whoa" wonder-moments yet, of which there were many in TR1, but no doubt that will come
- Everything is incredibly grimy and grim and greenish and rain-lashed, proving once again that visually videogames are STILL stuck in the late 90s
- Could do without the upgrade bullshit and constant feedback chattering about 2/7 GPS locators found or whatever that the game does but I guess that's just how games are now
- ONE GUN? LARA HAS TWO GUNS. WHERE THE FUCK IS HER OTHER GUN
- Sometimes in TR1 I'd just spend like 15 minutes jumping sideways and backwards and fowards and firing my guns at the same time, doing a roll, popping up and firing, etc. She was just SO MUCH FUN to control. Haven't quite felt that yet (though I am not far in at all)

She only has one gun so far because this is an origin story. You must first learn to walk before you can run(packing two .45s akimbo).

Also, I would point out that the only bits of this that grimly brown are the caverns. Most of the landscape is pretty lush and verdant. Still relatively monochromatic, I guess, but a step up from modern brown shooterism.

I wish the hunting mechanic was actually good for something than just more xp and cash.

Also, it struck me after playing a lot and listening to gamer podcasts talk about it(GiantBomb, GI, WeNerdHard, etc) that this is far more a "Lara Croft" game than a "Tomb Raider" game

It feels a lot more like Snake Eater than TR1 that's for sure. Though I expect these HardNerds had more sophisticated arguments than that.

She only has one gun so far because this is an origin story.

OK that's a good explanation. Still I hope I get to do a backflip and shoot two guns at the same time at some point.

no backflips but there are some two-gun moments i'll say, w/o spoilers

i'm an incurable grinder so i'd do it anyway, but i really like the gps/relic/challenge bits because it adds a puzzle element to the areas that you'd otherwise walk on by. the game doesn't really have the zany ancient pyramid puzzle business of the old games.

in a way this reminds me of the bond reboot: scrapping all the old characterizations of finesse, elan and cool gear; much greater emphasis on blood, grit and sheer force of will

the game doesn't really have the zany ancient pyramid puzzle business of the old games.

As much as I loved them in TR1 this may be no bad thing really. Uncharted did these to the hilt, and they were by far my least favorite part of those games. They seemed really.. discontiguous from everything else, like something that was in the way instead of something to savor.

Beat the game today. Whereas the ending of FC3 made me never want to go back to that island, the game ending here makes me look forward to what they're going to do next.

more thorts:

- Wait a minute I can't JUMP and SHOOT at the same time?? In a flash, I agree with all those who say this isn't really a Tomb Raider game. BY FAR the easiest way of dealing with enemies who have snuck up and are right on top of you SHOULD BE and always HAS BEEN to do a back flip and pound the hell out of them with hot lead
- On a related note, it is not really a TR game with no auto-targeting. I give no shits about marksmanship. The shooting-gallery sections are, by my lights, far and away the most boring parts of the game and are indistinguishable from Red Dead, Uncharted etc. TR shooting was always about what you have to do IN ADDITION to/WHILE shooting motherfuckers, i.e. jumping, hanging, rolling, etc

All that said this is an exhilarating game and quite fun

I'm playing FC3 at the moment and am really enjoying it, so if TR's nearly as good I'll be giving that a go I think...

I'm getting towards the end, i think, cos yeah the platforming is really being overshadowed by shooting a dozen guys, blowing up wall with grenade launcher, etc. I have been going through and trying to collect and explore everything and the game save said 40% complete or whatever, so i thought wow i really should just skip all the exploring and do the storyline. Then at the end, i can explore to my heart's content. So right now I'm stuck at some big armored guy who I've shot 300 times with a shotgun and every time he is down and it prompts me to finish him for some reason none of the QTE's seem to be working, and he just throws me on the ground.

Escaping the burning place was pretty fun. This game is full of great setpieces. I loved how the mission objective was "GET TO THE CHOPPER". Funny, I hadn't thought about the auto-aiming thing yet. Yes that's a huge change!

I still think this game has plenty of tomb raiding to do.

There's at least one way to get auto-aiming for a brief moment - when you scramble to evade and then stab the guy in the leg with an arrow, if you draw your weapon right away it's auto-aimed right at him

There could be other ways as well, I think?

i think there's a slight target pull (pretty standard these days) but it's not auto at all

it took me... a while to figure out those circle-timed QTEs

That heavy armor guy is just a pain in the butt. I get him w the axes and then shoot him in the face w the shotgun and then he's hunched over with a 'finish him' target flashing on his back. Then i got up and hit 'F' and it starts a QTE where it prompts me for a few more 'F's but no matter what i do, he just picks me up and throws me to the ground and the whole bit starts over again.

you have to "finish him" a couple times

LOL yeah everything i read online pretty much just says 'you have to do this' but no exact hints. i think there was a point where the first finishing hit worked and it went on to a second and a third and i was furiously tapping 'F' and for some reason it just didn't work. Looks like I'll just have to try, try again.

Man, if they make a movie out of this, I really don't think I'm going to want to see it. Too much gore.

Also, i feel like this game has been cinematic enough!

Both the swearing and the gore are totally gratuitous and add nothing beyond some kind of juvenile flattery of the player that they're an "adult"

^this, without sounding too snobby, is kinda why i'm not interested in this game

also i never got into any of the earlier tomb raiders for whatever reason, so no nostalgia factor

eh i don't think that's quite right tracer but i'd have to think about it

there is something gendered going on here w/r/t a young woman in dire circumstances. certainly the whole enterprise of making the iconic lara croft a """real woman""" needs a vigorous unpacking

i only played the first tomb raider so my memory is bad -- how much shooting of other adult humans did the OG LC do?

Both the swearing and the gore are totally gratuitous and add nothing beyond some kind of juvenile flattery of the player that they're an "adult"

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, March 18, 2013 10:12 AM (8 minutes ago)

^this, without sounding too snobby, is kinda why i'm not interested in this game

― i petted a bodega cat today. (forksclovetofu), Monday, March 18, 2013 10:13 AM (6 minutes ago)

You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge...

there is a recent/recurrent line of inquiry (let's say) in games of "what is it, to be violent?" and as far as that goes i think this game is the best one yet. there is something naggingly hypocritical about framing a game around that question, since enjoying the action of shooting and getting shot is a strong part of the uh cathexis of a game in the first place

xp haha yes

and again i'd bring up the craig bonds and the nolan batmen as context (w/ all their flaws) -- maybe "gritty realistic reboot" is kind of a dimwit idea in a possible final analysis, but it shouldn't put you off this game imo, it's excellently done

Well there's not a LOT of swearing or gore, which almost makes it worse. It's not necessary, not integral. Out of nowhere a character will go "FUCK!!" or something, or suddenly you'll find a room full of body parts and it's just like... uh why.

Also, maybe it's cause I'm a parent now, but it just seems like a pointless barrier to entry for kids whose parents aren't crazy about them playing a game with eviscerated corpses in it.

A related point is how the first TR game contained no people IIRC - there was lots of shooting but only of animals and weird netherworld monsters, which made it much more kid-friendly and even for adults gave it a kind of pure vibe.

haha wait, why on earth would Lara Croft stumble across a room full of body parts

Cause it's SPOOKY

"gritty realistic reboot" is kind of a dimwit idea in a possible final analysis, but it shouldn't put you off this game imo, it's excellently done

I'd agree with this.

It is kind of hilarious how totally beat up she gets, like immediately. It's an iron rule for action movies, at least as far back as Die Hard, that at the end of them the hero must be battered, bruised, probably bleeding, and have six different kinds of schmutz ground into their skin. In the new TR Lara achieves this state basically before you've even started playing!

Also, maybe it's cause I'm a parent now, but it just seems like a pointless barrier to entry for kids whose parents aren't crazy about them playing a game with eviscerated corpses in it.

Uhh Tracer dude it's an 18 rating.

Lara shoots a bunch of people in the OG Tomb Raider

well, two off the top of my head

agree that "adult" versions of fundamentally child/teen friendly stories is the worst bullshit tho

well there are like only two other people in the entirety of OG TR so percentage-wise you are OTM

Ms Natla whatever she's called has a few human goons iirc

Uhh Tracer dude it's an 18 rating.

As well it should be! I imagine TR1 was a lot lower.

my PC comp of the first 4 is rated PEGI 12

and i used to play the original with our Joel watching. he got really into it, kept asking me to play "Bang-a-bang"

that's fucked up

lol gun noise

You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge...
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Monday, March 18, 2013

maybe i'm being dense (or forgot about dre), but what's the zing here?

also i know video game webcomics are the most disgusting savages but
http://www.virtualshackles.com/img/tombRaider.jpg

nah it's ok that one's still horseshit

yeah terrible

yeah, i am ashamed for posting it
point that this is a MATURE EPIC GROWN UP SAGA since lara is no longer all bouncy bouncy and is pulling shards of shrapnel out of her thigh in QTE is one that I'd have to see to believe

I just reread the plot synopsis for TR1, which I haven't played since... 1997? and man I don't remember like even a lick of the plot

...There was a plot?

involving Atlantis!

I remember swimming a couple of times.

basically my memory of TR1 is "OH SHIT A DINOSAUR"

i remember being amazed at the size of some of those cave environments. i was still used to doom, p much

the only tomb raider i've ever played was the demo that came on a disc with some magazine, all i remember is that it was really hard to control.

First game had some human characters that you shoot at, they are just insane 90s genx cartoons instead of insane 00s pirates.

Don't let the talk of gore turn you off this game. There is far more time spent jumping, shimmying across ledges, figuring out how to get from _here_ to _there, making dramatic escapes, using grappling hook, exploring the island, etc. I haven't finished the game yet but it follows the Indy paradigm where the archeologist really gets the ancient mystical stuff, and believes it, and knows how to use it against the bad guys.

There is nothing problematic in the setting either. What is a tomb? Well it's a place where you put a corpse, or multiple corpses, where you write stuff on the wall, put up a bunch of candles, do some rituals, etc. etc. I don't think you can go 10 mins in this game without being in a tomb of one kind or another.

It's important to remember that when the very first one came out, the only other game like it was Mario 64, and it was seen as the more adult version of the 3rd person 3d experience. You shoot wolves, you watch Lara take horrific tumbles and get impaled and get swallowed whole by a T-Rex. Mario just jumps on a guy's head, that's it. Tomb Raider has always had a violent streak to it. You can imagine it as part of an adventure lineage starting maybe with the original Prince of Persia, and who can forget the horrific sight of being chomped in two by those razor blades in that game.

haha wait, why on earth would Lara Croft stumble across a room full of body parts

― Darth Icky (DJP), Monday, March 18, 2013 1:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tomb
/to͞om/
Noun

A large vault, typically an underground one, for burying the dead.
An enclosure for a corpse cut in the earth or in rock.

Synonyms
grave - sepulchre - sepulcher - shrine - vault

yeah thanks

real answer is that in this story you go up against not the supernatural evil directly but a crazy cult of earlier castaways who worship it

...who kill a lot of people

there is something gendered going on here w/r/t a young woman in dire circumstances. certainly the whole enterprise of making the iconic lara croft a """real woman""" needs a vigorous unpacking

― goole, Monday, 18 March 2013 17:16 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're aware this was a whole thing, right ... ? i don't think any of the criticisms amounted to 'a vigorous unpacking' because lol games journalists but the iffyness of all of it has been commented on many times

oh and the island was also fought over in ww2 so there's a sub-strata of death from that. and then the ancient shit! bones galore.

xp yeah i figured as much but i avoid most media on this subj.

understandable!

i'm kind of surprised by how much i find myself wanting to play this, despite i. all of that ii. it also sounds kind of like L O S T

My favorite part of the game early on is the hand to hand combat stuff. Throwing dirt in the eyes, and then clocking someone with a bottle. It feels kinda desperate. Agree with the comment upthread about wolves being genuinely terrifying and chaotic. But also ninja shit like shooting an arrow at a wall, and having people move to check out the noise and then picking them off with arrows, or shooting out the lights, or whatev.

My biggest complaint is that there should have been a slower buildup but that's probably my fault, my impatience. You come upon a new area and there are a couple bad guys and nowadays i just start taking them out immediately, where you can usually just wait it out, some of them will walk away and leave one by himself, planning out the attack, etc.

The whole set with the shipwreck and where you are ziplining from one piece to the next is effing GORGEOUS. This game is just totally beautiful. Except the shantytown ;-p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCe8-1dbXZc

"you have an organic reason to follow right behind her and very close"

Wow youtube to the rescue.

Hi everybody. When you shot the guy and the skull appears. Go towards the guy and press F, then you have to repeatedly press E, untill the symbol changes into the exclamation mark, then press F... Took me a while to figure this out... :S

Conan pretty otm. I think as the game goes on she tones up quite a bit but maybe that's my imagination.

can you translate that into playstationese?

I dont understand the 'characters are poorly done other than Lara' critique. I mean, you don't spend nearly as much time w them but they do have individual personalities. Some of them look up to her, they think she's a hero and they want to help in any way that they can, and they give their lives to help Lara. They only existed for a few scenes and I don't even remember their names but by having Lara's heroism develop through the eyes of her friends and fellow captives, it makes for a character arc with depth.

I like the scene when you go back to the Endurance, which mirrors a shot from the cutscene that opens the game. The first time through Lara looks in the mirror she looks like she does in that Conan clip; idealized mannequin-esque cgi with sex appeal, which triggers a reaction like we see Conan have hear, which is sort of normal bro gamer behavior, especially for someone raised on exploitative b-movies. Later in the game she sees herself in the same mirror, face and skin all caked in mud, covered in bruises, and armed to the teeth. Her reaction is steady then sort of surprised at what she sees. The acting is good enough that this comes across rather subtly. She realizes she has changed. In the 1st cutscene, which mirrors this, she kind of looks shocked at seeing herself in the mirror.

Anyways I think they did a fine job w story.

She has some kind of Old West 1000 yard stare or something the 2nd time. It's pretty cool.

the other characters are useless, they either abandon lara or break their legs or some shit.

Well Reyes learns to trust her after being skeptical for most of the game. And Roth helps out by killing a ton of people before he gets axed.

That one guy kinda looks like Manti Teo, amirite?

Yeah LOL.

Moving around the island gets more and more fun as you go through the story. The cool thing is that she keeps building new tools for getting around, and introducing new play mechanics. It's a blast to, say, shoot an arrow into a cliff, ride a zipline to the cliff wall, jump off, bury your axe in the side, and climb up. I'm looking forward to using these techniques after the story ends, and I hope they come out with some cool DLC that uses it.

at the outset of the franchise, playing Tomb Raider wasn't about getting to know Lara Croft's character. It was about searching, shooting, and platforming

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/187601/untold_riches_the_intricate_.php

years ago i did an interview for some students making a video for their course assignment and i said then that the point of Lara was that she was a personality-less blank that players could project onto. 99 percent of games worth playing are not equipped to fuck about with rich characterisation.

i redboxed this game last weekend knowing full well my ps3 was not recognizing game, dvd or bluray discs but hoping a little vaccuuming would do the trick. It did for games and dvd but no blu-ray. then i forgot the whole reason i was vacuuming it was to play the game and instead lost my mind over the bluray not playing and pulled the whole thing apart, dusted the whole disc area, broke a ribbon cable insert (but came up with a trick fix) then reassembled only to find id inadvertently messed up a spring and couldn't even put discs in the machine. now the game is back in the redbox and the ps3 is in parts again and I can barely stand to look at it.

Has anyone played Anniversary? I kind of want to check that out after this.

Yeah - it's good, all three previous Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider games are good in a "they really get it" way.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/7025-Tomb-Raider

http://killscreendaily.com/articles/interviews/tomb-raider-writer-rhianna-pratchett-why-every-kill-cant-be-first-and-why-she-wanted-make-lara-croft-gay/

I just finished the game, and I'm looking forward to exploring the island for a good bit, uncovering all the GPS things and little relics and hidden tombs and stuff that I missed. It was pretty great! Definitely ended up being a little more combat-based than it seemed at the beginning, but that's fine. And everyone (not here necessarily) who is complaining about the ending, I really don't know what to tell you, because I thought it was pretty awesome.

Sad about the lack of single-player DLC that was announced. Oh well. At least the game itself is great!

Started post-game item hunt, which is extremely fun in this game. Item hunts in general I don't mind, because usually they are placed in weird out-of-the-way spots where you have to figure out exactly how to get from here to there. Spent about an hour on shipwreck beach last night blowing up mines. TR doesn't really have a whole lot of invisible wall/2-foot-jumps you can't make, which is nice. Also it's cool that the island still has random bad guys and is repopulated with fresh deer and wild hogs to hunt.

I have(possibly foolishly) decided to play through all the Tomb Raiders after getting them all for next to nothing in a Steam sale. TR1 still holds up pretty well with some actual good level design, although the last couple of stages really amp up the frustrating bullshit and I was pretty glad when it was over.

TR2 is a massive disappointment though, three stages in and I'm already considering calling it quits. The problems are exactly the ones outlined in the OP - twats with guns who never miss, very few health items, hugely awkward combat controls. In the first game the actual human antagonists were limited to a very few encounters, probably for good reason, but in this one they're everywhere. Now I remember why I never played beyond the Venice stage when I first had this game a decade ago.

started playing this last night, it feels a lot better than i expected. kinda wish i could stay in this hunting/camping/tomb raiding zone for the whole game, no other humans or epic story involved.

Which TR?

My ps3 disc drive is fucked so I looked for the new TR in the PS Store. The full game plus a bunch of extra stuff is only $29.99! Older TR games were between $5.99 and $9.99

yeah, the new reboot one.

kinda wish i could stay in this hunting/camping/tomb raiding zone for the whole game, no other humans or epic story involved.

otm

Half off on Steam for the weekend

kinda wish i could stay in this hunting/camping/tomb raiding zone for the whole game, no other humans or epic story involved.

yeah the odds on my playing this are pretty long but there was some shot of lara hunting a deer in the early promo for this that made me really long for a roguelike version

otm. Hopefully they are listening to the feedback (which in general seems to be "wish there was more playing around/exploring tombs, less shooting") for the sequel. I've been playing through TR Anniversary and while it's really great and exploring these awesome levels is a blast, there have been plenty of moments where I was just stuck, unsure of where to go next, for a long time, like hours spent running through the same 7 or 8 rooms. Say what you will about too much combat and movie-style QTE's but while playing the new game I never got stuck like that.

the reliance on Red Dead Redemption style cover-and-shoot shit is just..... like sometimes maybe it's cool, but tomb raider it ain't

though no game is perfect; to be fair to the OG tomb raider there were PLENTY of times i ran through the same rooms over and over trying to figure out what i was missing. though maybe i just wasn't very good at it

i thought the combat in this was really good!

it is but the shooting gallery mechanic is familiar from other games... i want to JUMP and SHOOT at the SAME TIME with TWO GUNS basically

picked this up yesterday, hoping to start it this weekend

this game rules, feels kinda like an uncharted but without relying on guns guns guns and hordes of assholes with guns. the bow n arrow shit in this is super fun

the best bits of this are where you're actually climbing on and exploring random jungle shit, not running down corridors blasting fuckheads

i hate the QTEs, so pointless

come on it's like a cutscene you can fail

lol

I wonder how much the PS STore charges for Tomb Raider II. Must be around $6, right? I love the Venice section. So much fun.

"Her soul is trapped inside a decaying body! THAT'S the reason for the storms!"

makes sense to me

Why did they come to the island in the first place? I can't remember.

The game begins with Lara setting out on her first expedition about the ship Endurance, with the intention of finding the lost kingdom of Yamatai. By her suggestion and against Whitman's advice, the expedition ventures into the Dragon's Triangle, east of Japan. The ship is struck by a violent storm and split in two, leaving the survivors stranded on an isolated island.

Which it turns out, is Yamatai. But why did they want to go there? It's a big crew! Were they gonna go raid some tombs?

the glory hunter academic wanted to discover it (iirc) for what i took to be a crappy history-channel style tv show

Ah it's coming back now - yes

I have been pondering exactly how his grisly death will play out for some time

started playing this because ps+ free / long weekend... the game itself is fun to explore but the "press square to not get choked, raped and killed" QTEs are very lame. the voice acting is terrible, the story is stupid as fuck and the EMPOWERMENT angle feels thrown in for critics and not well thought out. Girlfriend finds this appalling and asks how come Lara is basically sounding like she's having sex when she's climbing a building. On the positive, it's like a much easier and less sprawling Just Cause, so that's okay. I may finish this?

Rise of the Tomb Raider is very cool. the pickaxe climbing mechanics are perfectly suited to this game about scaling snow covered mountains and exploring icy caves.

the game looks really really nice and is full of beautiful wintry vistas. the lighting is very cool, the blue-white snow having colored light reflected on it, red, yellow.

there is combat yes but are a lot of actual tombs in this game, which is super nice. pulling up the map shows you all kinds of things to discover and explore: the screen itself is refreshingly free of HUD elements. there are no destination markers floating on your screen, no mini maps taking up valuable real estate. the game already looks cinematic, this just takes it to the next level.

i was scaling the side of a mountain while hearing someone talk about the legendary Russian witch Baba Yaga. i have no idea if she is in this game but it is always cool when games dip into this irl folklore.

aw shit... that was pretty awesome

https://i.imgur.com/j3DOxXTl.jpg

this game really looks amazing

https://i.imgur.com/cCsW7hnl.jpg

i've been playing shadow of the tomb raider. bought it a couple of years ago, made some progress then forgot about it until recently. it feels like a guilty pleasure to play it while everyone else is playing elden ring. it's so easy and repetitive, it's like comfort food that makes me feel like i'm good at video games even though i don't have the time to get good at something like elden ring. i don't like the combat sequences but even those are usually pretty easy. it looks pretty incredible. equivalent to the uncharted games in terms of visuals and (lack of) challenge i guess.

it's funny how on rails the various exploration areas are. oh you can climb this one specific wall but none of the other walls that are the same height and made of the same material, ok.

they build the whole plot around lara's guilt for all the destruction she has caused in the pursuit of raiding tombs, then she'll go into an ancient church and just bash the shit out of the walls with a crowbar to find hidden clues

Yeah, I have a couple of those games that I picked up cheap, and I can totally see (even having not played them yet) how they have influenced the current generation of AAA games.

it's funny how on rails the various exploration areas are. oh you can climb this one specific wall but none of the other walls that are the same height and made of the same material, ok.

This frustrates me so much, especially when it’s not always obvious which wall one can climb. I was stuck for ten minutes in some temple area in Uncharted 2 because I couldn’t figure out which combination of ledges I need to leap across to get to a window I needed to climb in—like, Drake can survive falling several stories or leaping over giant pits, but for some reason, he can’t simply hop onto the waist-high pile of rubble right below the window and climb up. I understand why, from the designer’ POV, but still...