tomb raider games s&d

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

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...