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Reading the comments here I guess I'm the only one who really liked Underworld and thought Legend was pretty lame and forgettable. Legend felt like a continuation of those lovely one-off games that came after TR3, like The Last Revelation and Chronicles, and Angel of Darkness (which I never played but I heard was godawful). It was definitely better than any of those, but it still felt similar. "Let's have Lara in Peru and you can kick a soccer ball around... now she's in an Arthurian Legend-based theme park... now she's driving a forklift!" Underworld felt like what a modern Tomb Raider game should play like, with actual tombs being raided and enough new mechanics that it felt a little bit more fresh.
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Feb 28, 2013 01:24
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This game looks like it's going to have the same problem that the new Max Payne game had: people killing others with more proficiency than anyone has the right to be in their situation. Whether it be Max combating drug addiction will sniping dude's heads with a pistol while sliding down a glass building or Lara killing random people with ease after her first kill. It'd be great if the story wasn't a major component, but what these have in common is that the developers were trying to make the story a major part of the experience which hampers the game play aspect of it. I'm pretty sure that a lot of people don't really care about this, but for me it's really jarring and just takes me out of the game. These problems are relatively simple to fix. One poster had the idea to make the cross hairs have more sway at the beginning of the game which slowly goes away as she gets used to taking lives. Another poster's idea was to make it possible to have a minimal kill run. Not sure if this is actually possible in the game, so we'll see when it comes out. Another idea could have Lara talking to herself as she goes through the game. She can say stuff like "I had to do it", or "This is for my friends" as she kills people. An interesting twist could be that her dialouge changes depending on how many people she's killed. All these could help fix the cognitive dissonance that a lot of people will have while playing this game, but it doesn't seem like that's what the developers had in mind according to what reviewers are saying. It all just screams lazy if you ask me; not GOTY material in my opinion. tldr: New Tomb Raider game's reboot seems to mirror all the failings that the Max Payne reboot had; gameplay looks fun but story is executed with the same finesse of a baby rhino.
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Feb 28, 2013 03:14
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Crosshair sway is a good idea to show inexperience is a good idea in spirit and awful in practice. Tewratomeh posted:Reading the comments here I guess I'm the only one who really liked Underworld and thought Legend was pretty lame and forgettable. Legend felt like a continuation of those lovely one-off games that came after TR3, like The Last Revelation and Chronicles, and Angel of Darkness (which I never played but I heard was godawful). I liked Underworld more than Legend, albeit with how large and multistage the puzzles were, I sometimes felt at a loss for the next steps.
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Feb 28, 2013 03:26
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Legend was a more complete and less perfunctory experience, but Underworld was definitely more tomb raidery. Apparently the Lara's Shadow DLC, which I never got to play due to getting the game on PC, also explored some interesting gameplay ideas.
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Feb 28, 2013 03:35
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Underworld did have some ridiculous, out-of-place moments though, like the level where you're riding around on a motorcycle and fighting panthers. On the other hand, you're riding around on a motorcycle and fighting panthers. ...also Thor's Hammer. edit: vv I don't know, maybe I'm alone but I never gave a single care about the plot of any Tomb Raider game, so that never bothered me. King Vidiot fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 03:39
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Tewratomeh posted:Underworld did have some ridiculous, out-of-place moments though, like the level where you're riding around on a motorcycle and fighting panthers. If they hadn't stapled it onto the story of legend and anniversary I think it would have been received better. The plot would certainly have become more focused and wouldn't have necessarily involved Natla and all her associated nonsense.
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Feb 28, 2013 03:43
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Underworld is cool because it has some stuff about Norse mythology I never knew about like that Eitr stuff. That stuff was cool. Lara's Shadow was ok, but holy poo poo is it repetitive. There is shitloads of backtracking in it.
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Feb 28, 2013 04:55
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I decided to get Dynasty Warriors 8 instead of this just based on how many hours of enjoyment it will give me for a limited budget, so I guess this game will have to wait for another day. Also I am still amused that this is apparently Tomb Raider: Raiding Tombs Optional.
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Feb 28, 2013 04:57
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Tewratomeh posted:Underworld did have some ridiculous, out-of-place moments though, like the level where you're riding around on a motorcycle and fighting panthers. I've been stuck here for like a year because it's so God drat boring. I don't think I like Tomb Raider Underworld.
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Feb 28, 2013 04:58
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Samurai Sanders posted:Also I am still amused that this is apparently Tomb Raider: Raiding Tombs Optional. It's an origin story, man, you don't just throw all the good poo poo in up front.
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Feb 28, 2013 05:01
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The Last Revelation was pretty much nothing but raiding Tombs. I still need to play through it.
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Feb 28, 2013 05:02
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It is sort of unfortunate that the marketing for this game has been such rubbish. You'd think a game like "Tomb Raider" wouldn't need much to sell it--tombs, raiding, shooting. Easy, yeah? So why is it that this game has been struggling so hard to assert some sort of new identity? It's troubling--it either indicates the market is truly as finnicky as is assumed, or that the industry is desperately out of touch, and have no idea how to sell a loving video game because it has a woman as the main character instead of a man. Neither option really cheers me much.
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Feb 28, 2013 05:13
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RentCavalier posted:It is sort of unfortunate that the marketing for this game has been such rubbish. You'd think a game like "Tomb Raider" wouldn't need much to sell it--tombs, raiding, shooting. Easy, yeah? So why is it that this game has been struggling so hard to assert some sort of new identity? It's troubling--it either indicates the market is truly as finnicky as is assumed, or that the industry is desperately out of touch, and have no idea how to sell a loving video game because it has a woman as the main character instead of a man. Neither option really cheers me much.
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Feb 28, 2013 05:14
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Samurai Sanders posted:Huh? There's no mystery to me. They want it to compete with Uncharted so all its promo videos look like Uncharted except with Lara. They don't really though. If it looked like Uncharted with Lara then we'd not be having these discussions about the crap-rear end marketing.
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Feb 28, 2013 05:19
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On the subject of gory death sequences, I'll tell you this - the ones in Resident Evil 4 were the best incentive I've ever seen to avoid dying. The first time I got cornered by the chainsaw guy was absolutely gut-wrenching, and I instinctively just turned and ran whenever I heard a chainsaw in the future. And the Regenerators... oh god,. the things they could do to poor Leon. So long as you're given a fair chance to escape death each time, then shockingly grim deaths can be a very solid bit of negative reinforcement. The opposite would be Super Meat Boy, where there's almost no negative reinforcement - it slows you down by a fraction of a second, and you even get a replay of all your failures stacked up against your winning run. There's a game where death really doesn't mean anything. Here, they seem to be trying to drill it into your head that it's a very, very bad thing. A lot of reviews and even post-review analyses bring up the point that there's a strong vein of survival horror style running through the game. It's not an action-adventure in the traditional sense. Dominic White fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 05:20
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ImpAtom posted:They don't really though. If it looked like Uncharted with Lara then we'd not be having these discussions about the crap-rear end marketing.
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Feb 28, 2013 05:26
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Dominic White posted:On the subject of gory death sequences, I'll tell you this - the ones in Resident Evil 4 were the best incentive I've ever seen to avoid dying. The first time I got cornered by the chainsaw guy was absolutely gut-wrenching, and I instinctively just turned and ran whenever I heard a chainsaw in the future. Well, to be fair, Super Meat Boy is a platformer (and one developed for Newgrounds no less). Its priorities are different. In a platformer, you want to be moving quickly, and lengthy deaths get in the way of moving quick and precisely. This is a game with much more to it--you'd have to aim, shoot, hide, look for treasure, platform, climb (if they are seperate mechanics), heal at the bonfire, reinforce your estus, get the power bomb, max out your social links and break the damage cap. It has a lot more going on mechanically than Super Meat Boy, and as such, the pacing of the two games couldn't be more different. Compare, say, a game like 999, which actually has all of its game-overs take the form as entire "endings" to its saga, forcing you to replay the entire game numerous times just to, likely, fail and die. The deaths in that instance are drawn out and terribly cruel and unfulfilling. There's no satisfaction as a gamer there, so you seek out an alternative (or look at GameFAQs). We need to remember that things like "enemies" and "death" in video games all serve a purpose, or should: a death in a game is a result of you playing the game incorrectly, being forcibly extricated from that incorrect path, and set back to where you can resume playing the game as was intended. An enemy in a game is merely an obstacle that is presented to prevent you from completing your designated task. Go back to Mario--the reason Goombas exist is to force you to jump, and thus learn jumping. An enemy's existence should prove either educational or obstructive. It either guides you to playing the game the ideal way, or forces you to adjust your style to keep the challenge intact. It is why Dead Space 2 has so many issues. Enemies are obstacles, yes, but the whole of the game lies in their elimination, and failure to do so results in long, sadistic death sequences. The levels are all fairly rote, with the exception of the zero-G elements, and the battles lose their impact once you've established an effective strategy. Uncharted sort of does this too--all the shoot outs are largely the same, you'll almost always have either a sniper, rocket guy, or grenade thrower to eliminate first, and your goal is to largely figure out what order to kill your enemies in, and once you know that order, the game becomes routine. So, the death scenes in Tomb Raider should, ostensibly, discourage the player from performing badly--or, if performing badly is anticipated due to extreme challenge, a la Super Meat Boy, it should be relatively unobstructive and fluid, preventing as little flow and momentum of gameplay from being depleted as possible. It then stands to reason that the deaths in the new Tomb Raider are intended to be viewed as either ghoulish trophies of failure or stern incentives not to. Until we know what the difficulty curve is like (and how many insta-kills like that pipe in the rapids there are) it won't be possible to really tell what sort of design sense the game demonstrates.
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Feb 28, 2013 05:32
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SurrealityCheck posted:If they hadn't stapled it onto the story of legend and anniversary I think it would have been received better. The plot would certainly have become more focused and wouldn't have necessarily involved Natla and all her associated nonsense. The resolution of Lara's mother subplot was just so shittily handled in Underworld. Like they couldn't even be bothered to try to wrap it up and just kinda threw their hands up in the air and said gently caress it, she's a zombie now or something, whatever, I'm tired.
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Feb 28, 2013 06:13
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One thing I did enjoy about the games was the combat stuff you could do like jumping off their heads and the grapple pull
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Feb 28, 2013 06:47
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I recently played through Tomb Raider Anniversary out of hype for the new Tomb Raider. There's a few questionable design quirks but this is easily one of my favorite remakes, I actually appreciate some of the design philosophies they went for such as turning the exploration part of the game into a disguised ledge-climbing simulator. It's somewhat of a departure considering how it's suppose to be a remake, but regardless I find the punishment of being forced to trek through a series of ledges and crevices for a second time, over a single mistake, to be very satisfying, if you could even call a punishment "satisfying." There's a certain fascinating balance of difficulty regarding the simplicity of the levels/puzzles when met with the strict precision it requires to progress, so if you fail a jump you can't really blame it on anything else but yourself. I really admire this kind of game design, though I don't seem to see it in many games nowadays. Maybe it's just annoying and I'm being weird? Definitely had fun with this game, wish I had time to play through Legend and Underworld as well.
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Feb 28, 2013 11:31
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I don't think Tomb Raiders main selling point of setting was ever really "tombs". None of it has really been all about raiding tombs. It had a female protagonist on adventures a lot like Indiana Jones. That's why I play the games. The actual tombs are really nothing to me than brand recognition.
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Feb 28, 2013 11:43
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Mordaedil posted:I don't think Tomb Raiders main selling point of setting was ever really "tombs". None of it has really been all about raiding tombs. It had a female protagonist on adventures a lot like Indiana Jones. That's why I play the games. The actual tombs are really nothing to me than brand recognition. If this is the thing you love about Tomb Raider, you might as well just watch the new hit TV-show "Relic Hunter" starring Tia Carrere! Lara might have been good for marketing, but the first Tomb Raider succeded because of clever platforming, excellent, complex level design and a great sense of isolation. The series would have sucked from the getgo if there were no tombs and every time Lara visits modern locations and deals with other humans, it is usually the worst part of every Tomb Raider game.
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Feb 28, 2013 11:56
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I dunno, I think it's got potential to be an interesting jaunt. The protagonist shows her human side, as well as her badass-unload-a-full-ak47-clip-killer side... It's Lara Croft! It's her destiny!
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Feb 28, 2013 13:46
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All this talk about Underworld and Legend made me realize that, while I played both to completion, I have no idea which one is which and what differentiates them. They really blend together in my mind. I mean the puzzling and platforming was fun, but there's really nothing that stands out in my memories from either of them. Except that awful level in Peru full of fighting soldiers, that sucked. I hope this game at least does gunplay well, since it seems to be a big focus.
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Feb 28, 2013 14:16
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Underworld was the one with non-lovely graphics!
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Feb 28, 2013 14:27
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SurrealityCheck posted:Underworld was the one with non-lovely graphics! Non-lovely graphics and not shooting people until the last level or so, where you get a weapon so awesome you don't really need to use a gun. It was also the one that introduced the "walking precariously atop framework/poles" mechanic. Anyway, I think the main complaint people have about the modern Tomb Raider trilogy is that they're Tomb Raider games. The series has always been about exploring big, mostly-empty areas and some people just find that boring. I happen to like it, so my favorite games in the series are the ones that feature that aspect the most.
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Feb 28, 2013 15:46
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Yeah. I love the feeling of isolation you can get. I also enjoy that Lara has a certain type of benign, flip psychopathy (or had). Keeley Hawes needs to do more heroines!
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Feb 28, 2013 15:50
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Tewratomeh posted:Non-lovely graphics and not shooting people until the last level or so, where you get a weapon so awesome you don't really need to use a gun. It was also the one that introduced the "walking precariously atop framework/poles" mechanic. Yes, I really do like how the levels in Underworld feel like you are exploring a tomb from beginning to end. You aren't just dropped at the entrance and as you enter a puzzle space there isn't a slow pan showing you each key element. Granted, there isn't much telling you at all outside of Lara camera filming cutscene and the vague Field Assistance comments, but still... I didn't feel fed the path I need to take, which is nice.
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Feb 28, 2013 17:08
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Does this game have co-op? I read something about it a few weeks back but on further inspection today it seems to just have some weird tacked on multiplayer made by a different studio.
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Feb 28, 2013 19:04
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Luminaflare posted:Does this game have co-op? I read something about it a few weeks back but on further inspection today it seems to just have some weird tacked on multiplayer made by a different studio. No, it doesn't. Just the multiplayer, which I'm sure is practically dead a week after release.
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Feb 28, 2013 19:07
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I dunno man, I think playing Lara Croft's personal hellish journey towards becoming a lone killer might be weird if there were two of her.
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Feb 28, 2013 19:07
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Hakkesshu posted:No, it doesn't. Just the multiplayer, which I'm sure is practically dead a week after release. I'm extremely skeptical of multiplayer in a game like this, but it looks like Uncharted with a little Assassin's Creed flavor mixed in, and given how surprisingly good the ME3 multiplayer was, I'm going to at least give it a shot. If it sucks, it sucks, but thanks the Mass Effect I'm no longer writing off bizarre multiplayer decisions from the word go.
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Feb 28, 2013 19:10
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And the Deus Ex: HR guys made TR multiplayer, so it's not like it was outsourced to Time Gate. I'll give it a chance.
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Feb 28, 2013 22:22
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Roman posted:And the Deus Ex: HR guys made TR multiplayer, so it's not like it was outsourced to Time Gate. I'll give it a chance. I sense this becoming a euphemism used for whenever something that sounds good turns out badly. "We really had a lot of hope for the new product launch, unfortunately marketing for it was outsourced to Time Gate."
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Feb 28, 2013 22:40
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Great Rumbler posted:I sense this becoming a euphemism used for whenever something that sounds good turns out badly. Who is Time Gate? I'm in the dark on this.
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Feb 28, 2013 22:49
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DrNutt posted:Who is Time Gate? I'm in the dark on this. A studio with a less than stellar output who allegedly did most of the work on Aliens: Colonial Marines after Gearbox scarpered with all the money for the project.
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Feb 28, 2013 22:50
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Dan Didio posted:A studio with a less than stellar output who allegedly did most of the work on Aliens: Colonial Marines after Gearbox scarpered with all the money for the project. I gathered the bolded part myself, but have they done anything other than A:CM? If they were passed off a problematic project with little money or time to finish, I find it hard to imagine that's truly their fault.
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Feb 28, 2013 22:52
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That's really why I didn't want to say anything too negative. It's already near impossible to parse what blame lies where. Prior to this, the only real credits to their name are the F.E.A.R. expansion packs and the Section 8 series.
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Feb 28, 2013 22:53
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Dan Didio posted:That's really why I didn't want to say anything too negative. It's already near impossible to parse what blame lies where. Huh, I heard the Section 8 games were actually pretty rad multiplayer games, so maybe farming mp out to them wouldn't be a bad deal... And since when are you afraid of saying anything negative? 
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Feb 28, 2013 22:59
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Here's a good review of the new TR. Some serious critique in there and some solid dissection of the storytelling and character, but when all is said and done, it's a good, solid 8/10 game. Like with others, there's a hope that Lara won't be quite as pressured when the inevitable sequel rolls out. As for earlier talk of supernatural elements, and how they probably won't feature in the game it's set on a cursed island wreathed in supernatural storms, which is why it's covered in plane and ship wrecks and overrun by crazy cultists.. DrNutt posted:Huh, I heard the Section 8 games were actually pretty rad multiplayer games, so maybe farming mp out to them wouldn't be a bad deal... Yeah, the S8 series is solid. Honestly, it sounds like Gearbox did with Colonial Marines what Silicon Knights tried to pull with X-Men Destiny. Effectively taking a licensed property project so that they could siphon funding/resources off to an internal title (in this case Eternal Darkness 2), then pooping out a no-effort project at the last minute. This didn't work for Silicon Knights - between Activision setting a deadline and lawsuits, they kinda crumbled - but it seems like Gearbox might have pulled it off by keeping the game alive through cheap third-party contract work. It's probably a good part of why Borderlands 2 turned out so much better than the first. Dominic White fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 23:01
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