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SpazmasterX posted:Ughhhh why can't there be one loving post-apocalyptic game that doesn't have zombies in some capacity? It's just so drat lazy. Because the definition of zombie has grown to include like 9 other things.
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Mar 8, 2013 02:11
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Aphrodite posted:Because the definition of zombie has grown to include like 9 other things. Which is always "zombie".
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Mar 8, 2013 02:13
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It's only a matter of time before we get to zombies that take cover behind waist high walls and shout combat barks and utilize flanking AI. EDIT: drat it all to hell. Crappy Jack fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Mar 8, 2013 |
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Mar 8, 2013 02:16
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Crappy Jack posted:It's only a matter of time before we get to zombies that take cover behind waist high walls and shout combat barks and utilize flanking AI. Resident Evil 6.
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Mar 8, 2013 02:18
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I've been watching my boyfriend play this game and honestly I have to say having an AAA title with a capable female heroine at all is something. (Lara is seriously the only one I can think of within the last year, that's not counting games that have optional female protagonists but I may be forgetting one). Either way I've been finding it really fun to watch and I think Lara's pretty likeable, so for those looking for something to play with female relatives or friends I don't think this would be a terrible idea. The death scenes are gruesome but I haven't found them voyeuristic yet and aside from the early assault which was swiftly cut off, I don't think there's been a lot objectifying Lara at all which is pretty refreshing.
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Mar 8, 2013 02:19
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How's the multiplayer? Looking for goon opinions on it, most reviewers paint it as negative.
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Mar 8, 2013 02:22
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Alteisen posted:How's the multiplayer? Looking for goon opinions on it, most reviewers paint it as negative. Not great. There's a few interesting ideas that are under-executed on and the multiplayer mode has some strange frame-rate issues. For the most part it's just an unpolished version of Uncharted's competitive multiplayer with some novel ideas like traps, etc. etc.
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Mar 8, 2013 02:24
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Alteisen posted:How's the multiplayer? Looking for goon opinions on it, most reviewers paint it as negative. Every match I have tried to play ends up with spawn camping. The idea that in order to upgrade your weapons you have to walk around and find crates instead of fight other people was a very poor decision.
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Mar 8, 2013 02:26
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Prism_Pink posted:I've been watching my boyfriend play this game and honestly I have to say having an AAA title with a capable female heroine at all is something. (Lara is seriously the only one I can think of within the last year, that's not counting games that have optional female protagonists but I may be forgetting one). Either way I've been finding it really fun to watch and I think Lara's pretty likeable, so for those looking for something to play with female relatives or friends I don't think this would be a terrible idea. The death scenes are gruesome but I haven't found them voyeuristic yet and aside from the early assault which was swiftly cut off, I don't think there's been a lot objectifying Lara at all which is pretty refreshing. As far as a capable female protagonist, Final Fantasy XIII maybe? e: Whoops, past year. Nevermind  Time flies.
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Mar 8, 2013 02:54
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Winks posted:As far as a capable female protagonist, Final Fantasy XIII maybe? Lightning has a new game out in the autumn, at least? 
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Mar 8, 2013 03:03
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Yeah I thought about Final Fantasy XIII...I guess it counts, but that still only makes 2 games... Just posting because I feel like a lot of the criticism in regards to sexism thrown at the game in the thread has been a bit unjustified, though I just love that there's a fun, big budget title that isn't a complete breeze to play with a heroine. I mean even Lara falling a lot and getting the poo poo kicked out of her doesn't strike me as making her incompetent or something you should be sexualising. For me seeing her get pushed to her physical limits and pick herself up and keep going is just pretty awesome. Having more games not treat women like delicate flowers that can't be physically exerted or beaten up is cool, because they're almost always in support roles.
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Mar 8, 2013 03:26
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I've been playing this for the past two days, and it's really exceeded my every expectation. I wasn't expecting much from the game, but I preordered it through Steam on a lark to fill the time between now and Bioshock Infinite. Gotta say, the Uncharted-esque shooting sequences are really fun, serving as a change of pace from the more quiet exploration segments. And the fact that you can travel between areas and use Arkham-style gadgets to solve small puzzles really adds to my enjoyment of the game. And I've always been a sucker for XP-based upgrade systems and the salvage-to-upgrade-guns stuff is nifty as well. The only thing I don't get is why people seem to have a problem with Lara killing so many dudes. I'm not advocating it, but she is stuck on an island full of crazy cultists with guns and superior numbers, and her first run-in with them results in some pretty creepy near-rape poo poo going down, so she kills the attacker. And yeah she goes through the remorse and shock of killing someone, but quickly moves on and starts fighting her way out, even saying "It's scary just how easy it was." I don't think this is some crazy position or sign that she's a sociopath. If you put me on an island full of insane dudes who want to rape/kill me and give me the chance to kill them to stay alive, I don't think it would be much of a moral struggle. What's the alternative? Let yourself get killed? I connected with Lara during that because she's in the middle of a hosed-up situation, and she has the skills to keep herself alive and save her friends, and I as the player am motivated to use those skills to accomplish those goals because I empathize with her. I don't think she enjoys killing, but when some dude comes at you with a pair of machetes, fully intending to make your internal organs suddenly external, and you've got a bow and the skill to make him stop, I think most people would defend themselves. Although the bodycount she racks up does seem to be way too high. How many dudes could've possibly washed up on this island and survived to fight you? And after a while, you'd figure these guys would just stop getting in Lara's way. I've always wanted to see a game where after you off a few guys, the rest just say "gently caress it" and run off.
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Mar 8, 2013 03:29
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Prism_Pink posted:Just posting because I feel like a lot of the criticism in regards to sexism thrown at the game in the thread has been a bit unjustified, though I just love that there's a fun, big budget title that isn't a complete breeze to play with a heroine. I mean even Lara falling a lot and getting the poo poo kicked out of her doesn't strike me as making her incompetent or something you should be sexualising. For me seeing her get pushed to her physical limits and pick herself up and keep going is just pretty awesome. Having more games not treat women like delicate flowers that can't be physically exerted or beaten up is cool, because they're almost always in support roles. I absolutely agree so far. I think I'm ~75% theough, but I really want to have a chance to beat it before making any sort of final judgments though.
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Mar 8, 2013 03:35
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Prism_Pink posted:Yeah I thought about Final Fantasy XIII...I guess it counts, but that still only makes 2 games... I think the thing is people are expecting her to be Indiana Jones. She's not, she's John McClane, a highly skilled person put in an extraordinary situation, with only their wits and a radio to help them stop the bad guys while getting beat to hell and gritting their teeth and keeping going. The alternative, while possibly cool, would amount to Lara Croft Solid: Deer Eater, and I doubt Squeenix or CD wanted their adventuress archaeologist to be in a game that isn't able to directly compare with Nathan Drake. (Who also gets his rear end kicked in the second game, remember, even if there's the village level in between times to excuse it)
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Mar 8, 2013 03:50
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Gaz-L posted:I think the thing is people are expecting her to be Indiana Jones. She's not, she's John McClane, a highly skilled person put in an extraordinary situation, with only their wits and a radio to help them stop the bad guys while getting beat to hell and gritting their teeth and keeping going. Really the only problem in Tomb Raider is the quantity of it. They really should have shown a bit more restraint, which would have helped emphasize it when it did happen and would have helped reduced the "oh look, another horrifying injury, welp" aspect. McClane gets the poo poo beaten out of him but it's in pretty consistent ways instead of near-constant bad luck. It's harder to do over an 8 hour video game instead of a 90 minute movie but y'know. Alteisen posted:How's the multiplayer? Looking for goon opinions on it, most reviewers paint it as negative. It's really boring and was half-dead on launch day. I wouldn't bother.
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Mar 8, 2013 04:32
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McClane also feels the effects of those injuries more readily, partly because he exists in a movie instead of a videogame and partly because that was necessary to show that McClane was a much more human, personable character than the other action movie heroes of his time. He's kind of a different beast all together from Lara.
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Mar 8, 2013 04:37
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Dan Didio posted:Regardless, she's explicitly still not a 'silver-spoon fed' trust fund sort like you said. Let's see... Young wealthy girl from a crust of the upper crust family with a similar bestie, who had never been in anything remotely resembling an actual survival situation (and struggles financially only by way of a choice she apparently finds trivial to reverse when needed*), is thrown into an island where the environment, animals, and people are all working to kill her. You may disagree, but it is certainly not "explicit" that this is an invalid reading of the character. Lara grows over the game into a precursor to the sassy, cartwheeling, one-liner-and-bullet spewing badass she becomes, but at the beginning of the game she is nothing of the sort. I'll certainly grant you that perhaps Roth's training facilitates her growing out of her pregame state. * Here, Lara is practically a verse from Pulp's Common People. bloodysabbath fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Mar 8, 2013 |
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Mar 8, 2013 04:43
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bloodysabbath posted:Let's see... Young wealthy girl from a crust of the upper crust family with a similar bestie, who had never been in anything remotely resembling an actual survival situation (and struggles financially only by way of a choice she apparently finds trivial to reverse when needed), is thrown into an island where the environment, animals, and people are all working to kill her. She's not wealthy, her father is and her friend's dad is a loan shark or something similar. They're hardly the elite of the elite. The point is that Lara isn't silver spoon fed, she actually is trained as a survivalist and educated and didn't just roll off of a silk-sheeted bed to go on some starry-eyed naive adventure. She comes from a background of privelege and wealth, but she herself isn't some high-falutin' aristocratic brat like you implied, she's pretty clearly a capable and knowledgeable person outside of any concept of nobility or wealth. She very deliberately is not the Lara who lives out of a mansion with her own personal butler and goes on adventures whenever she feels like.
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Mar 8, 2013 04:46
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Stuck on the shantytown fight on Hard. It's some loving bullshit. Does it get worse or better after that?
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Mar 8, 2013 04:55
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Roman posted:Stuck on the shantytown fight on Hard. It's some loving bullshit. Does it get worse or better after that? There's some pretty gruelling fights after that. Two or three fights that have a similar level of action being thrown at you at once. Although you have more tools for managing them at that point.
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Mar 8, 2013 05:01
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Prism_Pink posted:Yeah I thought about Final Fantasy XIII...I guess it counts, but that still only makes 2 games... My girlfriend has been watching me play through the game and has a similar reading of it. One detail we both like is Lara becoming increasingly scarred up throughout the game. At certain points she is covered in scars, mud, and dried blood. It's pretty gnarly looking in addition to being cool visual storytelling. It's the polar opposite of the creepy clean faces stuff you see in skyrim mods and the like. Many video games and movies fall into the trap of making sure the female protagonist always looks like she just stepped out of the makeup booth. Lara's character model is the pretty 20-something girl she needs to be but she is a pretty 20-something girl who has been through some poo poo and has the scars to show for it. During the part of the game where you weapons are taken away in particular she just looks like a complete loving badass.
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Mar 8, 2013 05:32
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Just got done doing a 100% run and goddamn the game is fun even if you play through it twice. Really, really hope they do some DLC of tombs that are difficult or something because I really did enjoy figuring them all out. Plus I think this is maybe the first game in a long while that I didn't mind finding all of the semi-hidden items. None of them were in crazy places, and it generally was pretty fun finding them all.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:02
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This game has me personally loving floored. Usually if a game crashes on me 6 times in a day(nvidia card), I don't restart it the moment I get back. I just keep loving restarting. The only reason I'm not doing more right now is that I have a burger sitting next to me. The gunplay is fantastic, way better than I expected. The controls are top notch. The combat is both visceral and acts exactly how I'd expect. Enemies aren't geniuses, but they're good enough. They do a great job rewarding stealthy play, and don't make stealth 100% about just waiting till your enemy's conversation is over. Hell, the amount of times they talk about the exact best way to kill them is both subtle and makes listening in on most conversations great. The graphics are great. The animation is the best we've seen in years. Seriously- I can't think of another game with animation even close to as good as this. The transition smoothing in particular is nothing short of bonkers nuts sorts of good. Somebody better win an award for animation here. The only problem I've come across is that generally, the early QTEs(especially the 'rape' one) are pretty loving bad on PC. All the icons have the same color, dark red, against black backgrounds, none of the icons are actual keys, they're just a symbol- either a hand, a foot, or an exclamation point. None of them are very distinguishable. However, it seemed to quit being so bad at them(and quit doing them every 2 minutes) after about two hours, and suddenly my whole mood of the game changed. The story is a bit camp, but I'm okay with that. I love that despite being a darker story, that it handles it in all the right ways. They also manage to make me look up to Lara not because of her skill in killing- but because of how she always gets back up, and tries again. It's a constant theme, her pressing through whatever hurt her, is in her way, or is keeping her from her friends. The nuts cultists are cliche, sure, but the linking to Japanese folklore(even if they butcher Amaterasu pretty bad) is interesting and just grounded enough to make it cool. I love how it's playing with myths- it does outright acknowledge them, but it leaves it all vague, even impressing upon Lara in her own head just how bullshit it sounds. Sure, odds are it's hocus pocus magical sun queen, but everything that's happening isn't that unlikely. Also? That loving blood pool scene. I know it was small, I know it was quick, I know it kinda came out of nowhere. It still sent chills up my spine- not just in how creepy that would be, but in how calm and collected she was about it. It wasn't a big deal. Seeing her sit at that campfire, her entire body drenched in blood? I like this new Tomb Raider.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:06
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Alright so I take it nobody is interested in admiring the beautiful direction in this game while there's rants to be had about the legitimacy of Lara as a female protagonist. Ok cool.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:13
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Grey Fox V2 posted:Alright so I take it nobody is interested in admiring the beautiful direction in this game while there's rants to be had about the legitimacy of Lara as a female protagonist. Ok cool. You've had no less than 3 people on this page saying just this. What?
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Mar 8, 2013 06:16
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Sorry, I'm just pissed nobody looked at the screenshots I posted a few pages back right before that derail.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:29
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quaunaut posted:The gunplay is fantastic, way better than I expected. The controls are top notch. The combat is both visceral and acts exactly how I'd expect. Enemies aren't geniuses, but they're good enough. They do a great job rewarding stealthy play, and don't make stealth 100% about just waiting till your enemy's conversation is over. Hell, the amount of times they talk about the exact best way to kill them is both subtle and makes listening in on most conversations great. I think what makes the combat work so well is the aggressive nature of the enemies. I'm playing on hard and if I try and stay behind one piece of cover for more then a couple seconds I will either be burned out, have dynamite dropped on my head, or will be charged by a melee or shotgun cultist. The individual combat encounters tend to be fairly short but very frantic. It works extremely well and is a fun challenge.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:30
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Token Cracker posted:I think what makes the combat work so well is the aggressive nature of the enemies. I'm playing on hard and if I try and stay behind one piece of cover for more then a couple seconds I will either be burned out, have dynamite dropped on my head, or will be charged by a melee or shotgun cultist. The individual combat encounters tend to be fairly short but very frantic. It works extremely well and is a fun challenge. I think combat has a good flow because if you do let the enemies get close they can and will wreck you fairly easily. Combat isn't hard in the slightest but the fact that Lara and the enemies are both fragile makes it feel 'fair' and gives the impression that Lara is holding her own a bit more weight. It's an illusion but a pretty good one. I wish the game had a few bigger encounters but it's almost Batman-like in that the system clearly wasn't designed for bigger encounters. The few 'boss fights' the game has are pretty pathetic because they don't play to the combat engine's strengths at all.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:33
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quaunaut posted:
If this turns into a series and gets a few similarly great sequels, it's going down as one of my top game series easily. The gameplay is so perfect and fluid and I really love the way they handled the story and character development. This Lara isn't only the best yet in the series but one of the most enjoyable characters to play as in a game. She feels like a caged animal pushed to lash out and absolutely destroy anything in front of her. It's much better than the "I'm huge muscle man with guns so I can kill everything with ease". She's a beast with a reason for it and sure it's a bit of a Rambo situation but I'm not complaining. I can't even comprehend how good a sequel would be on next gen.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:36
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Token Cracker posted:I think what makes the combat work so well is the aggressive nature of the enemies. I'm playing on hard and if I try and stay behind one piece of cover for more then a couple seconds I will either be burned out, have dynamite dropped on my head, or will be charged by a melee or shotgun cultist. The individual combat encounters tend to be fairly short but very frantic. It works extremely well and is a fun challenge. I've gotta agree. Super aggressive enemies who react to what you do are more important than 'smart' enemies- it's why everyone thought the AI in Halo 1 was great. They were aggressive, and dove away from grenades. Only game I know of that had genuinely just-as-smart-as-you enemies was the first FEAR, and frankly, that hasn't been replicated since. Kilometers Davis posted:If this turns into a series and gets a few similarly great sequels, it's going down as one of my top game series easily. The gameplay is so perfect and fluid and I really love the way they handled the story and character development. This Lara isn't only the best yet in the series but one of the most enjoyable characters to play as in a game. She feels like a caged animal pushed to lash out and absolutely destroy anything in front of her. It's much better than the "I'm huge muscle man with guns so I can kill everything with ease". She's a beast with a reason for it and sure it's a bit of a Rambo situation but I'm not complaining. This is a good summary of why she's so great. She's vulnerable but doing what she has to- and gets loving good at it, because anything less would be death. However, I have to say- I do hope that future games have less combat. Not because it isn't good, but because, drat, I want more tombs. YOU HEAR ME? MORE. loving. TOMBS. Especially if they're going to relate to specific ancient mythology. That makes it extra awesome.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:41
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ImpAtom posted:I think combat has a good flow because if you do let the enemies get close they can and will wreck you fairly easily. Combat isn't hard in the slightest but the fact that Lara and the enemies are both fragile makes it feel 'fair' and gives the impression that Lara is holding her own a bit more weight. It's an illusion but a pretty good one. There's a section in the game where Lara has to get across a big forest area full of cultists at night. Going through that section carefully and silently taking everyone out with an arrow to the head was one of my favorite parts of the game. It was the best Rambo simulator I've ever played. I would love to see more stuff like that in a sequel.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:45
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quaunaut posted:
More tombs and more horror vibes would be great. This definitely isn't a horror game but at times it felt more creepy, dark, and ominous than proper genre games. I could walk through bloody dank cult infested tombs all day.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:53
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Dan Didio posted:She's not wealthy, her father is and her friend's dad is a loan shark or something similar. They're hardly the elite of the elite. If we accept the comic book as canon (and perhaps it isn't), Lara is wealthy, in that her dad is dead and she had enough control over the money to be able to lock it away somehow to "prove herself to herself," only to somehow retrieve it when Sam was looking for investors to supplement *her* rich (rear end in a top hat) father. I never called Lara a "brat," or claimed she wasn't book smart pre-ordeal. I stated that locking up one's trust fund to slum it for a while, while knowing how to access it if needed, is pretty indicative of silver spooners with no real world experience re: hardship. Either way, Lara and co. are bankrolling an operation that must cost, at minimum, seven figures. I don't know what sort of circles you are rolling in, but that definitely makes them the standard definition of elite. No, she isn't the butler/mansion/whim adventure Lara yet. It's an origin story. Important part is that none of this really takes away from the game. Game is legit.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:53
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I'm liking the game so far, although I think they could've cut down on the whole "something collapses and laura proceeds to fall down an entire mountain and hit 5 airplanes, 20 trees, and a rock on the way down" thing that seems to happen every 45 minutes. They're fun sequences to go through but I'm at about the halfway point I think and I'm already started to get a bit tired of them.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:54
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bloodysabbath posted:I stated that locking up one's trust fund to slum it for a while, while knowing how to access it if needed, is pretty indicative of silver spooners with no real world experience re: hardship. But she does have experience with hardship which is my point, the game makes this clear, regardless of her status, she has worked for her education and earned the skills that allow her to survive on the island. She's a far cry from the earlier interpretations of Lara who were very much silver spoon-fed characters. There's a very deliberate contrast there against what the character is now and what she used to be. I don't see her becoming the butler-assisted heiress in a meaningful way like she was in the previous games either, especially given the way the game ends. Kilometers Davis posted:More tombs and more horror vibes would be great. This definitely isn't a horror game but at times it felt more creepy, dark, and ominous than proper genre games. I could walk through bloody dank cult infested tombs all day. I thought they did some really nice work around the halfway mark, particularly with the lead up to the palace, the palace proper and the parts with the Stormguard flitting about in the background. At the same time, I really liked the tone of the earlier parts of the game where it's primarily her and Whitman in that really early section where Sam goes missing. Shirkelton fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Mar 8, 2013 |
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Mar 8, 2013 07:00
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bloodysabbath posted:If we accept the comic book as canon (and perhaps it isn't), Lara is wealthy, in that her dad is dead and she had enough control over the money to be able to lock it away somehow to "prove herself to herself," only to somehow retrieve it when Sam was looking for investors to supplement *her* rich (rear end in a top hat) father. I never called Lara a "brat," or claimed she wasn't book smart pre-ordeal. I stated that locking up one's trust fund to slum it for a while, while knowing how to access it if needed, is pretty indicative of silver spooners with no real world experience re: hardship. I just disagree that there is any indication that she has the characteristics of the "sassy, cartwheeling, one-liner-and-bullet spewing badass" that was pre-reboot Lara. This is a whole new Lara Croft not an origin story of the old Lara Croft. Although she may come from money she is very capable, intelligent, and pursues the island out of a passion for archaeological discovery not because of a want of fame or fortune. This is made very explicit in the dichotomy between her goals and that of Dr. Whitman.
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Mar 8, 2013 07:14
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Im really wondering why so many games go for a cheap shock by having the main character wake up in a giant pile of dead bodies. Mass Effect, Amnesia: Dark Descent, Farcry and now Tomb Raider. It worked in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it doesn't really work in video games.
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Mar 8, 2013 07:14
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Ghetto Prince posted:Im really wondering why so many games go for a cheap shock by having the main character wake up in a giant pile of dead bodies. Mass Effect, Amnesia: Dark Descent, Farcry and now Tomb Raider. It worked in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it doesn't really work in video games. They already have the art assets might as well use em.
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Mar 8, 2013 07:15
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Ghosthotel posted:I'm liking the game so far, although I think they could've cut down on the whole "something collapses and laura proceeds to fall down an entire mountain and hit 5 airplanes, 20 trees, and a rock on the way down" thing that seems to happen every 45 minutes. They're fun sequences to go through but I'm at about the halfway point I think and I'm already started to get a bit tired of them. They keep throwing those kinds of sections at you unfortunately. I really wish there was more set piece exploring like the shantytown and the ship graveyard.
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Mar 8, 2013 07:18
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Dan Didio posted:She's not wealthy, her father is and her friend's dad is a loan shark or something similar. They're hardly the elite of the elite. So basically she is Lena Dunham without the racism baggage?
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Mar 8, 2013 07:22
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