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Finally a Playlist Latest Video  The Game Rise of the Tomb Raider is the second game in the Tomb Raider reboot franchise, so it is a direct sequel to the 2013 game Tomb Raider (See Here For LP) and the prequel to the just-released-as-of-2018 Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Pinning down Rise of the Tomb Raider's release date is a bit more difficult, though. It was a timed Xbox release, so if you had an Xbox360 or XboxOne you got to play it in 2015. PC and PS4 players got a crack at it in 2015. Supposedly, day one of the game going multiplatform it outstripped the XboxOne lifetimes sales, so that may explain why neither publisher SquareEnix or Microsoft chose to continue the agreement for the sequel. If the game undersold that is just too bad. It is a really solid action/adventure game with a lot of really good set pieces, fun combat, great exploration and movement and a pretty good story that will make you want to keep moving things along. It also improves heavily on the previous title by adding more reasons to backtrack through the areas, a reformatted game map along with improved hunting, crafting and combat options over the reboot game. Rise of the Tomb Raider is set about a year and a half after the first game. Lara and her companions made it off the island where a Japanese ghost was keeping sailors from up to 30 years ago and an army of the undead prisoner and was trying to come back to life through Lara's best friend who was somehow a decedent of the ghost lady. It was a whole thing. Anyway, if you collected all the collectibles in the game you would find out some Templars-in-Assassin's-Creed style order called Trinity wanted to harness the death conquering powers of the ghost queen. Yo, guess who the bad guys are in this game? Really, just about all you need to know about the backstory of this game can be found in the first video, it's like an hour long. It's sort of jarring that so few elements from the first game's setting made it to this game considering both were written by Rhianna Pratchett and so you would think there would be more continuity there. Instead Rise of the Tomb Raider spends a lot of time fleshing out Lara's history and backstory, so the number of secondary characters is way down and the quest Lara is on is more personal for her, which means more emotions that aren't abject terror at the horrible situation she's in like in the first game. The LP For the most part I'm going to follow the formula I used by the end of the first Tomb Raider LP, in that I'll be moving all the Lore stuff to the end of each video, so don't let the format of the first video fool you. I'm going to show most everything I can on screen, though some stuff will end up being clean up collecting off screen. The idea is that each video will progress us in some way, either in the story or in the world. I'll be hitting all the tombs the game has on offer and the side missions, but I'm not going to strive to collect every cache of coins or anything. Hopefully the LP takes fewer hours than my first playthrough (27 hours...). I'm going to be choosing upgrades and weapon modifications, so this is going to mostly be viewer interactionless. Should be on a Tuesday/Thursday update schedule for the LP, depends on how much time I have to edit and record. Spoiler Policy Don't spoil stuff. Videos                                       
Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 17:00 on May 25, 2019 |
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Nov 21, 2018 01:55
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We're off to a very Uncharted start here, with Lara hopping around the globe and jumping forward and backward in time to break things in different environments. Some of them quite expensive, probably! One of the more interesting points about the plot to this game is that the previous game in the franchise is almost completely superfluous. Like, the island is mentioned, Trinity was hinted at existing if you collect all the things in the first game and Jonah is back, but that's about it setting-wise. If you liked the first game's mechanics, though, there's great news. Almost everything in the first game is back for a second round here, some of it improved or expanded upon, and a bunch of new features were added that we'll delve into as the game progresses that makes it really fun. There's not much of that in the first couple videos (like, wait till video five or six probably to see some of the really fun stuff), but the developers didn't just copy/paste the gameplay aspects of the reboot for the sequel.
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Nov 21, 2018 01:56
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berryjon posted:Yay! It's a good game, and engrossing. I put something like 26 hours into my first playthrough and still didn't collect everything. Granted, a great deal of that was aimless wandering and killing animals for skins I didn't need. It's a really worthy successor to something like Arkham Asylum where you have these hub areas where you need to go get an upgrade or gadget to progress through stuff and then you can get on a path to the next story set-piece.
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Nov 21, 2018 14:08
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Now we're into the meat of the Rise of the Tomb Raider experience. This game is a bit of a collectathon in that you are constantly killing animals, harvesting plants and breaking open crates to get scrap in order to upgrade your equipment and craft ammo and healing items. You are also on the lookout for the lore stuff (now at the end of the video as it will be for the rest of the LP) and coins. The coins won't have a real purpose for some time yet, but they are worth grabbing as you can bypass some of the gatekeeping the game does by spending them on the right things, but it isn't enough to think that's a reasonable idea at the end of the day; you are better off spending them on the quality of life stuff when that comes up. I have to say that they did a great job expanding on the secondary fire mechanic in this game. Each weapon has a version of it, you can always craft the ammo if you have the right stuff and they are all worthwhile. The bow actually gets three and they are all really good, though you won't see all of them till close to the end of the game. The only knock I have on the system is that with the variety of weapons (revolvers vs. semi auto pistols or Assault Rifle vs. SMG, etc) they had a chance to do multiple types of secondary fire for each weapon class and then have the bow be the equalizer with its three types of secondary fire so you only ever needed that type of special ammo to progress. It's a minor issue to be sure, and one that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but with only four weapon types a little bit more variety wouldn't have hurt.
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Nov 23, 2018 21:47
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Alexeythegreat posted:Oh god I missed the beginning of this and now I'll need to find the time to catch up with the first two videos I've beaten the game. Most of the early to mid part of the game is basically Gulag Archipelago the game with regards to the setting. DLC is nice and weird/fun, though.
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Nov 27, 2018 14:52
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In the Tomb Raider reboot there's a scene early on where Lara has to hunt a deer and then for the rest of the game the entire concept of killing random animals (that aren't wolves) goes right out the window. It was one of those weird design decisions in the first game that they completely rectified in this game, if you were wondering. I actually do wonder if they purposefully had Lara track down a deer in this game before introducing the bear as an enemy to highlight the fact that yes, it is going to be different this time. Tracking and killing animals is going to net you important upgrade materials, there are "special" animals that have special skins that are used in specific upgrades, there are rare animals you can only hunt at specific times in the game and there are a limited number of others (bears, mostly) that make you have to consider how to use the upgrade materials you get from them. Yes, this video is mostly Lara hunting other humans so this is sort of a tangent, but the change to Lara's interaction with the animals in the game is worth considering and mentioning in more detail here because I only brush past it during the videos. The developers could have just left it well enough alone as it doesn't necessarily add anything to the gameplay or ramp up the replay value or make you feel like you have to do something for completionist reasons, but it's a nice, inoffensive addition/expansion on the previous game that is more in line with how sequels should treat game mechanics. Keep the things that work, improve the things that almost worked and expand the stuff you hinted at but didn't have time to incorporate fully.
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Nov 28, 2018 03:38
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The best addition to this game gets introduced here. Yes, setting things on fire is very much in line with the previous game, but setting people on fire is kind of new. Lanterns now, molotovs, grenades and smoke bombs later; the game gives you a ton of different options for taking out or confusing enemies in the middle of a fight and it adds a layer of depth to the combat and set pieces that was missing from the previous game. I just wish rope arrows could pull people off ledges, then my life would be complete as you could gently caress with NPCs in even more ways at that point.
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Nov 30, 2018 03:47
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SubponticatePoster posted:I got this game and made it a bit further into the area you're in, then got distracted by something shiny. I've beaten the first and the latest, I'll have to come back to this one at some point (and do the VR thing). It's funny you say that because I tore through the first and preordered the third before I even loaded this one on my PC and I've owned it for over a year now. I think there's something about the series where I know it is really high quality, but my dumb brain keeps saying I don't have enough time to dedicate to it. Of course I tore through this in the course of a week and had a great time doing it, so maybe I'll remember that next time I try to convince myself I don't have the ability to sit down and just play a game.
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Dec 2, 2018 18:14
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Rise of the Tomb Raider brings back a lot of the structure of the Tomb Raider reboot. You have collecting scrap, you have documents and artifacts, you have challenges and tombs. One of the newer elements are these structured side missions. Most of them are pretty simple "collect this many of these" or "find all this" things that just send you around the map and are overall pretty simple. The reason I like them is that 1) the reward is often new stuff or weapon parts so while optional, they are genuinely helpful rather than being paltry or useless rewards (challenges, by the by, are just going to net you points to spend in the game's Card Shop and can be safely ignored) and 2) they are effective ways to take you around the map instead of just running from point to point to point for collectibles like you may be tempted to do. Instead you get encouraged to explore a bit from the main body or where quests require you to go and you can learn more about how the area is arranged than if you were just running between the objectives the maps and monoliths uncover. That said, there are only a few of these side missions and they are pretty basic. The game lacks some sort of grand reward for doing all of them, so they don't really add to a sense of amazing progression. It would be kind of great if that by finishing them you got like an expanded equipment bag or a special bow type or an outfit or something. Instead you just get a sense of accomplishment. If the game had a faction or trust system or something maybe it could have been incorporated in there, but with only one friendly faction and the story dictating the level of trust said faction has in you, I don't think that was ever in the cards. In the end the side missions are that new feature that adds a bullet point to the back of the box without making a major impact on the game, at best it is a nice thing to have included, at worst it is an inoffensive little addition that probably doesn't warrant two paragraphs of text.
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Dec 5, 2018 03:25
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Darkest Auer posted:But that's exactly what you get from the side missions You get special equipment from EACH side mission, but if you do all of them there's no like, uber reward. I think that isn't such a huge deal as you won't finish them till the end of the game and so it would just be a final chapter only item, but it would be fun to just wander in with God's Own Climbing Tool and just being able to one hit melee kill everyone or something nuts.
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Dec 5, 2018 21:52
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LP curse has delayed things a bit here. I've actually not sat at my computer for more than a few hours this week and that was spent trying to figure out why the next episode wouldn't process right. I still have no idea, but I changed out a transition (how do you feel about those, by the way?) and that seemed to fix it. Weird thing is that there were no actual errors with the video, just something in the way I structured the edits caused issues the first time through. Oh, oh and then even better I went to edit things for the next couple videos and it turns out something went super weird with the source video that caused a completely black frame to insert itself every 5 frames. For the whole video. If it was just part of the time I may have been able to fix it, but not like that. So I need to rerecord is the story there. Finally, my insistence on swapping out saves doesn't look like stupid paranoia. I knew this poo poo would happen.
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Dec 10, 2018 03:41
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The plan now is to spin off most tombs as their own thing so you can avoid them as they are mostly just flavor rather than story-relevant. In an effort to be more efficient in my recordings I had recorded two episodes back to back, those became the ruined video that partially delayed this one (the other factor is that I was out till 11 on Thursday and fell asleep about five seconds into being home on Friday night and decided to wait on posting). You know how this is episode six and each video has been about half an hour or longer? I took me 45 minutes to essentially speed run back to where this video ends. I just skipped the tombs, finding the artifacts and texts, hunting down supplies and didn't bother much with stealth or flavor conversations. It's amazing how much not-gameplay the game packs in, frankly. Now that I think about it, when I played through the first time I probably went a few hours between combat sequences at some points. There's lots to explore and find and do that isn't fighting and the game doesn't bother railroading you along the story path over much. As a matter of fact, I think you can fast travel out of just about everything until the end game. I felt like the reboot game was a lot more linear than this one with a ton more combat to sort of slow your progress while this game focuses more on puzzles and background details to keep you searching the more wide open maps that the game is comprised of. We're about 20 percent of the way through and something like four hours into the game, I expect I'll have to cut lots of exploration before we finish, and it'll still be a really long LP. The Tomb Raider team really delivers on your investment if you want to do everything you can.
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Dec 12, 2018 02:18
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Lord Zedd-Repulsa posted:Even if this ends up on the long side for your LPs or for video LPs, you won't take nearly as long as some I've followed for jRPGs with boatloads of side quests Oh, you mean the multi year LPs that update like twice a week and still make minuscule progress because there is just so much stuff? I hardly have the patience to read those, LPing them would be hell.
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Dec 13, 2018 18:16
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So it turns out TR has an interesting way of dealing with the documents you find in game telling a story. Instead of you picking up a specific document each time, you get the next document in the sequence from a person. That's why the documents in this video are from my scrapped version of this level: I picked up almost nothing in terms of documents in my effort to get back to this point in the game quickly and so got documents from early in the game here. I think the approach is just smart. The journals, letters, recordings, etc. are backstories that add a lot of context and flavor to the world. If you miss one or two of them in the middle of the sequence you miss important parts of those backstories. The game also seamlessly drops in one or two shot document types, like what we saw in the previous video, in areas where context or clues about a puzzle or how to make progress can be gleaned from said documents. It's natural enough and done smartly enough you wouldn't normally notice it unless you had a moment like I did in this video or someone pointed it out to you like I'm doing now.
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Dec 14, 2018 15:51
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Let's talk a second about how Rise of the Tomb Raider handles stealth: exactly like the previous game. You hide in bushes, Lara ducks behind objects and is invisible if you are not in an enemy's line of sight and the bow is completely silent while any silenced weapons still make a degree of noise. The "Throw stuff for distractions" mechanic is great as long as you don't, say, convert everything into an explosive the second you grab it and then ruin any attempts to stealth segments, something that I will surely do at some point. Stealth kills are pretty brutal and effective in the game, especially when in cover as Lara will pull the enemy right in to to bush or reeds or whatever she's hiding in. This is pretty great as the game has no body movement mechanic and so killing enemies in the open is often a detriment if you are trying to remain unnoticed. I also really, really like the "enemies in the line of sight of other enemies are highlighted red" thing. You can't always tell when that is the case on looks alone and not knowing can really mess up attempts to stay hidden. Later in the game when the maps get more complex it will also give you warning that there are guys you haven't seen yet out in the area, and that's a lifesaver if there ever was one. Once we get to that point in the game I'll have to talk about how the map design plays to the mechanics and how enemies just do not look up, which I think is a purposeful decision so the designers could give you flanking options over their heads.
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Dec 19, 2018 03:33
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One of the things they brought back for this game that I love are the escape sequences like you see in this video. They are simple, to the point, fun and spectacular to watch and play. All you really need to do is hit the sprint button and press jump as necessary and you are good to go, yet you feel great doing it. I think these sequences end up being great showcases for the game as a whole, whether you want to focus on the motion capture/animation or movement or responsiveness of the controls. If you screw up one of these segments it is often your own fault rather than something the game forced you into through some deep seated fault in the controls or anything. The polish the studio puts into the game comes through in these because you can find flaws with animation/motion capture, movement and responsiveness at different points (see: Jacob's arm in previous video), but when it matters most they made sure to have their ducks in a row for stuff like this and the "issues" with those subject matter are generally pretty small or nitpicks rather than showstoppers. They absolutely could be in other games, but the developers made sure to iron flat most of the egregious issues, which in my opinion counts for a lot.
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Dec 21, 2018 04:02
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This is about when the open world aspect of the game starts to assert itself. Yes, we've seen a side mission already and we know it isn't exactly a groundbreaking experience. Go find this, go collect that, accomplish a (seemingly) trivial task for me. You aren't going to find an Elder Scrolls style side-quest-that-takes-four-hours-by-itself missions here, they are just kind of quick and dirty quests that give you upgrades and such. I think it is a really workable solution to unlocking weapon pieces and whatnot as otherwise you would just be opening up storage boxes all day. Instead the game gives you a fairly trivial task, so it is hard to complain about even slightly more involved content in the game. Here's the other thing: it fits into the story of the game. In the reboot Lara and the other shipwreck survivors were struggling for survival and the only other people on the island were hostile. In Rise of the Tomb Raider Lara has made contact with friendly forces and wants to earn their trust as they have a mutual enemy, but she also has a level of guilt over the fact they need help as she more or less is responsible for Trinity showing up. Story wise the Remnant missions make a ton of sense and don't feel shoehorned in. If anything I would like to see more unique rewards or more involvement with the story tied to these (as I've mentioned before); finish them all and get a special weapon or technique or if you do X number one of the quest givers will help you out later instead of a generic character. Just something to make them feel a bit more tied into the main story and/or game structure than they are currently.
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Dec 28, 2018 02:31
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So because this is more collecting of things rather than new story content I wanted to do a quick check on something. You may have noticed that when I cut the documents/relics/etc. from the video and put them at the end that I'm using different transitions. How are those? Are they distracting or a nice diversion from the stock standard fade in/fade out that you may see in other LPs? I try to add new stuff to each LP I end up doing and so my objective here was to provide something a bit different for these segments that let you know the cuts were purposeful. I guess the better question is if the transitions/cuts are really necessary in your opinion(s). I think putting the journals and relic investigations at the end of the video is the right thing for flow of the episode, but you may feel like your are losing context. In at least one video I'm going to leave things as I found them because it makes an impact on the story. Otherwise, I think putting them at the end is the way to go, but I'm interested in what everyone else thinks.
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Jan 2, 2019 03:12
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Megillah Gorilla posted:Most of the stuff doesn't seem to connect directly to what Lara is doing at the moment, beyond general locational flavour. Luckily the latter scenario is not something the game ever does in the main campaign, but there are a few documents in the DLC that are relevant as soon as you find them, like the game requires you to pick one up to advance the plot and sends you on to your next objectives. Those three or so documents are the only ones that will stick in their original spots probably for the rest of the game. I was putting the other documents at the end of the videos because it worked well in the first Tomb Raider, but didn't want to make a bad assumption that it was still the way to go.
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Jan 2, 2019 19:59
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As promised, we get into the DLC this episode. Well, the story DLC. I have to make that distinction because Crystal Dynamics did something a bit different here and incorporated not only a main quest/side quest DLC but also did a "start from the menu" DLC that I have not actually played yet. I think what they did here is pretty fun and incorporates into the rest of the game really well. If it tied back into the main quest somehow it would more or less be exactly what people want out of main mission DLC, but instead it lives in its own world in terms of story and what. At the same time, there is the tomb seen in this video that grants you an ability you will take back to the rest of the game and you can boost your Russian skills in here and get a leg up on the high level Russian monolith near the lumber mill. It doesn't disrupt anything overly much, and is different and new enough to justify it being there in the first place. I can't think of much negative to say about this. It's kind of funny, though, that this game has a DLC incorporated into the main story/mode of play. Or maybe that's only in my case. Back when the PS2 was still new and consoles were seeing their first online services (Ignore the Dreamcast, I guess) one of the franchises that was suggested would get "Episodic" content was Tomb Raider. You could go down a dark hole looking for it, but I clearly remember an issue of EGM that plotted out how it would work. Basically, you would pay for chapters to the game that you would then download and play after the main quest was over. Think the modern Hitman franchise (hey, both were published by Eidos back then. Must be a coincidence) where you have a set of missions and then more are released for the title as time goes on. I don't think they ever bothered doing that with Tomb Raider because the average internet connection sucked then more than it does now and the console hard drives that weren't the Xbox sucked. Today it is almost unconscionable that any game not have DLC, but the trend is now towards season passes and free post release content with microtransactions to pay for the continued work of the devs. I wonder how the average industry person who was involved in Episodic Content would look at the modern DLC/post launch economy of games. I can't decide if they think we hosed up or evolved exactly along the lines they always envisioned.
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Jan 4, 2019 03:56
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Megillah Gorilla posted:Wow, that puzzle sucked. All of the cranks that move something Lara isn't standing on are just illusion of control intractable objects. You never have a reason to half or partially crank anything and it often ends up being detrimental if you do, as seen here. The game is incredibly forgiving when it comes to timing on puzzles and escape sequences; if you screw up and miss the first cue or get caught on something there is leeway in the timing of whatever platform/rope/jump is needed for progress. You would think because of that the interactable items like the cranks and things you can push or pull that show up later in the game would also have some slack. As we saw here, that isn't the case. They are more or less binary, on or off systems. If I had to guess, that is so players won't spend forever looking for a sweet spot or having to guess if they did something correctly on these. It just backfired hilariously here.
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Jan 4, 2019 14:41
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"tripping" sections in games feel almost mandatory now. Far Cry 3 basically made them a requirement because they were that good in that game that now everyone incorporates them. And why not? It give the art team something to do, gives you a chance to do something different with gameplay and is an instant mood/story builder if you make it on rails like this segment is. The one in this video works out because the developers don't overuse it, though. You won't really see it again in the entire game or in the DLC, and they aren't making you trip and shoot arrows or anything, no messing with the controls or what that other games may try. They know they are using it to add some back story or give some character depth or tell you how evil the witch is, etc. CD isn't going to make it the centerpiece of the rest of the DLC like some studios may have been tempted to do.
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Jan 9, 2019 03:37
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berryjon posted:I still think the best "Trip" section came out of the original Max Payne, if only for the sheer mood whiplash it causes. I don't remember the one from Oni, but the Max Payne one I think everyone knows. I think comparing the Max Payne trip sequences to Far Cry 3 and beyond is difficult because there was a generational leap between the two games. In the Xbox/PS2 era I don't think you could have pulled off what Ubisoft did in Far Cry 3 due to hardware limitations being what they were. You basically had to have a completely different level load in with different assets if you wanted players to have a "trip." By the the time the last generation of consoles were nearing end of life a number of developers were figuring out how to make assets pop in and out of existence in real time directly in front of the player.
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Jan 10, 2019 19:01
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My Cuck Dad posted:One of my favorite trip sections in a video game came from Spec Ops: The Line, although it's hard to say where the actual "trip" starts and ends with that game. That is a good one, I think the WP sequence is one of the more effective uses of altered mental states in games. If I had to point to a clunky use of the trip sequence it has to be the Scarecrow segments of Arkham Asylum. I'm almost always in favor of games changing up how you play them for short periods, but the Scarecrow segments were taking the really strong gameplay the series became known for and trying to shoehorn it into something that felt like a Mario 64 boss level. HOWEVER, I will concede that the "walk around and have visions" sections that precede the Scarecrow gameplay stuff are pretty good.
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Jan 10, 2019 21:36
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Well, this turned into a boondoggle. I really meant to just grab some chemicals and move on, then I realized how little time you would spend getting to said chemicals and had to decide on the fly if I wanted to keep exploring the area or go back to do more DLC. In the end, as you may see, I decided to soldier on a bit more and it turned out super well because now I can make bottles into firebombs and my god, I wanted that bad. Turning junk into weapons is super fun and great in this game. You'll see me take every opportunity I get to make use of both the tin can grenades and the molotov cocktails because they are just that good. The proximity mine radios I could take or leave, though. They rely on you wanting to alert guards and the radios are rare enough that they aren't as common as they need to be for the mines to be useful. Bottles and cans, on the other hand, are everywhere. I tend to think that is because the unlocks on those are free and so the developers can rely on you having them where the radio thing is an optional upgrade and so if every second guard dropped one they would just be a distraction object instead of a possible weapon, so by making them pop up less often the game doesn't force players to decide between a distraction object that could be a weapon with a quick button press and something that you can only use to distract.
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Jan 11, 2019 04:04
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Megillah Gorilla posted:It causes me deep nerd pain every time they do that. Raiders of the Lost Art on Netflix will invoke the same sort of reaction in art nerds. The first season is more about paintings that were lost, stolen or destroyed, the second season is sort of about the same thing but more biography of the artists with stuff thrown in about which of their paintings the Nazis stole and how the Monunments Men were awesome.
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Jan 11, 2019 14:24
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I legit think I had more weird technical glitches in this and the next episode than I've had in any recording in a long time. Granted, a large part of that appears to be due to me trying to get fancy and hit the zoom button, but yeah, things get all glitchy in the next video and it really throws me for a loop. Anyway, I really like the segments of games with vision sequences that take you through the area you had your vision in and show you how mundane(ish) it really was. All those skeletons that faced you down? Just scarecrows...with human skulls attached all over. Nothing weird there. Some of the other stuff is far more interesting, though. I will also say this about the episode: I apologize for the time it takes me to finish the centerpiece puzzle here. You need to get timing fairly close to exact and the game only gives you a notification it worked out when you get to the second level, so if you get it wrong like I do, you have to just go back and try again. And again. And again. It isn't to say you see bad puzzle design, it is just that the complexities of it are a bit beyond anything in the vanilla game and so managing platform positioning with timing and a veritable spiderweb of ropes can be a bit intimidating and may confuse someone unfamiliar with all the mechanics of the rope arrows.
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Jan 16, 2019 04:11
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So word of warning: almost this entire video is me loving up a dead simple, multi stage boss fight. I blame the fact I was trying to record at the same time. Also there's a weird glitch if you try to do stuff the wrong way, which I can only imagine exists because no one testing the game would have thought to see if you could or couldn't climb up in a spot when you could way more easily jump on a rotating platform. I had to cut out a dumb amount of video because I didn't figure that basic thing out. The fight is pretty good as far as I'm concerned. The boss isn't overly difficult, the adds that show up aren't in spots that are going to screw you over or be much of a problem, and the "puzzle" of the fight is well choreographed from earlier in the DLC. In all, I think the developers did a good job of making this DLC match with the rest of the game pretty seamlessly while also having it be its own thing.
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Jan 23, 2019 01:34
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MadDogMike posted:Actually picked up the Tomb Raider games after watching the LPs, just got a little past you in this one (been splitting between Rise and the original at the moment). You missed one shortcut when your weighted platform gambit failed around 10:30, there's a section of wall behind you where you can scramble up to reach some slats you can climb up (to the right of where you tried to jump up around 11 minutes). Not sure why they didn't color code it white like the usual spots, though the wall it's on is white at least. Granted just grabbing the platforms and coming back from the "opposite way" works better like you showed. Tried collecting all the stuff in that area, but it is a nightmare; at least one of them seems like a nightmare timed jumping puzzle that I decided not to screw with. Nice to see I'm not the only one starting to get too many resources so I can't collect more; think I even did the shotgun ammo pouch just to stop the complaining and try desperately to use some of the stuff up. Gathering everything in the area is a problem for sure. It really is better to come back after you've gotten most of the remaining equipment to clean up as you are unable to get to a few areas (as I mentioned in the video) until you have a specific unlock. Magical Lobster posted:Another good video! Really enjoying your LP - thanks for putting this together. Always glad to hear people are enjoying the videos. The in-story DLC is actually pretty good. I sort of wish they had done more of that (though the game is long enough, we're only about 35% of the way done), but there are additional DLCs outside the story that I haven't touched yet that I plan to cover before the end of the LP and I've heard those are really different and wouldn't fit into the game as it exists too well.
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Jan 24, 2019 14:26
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So my life is out of control and if Thursday is a clusterfuck then Friday through Monday are the same way. Hence late videos multiple weeks in a row. Before we get much further into the game I have to make a comment here: I have no idea how crazy Lara's training regimen is, but it must be nuts. I know this is a game and there's a suspension of disbelief, but seriously. I average 4.4 miles in half an hour in the freezing cold, up and down hill or on flat land, but at sea level. I went to Lake Tahoe a couple years ago and couldn't handle that pace on a treadmill even at the end of the week, and that elevation is nowhere near what Lara is dealing with. She has to be at like peak fitness if she can handle running, jumping, swinging and climbing in half foot deep snow and freezing conditions while wearing full winter weather gear. It's insane.
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Jan 30, 2019 02:49
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You know those moments in games where you start to see a thing and then it disappears for most of the rest of the game? Like a mechanic that gets brought up a couple times but is completely disregarded after introduction? Pushing stuff for puzzles is that mechanic in Rise of the Tomb Raider. It's used a couple times here and once in the previous video, but then pretty much stops being a major thing the rest of the time. I don't know why that is, but my theory is that they had so much other stuff happening around rope arrows, cutting lines, cranks and some things we haven't seen yet that there was just a hard limit on what they could do with it and so it just couldn't be fully implemented. I can't blame anyone for being cautious about overusing it as it is sort of unspectacular, but it is still weird that it doesn't stick around for more stuff through the rest of the game while some of the other things I've mentioned are in the game to the very end.
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Feb 1, 2019 03:15
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MadDogMike posted:Nice to see/hear you make the exact same mistakes I made in that area, though my ability to ninja through doing stealth takedowns like you do instead of bumbling around and shooting my way out frantically like a madman is... noticeably worse than yours. I will say having finally finished the first Tomb Raider that I like how this sequel seems much better about the running sequences; they don't seem to be as common in Rise and the ones that happen are much easier to figure out what to do (I swear sometimes I thought having a great graphics card made the first one harder because I couldn't see a drat thing past all the debris/splashing water it kept throwing on the screen, Rise doesn't let the chaos confuse you as to what to do in the sequence as much). I think RotTR does a much better job of clearly marking directions at all times. It seems like that is a side effect of the game being far more "open world" style than Tomb Raider. The use of large hub areas, side missions, etc. means that they needed to indicate the direction of progress for the average player because you can't just go with the usual "find more enemies to find more progress" path. Stealth in this game is really good, but there are points where I swear they want you to stealth stuff and then design the area so it is impossible to do so. Doubling down on guards, multiple patrolling guys, several levels of people on watch covering each other. After a time you just assume everything is going to be a firefight because sneaking around is effectively not possible. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I don't like the illusion of choice sensation I get from those areas.
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Feb 4, 2019 19:41
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Haha, lovely work internet.
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Feb 4, 2019 19:56
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We've officially arrived at our second major hub of the game, the Geothermal Valley. We're going to spend a lot of time here and so I used this episode to show off kind of the edges of the area, not everything by a long shot, but enough that you get the lay of the land. Just like in the Soviet Installation area there are a few different challenges and places we will need to come back to once we have new and different equipment and a couple spots that won't open up until we hit a specific spot in the story. I really like this hub. It has more in the way of terrain differences and traversal options than the Installation and some really great scenery, whether it is the giant tower off the coast or the ice floes in the river; the place isn't just snow and old ramshackle wooden structures. The only issue is that it makes my 1070 cry. RotTR is not a well optimized game, which is weird because it came out months after the Xbox version and so one would think that there was a bit more polish applied to making it run well on the PC. That is not what happened. Instead it appears Crystal Dynamics decided to bump up graphical fidelity and add a bunch of effects. Turning down settings won't do much to make the performance better, by the way, I tried that and this area just has a bunch of really rough spots no matter what I do. It always bugs me when I have a pretty strong setup with components that came out a year after the game released and the thing still makes the computer cry. Someone messed up is what that says.
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Feb 6, 2019 02:01
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CoffeeQaddaffi posted:I noticed it too, and I think it had to do with dropped frames making the level/action video slightly shorter than the audio. Or something, I'm not a VLP maker and don't mess around with editing video. I was pressed for time and didn't run it through my usual process. I may reupload with that step added and the audio/video reedited. This is what I get for trying to get around a proven workflow.
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Feb 7, 2019 02:22
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More side missions this time around. As I've said before, Rise of the Tomb Raider really gives you lots to do, even if things are kind of simple at times (or difficult if you are me and also dumb). Challenges, side missions, more tombs, more hunting and resource gathering; it's enough that I actually keep telling myself (and have said in some videos) that the game doesn't have a ton of combat compared to the first game. While this one is more puzzle focused than Tomb Raider Reboot it is still combat and stealth section heavy, it's just that you get long breaks in between story missions like this, and those are where most of the combat happens. One thing I haven't mentioned is just how good combat and shooting things in this game feels. You can see that when you start off with a weapon like the assault rifle it has a number of shortcomings that you have to work around, but instead of upgrading it to make it feel overpowered or like a different weapon entirely the upgrades are subtle enough that you don't have to relearn how the weapon feels as it goes through the upgrade path. It still feels like the same weapon, but you can reload faster or more bullets land on target, or the bow draws a little faster. As is usual with video games, enemy encounters ramp up in difficulty as you progress and so it seems like the gun upgrades just keep pace with the harder enemies. You can't just rely on an OP weapon to get you out of dumb situations is what I'm saying. Most shooters either don't have you upgrading at all or give story-progression upgrades that keep pace with the enemies. Rise of the Tomb Raider does gate you by controlling access to tools to take weapon upgrades to the next tier, but you have a great deal of freedom in deciding which weapons you want to upgrade and somehow it doesn't let you just blow everything out of the water if you focus on just one weapon, which is impressive.
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Feb 13, 2019 02:07
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This is one of those "I swear to god I'm not stupid" videos. Yes, I completely forgot you had to tech-tree to make grenades. Yes, I forgot which tombs did and didn't require plot items to get into. Yes, I totally forgot that you can attach rope arrows to stuff overhead. Actually, that last one I don't feel bad about. Watch the LP so far and stay tuned for the rest and see how many times Lara jumps up to stab an anchor overhead when using a rope arrow. I think this video contains the only instance in the entire game. I have no idea how you are supposed to figure out it can be done outside of trial and error. Additionally, we haven't seen a switch to this point in the game, or at least one that is operated by using rope arrows. Again, if you don't see it or the game never explicitly tells you it is a thing there isn't a good reason I can think of that you would work it out on your own. This is a pretty open game, but it is grounded in what Lara's capabilities are. If you aren't told something is possible you have no reason to think it is, and nearly every mechanic and object you can make use of is introduced in the course of story events so you have to know something is a thing because you can't get to where you are unless you learn it exists. For some reason this and a couple other Tombs in the game sort of throw that set of rules out the window and show you stuff you may have seen if you come back after a point in the story, but have no reason to know is a factor otherwise. It's a small gripe overall, but it does bug me.
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Feb 15, 2019 03:51
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More than the percentage of completion (we're still under 50% at this point, by the way) I knew there was a lot of game left when I didn't get the shotgun until this point in the game. Maybe doing the DLC as it appeared instead of later in the game caused me to think that I was far further in that I thought due to the sheer number of hours I had played, but for a semi-linear combat-action-puzzler Rise of the Tomb Raider is a long game with or without the Baba Yaga stuff. Blocking tombs off and keeping one of your weapon slots empty to this point is a good way to signal to the player that you have plenty of content left, but I do find myself wishing that one of the tools we've yet to get and the shotgun were earlier additions to Lara's inventory simply because handing out weapons is incredibly unevenly paced. You get the bow and pistol pretty close to each other, then the AR not long after. Then it is a long wait for the shotgun. Even if you want to point to the bow having multiple firing types, you have to remember it is basically just regular and poison arrows until you get fire arrows (like a video ago) and then finally the other arrow type next video. The fact they are throwing all these things at me makes me feel like I should be preparing for the end as the game hasn't been this generous with new stuff for quite some time, but in the same moment I know I'm pretty far removed from the end game based on my completion percentage.
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Feb 20, 2019 03:56
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I really like the short action sections the game throws at you. Just a couple fights in these otherwise forgettable areas without much new or different to see. The under the glacier ruins are much the same. I feel like this section is a better example, though, as you change scenery rapidly and gain new stuff at the end.
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Feb 22, 2019 12:13
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 08:25 |
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I ended up recording this episode for a full hour, hence cutting the video where I did. We're picking up more equipment by the end of the episode, and progressing the plot somewhat, and also fighting a bunch of guys. This is basically what every episode should be. If you want to see the inspiration of the Arkham franchise, or Metroidvanias on the Tomb Raider Reboot series this is a great episode for it just because you get to see the introduction of an ability and immediately you have a reason to use it right in front of you. In subsequent videos you'll get to see us access paths that were effectively blocked off to us because of the new ability. Just like a Metroid/Castlevania/Arkham game. I think the formula is really well applied throughout this game, better than the previous game, at least, and gives you a good reason to re-explore areas to pick up the benefits from tombs or from earning xp/coins/etc. I think a lot of the time games just use those gradual unlocks of additional means of traversal/level navigation to get you to collectibles and to the next mission/boss/stage where Rise of the Tomb Raider being a slightly openish world puts those things behind the same sort of lock and key but also hides away quality of life techniques and abilities, which is an even better incentive to re-negotiate some areas of the map.
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Feb 28, 2019 02:13
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