4RM3D said:
The old Tomb Raider games were pretty linear. You could only go 1 way and there was only 1 solution. The new Tomb Raider has a whole island to explore. The story progression is still linear, but the environment is bigger. There are still a few places with linear corridors as you described. But at the same time there are a lot of outdoor locations. The new Tomb Raiders wins in this regard.
I disagree. The new Tomb Raider has a semi-open area, but there's nothing to do in said area. It's just a pointless hub whose purpose is to give the illusion of freedom and to act as an in-between for the linear game sections whereas this is how the old Tomb Raider games worked
(At their best anyway, some of the old Tomb Raider games are genuinely crap, no denying that.):
You enter a new area in which there is a short linear section for the purpose of establishing the aesthetics and core design of an area, following this section you'll eventually enter a much larger area with no real defined goal beyond 'get through X' or 'retrieve Y'. This area in many cases will be huge, and although there's usually only answer for how to accomplish said task above, how you go about it and accomplish that goal is up to you. For example the Greek temple in Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider: Anniversary, in which to proceed through the main doorway at one section requires the completion of smaller chambers each with an individual theme based on a Greek god, for examples Ares room was a dangerous platforming/timing challenge filled with swords, sharp blades, and spears whereas Poseidon's room was a clever water puzzle that involved raising and lowering the water level to get to certain places you otherwise couldn't. These sections were non-linear and could be accomplished in any order you wished while similarly even the main chamber to reach these rooms was a giant open cavern with a massive pillar in the center you needed to platform across and solve puzzles even to just reach said themed god rooms.
4RM3D said:
Most of the old Tomb Raider games rarely had any clever puzzles either. Each game had 1 or 2 interesting ones, but I wouldn't go as far as to call them clever. The new Tomb Raider has optional tombs with puzzles. Yes, most of them are pretty straightforward and not as good as the older games. But I wouldn't say that it makes the new game worse.
Have you played many of the good old Tomb Raiders, such as the original or The Last Revelation, even Anniversary? I ask because there are tons of clever puzzles in each, including the Greek temple I mentioned above. It was only through a combination of timing, platforming, and puzzle solving that you could even beat Tomb Raider, action very rarely ever figured into the combination and usually only in the form of some endangered species that needed putting down.
4RM3D said:
There is a struggle for survival. In some cases you have to run, in other cases you have to fight and in some cases you can use stealth. While the new Tomb Raider has more shooting than the previous installments, it's definitely not a shooter. Unless you want to call games like The Last of Us shooters also?
I believe when you say run, you mean QTE event where the game shows you a cutscene of Lara running while you push buttons? Or maybe those occasional sections where really all you need to do is keep pressing forward while everything explodes or falls apart Michael Bay style around you? Yeah. Survival. You're brutally killing hundreds of people, many via gruesome and pointless 'kill sequences' where Lara plants a climbing axe in someones skull or torso. It's a shooter. Half-Life has about the same amount of puzzle and platforming as the new Tomb Raider and no one calls that anything other than a shooter.
Haven't played Last of Us so can't comment there.
4RM3D said:
Making a game more grim, dark and serious doesn't automatically makes the game better. But Tomb Raider handled it well. Also...
Debatable. As mentioned above you're viciously murdering around a hundred people throughout that game, any pretense of being a serious 'coming of age' story goes out the window when you realize you're playing a violent murdering monster. Lara Croft was often stereotyped as being violent in the original games and yet you know how many humans she fights in the first Tomb Raider game?
One. One person in the entire game. In this new 'super serious dark grim' retelling you're cutting down dozens at a time and somehow expected to sympathize with this little sociopath you're playing as.
4RM3D said:
And now the reboot tries to do something else (than the previous installments ) and succeeds. Although in this era of gritty realism games it might not stand out as much.
Here's my problem with that: There are literally hundreds of third person shooters out there and many more coming soon, many of which are excellent games. Now how many other games are there like the original Tomb Raider games? None, not right now anyway. It's literally an extinct genre, this new Tomb Raider game killed it as surely as Lara Croft kills endangered tigers.
Tomb Raider used to at least try and be different, now it's just another shooter franchise. You could argue it's a good shooter, great even, but that doesn't change the fact it's just no longer the same thing.
I'm glad you like the new Tomb Raider, but let me mourn the loss of the franchise I used to enjoy.
