How come Tomb Raider gets away with it?

[Treblaine]

For good measure:
Me saying that Nathan Drake and Lara Croft both borrowed from Indiana Jones was a response to someone else, so take the "Lara Croft is/isn't Indy" up with them, and I explained why I thought that Nathan Drake was a bit reminiscent of Indy Jones already.

It's hard to keep track with endless quote chains.

But I just wanted it to be added to the discussion, if they are following the thread they can read it as well as you can. And I did directly respond to what you said with direct quotes.

I think both the Indy movies and the Tomb Raider games deserve a bit more distinction than painting with a broad brush. Big published pundits (aka games "journalist") only ever seriously said Lara was a "female Indiana Jones" in terms of the most very basic plot premise, not that they genuinely consider their character indistinguishable other than gender.

 

[bigman88]

Given how most triple A titles today involve lots of shooting and nothing else, i see the reason why tomb raider will gt away with it. Unlike most people, i was only impressed with the uncharted series story, colorful art style, varied locations, and good writing (but not 3's writing, and i never played 1). But to me, uncharted was just a shooter, and only an OK one at that. I found nothing stellar about the game play in uncharted except the puzzles. A.I. had suicidal enemies rushing and bombarding my position head first without a care for bullets in their faces, and the guns sounded and felt like toys. Platforming held your hand; just push in the direction you want to jump or grab onto, press x, and just sit back and watch the pretty animation. Puzzles were sparse and easy, but still fun. But 93% of the game was shooting and some fisticuffs, and it was simply just OK.
I played the first and second tomb raider on PlayStation, and the very shooty tomb raider underworld on ps2. I preferred the feel of exploration, isolation and wonder of traversing and figuring out the large areas of the early tomb raiders; you were damn lost and confused in some of those temples and tombs, and it felt satisfying to figuring out how to get past that area you were stuck running around circles in for a week. The wonder of discovering needed items just presented it's own aura of exploration. I liked the occasional wild animal/enemy encounters in those games. Now we play tomb raider underworld, and its shift to very boring third person shooting. It was some fun, but i thought to myself i just finished beating a WAY better shooter before i went through this game. It had some pretty crazy set pieces, chases and what not, but just didn't have the isolated exploration feel of 1 and 2 i played.
I haven't played the reboot, but just from looking at the many gameplay video's for it, i have no interest. I was hoping they would remake a tomb raider that went back to 1 and 2's challenging platforming, exploration and puzzles while retaining the feel and pacing of unavoidable combat being more of a surprise "encounter" than mowing through armies. I know that it annoys alot of you, but i'm another gaming vet who thinks that this generations games have lost variety, originality, and effort. Tomb raider is an example of this. Why the big shift to shooting this generation? I have my own theories for a whole different topic, but that's what tomb raider is, a shooter, and it's looks...OK. Played nuff of those, ill pass.

 

[BoredAussieGamer]

Well, considering that the original Tomb raider series was never good to begin with, I dare say hitting the reset button with a reboot making Lara an actual character wouldn't have gone down that offensively.

The idea of XCOM being remade into some FPS was offensive because it was completely alien from a series that could be considered good. I know that the backlash died down when it was revealed that was a spin off, but that was understandable.

 

[King Aragorn]

It's an origin story, it explains the differences. Otherwise all prequels should get hate/origin stories....

 

[bigman88]

1: Tomb Raider didn't become a different type of game.
2: Luara had no real personality in the other games.
3: This Tomb Raider actually has a character arc.
4: THE GAME IS JUST AMAZING! Play it already!

I don't know about any tomb raiders bt 1,2 and underworld on ps2, but tomb raider 1 and 2's gameplay focused primarily of platforming and figuring out how to advance past areas and different kinds of puzzles. Having to flip dodge and shoot wild animals, enemy gunmen or supernatural creatures was more of an addition to the gameplay. In underworld, and this, blasting stuff is the focus, while platforming is automatic and and exploration is nill. I'm sure the game is fun, but was just hoping it didn't become yet another combat game, and kept and refined what i remembered waaaaay back in the day with 1 and 2.

 

[Doom972]

1: Tomb Raider didn't become a different type of game.
2: Luara had no real personality in the other games.
3: This Tomb Raider actually has a character arc.
4: THE GAME IS JUST AMAZING! Play it already!

1. Yes it did. See the original post for the explanation.

2. Lara (not Laura) had a videogamey personality, but a personality nonetheless. Whether or not it's a good thing, is a matter of context and taste.

3. So? I never played Tomb Raider games for the story, and it never was an important aspect of the franchise.

4. I'll pass.

 

[bigman88]

1: Tomb Raider didn't become a different type of game.
2: Luara had no real personality in the other games.
3: This Tomb Raider actually has a character arc.
4: THE GAME IS JUST AMAZING! Play it already!

1. Yes it did. See the original post for the explanation.

2. Lara (not Laura) had a videogamey personality, but a personality nonetheless. Whether or not it's a good thing, is a matter of context and taste.

3. So? I never played Tomb Raider games for the story, and it never was an important aspect of the franchise.

4. I'll pass.

I'm with you. I watched most of the game videos for this to see if it's what i liked so much about the first 2. I'm watching it and yet i see yet another game where the player flattens behind waist high cover, pops out, aims down an on-screen reticle, and shoots enemy dudes. Or sneaks up behind said enemy dudes and violently murders them. Or runs up to enemy dudes face and violently murders them. Or gets shot many times by enemy dudes till the color turns grey and red, retreats behind previously mentioned waist high cover, and waits until the screen isn't grey and red anymore. And from looking at these video's, all this that i mention doesn't even look as interesting or different as other games iv'e played that employ the same game play. As i said it looks fun, but was hoping for something that didn't focus on mindless "pew, splat".

 

[Something Amyss]

It's an origin story, it explains the differences. Otherwise all prequels should get hate/origin stories....

Most reboots DO get hate.

This is a reboot getting hate for rebooting the property. It's par for the course.

 

[bigman88]

It's an origin story, it explains the differences. Otherwise all prequels should get hate/origin stories....

Most reboots DO get hate.

This is a reboot getting hate for rebooting the property. It's par for the course.

I dint think that most people who are hating on this particular reboot are hating simply because they are rebooting a series they like. I think they are just hating because they are rebooting the series into your everyday shooter, which this game is. I'm not going to argue with the fact that this is an origin story, and the dev team decided to make Lara Croft's inception into the Lara of the PlayStation happen through bloody, brutal small arms combat with armed men; that's fine. But guess whatever sequel's coming out for this game will be? Even the ones that reaches or surpasses the timelines of the tomb raider games on PlayStation? Everyday shooters. That's where the hate comes from.
You can say that the criticism for the gluttony of shooty games in the 1st or 3rd person on the market is a poorly substantiated, annoying complaint, but no matter how you look at it, it's there, whether some of you are cool with it or not. A few of us wold just like a bit of variety retained in AAA titles like previous generations; and this game going from a platformer/ adventure/ puzzler with shooting in it, to a SHOOTER, and a regular one at that, is a bit annoying.
You can say my criticism of this being a regular shooter is subjective but... compare this to other shooters. See how different this is.

 

[theultimateend]

So, is it as similar to the X-COM case as I think it is? If so, why didn't it get the same reaction?

EDIT: It seems that most people's replies are about how awesome the new game is. As I said before, it's not about whether or not it's better, but whether or not it's actually Tomb Raider, or a completely different game using its name.

The formula for Tomb Raider was and still is fairly generic and boring. It had almost immediately been done better by plenty of others.

There has >never< been a game released like X-Com that people said "Well shit, X-Com pales in comparison."

I like the new one but even it is a shell of its former glory (I still play the original a few times a year, open X-Com is a great project for those that own it and would like it to work on modern PCs without addons).

PS. I really enjoyed Tomb Raider but it was never good enough for me to feel attached to the Franchise.

1: Tomb Raider didn't become a different type of game.
2: Luara had no real personality in the other games.
3: This Tomb Raider actually has a character arc.
4: THE GAME IS JUST AMAZING! Play it already!

1. Yes it did. See the original post for the explanation.

2. Lara (not Laura) had a videogamey personality, but a personality nonetheless. Whether or not it's a good thing, is a matter of context and taste.

3. So? I never played Tomb Raider games for the story, and it never was an important aspect of the franchise.

4. I'll pass.

I feel like these 2 quote blocks explain the entire purpose of this thread.

 

[bigman88]

So you're wondering why people weren't out-raged about replacing a pair of tits on a stick for an actual three-dimensional character?

Anyone who rages over that are horny little idiots who need to grow up. From what i read so far from comments on various sites, is that people do not care for the fact that the publisher and devs revamped the tomb raider franchise into a bloody shooting game. 85% of current gen titles are shooters, some really good, some shitty Watching the gameplay vids, this looks like a good shooter, but why the frig make it into a shooter? Aren't there enough of these? It's a very jarring, unneeded change. Keeping the exploration, puzzling and occasional enemy encounter intact from the first 3 tomb raiders would have been a fresh, welcome change to all these shooters. I love to pull a trigger just as much as any other gamer, but when a game is able to stand out from all the trigger pulling that consists of today's games and do something different, it trly is appreciated. To take a game like tomb raider and make it into another trigger pulling fest is the source of the out-rage.

 

[jcfrommars9]

1: Tomb Raider didn't become a different type of game.
2: Luara had no real personality in the other games.
3: This Tomb Raider actually has a character arc.
4: THE GAME IS JUST AMAZING! Play it already!

1. Yes it did. See the original post for the explanation.

2. Lara (not Laura) had a videogamey personality, but a personality nonetheless. Whether or not it's a good thing, is a matter of context and taste.

3. So? I never played Tomb Raider games for the story, and it never was an important aspect of the franchise.

4. I'll pass.

I feel like these 2 quote blocks explain the entire purpose of this thread.

I've read this topic twice and this is also all I have gotten from it. To be honest, I don't even understand the disagreement. I don't think the differences make either the first Tomb Raider or the 2013 reboot games any better or worse.

 

[Doom972]

So, is it as similar to the X-COM case as I think it is? If so, why didn't it get the same reaction?

EDIT: It seems that most people's replies are about how awesome the new game is. As I said before, it's not about whether or not it's better, but whether or not it's actually Tomb Raider, or a completely different game using its name.

The formula for Tomb Raider was and still is fairly generic and boring. It had almost immediately been done better by plenty of others.

There has >never< been a game released like X-Com that people said "Well shit, X-Com pales in comparison."

I like the new one but even it is a shell of its former glory (I still play the original a few times a year, open X-Com is a great project for those that own it and would like it to work on modern PCs without addons).

PS. I really enjoyed Tomb Raider but it was never good enough for me to feel attached to the Franchise.

I wasn't referring to XCOM: Enemy Unknown (the remake that was released last year), I was talking about the shooter reboot that we haven't heard about in a while, which was publicly announced first and caused much outrage among X-COM fans and other old-school gamers.

 

[Edl01]

In 2010, 2K games announced that they would be reviving the X-COM franchise in the form of a first person shooter. This was met with much rage, due to 2K taking a beloved old franchise and turning it into something vastly different that had nothing to do with the previous games except for its name and having aliens invade earth. As we all know, 2K received so much negative feedback that they decided to make a much more fitting game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and the XCOM FPS was never heard from again to this day.

For some reason, Tomb Raider doesn't get the same response. Lara Croft is a completely different character - she doesn't look, sound or act like the way she was liked/disliked for (depends on personal taste), and the gameplay is now about on shooting and sneaking rather than platforming and puzzle solving - basically changing genre from action-adventure to third person shooter with stealth elements.

I'd like to say that this doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the game, but whether it was right to call it a Tomb Raider game, when it's different to the point where under a different name it wouldn't be seen as such. Can you imagine this game being called a Tomb Raider successor/clone/ripoff if it had a different name?

So, is it as similar to the X-COM case as I think it is? If so, why didn't it get the same reaction?

Well, for one, the original Xcom was a huge classic whereas tomb raider was...yeah.

For two, Enemy Unknown and the shooter don't have much to do with each other, the strategy game wasn't created because of fan backlash.

And for three, the changes were overall for the better, not for the worse.

Tomb Raider was a classic, as much as people bash it the franchise is still one of the first 3D platformers ever made that was recieved extremely well. It is still one of the best selling games on the PS1, and it aged so much better than Xcom, a game that has an interface about as user friendly as a Jet engine.

I kind of get the tomb raider hate, since up until Legend Lara was really shallow and lacked personality(and no one played the 360 games unforuanatly). But denying it the fact the origional game is a classic is going way too far.


And I still don't get why people still say Lara had no personality before this, when she did. As is said above it wasn't a very complex or developed personality, but she was more of a character than Nathan Drake and showed emotions other that being stoic many times in them three games.

 

[hermes]

Bottom Line: No fan of Tomb Raider can possibly explain why or how the original games were "Adolescent sex fantasies" they can only imply it from the duplicitous coverage by unscrupulous gaming "journalists".

Except for the countless "nude mod" that where available pretty much since day one. An impressive feat for a time when modding was nowhere near as accessible.