Tomb Raider Review - An Icon Reborn
- Thread starter Susan Arendt
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So you've basically sold me on this game, but I have one question: Did anyone in the office play the PC version and, if so, is the game better with controller or mouse and keyboard?Susan Arendt said:
Alternatively: Does the gameplay on the 360 version seem well-suited to M&K or is it a controller game all the way through?
Inquiring minds want to know.
"The Lara of the new Tomb Raider isn't the plastic princess that we're used to..."
What games were you playing? Because as a long time, female fan of the series I don't recall her ever being a plastic princess until Crystal Dynamics took over and started to put in their ideas of how women behave. I'm getting sick of all the slut shaming and bashing of the classic Lara Croft, it's all focused on her appearance like she had no story, history, or personality before. Yeah they gave her big boobs, her cloths weren't always realistic, but she was made of steel. She was intelligent, she was talented, she was brave. There were levels of her as a young girl, she had fear and inexperience, but it was balanced out by her confidence. She wasn't going to cower by the fire, crying to her mentor Werner about how scary tombs are with him trying to encourage her. He wouldn't even have taken her along and mentored her if she were like this. Why would she even ask. The original Lara asked tons of questions, learned, took a deep breath and went into the darkness, at times without her mentor around to help her. This new Lara Croft looks to me to be like a porcelain princess who needs a bunch of men to teach her how to be strong so she can carefully edge herself into the darkness. But oh god, there might be a big burly dude in there wanting touch her inappropriately.
The game sounds like it's suffering the same problems as Other M. I don't care if it's written by a woman, it makes no difference. I don't care if positive reviews are coming from women even. It's just making a bunch of men sleep better at night.
Of course it's realistic, lacking confidence and strength has always been realistic for women. It's always realistic for women to look to men for strength. Vulnerability is always realistic for women. They'd never do this to a male protagonist in a video game, because it'll take the power fantasy away from male players. Reviews keep saying, no video game protagonist has ever been shown like this. Well no shit, they're mostly male. It's not realistic or good for sales to have men shown as weak and having to have their hand held. Even the cover of Tomb Raider has her all curled up, with her head down like a little, shy girl who needs encouragement to come out of her shell. A shy girl who's been abused to hell and back by a nasty boyfriend and needs a nice guy to come lift her chin and say cheer up kid. I'm here for you.
No one would dare make a game like this with a male protagonist. It's easy to do it to a female protagonist because it's "realistic." I'm sick of it being "realistic" for women. Keep the new appearance, but bring back the classic Lara Croft who would've nerd the hell out when finding a creepy, dark tomb, instead of whine about it.
The Tomb Raider game I've been waiting for is long dead and buried under males gamers being too intimidated to try.
What games were you playing? Because as a long time, female fan of the series I don't recall her ever being a plastic princess until Crystal Dynamics took over and started to put in their ideas of how women behave. I'm getting sick of all the slut shaming and bashing of the classic Lara Croft, it's all focused on her appearance like she had no story, history, or personality before. Yeah they gave her big boobs, her cloths weren't always realistic, but she was made of steel. She was intelligent, she was talented, she was brave. There were levels of her as a young girl, she had fear and inexperience, but it was balanced out by her confidence. She wasn't going to cower by the fire, crying to her mentor Werner about how scary tombs are with him trying to encourage her. He wouldn't even have taken her along and mentored her if she were like this. Why would she even ask. The original Lara asked tons of questions, learned, took a deep breath and went into the darkness, at times without her mentor around to help her. This new Lara Croft looks to me to be like a porcelain princess who needs a bunch of men to teach her how to be strong so she can carefully edge herself into the darkness. But oh god, there might be a big burly dude in there wanting touch her inappropriately.
The game sounds like it's suffering the same problems as Other M. I don't care if it's written by a woman, it makes no difference. I don't care if positive reviews are coming from women even. It's just making a bunch of men sleep better at night.
Of course it's realistic, lacking confidence and strength has always been realistic for women. It's always realistic for women to look to men for strength. Vulnerability is always realistic for women. They'd never do this to a male protagonist in a video game, because it'll take the power fantasy away from male players. Reviews keep saying, no video game protagonist has ever been shown like this. Well no shit, they're mostly male. It's not realistic or good for sales to have men shown as weak and having to have their hand held. Even the cover of Tomb Raider has her all curled up, with her head down like a little, shy girl who needs encouragement to come out of her shell. A shy girl who's been abused to hell and back by a nasty boyfriend and needs a nice guy to come lift her chin and say cheer up kid. I'm here for you.
No one would dare make a game like this with a male protagonist. It's easy to do it to a female protagonist because it's "realistic." I'm sick of it being "realistic" for women. Keep the new appearance, but bring back the classic Lara Croft who would've nerd the hell out when finding a creepy, dark tomb, instead of whine about it.
The Tomb Raider game I've been waiting for is long dead and buried under males gamers being too intimidated to try.
For that, I'd like to refer to the indie game Iji. Iji is a helpless girl thrown into extraordinary circumstances much like Lara and has to grow up very VERY quickly to face the challenges ahead. How her character develops depends on the player's playstyle in gameplay. If you choose the sneaky way, avoiding enemies and not killing anyone, Iji will reflect that in the cutscenes. Also, even when she does have to kill it's always with a regretting "No!" or "I'm sorry". If you go in guns ablazing, Iji will turn from a timid girl into a cruel terminator and in cutscenes it'll be her who suggests the aggressive options and while killing enemies it turns from a "sorry" to maniacal laughter. Thing is, the game is essentially linear so both "good" and "evil" go through the same plotpoints, it's just the main character that changes, yet it makes both playthroughs a delight.Susan Arendt said:
Now, I understand that this is difficult to pull off in a AAA game (more animations, more cutscenes, more voice acting = HOLY SHIT EXPENSIVE) but Iji is still a good lesson to learn to make the character act like himself in gameplay. Making Lara (at least at the beginning) audibly and maybe visibly regret the killings (sobbing, apologizing to the corpses, visible cringing etc) and later on at least stop for an introspecting moment after taking out half an army might've made the inevitable difference not as jarring as mentioned in the review.
On a related side note: I'm so glad Tomb Raider turned out to be decent because I wanted it to be decent. Making her relateable is actually the one reason for me to get this game.
lots of reviews seems to give it a good score. we are discussing it a lot now in the TR forum.
and people asking about pc version, the specs are out:
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=133428
well, still 6 days to go.
and people asking about pc version, the specs are out:
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=133428
well, still 6 days to go.
Simple.Doom972 said:
If they had made this game without the Tomb Raider title, people would be calling it a Tomb Raider rip-off, and it'd be constantly compared to those games. The differences are enough to be noticeable to those who enjoyed the games, but they are also similar enough to have a lot of comparisons.
Then there is also the fact that brand name sells. Pretty much everybody in the "gaming world" has heard of Tomb Raider, even if they haven't played one. Games, as much as people like to pretend otherwise, are made to make money. This game has gotten a lot more pre-orders simply by being a Tomb Raider reboot, than it would have done if they'd called it something else.
That is not to say that I agree or disagree with the decision, but that's the reason why.
Well. Colour me as officially intrigued. Might have to pick this one up after I upgrade my rig.
It would've been interesting had they figured out some way to factor in the player's own actions to how battle-hardened Lara Croft becomes. For instance if you spend most of the game deliberately maiming enemies rather than killing them outright and setting them on fire like a gleeful psychopath you get a colder far more ruthless Lara Croft by the end of the game than if you actively steered away from unnecessary killings and only killed when you absolutely had to.
It would've been interesting had they figured out some way to factor in the player's own actions to how battle-hardened Lara Croft becomes. For instance if you spend most of the game deliberately maiming enemies rather than killing them outright and setting them on fire like a gleeful psychopath you get a colder far more ruthless Lara Croft by the end of the game than if you actively steered away from unnecessary killings and only killed when you absolutely had to.
It looks really solid, except I have one major gripe that's been noted in several reviews.
I *hate* when a game is disconnected from it's narrative.Stop being emotional when I've just slaughtered 100 bandits! Better yet, how about we don't need to kill 100 bandits in a game, maybe tone down the action into something more believable if you're going for a solid "realistic" character story. It's starting be a very jarring issue with almost all games today, it's like you can't call it a game unless you're able to commit mass-murder on your enemies.. why is that a requirement?!?
Every game wants to have a powerful, serious narrative and story, and on many occasions the games do just that. Problem is, when the cutscenes end, you're back to playing Contra..
I *hate* when a game is disconnected from it's narrative.Stop being emotional when I've just slaughtered 100 bandits! Better yet, how about we don't need to kill 100 bandits in a game, maybe tone down the action into something more believable if you're going for a solid "realistic" character story. It's starting be a very jarring issue with almost all games today, it's like you can't call it a game unless you're able to commit mass-murder on your enemies.. why is that a requirement?!?
Every game wants to have a powerful, serious narrative and story, and on many occasions the games do just that. Problem is, when the cutscenes end, you're back to playing Contra..
I was speaking more to Hitman with that point, and SC: Conviction's whole "well, you don't have to use this mark and execute thing". It's just a problem with the "Just don't use it" excuse in general. If it's not the case here then fair enough, although I still find it irksome. We went an awful long time without the apparent need for poorly justified magic abilities.Susan Arendt said:
The review doesn't say much about the gameplay in itself to be honest, apart from the fact that it's disjointed from the actual narrative and it seems nothing more than shooty shooty action with the occasional quirks and linear climbing sections. What is there more to this Tomb Raider really than something anyone could find in an Uncharted or an Assassin's creed when it comes to the tomb sections ? Are there multiple paths, replayability ? Or what about the use of stealth, or is there a way to bypass the game without using any weapons ?
I was hoping this new Tomb Raider would be Far Cry 3 but less brotastic. I was on the fence about trying out Far Cry 3, but after watching the Unskippable intro I don't think I could stomach it. A Far Cry 3 RPG would pretty much be my dream game - i.e. Fallout 3 with tightened up FPS combat.The Wah said:
Then, I remembered that Tomb Raider has always been a third-person platformer, so they wouldn't be anything alike anyways.
Also, quick question: Wasn't the 2006 reboot really well received? I remember playing about half of the first one and quite enjoying it. Did that all go to crap, too?
This is something that game designers HAVE to address at one point or another, because blatant disconnect between the cutscenes and the action is growing and is seriously jarring in modern games. Uncharted 3 was mentioned previously, but other titles had this problem as well. Mass Effect had the infamous "krogan cutscene death syndrom", where krogans were extremely tough according to lore and the gameplay - but fragile as china in cutscenes. GTA 4 had the problem of Nico "I just killed an entire population of Belgium" Bellic contemplating whether he is good enough to forgive a man, who betrayed him in the past. Hawk, savior of Kirkwall and one man/woman slaughterhouse? List goes on.Susan Arendt said:
And I am sure this is solvable, as soon as the game designers will consider this problem worth solving.
Think of something: make armshots and legshots into non-lethal incapacitation of your enemies. Introduce panic - when you do kill an enemy - his comrades realize that **it trully hit the fan and are reduced to terrified messes. As an added bonus, you add more realism into the enemies. They are not mindless mooks, they are people. Evil people, but people none the less - who howl in pain when shot and who don't want to die.
I am not a professional game person, but I am sure you can make death meaningful in game again - and thus eliminate the narrative disconnect between the cutscenes and gameplay. Modern games are trying to introduce deeper and deeper messages... in cutscenes and lore that is.
In this case, it was pretty easy to get it right... if they wanted to create a "Lara Croft that cares" all they had to do was copy the original Tomb Raider where you had like... 4 or 5 human antagonists and I don't even think you fought them all, don't really remember. The point is, she was alone most of the time. Yea sure, it had dinosaurs, lions, mutants and shit, but that was fine in the context of that game.nexus said:
This game could have done the same thing only with an actual story, minus the dinosaurs. Drop her on this island all alone, with very sparse human encounters, so when she kills someone, it means something. How about coming up with a situation where Lara has to kill one of her friends to put him out of his misery or whatever.
Instead, it's all very "omg, I'm killing a deer, I'm a terrible person what am I doing..." then the cutscene ends and the game tells you "MAXIMUM DEER CARNAGE, KILL 3 MORE DEERS TO LEARN HOW TO KILL BABY SEALS" or some other nonsense. I hope I'll be proven wrong when I eventually play it, but judging by everything I've seen, this game is just a shooter where you can jump on things.
Exactly right. The original Tomb Raiders were sparse with the manshoot, and the games were indeed excellent. You spent the majority of your time hoping you didn't run into a bear or pack of wolves, or some unholy beast. I remember the human enemies always signified the worst part of the game, at least for me.Wintermute said:
They did eventually start getting crazy in each game, really laying on the cheese... Area 51, nonsensical plots..
I feel the same way with Assassin's Creed, especially the third one. Several hours in and it's like.. I have killed too many people, this is absurd, I can't even take anything serious anymore. 12 hours in, and the world would start organizing a coalition to end the tyrant known as Desmond, aka Connor. But you get what you expect in a game called "Killing Creed", basically.
I would definitely like to play an old school Tomb Raider, a game where you get what you expect from the title.. not:
--"Tomb Raider-esque: Manshoot Deerhunter Sociopath"
Really? What streams? From whom? Of what parts of the game? I'm curious.TsunamiWombat said:
I'm sorry, I can't help you there.Agayek said:
Exactly my thoughts, I haven't been able to find a single review of the PC version, so I will resist the temptation to pre-order through steam. Unless some reviews of the PC version comes along soon, I'll probably hold out until it goes on some kind of sale.Agayek said:
For people asking is it a good PC port. While I don't know that because the game isn't out yet, Square Enix has been very good to PC community with their previous games.
But that's not why I'm here. I am here to give you some good hair news. Finally, something is being done about the hair in video games. AMD has some new fancy tech that makes Lara's hair look just fabulous. Very next-gen stuff. And as a PC gamer, I can't completely ignore shiny things and new technologies, so this makes me excited about the future of hair in gaming. It's a pretty big leap from how hair's been rendered in the past. It's also a huge plus for this game, but I already decided to get it anyway.
LOOK!
http://kotaku.com/5986952/thank-amd-for-the-best-video-game-hair-ever/gallery/1
The tech behind it: http://blogs.amd.com/play/tressfx/
But that's not why I'm here. I am here to give you some good hair news. Finally, something is being done about the hair in video games. AMD has some new fancy tech that makes Lara's hair look just fabulous. Very next-gen stuff. And as a PC gamer, I can't completely ignore shiny things and new technologies, so this makes me excited about the future of hair in gaming. It's a pretty big leap from how hair's been rendered in the past. It's also a huge plus for this game, but I already decided to get it anyway.
LOOK!
http://kotaku.com/5986952/thank-amd-for-the-best-video-game-hair-ever/gallery/1
The tech behind it: http://blogs.amd.com/play/tressfx/