Zero Punctuation: Tomb Raider

[SoMuchSpace]

There is no pleasing Yahtzee or one most of you."WE WANT A CHARACTER ARC!!!!!"Well you got one, and now you're all "OMG LULZ NOT BELIEVABLE ENOUGH".


Sorry that the game's progression was a bit too complex for your brains.A person is asked to survive.Alone, tired and on a freaking island full of violent male cultists.At the start of the game she is so unsure of herself, if Roth hadn't been there for her over the radio she probably would have killed herself.But she CHOSE to go after her friends, to save them.The same way Cpt Walker CHOSE to use the mortar.It was a decision by Lara.

And the game itself discourages this.The narrative, at least.I agree there seems to be a disparity between the nrrative and the game - but that is freaking trade off between fun and restricting the player.Yahtzee would be the first one to yell at the top of his lungs if the game didn't allow headshots at all, or if her hands kept shaking while holding a gun throughout the game as they did in the cutscene when she first killed a man.She has to move quickly, she can't be stuck over something.IT'S CALLED SURVIVAL.On an island such as this, if you decided to hole up in one place hoping for help, you'd die and probably deserve to.

And that deer thing was pointless?Okay?Eating is pointless in general then?She was starving.She had to eat something.Se was attacked, she needed the weapon.

Honestly get those freaking sticks out of your butts, you guys are the first to cry when the industry gives you COD clones, and when a game comes along that wants you to play as you want (WHO IS ASKING YOU TO HEADSHOT THEM?YOU DO THAT.), and which also has character development (a solid one), you people act like the most pretentious idiots ever.

 

[Darth_Payn]

I get the feeling Yahtzee used "goddamn, fucking, piss-in-my-sandwich" to describe a same-title reboot game before. That should be his official term for this sort of thing. I thought the funniest bits was the guy with the spiked club yelling "NOW FUCKING GROW AS A PERSON!" and calling the game "I Spit On Your Tomb" for it's over-the-top violence. I don't mind violence in a game, but when it becomes torture porn, is when it gets stupid. Didn't Yahtzee say something about tonal inconsistency in video games in yesterday's Extra Punctuation column?

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Captain Walker (i.e. me) didn't decide to use white phosphorus. The developers forced us to use it.

You are not making captain walkers decisions..it's not a role playing game, or a decision based game.

I can understand it gets confusing because you are given the illusion of choice and your brain decides it's a typical choice based game like mass effect or something...but it's not.

That would be like saying; 'the Tomb Raider developers made me kill all those islanders'. It's not a valid critique

And that somehow makes it okay?

Also, I don't remember making you the official Decider of What Is and Isn't Valid Critiques.

I don't remember making you the decider of who is the decider of valid critiques.

I descended from Lord Critiquese of critiqueHall. So I have divine right to the title

That's funny.

Your alright in my book.

 

[Zen Toombs]

I admit, I had started to feel like Yahtzee was getting a bit stale, but this episode just managed to blow me away. It wasn't as good as some of his best ones, but it looks like Yahtzee's got his groove back!

Captain Walker (i.e. me) didn't decide to use white phosphorus. The developers forced us to use it.

You are not Captain Walker.

CAPTAIN WALKER decided to use the white phosphorus. YOU didn't.

Exactly. There's a reason I wholly support the idea that the whole game is played in purgatory, except for maybe the first five minutes. It's even supported by the creator of the game.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[small]

RIP Vault 101
You will be missed.​

[/small]

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Captain Walker (i.e. me) didn't decide to use white phosphorus. The developers forced us to use it.

You have to press a button to use it, you make the call. If you were so fucking disgusted with it there always was the option to stop playing.

Oh bog off. That is not a choice.

Are they making a game or are they making a statement? If they're making a statement, then they don't get to charge me fifty bucks for it.

Imagine if PETA charged money for the Pokemon murder simulator game, they'd be laughed off the internet!

http://www.agonybooth.com/video784_Spec_Ops_The_Line_Tactical_Shooter.aspx

 

[mjc0961]

Yeah, the more I hear about this game, the happier I am that I didn't rush out and drop $60 on it. It's really short. The online sucks. It has microtransactions to unlock upgrades for Lara that should have just been unlockable in game for no money. Now the single player lacks focus and Lara still isn't a terrible great character.

This one is definitely a "I'll pick it up for a fiver during a Steam sale eventually" kind of game.

Captain Walker (i.e. me) didn't decide to use white phosphorus. The developers forced us to use it.

The problem is that you are actually not Captain Walker. Captain Walker is Captain Walker, and Captain Walker made a decision on his own without asking you first because Spec Ops isn't a game all about giving the player choices like, for the most obvious example, Mass Effect. Get over it, because everyone else is correct. Your complaint is not valid because you are NOT Captain Walker.

You wouldn't identify yourself as Lara whilst plaything this would you?

HE probably would, but the rest of us wouldn't because we know we're not supposed to.

I wonder if this guy watches TV and gets mad because particular character (i.e. him) didn't decide to do something, the director forced him to as well.

 

[mjc0961]

Yeah, the more I hear about this game, the happier I am that I didn't rush out and drop $60 on it. It's really short.

When did fifteen-twenty hours with multiple difficulty settings become short?

The online sucks.

Good thing it's a single-player focused game then!

It has microtransactions to unlock upgrades for Lara that should have just been unlockable in game for no money.

And that's just not true. The game has no microtransactions at all. Not a single one. Zero. Nil. Where the hell do you get your information?

Someplace quite a bit more accurate than yours, I imagine. 25 hours? Not even close, and "multiple difficulty settings" doesn't count because A, nobody plays every single one, and B, no game before got credit for them so no starting now.

Doesn't matter if it's a single-player focused game. They put in a multiplayer mode that sucks, that lowers the game's overall rating and also lowers it's value, or rather what I'm willing to pay for it. Maybe they should have taken that time and money away from multiplayer and used it to put in more difficulty settings so the game could be longer for you.

Bullshit about no microtransactions: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Agility/82a82d03-f19f-4e28-8027-541f8c74a1e1
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Animal-Instinct/11752b96-6038-464f-8795-9f7e6333f461
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Headshot-Reticle/81d5044f-5c90-4122-a602-334fd12db750

So yeah, once again, I clearly got my information from a more accurate source than you did. Goodbye now!

 

[Yuuki]

I too held off on the QTE in the "rape scene" to see how it unfolded, and turns out he was just trying to kill her just like every other murderer on the island. So the people who condemned this game (and the developers) for that scene will be feeling like a right bunch of sillies now won't they?

Oh wait, they're nowhere to be seen! Gosh, I wonder where they went, I wonder what happened to the controversy...it's so unlike them to suddenly vanish after the game's release like that, never happened before...

Anyway, look people, Yahtzee's criticism is valid but the game is still worth buying...especially on a sale. It has been a fun experience for most (including me) and it definitely stands above what passes for "average" these days.

RIGHT.
IN THE SAME.
SPOT!
Every Time!

I was quite surprised Yahtzee didn't make a joke out of that one, it was ripe and ready for picking...
"It's Lara is desperately AIMING to get herself impaled in the throat, and fate couldn't be happier to oblige!"

Oh dear, I'm not very good at pulling a Yahtzee

 

[Terminal Blue]

Forgot to mention, hey feminism, notice how no chicks in tomb raider died? NOT ONE. Of all the deaths, good guys and bad guys, WERE ALL MALE.

I've got feminism on the line for you, she says, "Called it".

What, did you think that joke about Lara and Nathan Drake was a serious point?

 

[genericgamer]

Yeah, the more I hear about this game, the happier I am that I didn't rush out and drop $60 on it. It's really short.

When did fifteen-twenty hours with multiple difficulty settings become short?

The online sucks.

Good thing it's a single-player focused game then!

It has microtransactions to unlock upgrades for Lara that should have just been unlockable in game for no money.

And that's just not true. The game has no microtransactions at all. Not a single one. Zero. Nil. Where the hell do you get your information?

Someplace quite a bit more accurate than yours, I imagine. 25 hours? Not even close, and "multiple difficulty settings" doesn't count because A, nobody plays every single one, and B, no game before got credit for them so no starting now.

Doesn't matter if it's a single-player focused game. They put in a multiplayer mode that sucks, that lowers the game's overall rating and also lowers it's value, or rather what I'm willing to pay for it. Maybe they should have taken that time and money away from multiplayer and used it to put in more difficulty settings so the game could be longer for you.

Bullshit about no microtransactions: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Agility/82a82d03-f19f-4e28-8027-541f8c74a1e1
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Animal-Instinct/11752b96-6038-464f-8795-9f7e6333f461
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Headshot-Reticle/81d5044f-5c90-4122-a602-334fd12db750

So yeah, once again, I clearly got my information from a more accurate source than you did. Goodbye now!

So I played the game in 18 hours, decent of length for someone like me. Multiplayer was silly and cant disagree with that, would have enjoyed more Single player story. But hey look, you were both right/wrong to some extent cause if I get it through Steam there is no DLC - http://store.steampowered.com/app/203160/ All the shit Microsoft has you pay for was stuff I unlocked playing the game, so you both didn't do your research but had accurate sources.

 

[Di-Dorval]

I loved this review. I didn't played the game though just saw a bit of gameplay and it seemed hollow and ridled with scripted events which always bore me.

I'm just not this kind of gamer I guess.

 

[Nazulu]

Thank you Yahtzee for tearing this one a new asshole. The game was just hyped up so much, but all the videos made it look so bland and scripted, and there are so many annoying noises and poor acting bits. Also, I can't stand it when they give the same fucking name as the original! I'm just going to ignore this one out of existence.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

So how would you improve the story then? There is character development- she starts off unsure about herself and her abilities, has a load of shit thrown at her, and becomes a survivor (confident, strong, determined, blah blah blah). And her being 'reactionary' is the whole point of the story, so I'm not entirely sure what your problem is on that front.

How would I improve the story? I'm glad you asked actually; I've been giving this some thought for a few days now:

Spoiler: Tomb Raider story spoilers within

Boot the support characters
There are two inherrant propblems with the "support characters"

1. They are broad stereotypes with little to no impact on the story.
2. They provide Lara with support, emotionally at least.

I care not for the support characters, I hardly know them and I have no wish to change that. The game gives me, as a player, little reason to care for them. Lara may have slightly more connection to some of them but it's barely shown. Roth is about the only worthwhile character in the lot.

Lara is supossed to be lost and alone on a dangerous island. Having her friends there to cheer her on is simply ridiculous and it's effect is never more jarring than in the scene where she breaks them out of a large suspended cage. Most people can do most things with their friend's support so this is hardly conducive to the whole "survival" theme.

My suggestion?
Kill the support characters off early, pretty much all of them. Remove Lara's lifeline early. Lara wakes on the beach, she sees her friends being taken by the islanders, she is not captured herself. She spends the first level trying to reach them and save them. She fails and watches most of her friends die horribly, except Roth and Sam. She finds Roth shortly after and he is dying, they have the whole "you can do this" speech before he passes. Lara is lost, alone and completely without support.


Give Lara a character, make her imperfect
Lara is bland, boring and one dimensional. When the game opens she appears to be pretty much as we've always known her, an expert in her field, confident in her own analysis, has an eye for details and is willing to take a risk in the Dragon's Triangle.

As a character Lara appears to be little miss perfect. No flaw is presented to us, we are given no reason to think that this girl can't handle anything. She doesn't have trouble working with people, she doesn't have crippling insecurities, she isn't overly reckless, she doesn't have an irrational fear etc. I think the devs were so worried about being called out as sexists that they didn't dare risk making her appear weak as a person. This leads into Yahtzee's comment about her being reactionary. Lara didn't need to improve before the crash, she had no intentions of improving because were given no reason why she should. Instead she's thrown into a situation where she must change, sure it's development of some kind but this is a binary choice. Do or die. A game about a girl who dies 10 minutes in is not a very fun game, is it? Lara's skills improve, that is all. There is no character development, only physical improvement.

My suggestion?
Reveal more of Lara's history. Who were her parents? How did they die? Why does she feel that she can't live up to the name of Croft? This story needs to be personal to Lara. Saying that her character develops through the act of surviving the island is ridiculous. Give her a flaw, a personal issue that needs to be overcome before she can survive the island. This way the island helps her to improve as a character. Any old Joe-Shmo could do what she does when they are given no choice, what specifically sets Lara apart from the rest?


Lara must lose
Lara wins everything all the time. If someone dies it's because they made a stupid choice, if Lara gets injured it's because she was involved in a ridiculous QTE infested cutscene. It's never established that Lara loses anything for simply being rubbish at something. In fact she seems to be superhuman most of the time, surviving falls and explosions that no one else could.

My suggestion?
Everyone dies near the beginning, as I said before. Lara tries to save them, she cannot. They die horribly and she is distraught about it. She loses Roth who is her mentor and metaphorical support line. She has lost. The only way she can continue to is to improve. But not just get better at rock climbing, she needs a flaw, something specific to her character that she needs to overcome in order to proceed.

Aditionally, Sam needs to die. Someone mentioned before that the final boss should have been Sam as a giant, overpowered Queen Himiko that Lara fights. I like this idea. I think it's important that Lara is too late. I also think she should be made well aware that destorying Himiko (and Sam in the process) is her key to leaving the island. She makes a choice: kill a friend in order to survive or die on the island. This indicates a huge change in her character and one with a slightly dark edge, even though she had little choice in the matter.

The result? Lara leaves the island alone, she is the sole survivor. She has "won" because she is alive and has escaped but it is a bitter-sweet victory because everyone else is dead. She has also failed in this regard. Failure is important because it means she's not perfect at the end of the game and gives her motivation to further improve herself so that she never fails again. The ending we actually get shows her willing to continue her adventures even though she "won" and has no real need to seek such danger again.


Less physical trauma, more emotional trauma
Throwing Lara around a collapsible environment and having her survive at the end is not character development. We need far less beatings and far more emotional impacts. Lara takes a deer out with ease and then feels sorry for doing so. She is distraught when she first kills a man and then goes on to mow down several hundred islanders with a nonchalant ease that Rambo himself would be envious of.

My suggestion?
Have Lara think back on her dead friends. Those video camera exposition scenes were actually quite good and we never saw much of them. How about we unlock a new one at each major camp? Looking at them provides more info on Lara, her character and her relationship with those she has lost. Two for one.

Lara needs to have more trouble actually doing what she's doing. Fear of heights? Unable to pull the trigger? Panicing in the darkness? More on that below...


Mend that disconnect
Lara goes from college student to John McClane in no time at all. This is a gameplay issue really but there's such a jarring change between Lara's in-game actions and her cutscene actions that makes this a whole mess of its own. Why the focus was on combat in this game rather than survival is something I may never know. It feels like survival was a key theme and then everyone forgot about it after the deer scene. You know how it goes, one minute Lara is struggling to kill a wild animal, the next she's popping off headshots with a bow at men who aren't even aware she's there yet. That's not survival, that's just plain murder.

My suggestion?
I'd like to manage my health and mental status, some aditional stats working underneath would have been nice. Other games have done it before, if your "psyche" get too low then you have trouble aiming, your hands shake, your vission blurs, your character refuses to perform certain actions. The inherrant neccessity of searching for useful objects is a key element of survival. Perhaps killing wild animals or islanders lowers Lara's "psyche" level but could provide benefits in the long run. Combat is optional now, risk losing your mind for the possibility of gaining useful items in order to progress? Or try to stealth it out and be less well equipped for the later trials? That sounds like survival to me.

Of course, that's all just my opinion.

 

[SoopaSte123]

Did you just spoil Far Cry 3's ending for me? Thanks for that.

 

[mad825]

Captain Walker (i.e. me) didn't decide to use white phosphorus. The developers forced us to use it.

This is a complaint I see a lot, and it's one I'm going to have to object to. A lot of people claim that the shocking moment in Spec Ops is 'meaningless' because it's scripted. In reality, the whole game is scripted. If the game ever gives you the objective "fight through this building and kill Joe Bloggs", you'll have to fight through the building and kill Joe Bloggs; you'll never have the option of sneaking round the side and talking to Joe and maybe convincing him to help you or something.

You see, the whole "do you do a bad thing or not" isn't the real choice of the game. The real choice is:

Spoiler: Major spoilers

Whether you keep playing or not.

The game throws you into a hellish warzone with a gun and tells you "You're the hero! You can fix this!". The question is: how long are you going to believe it when the evidence is mounting otherwise? Will you get so sick of committing atrocities that you'll throw away a whole portion of a $60 game? And if you do decide to stick it through to the bitter end, then you'd better be ready when the game turns around and asks you what the hell you thought you were doing.

So, that's why I don't think it's fair to say that Walker "didn't choose" to use the white phosphorus. Sure, he didn't have a choice in the situation he was in. But that's only part of it....

Uhuh, you are meant to be doing simple recon and then leaving to confirm existence of human life, those were the orders. That scene is the most scripted part of the game, a "choice" without the illusion of choice.

The sadist part, the NPCs cheat. I've cheated. You cannot grapple down and no matter how many you kill, they still come out of the cloning VAT 2000.

Edit: on second though, willy pete those fuckers was the most moral thing ever. cloning is bad.

 

[Caffeine_Bombed]

Out of interest, does anyone else disagree with the whole "Lara has one freak-out then becomes a badass" thing that ALL the reviews go on about?

 

[Quiotu]

Yeah, judging from everything I've seen about this game, it could've also been called 'Uncharted For Those Without a PS3'. And yeah, I'm aware Uncharted was basically Tomb Raider with a dude, but it did improve what was horrible with the franchise, give it a fairly decent story, and made the scenery fucking GORGEOUS. They knew the game was going to be compared to the Uncharted series now, so they needed something to make it stand out other than 'You're a chick'.

But wielding a bow and arrow with broken physics, or adding XP levels so she can suck in the beginning, or a tacked-on survival/crafting element doesn't really do it. Naughty Dog simply did this better and in a more concentrated, pulpy action style... rather than a dirty gritty reboot of something no one's taken seriously EVER. Worst part is Naughty Dog comes out with The Last of Us in mid-June, potentially showing gamers how survival and crafting is done well.

Here's the thing about this game... if it didn't have Tomb Raider on the cover, I wouldn't know it was supposed to be a Tomb Raider game. It skewed a long way from its roots, and it landed in an already well-established genre. I just don't think it's enough to give it any momentum.

 

[ArmorKingBaneGief]

HE probably would, but the rest of us wouldn't because we know we're not supposed to.

Fuck what we're "supposed" to do. If I'm playing a game, I'm identifying as that person because I'm controlling his actions. It doesn't matter if it's Mario, CJ from San Andreas or Lara Croft. When I'm watching a movie, I'm watching a person. When I'm playing a game, I am that person. It's just that simple.