Comments on: Thoughts: Rise Of The Tomb Raider

By: Thoughts: Shadow Of The Tomb Raider | The Scientific Gamer

Thoughts: Shadow Of The Tomb Raider | The Scientific Gamer — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 11:27:05 +0000

[…] hammered on this point again and again in my Rise review, but Shadow really does push it to the point where it’s no longer a joke and is actively […]

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 22:32:47 +0000

Yeah, I do want to play Last of Us and Uncharted, but I bought into the Xbox ecosystem instead for certain Halo-related reasons (I think Rise is releasing on PC early next year?). I do wonder just how similar Rise would feel; how many of its ideas I’m seeing for the first time here that have actually been borrowed from those other games.

I can’t remember any of the encounters from TR 2013, they were that generic. Great mechanics, but there was nothing particularly striking about the locations or the enemies. In two years I’ll likely be saying the same about Rise despite the increased quantity of combat – it’s competently executed, but completely unmemorable.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 22:28:47 +0000

You make a good point that a lot of these games recycle each other’s ideas to the point where they all feel largely the same (although Wolfenstein shouldn’t be lumped in there). Tomb Raider’s spin is supposed to be the puzzles; when it’s doing combat it’s competent, but it feels no different than a dozen other contemporaries I could name.

If you quit TR 2013 because of the combat, then Rise is definitely not going to be your cup of tea. She goes full-on muderbot from the first hour onwards.

By: Aleksei Volchok

Aleksei Volchok — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 08:03:40 +0000

I’ve only recently completed the original Tomb Raider 2013 and indeed it feels wrong seeing Lara switching between believable ordinary person in a complicated situation and perfect killing machine. Also the plot is made of boring staples and balances on being offensively stupid and boring.

Gameplay though is the only available modern adventure game on PC, ain’t it? Like those fancy The Last of Us or Uncharted games with huge variety of available murder tools. Too bad it’s too easy for you to have to use any of those tools. It didn’t have any killer abilities you describe, it was just easy to kill everyone with a bow or a pistol sometimes using exploding barrels and that’s it. There were only couple of memorable battles (sunny shanty town, gates of the final temple, maybe Japanese bunker with its interesting structure) and it felt like they’ve made a good battle system without adding enough battles. Instead they’ve added tons of places where I had to crawl, QTE through danger and drop to my death cause I’m too blind to see where should I run.

You make it sound like they’ve got rid of much of the later but broke fighting. So now there’s less irritating stuff there… And less good stuff. Hm.

By: Zenicetus

Zenicetus — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 18:53:16 +0000

I bailed out of the first Tomb Raider reboot about 2/3 of the way through. I was able to grit my teeth through the QTE’s, because I like games with stealth and bow and arrow. But at the point where Lara became Death Incarnate and was just progressing through one arena full of bad guys to the next, it got tiresome.

It’s good that they killed off the Quicktime cutscenes in this new one, and the expanded tombs sound at least a little more interesting. I might give this one a try, but probably not until it’s on sale, since I might not have the stamina to finish the game.

The way some of these AAA games are made now, it starts to feel like I’m playing the same game with the same character, just reskinned and in different environments. Whether it’s Lara, BJ Blazkowicz, or whoever the current Assassin Creed dude of the day is… the main character doesn’t matter that much. These “action RPG’s” are all copying each others’ mechanics so it all blends together, and the main story line often isn’t enough to get me to the end. The Witcher 3 was the only recent game that managed to make me care about and invest myself in the main character.

Good review, BTW. It covered everything I wanted to know about whether I’d want to play it now, later, or ever.