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I don't exactly trust the brand or the studio, so I am going to give this one a cautious rent. If it ends up being Uncharted 2, GOTY good, I'll pick it up. It will probably be a lot like Legend, the only game in this series I have liked - 8 hours, never play again.
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Feb 20, 2013 17:26
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As per the Polygon review: ""It's a near-perfect embodiment of the age of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 with a hint of what to expect next." I'm sorry, we're talking about Tomb Raider here, right? There's no words for how shocked I am to see outlets talking about this thing with "Game of the Year" style language. Might actually pick this one up.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:16
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They're taking a series that became both a punchline and a parody of itself and bringing it kicking and screaming, literally, into modern game design and the expectations that come with it. Christopher Nolan did it with Batman. Before Batman Begins came out, the last thing people remembered from that franchise was "Clooney Batsuit Nipples." They're taking an avatar that was a walking pair of tits with guns and sassy quips and making her into an actual character with a backstory and a hero's journey, and they are doing it with a game that sounds like a possible early GOTY contender. These narrative driven third person shooters usually have nothing at stake for the protagonist - even when he's captured and beaten, Nate Drake still has great hair. If developers are going to take characters like Lara, or Max in Max Payne 3, and really start putting them through the wringer and chewing them up a bit, it's going to give these games things they've never had before - stakes, where the main character doesn't always seem invincible. Besides, if you don't want to see gruesome death animations, there is a simple solution: Get better at the game!  I have nothing invested in this franchise at all, but everything about what they've done with a washed-up series sounds nothing short of miraculous.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:07
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Irish Joe posted:That's a ridiculous argument, though. Its like saying the Saw movies are less violent on VHS than blu-ray because they're in a lower resolution. We all know that isn't the case. The violence and brutality of an act isn't diminished by picture quality. The same applies to video games. Regardless of how many polygons Lara has, you're still seeing a virtual representation of a human being brutally killed/murdered. Since you brought up Saw, another thing is that shows and movies and books and comics and songs and literally everything else have been using violence as they see fit for years and years. Saw became the most successful horror franchise in history, and you do not see a fraction of the handwringing over the violence done to humans by other humans in The Walking Dead, a.k.a., cable's top show, that you do over video games. For me, that's what makes every new "conversation" about violent/controversial video game "x" tiresome and pointless: When we respond to violence in video games differently/more intesely than we do to violence in other mediums, when we act as if video game developers have some sort of unique moral obligation to tone down their product that we don't place on any given stupid direct to DVD movie you can rent from Redbox, we are just playing into this stupid notion that games have not yet "earned" their legitimacy, or whatever. In the world of third person shooters, there is room for Indiana Jones (Uncharted), and there is room for I Spit on Your Grave (Tomb Raider - though I don't think there is anything close to the atrocity in that film, or Kotaku would have already written a 30 page thesis about it), and there is room for Man on Fire (Max Payne 3), and there is room for a crazy mashup of Dawn of the Dead with The Road (The Last of Us). I totally respect the right of individuals to pass on material that doesn't appeal to them for any reason, from violence to theme to a texture flickering the wrong way, but none of these works have any obligation to justify their creative directions to people who think there is some sort of special standard of proof on video games. quote:I dunno about you guys, but when the inevitable Final Fantasy 7 remake comes along, I can't wait to see Sephiroth graphically disembowel Aeris, leaving her twitching and gurgling on the floor as Cloud, covered in her spilled blood and entrails, thousand-yard stares at the gory spectacle. I mean, that's pretty much what happened, right, but they just couldn't show it because of 1997 technology? Right? You honestly do not see why a developer might choose to employ a different tone with an updated Tomb Raider game than a Final Fantasy remake? Star Wars has a different tone than Star Trek, which has a different tone than Event Horizon. It's almost as if the people making these games have minds of their own and can decide what to put in the software they ship! bloodysabbath fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 17:21
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DrNutt posted:I think it's pretty cool that we can have these kinds of discussions, actually. I think I think a lot of this - not all - has to do with the games press and certain segments of the community lacking the ability to make critical analysis/offer forth an opinion without resorting to snarky, combative shots. Dan Didio posted:Like I've said, I'm not particularly sold on the premise, nor do I think it's necessarily justified, but I do think it's interesting and hearing that it's effectively been half-assed is fairly dissapointing. Hopefully the game plays with that more, but the pre-release footage and initial impressions don't seem to indicate so. Yeah, it's a shame. The type of game you seem to want, a third person narrative based AAA level game that is all puzzles and almost no combat (to remain consistent with a "reluctant killer" vibe), stands no chance of recouping the ridiculous amount of money that was likely poured into this thing. It would have been very easy to have gone straight action the entire way through. What you dismiss as "half assed" is actually a pretty sensible attempt to preserve the legacy of the franchise (puzzles) while also, you know, actually selling enough copies to be worth the trouble. I also think the pacing would be less interesting, and not as fun, without palette cleanser firefights. But to each his own. bloodysabbath fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 19:38
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Fonzarelli posted:I can't wrap my mind around why Lara getting realistically beaten up is at all connected to enjoyment of a shooty-jumpy escapism fantasy game. I don't know what type of deep psychological horror you are possibly expecting from a reboot of a boob-themed franchise, but I find this game to be pretty drat fun and polished. Is it possible to just react to the game on its own terms, in which the violence against Lara kinda facilitates the stakes? Exactly this. Immediately following the opening cutscene, the entire game is Lara in a survival situation. When you've got a deathtrap island full of guys with guns shooting at you, you don't get to have a long drawn out internal battle about what it means to take a life. It's adapt or die. Tomb Raider isn't a multiseason TV show where writers can slowly build or alter characteristics in a protagonist over X episodes. This is a bleak action movie, and you have to establish setting, as well as characters and the relation between them as fast as you can. It's effective storytelling, and another thing that this game has on its side more than most games is that story, dialogue, characters, and setting all do a good job of getting the audience to believe that a silver-spoon trust fund girl with no real life experience can become a hardened badass inside the space of a few in-game hours. (Also, for all the complaints that Tomb Raider is too shoot-heavy now: The shooting picks up later in the game, but the ratio is way more focused on platforming, collecting, etc. Shooting's role is primarily that of a very entertaining palette cleanser.) Maybe it's because this game is just so good, but it seems like Tomb Raider is getting picked apart for things most other games, movies, etc. get a pass for.
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Mar 7, 2013 18:01
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Geomancing posted:Lara's father left her an undisclosed amount of funds when he died, but she had it locked away so she had to 'make it on her own'. Sorry, even if Roth had been giving her some kind of training since she was little, there is *nothing* more trust-fundy than this.
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Mar 7, 2013 22:13
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Dan Didio posted:Regardless, she's explicitly still not a 'silver-spoon fed' trust fund sort like you said. Let's see... Young wealthy girl from a crust of the upper crust family with a similar bestie, who had never been in anything remotely resembling an actual survival situation (and struggles financially only by way of a choice she apparently finds trivial to reverse when needed*), is thrown into an island where the environment, animals, and people are all working to kill her. You may disagree, but it is certainly not "explicit" that this is an invalid reading of the character. Lara grows over the game into a precursor to the sassy, cartwheeling, one-liner-and-bullet spewing badass she becomes, but at the beginning of the game she is nothing of the sort. I'll certainly grant you that perhaps Roth's training facilitates her growing out of her pregame state. * Here, Lara is practically a verse from Pulp's Common People. bloodysabbath fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Mar 8, 2013 |
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Mar 8, 2013 04:43
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Dan Didio posted:She's not wealthy, her father is and her friend's dad is a loan shark or something similar. They're hardly the elite of the elite. If we accept the comic book as canon (and perhaps it isn't), Lara is wealthy, in that her dad is dead and she had enough control over the money to be able to lock it away somehow to "prove herself to herself," only to somehow retrieve it when Sam was looking for investors to supplement *her* rich (rear end in a top hat) father. I never called Lara a "brat," or claimed she wasn't book smart pre-ordeal. I stated that locking up one's trust fund to slum it for a while, while knowing how to access it if needed, is pretty indicative of silver spooners with no real world experience re: hardship. Either way, Lara and co. are bankrolling an operation that must cost, at minimum, seven figures. I don't know what sort of circles you are rolling in, but that definitely makes them the standard definition of elite. No, she isn't the butler/mansion/whim adventure Lara yet. It's an origin story. Important part is that none of this really takes away from the game. Game is legit.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:53
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Finished it today. Everything about this game was fantastic, and for all the usual gnashing of teeth, the only thing "creepy" or "awkward" here is that with new consoles about to drop, a loving Tomb Raider game stands a good chance of coming out as the pinnacle of game design for this generation of systems. Seriously, did anyone ever think that a Tomb Raider game would again be on the short list for GOTY? Bizarre.
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Mar 10, 2013 06:56
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Mr. Mallory posted:The level of nitpicking about pointless poo poo about this game is astounding to me. Play the game and have fun, don't complain about pointless injury inconsistencies. Every game has its hater bandwagon, and this isn't really directed at anyone -- or even this forum -- in particular, but It's kind of funny how the progression of that curve has gone with TR: Stage 1: "I think Lara moans too much and it sounds too sexy when I turn the video off of my video game. Also a developer made a relatively pointless comment about "protecting" Lara that broke the uninterrupted record of developers being master orators with the interviewing skills of politicians." (Square Enix bends over backwards to reassure people that at no point during Tomb Raider will Lara be sexually assaulted.) Stage 2: "Well, whatever. Game developers/publishers/players are still literally worse than the devil, and besides, this is a Tomb Raider game and it's going to suck and the only people who will enjoy it are loving misogynists who hate women and want to guide Lara into a throat spike over and over again while they jerk it." (Game is released, is perhaps the finest example of the third-person cinematic action game to date. At no point is Lara sexually assaulted, nor is a booty shorts DLC outfit unlocked, etc.) Stage 3: "Uh... well... shooting 500 guys is not very realistic, is it? And if they were going to make Lara sustain an injury at the start of the game, why can she pull off headshots and leap across chasms? Hey, did you know in real life, if you get shot by a bullet, it will kill you and you won't regen after a few seconds? Game is all over the place. If Lara is injured, the controls should totally suffer until such point that the $60 retail product isn't fun to play anymore."
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Mar 17, 2013 20:32
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blackguy32 posted:Its a minor issue that will need to be eventually addressed as gaming evolves. Why? Movies and TV regularly do things that are inconsistent with real life all the time, and to hold games to a higher standard where every instance of smug "well THAT couldn't happen" has to be planned for and meticulously explained is absurd.
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Mar 17, 2013 21:57
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DrNutt posted:This is really dumb and dismissive, and I for one am glad that critical thought and discussion is at least tolerated with some civility here on SA. How the gently caress else does media improve, if not through criticism? First and foremost, the irony of calling an opposing opinion "dumb,' even as you sing the praises of "critical discussion" is wonderful. I'll disagree with you and say that I don't really think video games need to "improve" in the "you know, gas cans don't ~really~ blow up when you shoot them, and bullets would go right through a car door if you hid behind it as a shield" sense. Did you know most situations aren't resolved in 30 minutes, or in 12-24 neatly spaced sections? Did you know a killer usually isn't caught or killed in a 3 act structure? Did you know it usually takes longer than an hour to find, apprehend, and convict a criminal? I don't engage in the "academic" zero-sum game of holding fiction accountable to the way the real world works, particularly "hyperreality" fiction. Do whatever you like -- If you fancy yourself a "critic" for pointing out stuff like "a whole lot of civilian contractors probably died when Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star," more power to you. I don't buy it. My point was, a not inconsiderable number of people wanted to hate this game from the get go, and it's sort of funny to watch the reasons shift as it became clear that the game was rock solid. Hell, lump me in with that initial hate bandwagon -- not for the usual SJW reasons, but because it's a Tomb Raider game by a studio that has been doing poor-to-middling Tomb Raider games since forever. quote:As games push more and more toward "realism," there are certainly valid reasons to bring stuff like this up. A metric ton of movies and television with actual human beings -- doesn't get much "realistic" than that -- are released every single year that ask you to believe all sorts of fantastical situations that have precisely nothing to do with the way the real world works. Suspension of disbelief is key to all fiction, no matter how well written or grounded in reality. quote:But from a game design perspective, I understand why they didn't do that and I'm not sure I would have enjoyed playing that game as much as this one. This is why Nathan Drake kills 5000 people without having a PTSD fit in the middle of the game, this is why Lara Croft can survive impalement and go on to do acrobatics, this is why one soldier is able to defeat an entire army of aliens/monsters/terrorists. Much in the way that even a movie about genocide is going to benefit greatly from skilled actors, a good game -- even one with dark subject matter -- must be enjoyable to play.
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Mar 18, 2013 05:48
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