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I don't normally preorder games. I preordered this for three reasons: 1: Crystal Dynamics are 4 for 4 on good Tomb Raider games. Core ran out of steam after 2. It also sounds a bit like Soul Reaver, which they also made, and was also great. 2: Rhianna Pratchett is the lead writer on this, is VERY proud of her work and seems annoyed at how the marketing has misrepresented how things actually play out in-game. 3: I managed to stack a bunch of discounts a while back and get it for about £17 from Green Man Gaming. Budget price off the bat? Yes please!
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Feb 24, 2013 20:22
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Hakkesshu posted:There's a possibility that this wasn't entirely her fault, but she also wrote Mirror's Edge, which had a laughably awful storyline. It also had about three minutes of storyline spread across the whole game. It was 98% running, 2% cutscenes, and the cutscenes were farmed out to a third-party group. Still, some hands-on previews had pretty good things to say about the narrative so far. Dominic White fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Feb 24, 2013 |
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Feb 24, 2013 20:51
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Reviews for this should be rolling out in the next few minutes - time to find out whether my gamble worked out. If it did, score! If not... anyone want a Steam key for the game for £18?
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Feb 25, 2013 15:59
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Yeah, Eurogamer's review is pretty snarky and makes a major point of it being perhaps a little thematically dissonant and videogamey, but still ends up saying it's a genuinely good game. So, yay - I'm pleased that I get a good game for budget price ($25).
Dominic White fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Feb 25, 2013 |
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Feb 25, 2013 16:05
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Huntsekker posted:Polygon liked it, and gave it a 9: Polygon are a bit over-enthusiastic about everything, but they're also one of a handful of sites that are effectively independent of the advertising cycle that leads to so many places being accused of shilling or selling out. RPS is another site where they basically get to write whatever they want while ads are just incidental and not related to the content at all. Editorial freedom + glowing review is probably a good sign, then.
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Feb 25, 2013 18:43
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Crappy Jack posted:Likewise, I just got a gaming PC for the first time ever and own both consoles. So buying games now is like shopping for a new car. All the screenshots seem to be of the PC version, which looks far and away prettier than the PS3/360 editions. Seems to be one of those games where the PC was the main development platform and the console versions are toned down until they hit a stable framerate.
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Feb 25, 2013 19:20
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PonchAxis posted:The game looks cool and the Eurogamer review pretty much confirms a bunch of things I knew that were going to happen (intense cutscenes that lara just killed someone, to then going on to kill a bunch of dudes with a gun). Its pretty hard to make a game make you feel bad about killing someone when you are constantly killing them (unless you go the Spec Ops route). The thing is that this is meant to be the origin story of Lara Croft. By the end of it, this is a character that can gleefully cut through a dozen men and several endangered species' on a mission to recover some ancient (probably cursed) object from a long-forgotten tomb. That has always been her nature, and I expect it always will be. She's a videogame heroine first and foremost. It might make you feel bad about all the killing at first, but this is a Tomb Raider game after all.
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Feb 25, 2013 22:07
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I think it needs to be highlighted that this is meant to be an origin story, so while the start is 'Lara Croft, terrified archaeology student', the end result is going to be something more familiar, along the lines of 'Raids tombs, shoots fools, pisses off ancient cosmic evils and gives no fucks'. Y'know, how she always used to be. Batman Begins might have had a somewhat darker, more human point of origin, but we still ended up with Batman by the end. Edit: I'm waiting for people to be complete blindsided/enraged when the inevitable supernatural elements kick in.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:09
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Anyone remember how people reacted to the ending of Uncharted? We've seen it happen before. ImpAtom posted:On the other hand by the end of the trilogy we ended up with "Batman is fundamentally damaging both physically and mentally to the person being Batman and the happiest possible ending is not being Batman." Pretty much how things went in the comics. He ended up a downright paranoid, miserable old bat-dude who perpetually kept friends at arms length even when he was part of the Jusice League. Dominic White fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 16:33
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On the subject of gory death sequences, I'll tell you this - the ones in Resident Evil 4 were the best incentive I've ever seen to avoid dying. The first time I got cornered by the chainsaw guy was absolutely gut-wrenching, and I instinctively just turned and ran whenever I heard a chainsaw in the future. And the Regenerators... oh god,. the things they could do to poor Leon. So long as you're given a fair chance to escape death each time, then shockingly grim deaths can be a very solid bit of negative reinforcement. The opposite would be Super Meat Boy, where there's almost no negative reinforcement - it slows you down by a fraction of a second, and you even get a replay of all your failures stacked up against your winning run. There's a game where death really doesn't mean anything. Here, they seem to be trying to drill it into your head that it's a very, very bad thing. A lot of reviews and even post-review analyses bring up the point that there's a strong vein of survival horror style running through the game. It's not an action-adventure in the traditional sense. Dominic White fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 05:20
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Here's a good review of the new TR. Some serious critique in there and some solid dissection of the storytelling and character, but when all is said and done, it's a good, solid 8/10 game. Like with others, there's a hope that Lara won't be quite as pressured when the inevitable sequel rolls out. As for earlier talk of supernatural elements, and how they probably won't feature in the game it's set on a cursed island wreathed in supernatural storms, which is why it's covered in plane and ship wrecks and overrun by crazy cultists.. DrNutt posted:Huh, I heard the Section 8 games were actually pretty rad multiplayer games, so maybe farming mp out to them wouldn't be a bad deal... Yeah, the S8 series is solid. Honestly, it sounds like Gearbox did with Colonial Marines what Silicon Knights tried to pull with X-Men Destiny. Effectively taking a licensed property project so that they could siphon funding/resources off to an internal title (in this case Eternal Darkness 2), then pooping out a no-effort project at the last minute. This didn't work for Silicon Knights - between Activision setting a deadline and lawsuits, they kinda crumbled - but it seems like Gearbox might have pulled it off by keeping the game alive through cheap third-party contract work. It's probably a good part of why Borderlands 2 turned out so much better than the first. Dominic White fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 23:01
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TheCoon posted:If you pre-ordered from Greenmangaming they just started sending out codes. Pre-load on Steam is 8.8gb. No sign of a key here yet, sadly. I preordered late last year, back when they had a crazy combination of discounts that knocked it down to £17. Even if I don't get the Steam bonus perks, it'll still probably be worth it at that price.
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Mar 1, 2013 18:13
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Yeah, critics are being especially critical of this game because it's a highly controversial reboot (especially considering the PR clusterfuck surrounding it), and there doesn't seem to have been any of the PR lock-step stuff that surrounded DmC. More often than not it's also getting given to the more outspoken female reviewers for each site, and they're picking it apart for issues. At the end of the day, they still can't find much to seriously complain about, other than there being a degree of thematic/gameplay disconnect (and that's going to be the case for almost any action game for quite some time to come), and the now-seemingly-mandatory trend of popping up a reward message every time you do anything. I think it's a good sign if they're being so serious about it, but still ending up declaring it a good/great game. The reviewer over at The Escapist was talking about it at length in the comments/forum thread after the review, and mentioned that as jarring as it might have felt to transition from terrified survivor to murder-tornado, she really liked the combat.
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Mar 1, 2013 19:05
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DrNutt posted:Oh, come the gently caress on. Like those aren't a legit thing to discuss in a Tomb Raider game of all things, especially one hoping to reboot the series in a "more serious, mature" direction. You misunderstand me. I think it's a great thing. I'm one of those guys constantly being yelled at for being a 'white knight' or 'feminazi sympathizer' for having the nerve to suggest that women might want to have a say in this industry, or even just be considered as equals. Lara Croft is one of the few female videogame icons out there. Having the women of the industry have their say about how well they've handled the reboot is a very good idea.
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Mar 1, 2013 19:10
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The reason Lara's ponytail was cut short in the original Tomb Raider was because they couldn't make it look right with the technology of the time, so yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing how they pull off that extra detail in the PC version. On a general note, I'd actually love to see more games given the same degree of scrutiny that TR has. The reviews so far have been far more insightful and rightfully critical than average.
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Mar 1, 2013 19:15
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TheCoon posted:Why we (still) haven’t reviewed Tomb Raider - PC Gamer I'd imagine last-minute issues with porting it, especially as they've added a ton of cutting-edge DX11 features onto the PC version. And the video embargo is likely due to wanting to control spoilers, as it's a story-driven game.
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Mar 1, 2013 21:50
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coyo7e posted:I thought you lived in the UK, not Mississippi. You really get yelled at? Just on the internet, thankfully. Not met anyone quite that noxious face to face. There seems to be plenty of them out there, unfortunately.
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Mar 1, 2013 23:36
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Regenherz posted:Actually, I quite liked this review by Maddy Myers. Don't know how often reviews like that are linked here but I would consider them to be a little bit more interesting than the usual stuff that only focuses on mechanics. Diversification of game journalism for the win, I guess. Yeah, I linked that one a while back. It's a really well written review, much more up to the standard that I think we should hold games journalists to. In the end she really liked the game a lot, but she had more than just quality judgements to say about it.
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Mar 2, 2013 16:47
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Camaro83 posted:Thanks! Gotta love PC prices. It came down as low as £17.50 ($25) on GMG back during the December sales. There is a certain art to bargain-hunting that seems almost inseparable from PC gaming now.
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Mar 4, 2013 19:47
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660ti here - I turned off TressFX because it's a GPU hog and the constraints on the hair are weirdly off right now. I was getting some shadow glitching until I turned Tesselation off, and SSAO from Ultra to Normal. Everything else is maxed, though. Almost no perceptible loss of quality. I'm using my own Ultra SMAA setup for SweetFX instead of the games own FXAA. @1080p, the benchmark says 50fps average, 45fps minimum. Game tuned, now to play properly.
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Mar 5, 2013 02:07
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The weird shadow-glitches I was experiencing disappeared after I updated to the very latest Nvidia beta drivers. Some came out just yesterday, apparently. Back to running the game with everything at full except for TressFX (it just looks squirly - not sure I'd use it even if I wasn't taking a performance hit). I've substituted the game's own FXAA for my own ultra SMAA, which is almost as pretty as 8xMSAA, but comes at near-zero performance cost.
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Mar 5, 2013 04:47
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Ha, I think I know the reason for the video embargoes and NDAs regarding reviews - the game really wastes very little time in getting back to classic Tomb Raider subject material, exceptionally overt supernatural elements and all. Almost every trailer and gameplay video is of the first two hours or so - mostly the first hour - and people are saying that it's a good 18-20 hours long. Lara pretty much gets over the shock of taking lives about ten minutes after her first kill. Even going as far as saying how easy it was. She's a natural born killer, looter and raider of tombs.
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Mar 5, 2013 18:54
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poptart_fairy posted:There was a very skeevy under-current in all the advertising that was difficult to get away from. I'm really happy that my hunch was right on this - Marketing Dudes are tone-deaf idiots. Outside of maybe the first hour, Lara is almost supernaturally capable and dangerous. She's hesitant about some things, but that just means she needs to spend about two seconds convincing herself that it's a good plan. She literally crafts herself a sack full of rope-arrows while under heavy fire from multiple directions.
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Mar 5, 2013 19:33
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nickmeister posted:One thing that's got me a bit annoyed are the bullet sponge enemies You get much beefier weapons as you go, and you can often quickly kill enemies by using the Uncharted one-two. Stun them with a leg shot and finish with a melee hit.
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Mar 5, 2013 20:00
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TheBystander posted:Yeah actually, if there's one thing that gets to me about the game, it's that her wounds don't exist outside of cutscenes, barring a few exceptions. For the most part, no matter how many spills she takes, or how many times she gets wounded during a cutscene, she won't move or play any differently in game. Fatigue is never a factor. She never winces or misses a shot because of pain. She is essentially unfeeling. I think you're thinking waaaaay too hard about what is ultimately a pretty traditional videogame. Max Payne soaks up bullets constantly, both in and out of cutscenes, and aside from (like Lara) occasionally stumbling around a bit, he's not permanently effected either, except for one level in Max Payne 3 where he takes a bullet to something a bit more vital and ends up monologuing about how beat up he feels. As for Lara supposedly being hesitant in cutscenes, I really don't think so, either. The first time she tries to rescue Sam, she goes in trying to kill everything in her path, only to get overwhelmed. When she gets another shot at rescuing her, there's not even a pause between Matthias leaving the room and the guard getting an arrow straight through the heart. Some of you seem to be expecting Lara to be weaker or more emotionally fragile than the game ever presents her as, outside of the first hour.
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Mar 7, 2013 15:16
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Pedialyte posted:Can someone tell/show me what exactly Tessellation does in this game specifically? I am out of the loop with fancy graphics options. Tessellation interpolates extra polygons between existing ones to make things look a little more naturally curved. Lara's shoulders are a nicely noticable point in the benchmark screen - you can see the polygon edges with it off, but they're a bit more rounded with it on. It's also costly - not really worth turning on unless you have FPS to spare.
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Mar 11, 2013 19:36
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Hakkesshu posted:TressFX doesn't look good at all, though. I mean it looks fine in still images, but in actual motion it's like Lara's got a bunch of spaghetti hanging from her head. They've improved the clipping and animation constraints a lot on it since the first release, so it looks somewhat more natural now. When it first launched, her hair liked to levitate and inch or two away from her skin.
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Apr 15, 2013 15:03
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