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This looks actually pretty interesting, with some cool stuff happening with cover degradation when enemies shoot at you. The only thing that aggravates me is that the new voice actress is a) not very good and b) not very English. She's spent far too long in LA and picked up some terrible rhoticity. I understand why they abandoned Keeley Hawes, as they needed a new voice, but they really could have picked somebody with better enunciation
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# ¿ Feb 20, 2013 01:32 |
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 14:04 |
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BexGu posted:Yeah, it just a shame that the shooty bits take up so much of the game that its looks like they are going back to the "Lara the killer" model. The gametrailers.com review really drives home just how violent of a killer Lara can get: http://www.gametrailers.com/reviews/7zar52/tomb-raider-review She was a bit of a lunatic in the original concept art too. http://www.croftgeneration.com/imagenes/galeria/concept_art/TR1/bigimages/Concept_Art_TR1_005.jpg
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# ¿ Feb 25, 2013 22:10 |
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One of the things I enjoyed the most about the older tomb raider games was the sense of isolation. The games were very surreal and I enjoyed that particular flavour enormously - the slightly slow pace as you wandered around these vast byzantine edifices with relatively little interaction other than animals. I am hoping the sequel to this game will place a greater emphasis on that, although it seems to be not really a genre that exists any more.
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# ¿ Feb 25, 2013 22:54 |
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I rather liked the old teflon Lara, just because she was a fairly rare beast in computer games. I also don't have a huge problem with there being excessively gory deaths, so long as they serve a purpose beyond mere voyeurism. If the intent is to make you feel panicked and desperate to avoid Lara dying because the deaths are so distressing, and it works, then I am ok with that. Shock and distressing images can serve a purpose beyond merely the emotions they evoke if they are placed in proper context. Of course it is possible the game will fail at this, but we shall see.
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# ¿ Feb 27, 2013 20:06 |
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Mirror's edge is an amazing game, but purely kinaesthetically. The story is forgettable. I have yet to play a game that Rhianna pratchett wrote for where I would say the writing was actually "good. I suspect this is partly reflective of studio restrictions and subject matter as much as anything else, but I haven't seen any evidence of anything jaw-dropping from her yet. Also, Dan I very much agree RE: keeley hawes. She was fantastic, and had near flawless elocution. The new girl reminds me of the terrible girls who went to the various private schools for girls and sounded faintly brainless. I'm also sad they dropped troels folmann, the composer for the Legend and Anniversary soundtrack, as he had a fantastically wide range of influences. I am sure jason graves will do a good job, though!
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# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 00:01 |
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Dan Didio posted:She perfectly flits between upper and middle class, somehow. She was born with a middle-lower London accent and had elocution lessons. It's why her consonants are so precise and why she doesn't do any upper-class slur.
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# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 00:06 |
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Legend was a more complete and less perfunctory experience, but Underworld was definitely more tomb raidery. Apparently the Lara's Shadow DLC, which I never got to play due to getting the game on PC, also explored some interesting gameplay ideas.
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# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 03:35 |
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Tewratomeh posted:Underworld did have some ridiculous, out-of-place moments though, like the level where you're riding around on a motorcycle and fighting panthers. If they hadn't stapled it onto the story of legend and anniversary I think it would have been received better. The plot would certainly have become more focused and wouldn't have necessarily involved Natla and all her associated nonsense.
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# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 03:43 |
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Underworld was the one with non-lovely graphics!
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# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 14:27 |
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Yeah. I love the feeling of isolation you can get. I also enjoy that Lara has a certain type of benign, flip psychopathy (or had). Keeley Hawes needs to do more heroines!
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# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 15:50 |
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ImpAtom posted:I love Nier, it's one of my favorite games, but taken objectively it has a lot of problems. I don't care because I'm willing to overlook them but if you're not they can easily ruin the game. I am not sure the "objective" measure is super relevant though. Everybody I've persuaded to play it says "This game is super awesome"! And they have a great time, even if they realise there are things cavia should or could have done better.
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# ¿ Mar 3, 2013 05:18 |
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PC port is really pretty good.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 12:15 |
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Future animal kills are delicious XP. Lara is a vampire who grows by feeding off the trauma of animals.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 14:49 |
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Chinaman7000 posted:I laughed after she killed the first deer for food, agonized after stabbing it to death, and then immediately walked away from the body and just left it and was cool again. I just wish it was still keeley hawes
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 15:02 |
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Also "OH NO I KILLED A MAN!" "HEADSHOT! +15XP!" There is some serious dissonance between the story tone and the xp system. I kind of think they should have dumped per animal xp. And they definitely shouldn't have the KILLING SPREE COMBO KILL type cod4 messages.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 15:48 |
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Lara survives so much hosed up poo poo that half the time I think I've activated a death sequence but it's ok, she just slams onto the floor and rolls around a bit panting before getting up again.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 17:46 |
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FuSchnick posted:[Edit] Lara is still the Worst Archeologist Ever. Whenever she raids a tomb there's SO MUCH SWAG in those boxes and she just takes one bit! Why can't she even raid these tombs properly! Also Impatom she hates tombs. She smashes them to show dominance.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 17:52 |
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Also it is interesting to note which things come directly from underworld. Her jumping while on a ledge animation and shimmying both seem to be lifted directly from underworld, as does the pottery smashing sound. Why waste the work of Miss Heidi Moneymaker, I guess!
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 17:56 |
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Scene with 20 dudes. Go all hunger games on them and 2 pigs. 90% of corpses despawn before I can loot. I'm on a PC. Why are they imposing console memory limit type stuff? :<
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 18:23 |
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Oh god. Egregious EGREGIOUS cut scene loss of power towards the end. Suddenly she's helpless again! :<
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 19:48 |
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The enemies aren't bullet sponges at all... unless they have a helmet they die in one arrow/shot to the head.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 20:49 |
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OK, just got an out of memory error. I have 8gb of ram. Strange.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 21:01 |
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Anybody else bought the "execute enemies with this weapon expert" perk and not get any results? Lara seems to prefer axing dudes instead, no matter what weapon I have out.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 22:02 |
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It's a shame Lara's voice actress hasn't spent much time in the UK. A fair few American words and phrasings are in her dialogue and I guess she didn't correct them. There's a lot of Underworld and legend's DNA in this. The designs of the island complexes often are very reminiscent of Kazakhstan from TRL. The general lighting and "look" is very underworld, albeit with slightly more realistic characters - although whoever designed zip managed to sneak his hairstyle onto Reyes, very cunning. I groaned a bit when the Kiwi (who looks like he's meant to be a Maori/pacific islander, and they even loving named him JONAH) went all "WHEN I WAS YOUNG ANCIENT TRIBAL WISDOM ALSO TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS". The characters aren't terrible, but they aren't reaching very far outside the stereotypes here.
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# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 23:54 |
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Yes. When not doing Lara she's really pretty rhotic. Also how come half the dudes on this island have sweet rear end swords and I'm stuck hitting dudes with an axe. Giev katana please game
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 00:18 |
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Reveilled posted:That's not really how voice acting works though. When you take a voice acting gig, you're given the script and told to read it, in the great majority of cases you are not given input into the writing of the script, even if you know for a fact that there are inaccurate phrasings based on the language or accent you are being asked to do. There is normally a script, but the few times I've observed VA work being done if the actor was a native speaker they would be allowed to correct small things like word usage that the script writer got wrong. I guess it just depends. In this case, I would imagine she would have been able to effect some change.
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 00:31 |
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Finished it. Ending was... kind of what you expect. The final bow looks like wings when you climb! Lots to like in the game, lots that could have been done better. Still very much worth the money, I enjoyed it. Although the troels-folmann-less soundtrack is really pretty forgettable and has nothing on Legend. SurrealityCheck fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Mar 6, 2013 |
# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 01:31 |
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Interestingly, both writers were female.
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 01:36 |
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Irish Joe posted:Fascinating. Do you think writing this game influenced their decision to become male? Yes.
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 01:49 |
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I do remember the really early leaked concept art that looked like they were almost going in a silent hill direction. I wonder what that would have been like.
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 02:03 |
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Eruonen posted:I haven't seen the concept art, but I have been reminded of Silent Hill while playing the game. Just a small similarity, mind you, the game is nothing like Silent Hill. This stuff.
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 02:29 |
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Hanks Lust Cafe posted:Oops. My fault. Do not worry! They are still technically spoilers, because now you know what is not in the game!
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 03:13 |
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The QTEs are a bit of a mix. Some of them are so close to actual gameplay (things like Lara doing a jump and then you need to mash e to hold on, etc) that the QTE requirements can be guessed. Others are a bit more cryptic (such as needing to guess when you need use versus melee in some of the melee QTEs). They were mostly fairly effective, except that next time they really need to replace the icon with the binding you have...
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 13:26 |
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I'm not a huge fan of the shanty town corrugated island aesthetic, though. I think they could have done with a bit more beauty in the game.
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# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 18:53 |
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You can't run out of ammo on any difficulty. Even straight up spam shooting the pistol into dudes chests will net you back pistol ammunition at the same rate, assuming you are full on other ammo.
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# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 01:44 |
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What I am hoping for is that next game they add back in her slightly flip attitude. Then we will have squared the circle.
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# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 15:28 |
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To be fair she is frequently running through waterfalls, so she would easily be able to get rid of most of the outward grime.
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# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 15:41 |
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As far as game mechanics go, I think they might have been better off hiding the in combat xp messages and made the "Good job headshot" feedback something less explicit. Maybe even divorced the xp entirely from how you choose to solve combat. I would have happily run through the game shotgunning all the dudes, but the moment I realised that stealth killing everybody, or headshotting them, was way better xp I was kind of stuck doing that. Also exclamation mark messages like "KILLER HEADSHOT! +20xp" didn't really fit the nominally grim tone.
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# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 16:00 |
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ImpAtom posted:lara isn't a silver-spoon fed trust girl though. She's established as having done quite a bit before this game, just not actively killing. I actually liked that because it was more believable that she had already done a bunch of stuff, just not crazy stuff. Yeah, they were relatively quiet about her background. I wonder if they are pulling her away from the Lara Croft, aristo model. But Roth certainly seems like a prime candidate for "EARTH NORTHERN GAMEKEEPER GUARDIAN".
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# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 20:31 |
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 14:04 |
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ImpAtom posted:I mean big encounters ala boss fights against single very large enemies. Arkham Asylum was at its weakest when fighting a single oversized enemy and Tomb Raider is too. I can only think of two moments where it happens, and they were short enough that they acted as a refreshing break from the norm for me. RE: bow headshots - you get an upgrade to the bow that means a fully charged bow shot penetrates helmets!
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# ¿ Mar 8, 2013 16:17 |