Block pushing is so 1996. Now we're in to cross bows: TOMB RAIDER

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Block pushing is so 1996. Now we're in to cross bows: TOMB RAIDER

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

I haven't been too interested in this game and I started getting sick of the ledge hopping of the 2nd trilogy. I recently went back to playing the old games and I still enjoy them because they do have some interesting parts and environments.

I have been turned off by the marketing for this game. But I also get a Far Cry 3 vibe from the game as well

# ¿ Feb 19, 2013 23:43

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 22:02

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

OxMan posted:

This. Tomb Raider always had really gruesome deaths, they just never had the technology at the time to show it. Lara falling in one of the billions of spike pits in TR2 was just a really low res version of that. Crushed by rocks, eaten by sharks, TR deaths were always gruesome. As long as the new game keeps that feeling from Legend when you enter some giant cave or room with different paths to go through and like 4 connected puzzles where you sit down and do that Indiana Jones crouch where you drop to a knee and rub your chin while looking around figuring out how you're going to navigate stuff, it'll be a great addition to the series.

I guess the problem I have with this is that the new trilogy did have the technology, and there is nothing in there nearly as gruesome as what is shown in that gif. Even if it was, it usually occurred off screen such as if you failed a QTE

# ¿ Feb 20, 2013 00:12

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Dominic White posted:

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.

I usually trust Eurogamer because they aren't afraid to give low scores to popular things and their review writing is really good.

While I feel that the number they gave was in congruent to the review they wrote, they had some pretty good things to say about Tomb Raider.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2013 18:46

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Nighteyedie posted:

I don't see why the genre matters, they can do what ever they want. Its ridiculous to dismiss a game before you play it because the genre isn't labeled right.

It can mean all the world since games are 60 dollars and if you don't like a particular genre, it is much safer to just not buy it than to buy something that you might end up hating.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2013 05:33

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Underworld is cool because it has some stuff about Norse mythology I never knew about like that Eitr stuff. That stuff was cool.

Lara's Shadow was ok, but holy poo poo is it repetitive. There is shitloads of backtracking in it.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 04:55

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

The Last Revelation was pretty much nothing but raiding Tombs. I still need to play through it.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 05:02

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

One thing I did enjoy about the games was the combat stuff you could do like jumping off their heads and the grapple pull

# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 06:47

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

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.

The point is that Lara isn't silver spoon fed, she actually is trained as a survivalist and educated and didn't just roll off of a silk-sheeted bed to go on some starry-eyed naive adventure.

She comes from a background of privelege and wealth, but she herself isn't some high-falutin' aristocratic brat like you implied, she's pretty clearly a capable and knowledgeable person outside of any concept of nobility or wealth.

She very deliberately is not the Lara who lives out of a mansion with her own personal butler and goes on adventures whenever she feels like.

So basically she is Lena Dunham without the racism baggage?

# ¿ Mar 8, 2013 07:22

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Speedball posted:

Executive-mandated multiplayer is a modern game-publishing convention that really needs to loving die, I agree.

I dunno, it managed to work for games that I didn't ever think needed a multiplayer mode like Chaos Theory and Uncharted

# ¿ Mar 11, 2013 04:43

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Chillmatic posted:

Heh. Someone doesn't understand satire.

Dude that whole angle was played up to an incredible extent. They're specifically making fun of the whole "rich white dude somehow shows the tribal people TRUE ULTIMATE POWER" trope.

Unfortunately whiny white dudes (the vast majority of gamers in America) apparently can't understand subtlety (however imperfect the end result definitely was).

I don't think it was satire. It was completely played straight. Judging by the way they handled some of the major deaths in that game, I don't even think the writer is that clever to begin with.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2013 16:08

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Sakurazuka posted:

Dammit, this would be awesome. Especially if they made it not a reboot and carried on from where Defiance left off. Which would never happen.

Didn't Defiance actually close out the story? Im not too sad about the series since it seemed like the developers ran out of ideas after Soul Reaver. I would even argue that they ran out of gameplay ideas during Soul Reaver, because even though I know it was rushed out the door, the last ability you get in that game is pretty drat useless. Soul Reaver 2 took out the cool finishing enemies off mechanic and Defiance was repetitive as hell.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2013 16:25

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Sakurazuka posted:

It finished off Raziel's 'arc' but there were still unanswered questions. From what I remember anyway, I haven't played it since it first came out.

I know some of the questions, you were expected to play Blood Omen 2 for, but from what I can tell, nobody played that game :v:

# ¿ Mar 12, 2013 16:52

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

ImpAtom posted:

I am sort of confused at how Lara is painted as the villain when she does literally nothing but try to avoid getting herself and her friends killed. Like there's no point where she isn't trying to rescue someone or get away from people who are trying unambigiously to kill her, except maybe the tombs. This is not a game with moral ambiguity, not even Uncharted-style "Well, Drake's a selfish rear end in a top hat too" style stuff.

I honestly think it is leading to a evolution of things. As much as I dislike Spec Ops: The Line, it at least tries to measure up the pretty reprehensible things you do. But it is clear in games like this and Uncharted, we are supposed to be cheering for everyday people to mow down dozens and dozens of people, especially when they begin enjoying it. At least Far Cry 3 tried to point out how much of a crazy person you became, even if it was out of necessity.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2013 18:42

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

The upgrade system in this frustrates me to hell. It just feels like I am bottlenecked since I have tons of salvage but not much else to spend it on.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2013 20:42

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Slim Killington posted:

You can't say it gives you no option and then call it a choice. And you do have a choice as the player, don't shoot anyone and die. In your ideal story, since killing people as gameplay can't be dissociated from the plot, the Lara in your story can choose not to and die (your story kinda sucks).

Seriously though, shooting a hundred baddies is just gameplay. It has no bearing on the actual plot of the game. You need something to do between cinematics to keep the game interesting, otherwise it's just a movie and she has a body count of like, 3. I can't think of a better gameplay sequence unless you make the game entirely puzzle heavy and take violence out almost all together.

Funny enough, in the original Tomb Raider, her actual human body count was 4 people total. That and a shitload of animals.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2013 21:13

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

I said it in the Playstation games thread, that I think they should have just dropped the whole survivor angle. There never really seems to be a time where it really matters anyways.

Electromax posted:

That didn't last though. In Tomb Raider 2 she kills throngs of dudes in Venice, the Oil Rig, Tibet, she murders like 20 dudes with a shotgun in her mansion in the final level. In Tomb Raider 3 she kills most of the soldiers in Area 51, piles of London Underground cultists, a whole mine of workers, a ton of South Pacific blowdart-shooting tribesmen, etc.

She's always been pretty cocky with her guns. Check out the cutscenes from confronting Larson in TR1 or the dudes in India in TR3, I think she has to have shed some blood in her youth to be cold like that when she's about to kill someone.

It didn't last because they quickly moved her out of the tombs. I thought the Last Revelation was definitely a much more well rounded experience.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2013 00:13

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

quaunaut posted:

I've always found that argument about "power fantasies" to be particularly vacuous.

What players want, is to see an effect based on their input. It's incredibly important- so much so that when you hear a talk from any designer at Valve, it's one of the top things they talk about in terms of gameplay design.

It's not that we're only into power fantasies- if it was, then Minecraft wouldn't have sold like mad. Dark Souls wouldn't have sold like mad. The Walking Dead wouldn't have sold like mad.

However, the easiest way to convey the player affecting the world around them is to make them the center of the story/action- both because it's easier to design this way, and from a technical perspective, it's a lot easier to do this than to just build a few dozen interlocking world and AI systems with umpteen million ways of interacting with one another that you could never bug test in a decade.

Edit: And to echo earlier arguments, all he keeps doing is ignoring the overwhelming majority of ingame narrative just so he can justify the fact that he doesn't like that we kill so many dudes. Which pretty much everyone here agrees with him: Killing less dudes would have made a better game. We agreed on this a long time ago. But it doesn't create a narrative/gameplay dissonance, it just makes the narrative/gameplay we get as a result more bland and cliche(all the dudes are evil and try to kill you, kill the dudes before they kill you).

Eh.. this kind of rings hollow when most of the popular games out there have you pretty much winning massive wars on your own. Call of Duty, Gears of War, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3.

I just beat the game and I have to say that it is kind of bizarre. As ImpAtom said, they really try to play up the survivor aspect with the hunting and foraging for food and then that angle is pretty much dropped to make way for Uncharted type antics for the rest of the game.

Also, while I don't agree with Adraeus completely, I do agree with him in that I don't think she nor Nathan Drake are people I particularly would like to hang out with.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2013 05:14

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Also, why didn't the Oni just kill Lara instead of knocking her out?

# ¿ Mar 13, 2013 05:39

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

I think people are forgetting that GTA5 is launching this year or maybe even the Last of Us. I agree with him. I felt that the game was kind of bare to be a GOTY contender. I beat the game and really had no urge to pick it up and play again.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2013 15:03

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

poptart_fairy posted:

Hilariously, Last Of Us seems to be getting by on the you're killing PEOPLE WITH FAMILIES thing that a lot of folk thought Tomb Raider would be.

I think a lot of games similar are going to start getting that kind of criticism unless they actually handle it well in the game. Both Uncharted 2 and Tomb Raider kind of ignore it with Uncharted 2 having one throw away line alluding to it and not much else.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2013 15:11

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

ImpAtom posted:

The problem, I think, is that the enemies going from 8-bit space invaders to defined humans who have personalities and dialogue and such has really driven home that (even if those people are bad), you are killing an absolutely insanely ridiculous amount of people. Nathan Drake kills more humans in a single game than the Aliens, Predators, Terminators and Rambo have in every movie they have combined. Even if it's a game it's getting harder to overlook it.

I also think its amplified because these are everyday yokels like you and me and really people with formal training at this stuff.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2013 16:51

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

sebmojo posted:

Running, climbing and swimming through sewage. After being impaled on rusty metal.

In my head-canon she finishes the game then dies three hours later from septicaemia, massive blood loss and hyper-tetanus.

Edit: ^^^ weirdly I agree with both the two posts above at the same time; the verisimilitude of the way the grittygrim realism and the action movie heroics interact is clunky, but it's a very minor issue.

Its a minor issue that will need to be eventually addressed as gaming evolves.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2013 21:06

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Palpek posted:

Lara is a indirectly a superheroine so I don't know what the problem is - she mows down tons of enemies and has super-strenght, impossible endurance, agility, can run infinitely etc.

To me this game is almost like Batman: Begins in a lot of ways. The movie introduced darker themes, probability and physical constraints to a guy who will later fly between skyscrapers without making you actually analyse it or destroying the suspension of desbelief because you have to buy the improbable premise in the first place.

Tomb Raider is the same. We know Lara Croft as a woman who graciously jumps through bottomless tombs while escaping T-Rexes. You have to accept a certain dose of fiction here while allowing for some rough "origins" themes that add flavor to the story. Her difficulties and low points create a drama and benefit the plot while analysing the consistency of received wounds falls way out of the fiction spectrum that the franchise still contains.

The Batman movies actually did much more interesting things with the character such as how what he does pretty much ruins his social life and actually led to a lot of ruin for the city in general. It is him placed in a world that is highly critical of him.

Tomb Raider on the other hand, drops many of the things that they are trying to create with Lara Croft within the first 2 hours of the game.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2013 21:59

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

bloodysabbath posted:

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.

Who said anything about holding them to a higher standard? I am holding them to the same standard. Which is why I criticized the Dark Knight Rises for having his back fixed with simply a little punch and some rest.. People criticized Prometheus for some of the stuff in that movie that was inconsistent.

I was mostly annoyed that they played up the gritty beat up look when it didn't really make a bit of difference. Apparently many reviews criticized the same thing.

Games are not movies and that is true, but for some reason, developers are trying to make their games like movies and it leads to stuff like we got in this game or things like in GTA4 where you are a psychopath in gameplay yet a annoyed frustrated man who resents killing in cutscenes.

For all the flak I give Spec Ops, I think they did get that part at least right.

blackguy32 fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Mar 17, 2013

# ¿ Mar 17, 2013 22:08

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Neo Rasa posted:

Just do me a favor and never play III, Last Revelation, Chronicles or Angel of Darkness.

Whats wrong with the Last Revelation?

# ¿ Mar 19, 2013 03:29

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Snak posted:

What is wrong with Tomb Raider III? It had some of the largest, most interesting and varied environments. I have always considered III to be the last "good" one, but I never played Aniversery or the other newer ones... I checked out about half way through Angel of Darkness.

I remember Tomb Raider 3 having a brutal first set of levels. If I am not mistaken, you can get instantly killed 30 seconds into starting the game by landing on a set of spikes or getting crushed by a boulder. Then if you get that, you have to watch out for the quicksand.

I might be biased because I remember being stuck on the first level because I couldn't find a key that a monkey drops when you kill it. We spent about 6 hours going back and forth thinking of places that we could have missed. I think the TV was too dark or something :smith:

# ¿ Mar 19, 2013 19:57

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Freak Magnet posted:

With all the talk about the old TR games, I figured I'd share this with you all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shB4nDTkyOE&feature=share&list=PLD584AE92588DC4A8

It's a level by level, area by area, comparison of the original Tomb Raider alongside it's Anniversary Edition, complete with developer commentary by Toby Gard (Series Creator) and Jason Botta (Creative Director).

It's interesting to see the original sections of the game playing next to the re-made ones and hearing what they've got to say about it.

I loved TR 2013, but I think Anniversary is the best of the series.

Anyway, enjoy.

I wonder what they say about the Atlantis portion of the game. I was pretty pissed when I noticed that the level was quite easily visibly shortened in the anniversary edition

# ¿ Mar 20, 2013 16:28

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Yodzilla posted:

I didn't like most of the changes in Anniversary honestly. The dinosaur segment in particular was a giant letdown and there was just something sort of off about a lot of the areas.

There were some changes I liked, but it is clear upon playing it that while a lot is the same and you can beat most levels in 15 minutes that originally took an hour, that they removed quite a bit of stuff.

But Anniversary to me always seemed half rear end because when it was released, it was only for PS2 and PC. I think it was released as a download for 360 much later. Plus, once you mastered the adrenaline headshot, combat was too easy. But I guess combat was never emphasized that much in the original either. Although I felt that Legend had some pretty cool additions to the combat.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2013 16:46

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

DrunkPanda posted:

This is the first Tomb Raider game I've ever played and I loved it so much I immediately bought the Tomb Raider trilogy, as soon as I completed this game. But I'm about an hour into Tomb Raider anniversary and so far I'm pretty disappointed. I heard they majorly overhauled the graphics and I was expecting the game to look like a ps3 game. But it really looks like a PS2 game. So far it's pretty dull, does it get better?

If you don't like it so far, then you probably won't like it. Personally, I thought the Anniversary Collection was disappointing. Legend and Underworld were much more interesting to me.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2013 05:51

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

How long was this game in development?

# ¿ Mar 26, 2013 23:57

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Renoistic posted:

They should fire their marketing department then. Both Hitman and Tomb Raider had disastrous campaigns, and I think Sleeping Dogs kind of fell under the radar.

What? I can understand maybe Tomb Raider, but Hitman sold more than any other game in the series other than Hitman 2. It even beat out the often held high Blood Money, which amazingly enough, barely broke a million.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2013 17:42

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

I dont really think it is that crazy. People said the same thing about Uncharted 2 and that game took off. Splinter Cell also had the same complaints about the multiplayer and they ended up being good.

This was just a swing and a miss.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2013 13:37

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Palpek posted:

The difference is that both of those games had decent multiplayer. One thing is for a good mode not to catch on and another is to have a multiplayer mode that is just plain bad. I can't believe a developer studio doesn't realise their multiplayer mode is poo poo during testing. Tomb Raider's multi is plain bad unlike Uncharted 2's or Splinter Cell's but they still decided to pump resources into making DLC for it. That's just a bad CEO-level decision.

Also even if I pretend they somehow believed people will decide to not have fun and play it - they were fully aware of the situation the first week after release and still decided to ask Activision level $ for additional maps instead of making one pack that gathers multiplayer maps/weapons/skins and is proportionally marked down when it comes to price.

There is no way of knowing if multiplayer will be well received on release or not other than releasing a demo or a beta.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2013 15:59

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Ronnie posted:

The gruesome QTE deaths do start to come less frequent the further in the game you get. I was a little miffed that survival is very minimal compared to the combat but once you realize it's not going away and you build up your arsenal you get a good adrenaline rush from killing these crazy cultists! I think the platforming is where this game really shines.

Pick up the game while you can guys that is a very good price!

Just picked up Tomb Raider: Anniversary man they did a good job revamping the original game, they cut a lot of out dated game concepts, kept and improved the good stuff and added extra bits and pieces. I'm really hooked!

They also cut out a lot of the interesting parts of the original. The Atlantis level in particular got butchered horribly.

# ¿ May 4, 2013 02:10

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

The major thing I dislike about this game is the upgrades to weapons. I wasn't a big fan of having to methodically search every single crate just on the hopes that there was a upgrade piece in it. Not to mention, it seems to be a little inconsistent on where you will find upgrade parts.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2013 17:37

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

I felt this was like a easier Uncharted game but the melee in Uncharted made that one better at combat. This one did have better platform mechanics in a open world and I wish they would have taken advantage of that more.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 13:55

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

Ravenfood posted:

So, I picked this up since it was 75% off on Steam all weekend. I played a tiny bit with the mkb controls and it seemed irritatingly clunky and pretty much designed for the xbox controller. Should I just go with that or is it just how the game is made?

Platforming is pretty much always going to be pretty clunky with a mouse and keyboard. Its manageable but when I played it on PS3, it was far more natural.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2013 18:19

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 22:02

blackguy32: Oct 1, 2005; Say, do you know how to do the walk?

superh posted:

I seriously wish there was a NG+ where I could do a dodge-only run.

I wish there was a new game+ so I wouldn't have to bother with opening every single crate for gun upgrades.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2014 23:21

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Block pushing is so 1996. Now we're in to cross bows: TOMB RAIDER