Tomb Raider Review Thread!

Fine Ham Abounds said:
And then I read shit like this and wonder if I should even bother putting in any effort into giving my impressions for this at all.
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So you call other people's opinion 'shit' and then your 'opinion' is something worth than others.

Fuck you.
joking, but some people just hated the game.
 
PSY・S;48244814 said:
That seems, unnecessarily brutal. I've never really played Tomb Raider before but, is Lara supposed to be a cold-blooded killer?
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in that scene she don't know how to use machine gun very will,look at her hands
 
Lime said:
@Jim Sterling:

When you review a game and the narrative clashes with the gameplay, why don't you dog it for more points? In the case of Tomb Raider you specifically mention the gameplay "more or less undermines the whole narrative about the impact of taking human life.", yet you fail to see it as a severe flaw with the game in terms of coherence? Personally I have a hard time understanding how or why such a flaw can be ignored in assessing the quality of a game emphasizing its narrative and characters within it.

I'm just curious.
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I think it's clear that many reviewers and people who play games still place the utmost importance on the 'fun factor'. It can severely tilt scores in one favour or another. It's conditioned in most of the people who began playing games when story or narrative meant absolutely nothing.

Should they? That's a different argument!
 
Sounds good. Always thought it looked like something I could have fun with, but I feared the worst in terms of how it would be received critically. Nice to see that it apparently turned out to be solid.
 
kuroshiki said:
So you call other people's opinion 'shit' and then your 'opinion' is something worth than others.

Fuck you.
joking, but some people just hated the game.
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You didn't have an opinion. You saw high scores and then told everyone who had concerns to suck it.

Also nice try at saving face by editing that spoiler in. "FUCK YOU YOU PIECE OF SHIT......*edit* jk of course, please don't ban me mods."
 
x-Lundz-x said:
The hate comes from people stuck in the 90's who want outdated game design.
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Making your way through complex, challenging but satisfying tombs (puzzles) with some controlled shooting elements of the 90s vs dudebro action with some kiddy puzzles every now and then, today. Outdated what, exactly?

Not like the 90s genres won't make their come back though, we're already seeing it in games like Dark Souls.
 
derFeef said:
Kudos, VG247.

054i5Ur.jpg
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But the only thing that isn't in Uncharted is a deer. They got cows and horses instead.
 
x-Lundz-x said:
The hate comes from people stuck in the 90's who want outdated game design. I knew this game was going to be amazing the moment the first game play was shown. March 5th can't get here soon enough.
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Yeah, I guess that's one way of putting it. It's just a shame that wanting to raid tombs, awesome platforming, preferring a lack of QTEs, not liking "interactive" cutscenes, exploration that leaves you wondering "How do I get up there when I'm down here" is considered "outdated game design."
 
Lime said:
@Jim Sterling:

When you review a game and the narrative clashes with the gameplay, why don't you dog it for more points? In the case of Tomb Raider you specifically mention the gameplay "more or less undermines the whole narrative about the impact of taking human life.", yet you fail to see it as a severe flaw with the game in terms of coherence? Personally I have a hard time understanding how or why such a flaw can be ignored in assessing the quality of a game emphasizing its narrative and characters within it.

I'm just curious.
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This bothers me too, but I think most people who play the game would not be bothered by this (or even notice it). To me it's central to any conversation about game play, but I think most gamers - including the ones whom Sterling is presumably writing for - could care less, and would cry foul if a review made hay out of such a thing.
 
shidoshi said:
Here's my review over on EGM. Interesting that some people seem to be saying that the first hour is the worst, when I thought the first hour was the most representative to what I had wanted from the game.

The tomb puzzles are extremely simple.
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However, that all changes. Hunting and foraging come to play no part in the game outside of XP collection; the island’s threats, both living and natural, take a back seat to the squads of hostiles that inevitable inhabit every location we’re lead to. Lara’s transformation from inexperienced young girl to unstoppable powerhouse comes far too quickly. The first time she kills another human, it’s an emotionally powerful moment too rarely seen in videogames. Soon, her body count rises exponentially—as does the power of her weaponry. (In fact, on more than a number of occasions, Lara enters into battles with the island’s rag-tag inhabitants where she greatly out-guns them; it’s easy to feel some level of moral ambiguity when you’re using an automatic rifle to mow down men carrying nothing but bows and arrows.)

Then there’s Tomb Raider’s island itself. What originally seems to be a collection of path-following segments based around cinematic needs end up intertwining with one another to create a more open-world environment. Found among its beautifully-rendered mountain peaks and sprawling forests are the ruins of a lost Japanese civilization, interspersed with bonus hidden tombs for raiding. Strangely, Tomb Raider’s standard structures are far more exciting in terms of design and challenge than those ancient burial grounds—even though they give a nod to past chapters of the series, the puzzles found within are disappointingly simple.
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Game really is sounding a mixed bag. Thanks for touching on these points.
 
Shacknews Review from Mattas seems to echo Tara Long's review.

There are still some environmental puzzles to be solved--my favorites being ones that involved using Lara's rope arrow upgrade--but you're not likely to get stumped by them, nor are they likely to test your dexterity much. It's a nice touch that there are a number of optional tombs to explore along the way, but most of them basically amount to a single-room puzzle. Similarly, while there are some branching pathways, side-routes, and optional nooks to explore throughout the game, thoroughly scouring each area doesn't take long.
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Mixed impressions.
 
I'm going to wait for GAF impressions, but I'm cautiously interested. That said, I am weighing that up against the chance of it appearing on Playstation Plus sometime in the back end of this year.
 
This game looks refreshing, glad to see a company take a title and breathe new life into in especially with so many titles just being recycled content with a twist *Cough* COD, Dead Space, AC *Cough*.
 
Lime said:
@Jim Sterling:

When you review a game and the narrative clashes with the gameplay, why don't you dog it for more points? In the case of Tomb Raider you specifically mention the gameplay "more or less undermines the whole narrative about the impact of taking human life.", yet you fail to see it as a severe flaw with the game in terms of coherence? Personally I have a hard time understanding how or why such a flaw can be ignored in assessing the quality of a game emphasizing its narrative and characters within it.

I'm just curious.
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Perfectly happy to answer questions!

I don't believe in stone-clad objective rules when it comes to assessing a game. I take each thing on a case by case basis, and in a game that relies too heavily in its narrative would indeed have deserved more ragging on the failure to keep this theme consistent. In Tomb Raider, it simply did not matter that much.

In the case of Tomb Raider, the taking of human life is only ever a light theme, not something consistently portrayed or heavily important to the narrative. Hence, it only came across as an amusing irony than a glaring literary sin. That, coupled with the fact that the combat design is something I found beautiful in its elegance, contributed to my being forgiving.

Narrative is important, it absolutely is. But its importance varies by game, as does its themes, depending on which ones the writer chooses to emphasize the most.
 
The rule of the generation:

Game broken in a way that causes the game to provide too much friction for the reviewer? Middling score.

Game broken in a way that makes the game dead simple and piss easy to all walks of life? 8/10+.
 
OwlyKnees said:
Disagree. I'm more inclined to reviewers such as Edge, who withhold such information. Yes, it's nice to know an individuals taste and if your own matches up, but it should be irrelevant. If a company is operating as a whole, as they should, then there should be no need to distinguish reviewers. Professional reviewers should be objectively critical in their reviews, personal subjective comments have no place and therefore knowing the reviewer makes no difference.

Whether reviewers do such, however, is another matter.
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The last part is why none of what you said matters (along with the near-impossibility of keeping a review entirely objective, unless all you want is to read about framerates and texture pop-in). Sounds to me like you only should care about reviews from Edge (not a bad policy, actually), perhaps Digital Foundry, and no one else, considering that every other site does list a person's name, and for good reasons (giving due credit, among them).
 
Bit confused about the varying opinion on the automated(or not) platforming. If it isn't like Uncharted where you automatically grab on then how does it work?

As for the machine gun gif, it's more absurd than bruta;.
 
eot said:
The GT review makes it look like Ludonarrative Dissonance: The Game
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Jim Sterling echoes that sentiment:

Lara can more than hold her own against the crazed island inhabitants, and killing them is so much fun, it more or less undermines the whole narrative about the impact of taking human life.
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OwlyKnees said:
I think it's clear that many reviewers and people who play games still place the utmost importance on the 'fun factor'. It can severely tilt scores in one favour or another. It's conditioned in most of the people who began playing games when story or narrative meant absolutely nothing.

Should they? That's a different argument!
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Good elaboration, but:

1. 'fun' is a meaningless term if you want to have a fruitful discussion and
2. overlooking/ignoring actual existing flaws because the reviewer had mindless fun is simply not acceptable if your role is to adequately assess the quality of a title.

I'm not arguing against you, just stating that people who hold the position you describe don't know what they are doing.
 
Good, good, bring on the 9's.
I've been looking forward to this game since E3.

This is the first time I've given a shit about the name Tomb Raider since TR2. This series was in desperate need of a reimagining and all signs point towards them nailing it here. I'm excited.

I very much enjoyed watching IGN's review and reading Polygon's. I look forward to more swimmingly positive reviews.
 
params7 said:
Making your way through complex, challenging but satisfying tombs (puzzles) with some controlled shooting elements of the 90s vs dudebro action with some kiddy puzzles every now and then, today. Outdated what, exactly?

Not like the 90s genres won't make their come back though, we're already seeing it in games like Dark Souls.
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Yeah I got a laugh out of that, and then sighed when I realized that good deep gameplay is now considered "outdated".
 
Whatever the scores are, the reviews confirm the fears a lot of us had with the game.

I'll get the game for cheap but this game definetly kill the Tomb Raider games as we know it.
 
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