Mild SPOILERS for halfway 2013 TR and some chapters for U4.
After having just finished Uncharted 4 about a month ago and being satisfied with the story but disappointed with the gameplay, I am playing through Tomb Raider 2013 now for the first time on my PS4. I just passed what felt like was the ending but apparently I'm only halfway through, so that was actually kind of shocking. However, I think I've seen enough to make my points here to draw some comparisons.
First of all, you can't convince me that it's unfair to compare Tomb Raider and Uncharted series. They have been inspired by each other for years. They take cues from each other, with TR lifting-and-adapting Uncharted 2's collapsing building setpieces to Uncharted 4 straight-up copying the piton and rope from TR2013. Same genre, same concept (adventurer for treasure), similar gameplay mechanics. I can compare a lot of the similar things about them about as logically as someone can compare whether they like Whataburger or In-N-Out better or one presidential candidate versus the other.
Background
Now, to start things off, I have always been a huge fan of the Uncharted series. U2 was one of my favorite games of all time. The amazing script with witty, colorful characters carried by breakneck paced gameplay and a thrilling sense of fast-paced adventure enchanted me.
I totally skipped the Tomb Raider reboot series because I was a busy student at the time and I just didn't care that much. I also heard lukewarm reception to its story, and I thought, clearly, the gameplay wouldn't be so much better that it would be worth playing instead of an Uncharted game.
Reflecting on Uncharted 4
I played Uncharted 4 this month. While I still love the characters and the universe it has built for itself, I was disappointed with the game and I thirsted for some alternatives in the genre. It had the best combat system in the series and yet there were chapters where you didn't use it at all. There were chapters where the combat encounters for a given environment only lasted seconds, and things only really ramped up at the ending hours, only for the story to end.
In the end, many would suggest that U4 was intentionally focused around a foundation of exploration and light traversal/puzzles, while the action gameplay (for the sake of this post, I define action gameplay as the moments where there is combat, set-piece action, or conflict of some kind) was sprinkled in between and at the beginning/end, unlike previous iterations that focused proportionally more on action. The main problem with this was that decreasing the proportion of action segments only to saturate the game with traversal really highlighted the series' flaws. The copious amounts of light traversal/puzzles/climbing were never satisfying. It felt extremely simplistic, low-quality, and shallow.
U4 Exploration Flaws
Madagascar's open field level was a sandbox-type level, except there are no NPCs to find, no meaningful items to scavenge (just trinkets for after you beat the game), no large-scale puzzles to trigger or unlock, etc. At the end there's the option to find some enemies, but that's not much content for so much level to look at. In fact, a lot of the level lures you into getting out of your jeep to explore what's behind a boulder or atop a cliff, only to find nothing and feeling like you wasted your time. The worst example is the archipelago. I am fucking around on these islands looking for the next path to follow, some of these areas having nothing to find. There were fleeting moments where your curiosity is rewarded, like finding the sunken ship in the archipelago, but you are rewarded with a trinket that has no effect on the game. The treasures are so well-hidden that it is not often you are rewarded with one for your efforts of exploring the stray path. And even when you are, who cares? You found an ancient coin? Yawn. The lonely exploration gameplay doesn't have you navigating carefully designed levels for useful items ala Zelda or Dark Souls. In summary, the exploration in this game is not well rewarded with anything tangible. If you are the kind of person who could get lost for days in a pretty level that has absolutely NOTHING, I think you're insane and boring, but to each his own, I can't. I need a meaningful and interactive reward mechanism for exploration.
U4 Climbing/Traversal Flaws
The mechanics are mostly the same as they have always been: mediocre. Except now it's such a main part of what you will be doing between Chapter 11-20 that you really get a lot of time to experience how rudimentary it all is. You flail up the side of a mountain within seconds thanks to a conveniently designed, painfully obvious path where your fingers magnetize to the ledges. It's simple, it's automatic, it gets the job done. But it is certainly not engaging or clever to the extent that it should be a large portion of the gameplay. It functions best as a "palate cleanser" in between action meals, as one GAFer put it. The best new mechanic was the rope, and yet it still feels underutilized, and we have an entire thread on the dissonance of this mechanic in the first place. It comes in handy at convenient moments, and is blissfully ignored at others where it could come in handy. And it's rarely used for any sort of clever puzzles (although I admit, when it is, it feels great). Finally, the piton is pitiful. It doesn't empower Drake in any admirable way. It's an extra button press in the climbing process. Nate can't climb any higher ground using the piton, he already knows how to super human leap. The piton just forces the last part of the game to use a lot of scaly terrain to justify the mechanic, which is just lazy game design. In summary, the traversal mechanics are weak and underutilized.
U4 Puzzle Flaws
U4 had moments of enjoyment with puzzles, but they're far too rare. You either have the very rare complex puzzles in a dungeon/treasure room that take several minutes, or the hilariously unimaginative ones like the crate on wheels.
Moving on to Tomb Raider...
After considering the major flaws of U4's focus on passive gameplay ideas, I was incredibly let down with the game and thought to myself, well, what would I have liked to see instead? I hadn't found a game that incorporated what I thought would have been better traversal/puzzles/climbing. I picked up Tomb Raider on a whim and I am floored at how many things it got so right in game design in comparison to Uncharted 4. It's almost embarrassing that Naughty Dog is praised so highly in this genre, and in their latest outing they didn't improve upon great gameplay concepts TR introduced back in 2013. Allow me to elaborate.
Tomb Raider doesn't have the amazing characters and script and graphics of Uncharted, and the combat isn't perfect, of course. In fact, the story is so bad at making me care about its characters, I can't remember caring or remembering how was on-screen except for Lara. Apparently Roth is super close to her but I don't even remember why. It's all so pitifully executed that I just don't even care. And yeah, the guns sound like pea shooters and the animations are meh and it's all kind of janky/arcadey in combat. But that is okay. What is really really surprising me about Tomb Raider are some of its game mechanics that in some ways are miles ahead of what Uncharted 4 tried. I'm actually having fun climbing around, looking underneath waterfalls and inside caves, etc. These are the main reasons why:
The environmental puzzles and ordinary exploration gameplay shit on Uncharted 4 from a great height
You know what was amazing for me? How layered the game design is here. It's not one-trick pony. The items, the traversal, Lara's abilities, the environment, it's all layered and peels back as you progress. This gave it a really satisfying feel in comparison to U4. I'll try to explain what I mean.
The puzzle levels and environments have many concepts, tools, and mechanics going on at once. Within the first few minutes of Tomb Raider, I was solving a puzzle (the crate, water, and fire puzzle) that actually had me use game mechanics + cleverness + the environment to progress. You see, those are my favorite kinds of puzzles. And they do exist in U4 (like when you use the water current to access a wall or the rope and widget mechanics) but they were very rare in a typical chapter. In this game, this kind of puzzle-solving happened within minutes, and they are plentiful within the game. They develop in complexity over time and they incorporate NEW GAME ITEMS to complete! Lara is constantly getting stronger and more geared in a logical and satisfying way. It's all layered. When I unlocked rope for my bow and arrow, I suddenly thought "oh my god, all those rope structures I saw in previous levels can be manipulated with this new game mechanic!" Let me tell you that I audibly said "whoa" whenever I was trying to get some gear down from a tree, and I used my rope bow to pull a lantern structure I lit with my torch, which then burned the net the gear was trapped in so I could get it. It felt like a Zelda moment. The rope arrows, like the other items, tend to expand in their use as you progress. Suddenly, I started using rope arrows to create paths between large chasms in a mountain range! One of the coolest moments was when I had to escape the building by using a giant bell to break through the ground. I used my rope to pull window blinds open to adjust wind and knock the bell to the floor. These kinds of puzzles incorporate the USEFUL game items you are constantly improving and upgrading, like the fire arrows. So unlike the piton in Uncharted 4, which was seems to arbitrarily exist, gear like the torch, firestarter, grenade launcher, rope arrows, etc. all have uses not just in combat, but in the environment, traversal and puzzles. It all leads to a richer, more involved player experience in navigating the environment that just runs circles around U4's traversal. are commonplace in TR, and it makes the moments where I am NOT beating the shit out of people with an axe still engaging. Game design like this makes Tomb Raider 2013's pacing significantly and consistently better than Uncharted 4's lulling early-to-mid chapters.
The optional tombs are fantastic game design. Why? They reward the player for exploring, but not with useless trinkets, but with clever gameplay and USEFUL items and trinkets. Some of the best third-person adventure puzzles outside of Zelda/Dark Souls/Darksiders are in these optional tombs, and they don't break the pacing because they're engaging and completely optional. Reaching the first tomb, I immediately saw Tomb Raider's better approach to open design than Uncharted 4. Whereas U4 has a couple of huge open levels with pockets of arbitrary space occasionally littered by sparkling trinkets, TR follows a mostly linear level design, but presents you with meaningful choices. Do you go left to catch up with the NPC or do you go right to explore an amazing tomb of secrets? Do you go up the cliff to the useful item or down the short path? U4 had moments like this, but the diverted path only sometimes led you to a small cave with a note or useless artifact, not entire optional puzzle rooms or items that changed the gameplay. Furthermore, the levels designed in Tomb Raider have multiple layers of access. Once I unlocked the firestarter for my torch, I realized I could go back to an earlier campsite to explore a cave behind a waterfall. Once I got the shotgun, I realized I could go back to the first tomb and break down the reinforced wall at the end of the tomb. Once I found the rope arrows, I could cross unclimbable gaps I couldn't before. Once I unlocked the piton, I could climb scaly walls that were earlier in the game that I hadn't accessed before. And unlike U4, Lara can't superhuman leap up conveniently colored bricks on the wall, so the piton actually opens up traversal for her. I was really annoyed in U4 how many obstacles couldn't be climbed or passed even though I had the tools and superhuman strength to do so. I remember finding walls I couldn't scale even though I had just performed superhuman leaps moments before. The opposite seems true in TR. The level design opens up as you gain more strength and abilities. I appreciate Tomb Raider's layered exploration, using tools and gameplay mechanics that build and make sense. Despite being very linear, the level design is all very organic and multi-layered in its traversal and item mechanics, which feels incredibly satisfying in comparison to U4, where they probably spent weeks modeling the artifacts in an empty house I will walk through and never return to.
Final Thoughts
A lot of people defend the long stretches of exploration gameplay in U4 like its good or well-designed just because it helps make the rare action moments more meaningful. I am really tired of hearing unconvincing justifications for this slow, empty gameplay when there is just such a better example of how to do non-combat exploration but making it meaty and engaging. The shallowness of U4 in this aspect is really obvious when you compare it to Tomb Raider's level design and tombs. The combination of climbing and weapons and environmental changes in these puzzles and traversal shame Uncharted 4's barebones exploration gameplay that has almost nothing to unlock or reveal.
The moment-to-moment gameplay here is much more consistently engaging. Like I said, yes, the story is nothing to praise. I'm not being fed particularly interesting characters, but it's serviceable, and the motivation for Lara to survive the island and increase her skills as a survivor is functional enough. The moments where Lara is alone or not fighting are never boring. There is always something to discover about the environment. Sure, it's not as gorgeous as U4 and the art design is not as consistently amazing as U4, but the team did a good enough job at making a pretty Japanese island with reason to look around. So far, not once have I felt like I was being dragged through exploring my environments. It doesn't hurt that in this game, like The Last of Us, I'm actually collecting stuff that impacts the gameplay, unlike the lack of incentives to look around in Uncharted 4.
I will never forget U4's story and that it was fun for a playthrough. But the story does not make up for its mediocre pacing and shallow level design and exploration gameplay being the pillar of its game design. Meanwhile, yes, TR also has some glaring flaws, but my personal tastes don't mind the story being atrocious (as most game stories are) or the combat being a little rough and arcadey when the overall moment-to-moment gameplay makes me feel like a real adventurer with developing skills and meaningful tombs to explore. In some ways, Tomb Raider does classic adventure gameplay that the Uncharted series has wanted to be about better than Uncharted 4 does.
I'm sure some people think I'm crazy for enjoying myself more with TR than Uncharted, especially since I grew up a fan of the latter, but the action and exploration gameplay here is so much better balanced in pacing and proportion compared to U4 that I am just loving it.
TL;DR Tomb Raider does exploration, puzzles, items, and pacing better than Uncharted 4, and U4 could learn some game design from Crystal Dynamics.
After having just finished Uncharted 4 about a month ago and being satisfied with the story but disappointed with the gameplay, I am playing through Tomb Raider 2013 now for the first time on my PS4. I just passed what felt like was the ending but apparently I'm only halfway through, so that was actually kind of shocking. However, I think I've seen enough to make my points here to draw some comparisons.
First of all, you can't convince me that it's unfair to compare Tomb Raider and Uncharted series. They have been inspired by each other for years. They take cues from each other, with TR lifting-and-adapting Uncharted 2's collapsing building setpieces to Uncharted 4 straight-up copying the piton and rope from TR2013. Same genre, same concept (adventurer for treasure), similar gameplay mechanics. I can compare a lot of the similar things about them about as logically as someone can compare whether they like Whataburger or In-N-Out better or one presidential candidate versus the other.
Background
Now, to start things off, I have always been a huge fan of the Uncharted series. U2 was one of my favorite games of all time. The amazing script with witty, colorful characters carried by breakneck paced gameplay and a thrilling sense of fast-paced adventure enchanted me.
I totally skipped the Tomb Raider reboot series because I was a busy student at the time and I just didn't care that much. I also heard lukewarm reception to its story, and I thought, clearly, the gameplay wouldn't be so much better that it would be worth playing instead of an Uncharted game.
Reflecting on Uncharted 4
I played Uncharted 4 this month. While I still love the characters and the universe it has built for itself, I was disappointed with the game and I thirsted for some alternatives in the genre. It had the best combat system in the series and yet there were chapters where you didn't use it at all. There were chapters where the combat encounters for a given environment only lasted seconds, and things only really ramped up at the ending hours, only for the story to end.
In the end, many would suggest that U4 was intentionally focused around a foundation of exploration and light traversal/puzzles, while the action gameplay (for the sake of this post, I define action gameplay as the moments where there is combat, set-piece action, or conflict of some kind) was sprinkled in between and at the beginning/end, unlike previous iterations that focused proportionally more on action. The main problem with this was that decreasing the proportion of action segments only to saturate the game with traversal really highlighted the series' flaws. The copious amounts of light traversal/puzzles/climbing were never satisfying. It felt extremely simplistic, low-quality, and shallow.
U4 Exploration Flaws
Madagascar's open field level was a sandbox-type level, except there are no NPCs to find, no meaningful items to scavenge (just trinkets for after you beat the game), no large-scale puzzles to trigger or unlock, etc. At the end there's the option to find some enemies, but that's not much content for so much level to look at. In fact, a lot of the level lures you into getting out of your jeep to explore what's behind a boulder or atop a cliff, only to find nothing and feeling like you wasted your time. The worst example is the archipelago. I am fucking around on these islands looking for the next path to follow, some of these areas having nothing to find. There were fleeting moments where your curiosity is rewarded, like finding the sunken ship in the archipelago, but you are rewarded with a trinket that has no effect on the game. The treasures are so well-hidden that it is not often you are rewarded with one for your efforts of exploring the stray path. And even when you are, who cares? You found an ancient coin? Yawn. The lonely exploration gameplay doesn't have you navigating carefully designed levels for useful items ala Zelda or Dark Souls. In summary, the exploration in this game is not well rewarded with anything tangible. If you are the kind of person who could get lost for days in a pretty level that has absolutely NOTHING, I think you're insane and boring, but to each his own, I can't. I need a meaningful and interactive reward mechanism for exploration.
U4 Climbing/Traversal Flaws
The mechanics are mostly the same as they have always been: mediocre. Except now it's such a main part of what you will be doing between Chapter 11-20 that you really get a lot of time to experience how rudimentary it all is. You flail up the side of a mountain within seconds thanks to a conveniently designed, painfully obvious path where your fingers magnetize to the ledges. It's simple, it's automatic, it gets the job done. But it is certainly not engaging or clever to the extent that it should be a large portion of the gameplay. It functions best as a "palate cleanser" in between action meals, as one GAFer put it. The best new mechanic was the rope, and yet it still feels underutilized, and we have an entire thread on the dissonance of this mechanic in the first place. It comes in handy at convenient moments, and is blissfully ignored at others where it could come in handy. And it's rarely used for any sort of clever puzzles (although I admit, when it is, it feels great). Finally, the piton is pitiful. It doesn't empower Drake in any admirable way. It's an extra button press in the climbing process. Nate can't climb any higher ground using the piton, he already knows how to super human leap. The piton just forces the last part of the game to use a lot of scaly terrain to justify the mechanic, which is just lazy game design. In summary, the traversal mechanics are weak and underutilized.
U4 Puzzle Flaws
U4 had moments of enjoyment with puzzles, but they're far too rare. You either have the very rare complex puzzles in a dungeon/treasure room that take several minutes, or the hilariously unimaginative ones like the crate on wheels.
Moving on to Tomb Raider...
After considering the major flaws of U4's focus on passive gameplay ideas, I was incredibly let down with the game and thought to myself, well, what would I have liked to see instead? I hadn't found a game that incorporated what I thought would have been better traversal/puzzles/climbing. I picked up Tomb Raider on a whim and I am floored at how many things it got so right in game design in comparison to Uncharted 4. It's almost embarrassing that Naughty Dog is praised so highly in this genre, and in their latest outing they didn't improve upon great gameplay concepts TR introduced back in 2013. Allow me to elaborate.
Tomb Raider doesn't have the amazing characters and script and graphics of Uncharted, and the combat isn't perfect, of course. In fact, the story is so bad at making me care about its characters, I can't remember caring or remembering how was on-screen except for Lara. Apparently Roth is super close to her but I don't even remember why. It's all so pitifully executed that I just don't even care. And yeah, the guns sound like pea shooters and the animations are meh and it's all kind of janky/arcadey in combat. But that is okay. What is really really surprising me about Tomb Raider are some of its game mechanics that in some ways are miles ahead of what Uncharted 4 tried. I'm actually having fun climbing around, looking underneath waterfalls and inside caves, etc. These are the main reasons why:
The environmental puzzles and ordinary exploration gameplay shit on Uncharted 4 from a great height
You know what was amazing for me? How layered the game design is here. It's not one-trick pony. The items, the traversal, Lara's abilities, the environment, it's all layered and peels back as you progress. This gave it a really satisfying feel in comparison to U4. I'll try to explain what I mean.
The puzzle levels and environments have many concepts, tools, and mechanics going on at once. Within the first few minutes of Tomb Raider, I was solving a puzzle (the crate, water, and fire puzzle) that actually had me use game mechanics + cleverness + the environment to progress. You see, those are my favorite kinds of puzzles. And they do exist in U4 (like when you use the water current to access a wall or the rope and widget mechanics) but they were very rare in a typical chapter. In this game, this kind of puzzle-solving happened within minutes, and they are plentiful within the game. They develop in complexity over time and they incorporate NEW GAME ITEMS to complete! Lara is constantly getting stronger and more geared in a logical and satisfying way. It's all layered. When I unlocked rope for my bow and arrow, I suddenly thought "oh my god, all those rope structures I saw in previous levels can be manipulated with this new game mechanic!" Let me tell you that I audibly said "whoa" whenever I was trying to get some gear down from a tree, and I used my rope bow to pull a lantern structure I lit with my torch, which then burned the net the gear was trapped in so I could get it. It felt like a Zelda moment. The rope arrows, like the other items, tend to expand in their use as you progress. Suddenly, I started using rope arrows to create paths between large chasms in a mountain range! One of the coolest moments was when I had to escape the building by using a giant bell to break through the ground. I used my rope to pull window blinds open to adjust wind and knock the bell to the floor. These kinds of puzzles incorporate the USEFUL game items you are constantly improving and upgrading, like the fire arrows. So unlike the piton in Uncharted 4, which was seems to arbitrarily exist, gear like the torch, firestarter, grenade launcher, rope arrows, etc. all have uses not just in combat, but in the environment, traversal and puzzles. It all leads to a richer, more involved player experience in navigating the environment that just runs circles around U4's traversal. are commonplace in TR, and it makes the moments where I am NOT beating the shit out of people with an axe still engaging. Game design like this makes Tomb Raider 2013's pacing significantly and consistently better than Uncharted 4's lulling early-to-mid chapters.
The optional tombs are fantastic game design. Why? They reward the player for exploring, but not with useless trinkets, but with clever gameplay and USEFUL items and trinkets. Some of the best third-person adventure puzzles outside of Zelda/Dark Souls/Darksiders are in these optional tombs, and they don't break the pacing because they're engaging and completely optional. Reaching the first tomb, I immediately saw Tomb Raider's better approach to open design than Uncharted 4. Whereas U4 has a couple of huge open levels with pockets of arbitrary space occasionally littered by sparkling trinkets, TR follows a mostly linear level design, but presents you with meaningful choices. Do you go left to catch up with the NPC or do you go right to explore an amazing tomb of secrets? Do you go up the cliff to the useful item or down the short path? U4 had moments like this, but the diverted path only sometimes led you to a small cave with a note or useless artifact, not entire optional puzzle rooms or items that changed the gameplay. Furthermore, the levels designed in Tomb Raider have multiple layers of access. Once I unlocked the firestarter for my torch, I realized I could go back to an earlier campsite to explore a cave behind a waterfall. Once I got the shotgun, I realized I could go back to the first tomb and break down the reinforced wall at the end of the tomb. Once I found the rope arrows, I could cross unclimbable gaps I couldn't before. Once I unlocked the piton, I could climb scaly walls that were earlier in the game that I hadn't accessed before. And unlike U4, Lara can't superhuman leap up conveniently colored bricks on the wall, so the piton actually opens up traversal for her. I was really annoyed in U4 how many obstacles couldn't be climbed or passed even though I had the tools and superhuman strength to do so. I remember finding walls I couldn't scale even though I had just performed superhuman leaps moments before. The opposite seems true in TR. The level design opens up as you gain more strength and abilities. I appreciate Tomb Raider's layered exploration, using tools and gameplay mechanics that build and make sense. Despite being very linear, the level design is all very organic and multi-layered in its traversal and item mechanics, which feels incredibly satisfying in comparison to U4, where they probably spent weeks modeling the artifacts in an empty house I will walk through and never return to.
Final Thoughts
A lot of people defend the long stretches of exploration gameplay in U4 like its good or well-designed just because it helps make the rare action moments more meaningful. I am really tired of hearing unconvincing justifications for this slow, empty gameplay when there is just such a better example of how to do non-combat exploration but making it meaty and engaging. The shallowness of U4 in this aspect is really obvious when you compare it to Tomb Raider's level design and tombs. The combination of climbing and weapons and environmental changes in these puzzles and traversal shame Uncharted 4's barebones exploration gameplay that has almost nothing to unlock or reveal.
The moment-to-moment gameplay here is much more consistently engaging. Like I said, yes, the story is nothing to praise. I'm not being fed particularly interesting characters, but it's serviceable, and the motivation for Lara to survive the island and increase her skills as a survivor is functional enough. The moments where Lara is alone or not fighting are never boring. There is always something to discover about the environment. Sure, it's not as gorgeous as U4 and the art design is not as consistently amazing as U4, but the team did a good enough job at making a pretty Japanese island with reason to look around. So far, not once have I felt like I was being dragged through exploring my environments. It doesn't hurt that in this game, like The Last of Us, I'm actually collecting stuff that impacts the gameplay, unlike the lack of incentives to look around in Uncharted 4.
I will never forget U4's story and that it was fun for a playthrough. But the story does not make up for its mediocre pacing and shallow level design and exploration gameplay being the pillar of its game design. Meanwhile, yes, TR also has some glaring flaws, but my personal tastes don't mind the story being atrocious (as most game stories are) or the combat being a little rough and arcadey when the overall moment-to-moment gameplay makes me feel like a real adventurer with developing skills and meaningful tombs to explore. In some ways, Tomb Raider does classic adventure gameplay that the Uncharted series has wanted to be about better than Uncharted 4 does.
I'm sure some people think I'm crazy for enjoying myself more with TR than Uncharted, especially since I grew up a fan of the latter, but the action and exploration gameplay here is so much better balanced in pacing and proportion compared to U4 that I am just loving it.
TL;DR Tomb Raider does exploration, puzzles, items, and pacing better than Uncharted 4, and U4 could learn some game design from Crystal Dynamics.
