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Tomb Raider |OT| Lara's Misfortune

Anybody home?

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CatPee

Member
Jason does not seem bipol... let's agree to disagree here. Going from a hunter to a QTE bossfight is definitely ludonarrative dissonance. At least in Tomb Raider the QTEs are confined to parts where Lara is actually reactionary instead of in control (which they did great as the use of QTEs diminshed as she was taking control of the environment), that's ludonarrative consonance. At least Lara when she killed her first man reacted with "I was scared by how easy it was" (which I agree is a bit too fast, though not out of character), instead of Brody who is a scared rich kid who must learn to be a hunter, yet already is a veritable killing machine the moment he steps out of the first shack door.

Ludonarrative dissonance doesn't occur for Jason since he is never portrayed as scared of anything apart from the very beginning. In fact, he's portrayed as someone who relishes in the killing and brutality. Lara is portrayed as afraid and a weak little girl in cutscenes, but then proceeds to kill tons of people and
the Stormguards (who happen to utterly destroy the Japanese army but is no match for a newbie "survivor")
doesn't afraid of anything. Your points about her being portrayed as scared actually supports my points. QTEs have nothing to do with ludonarrative dissonance.

FC3 still does many things much better that TR tries to do. Exploration is hugely better even on the story missions that involve tombs. Wildlife and flora actually serve a purpose aside from being there for the sake of throwing XP into the player's face. Survival on an island is done far, far better than TR because it offers actual incentives to do survival-y things such as hunting and crafting. FC3's puzzles for some relics are more complex than TR's tombs (though that's not saying much). Combat encounters are open-ended and doesn't shoehorn you into taking enemies head-on. The only thing it's inferior at compared to TR is the platforming (and by extension, main character animations), which is due to its limited first-person perspective. As I mentioned previously, it nails the "survival on an island" and "a survivor is born" theme far better than Tomb Raider does, which is a damned shame.
 

kaskade

Member
The game definitely gets better when it starts to "open up" about an hour in. While I'm not anywhere near finished yet (maybe a 1/3 through if I had to guess) I really want to see more of the series in this direction.
 

pakkit

Banned
Anybody home?

http://24.media.tumblr.com/e751773f2ea84bf6b10f2f67bbf96b21/tumblr_mjmgfx8nvd1rxhu0oo1_500.gif[IMG][/QUOTE]
As great as this is, I would be upset to see that spoiler if I hadn't gotten to that point yet.

I'm really disappointed in the post-game. The cries of "Metroid-esque" were unwarranted. The fast-travel system doesn't truly allow you to explore the island, you can only get from one area to another using the camps. Even Arkham City was more "open-world" than this.

I enjoyed this a lot, but, with no interest in multiplayer, I do regret paying full price for this. A really great rental, though.
 

FroJay

Banned
At roughly the halfway point and this thing has really picked up, I'm enjoying the game quite a bit more now. You definitely need to get in the flow of the game, bow and arrows are my new favorite death toy. Great stuff!
 

Kydd BlaZe

Member
Damn. This game is definitely GOTY so far. Finished it in two sittings (two VERY LONG sittings). Could not put the game down. I wanted to see, do, and collect EVERYTHING. Got all of the singleplayer achievements, but I refuse to mess around with the awful multiplayer, which almost killed the overall package for me. I sort of expected a bit better from Eidos Montreal. Crystal Dynamics really nailed the singleplayer, however. I'll definitely keep my eyes peeled for the inevitable next gen sequel.

Loved this game.
 

natkingcoleslaw

Neo Member
I just finished this, and what a great ride it was! One of the best games I ever played.

Combat - Superb. Melee is kind of average, but it feels great once you invest the tier 3 weapons expert skills. IMO, UC 3 had better Melee.

Level design - Superb.

Graphics & Presentation - Awesome.

Lara Croft - My new hero!

However, the story was your average adventure stuff, characters were OK (nothing great), Music was forgettable and the QTEs are simply useless and horribly designed.

The best part was the storming of the samurai stronghold.
 

GeoGonzo

Member
15 mins in and the story's already pissing me off.

"Let's split up guys"

NO

Not a spoiler: In almost every single videogame where you control one character that meets other people during a cutscene you'll be separated by an event or decide to split up before the cutscene ends.
 

Lima

Member
I just rolled my eyes at the homage during that scene. I liked the area but that shot just had me groaning.

You know maybe the developers just really like The Descent. All I know is that it is one of my favorite horror movies. I shit my pants just thinking about it.
 

Lima

Member
Finished it. When I return to the game to look for collectibles...are there still bad guys? Wish there was a new game+

A couple here and there in the mountain village and so on but if you are missing some of the combat trophies it is better to just start a new game.
 

Ollie Pooch

In a perfect world, we'd all be homersexual
Fuck, this game just seriously dropped in fun factor, I was loving it up til now. The bit in the
dark forest with the dogs and soldiers is just horribly generic-shooter. The dogs are awful and seem to take 3-4 shotgun rounds before dropping, and I can barely see them. So frustrating.
it's seriously unfun and just irritating. Hoping it's over soon.
 
I'm really liking it so far (I'm 4 hours in); it has virtually nothing to do with old Tomb Raider, and I'm ok with the new direction, I'm a sucker for Uncharted.

Visually it's stunning, the locales are great (even though there's nothing new or particularly original), combat is fun enough and traversal feels good.

And in 3D is amazing. Really a sight to behold sometimes.
 

LiK

Member
Fuck, this game just seriously dropped in fun factor, I was loving it up til now. The bit in the
dark forest with the dogs and soldiers is just horribly generic-shooter. The dogs are awful and seem to take 3-4 shotgun rounds before dropping, and I can barely see them. So frustrating.
it's seriously unfun and just irritating. Hoping it's over soon.

i loved that part. i used stealth kills through that whole part until the end of that level
where 3 guys are guarding the door
which seemed impossible without alerting the rest of them. but it was easy taking them out there.
 
Is there actually a reward for 100% completion?
I'm at the point of no return
and I'm just wondering if it's even worth going back to get all the gps caches and relics etc. I've obtained most of them already, just missing a bunch from the last couple of locations. I've already acquired every skill and fully upgraded a couple of weapons.
 

Lost_Paradise

Neo Member
It's a good game but as a tomb raider fan I was disapointed. I knew that the main story would have easy puzzles but I expected more from the optional tombs.

I don't know if you guys have seen this:


Someone on reddit
I thoroughly enjoyed the Tomb Raider game from beginning to end. Great job to everyone in the Crystal Dynamics team!

One critique I read about the game was that the tomb challenges were a little on the easy end which in some way I have to agree. Were the tomb puzzles made to that degree of difficulty to ease in new gamers to the franchise? Can we expect to see even harder puzzles in the next Tomb Raider game?

Noah Hughes...
Thanks! we will pass your kind words along to the team. In regards to puzzles, we are hearing a lot of consistent feedback that we are hoping to address. As you pointed out, accessibility was a consideration for this game but one of the nice things about the non-linear experience is that we could have done harder puzzles without making everyone get stuck as far as story progress so maybe in the future we can push this farther.

I would be ok with that, they seem to be taking feedback at least.

Rest of the AMA http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1am2sl/hi_i_am_karl_stewart_global_brand_director_for/
 

Derrick01

Banned
I don't get it. This game was supposed to be non linear and they still didn't put any real puzzles in. The optional tomb puzzles were even easier than the couple in the main story, and those were supposed to be the ones that were tougher precisely because they were optional.

Fool me once shame on you etc etc.
 
Crystal D's puzzles were never really that hard anyway. Core, on the other hand, had some malicious puzzles that made you shout with victory when you "made it".
 

Lost_Paradise

Neo Member
Crystal D's puzzles were never really that hard anyway. Core, on the other hand, had some malicious puzzles that made you shout with victory when you "made it".

Yeah this is true.

I also thought that the way the side tombs worked was really lame, solve puzzle get bunch of salvage...

I made this thread on TRF about an idea I had for the side tombs in future games.

http://www.tombraiderforums.com/showthread.php?t=199033

Basically treating the side tombs as a side story that would span the entire game and you would have to solve them in sequence as a requirement.
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
I really enjoy this game for what it is. It's basically Uncharted with a more likable protagonist with some light Metroid elements. For the next game up, I'd be okay with 50 percent less combat and 50 percent more puzzles/Metroid style recursions, but other than those minor complaints, I'm totally in love with this. GOTY for me, so far.
 

Scuderia

Member
Thanks, i actually think i've seen it...

Does she end up escaping from the cave, only to wake up from the dream and still be stuck?
 
94% on trophies. Need to replay the game for the rest: Deadeye, Former Adventurer, Boom Goes the Dynamite, Chatterbox.

Want some DLC costumes before I replay the game though.
 

RagnarokX

Member
Yeah this is true.

I also thought that the way the side tombs worked was really lame, solve puzzle get bunch of salvage...

I made this thread on TRF about an idea I had for the side tombs in future games.

http://www.tombraiderforums.com/showthread.php?t=199033

Basically treating the side tombs as a side story that would span the entire game and you would have to solve them in sequence as a requirement.

I got another idea. They could make a game where the primary focus of the gameplay is to enter, explore, and raid tombs with complex puzzles. They could call it, I dunno, Human Hunter :p

Thanks! we will pass your kind words along to the team. In regards to puzzles, we are hearing a lot of consistent feedback that we are hoping to address. As you pointed out, accessibility was a consideration for this game but one of the nice things about the non-linear experience is that we could have done harder puzzles without making everyone get stuck as far as story progress so maybe in the future we can push this farther.
This is why you have survival instinct, damnit. Press the button and it tells the people who get stuck exactly what to do. The experience isn't non-linear at all, they just made the tombs optional along the linear paths. They could have put them in a list you access from the campfires and said "Look, you can choose any item from the list in any order! Non-linear!" which is actually kinda what they did since you need to use fast travel to return to anywhere, but that's a misappropriation of what "non-linear" means in video games. Give gamers a bit more credit, huh? Sure a lot of them these days eat this stuff up (I honestly cannot believe the people saying this is GotY and praising the platforming/puzzles), but 8 million people bought the old games; surely you don't have to water down the gameplay so far; there's some level between "frustratingly hard" and "so easy a vegetable could win". Throw in copious hints for people that can't find their way out of a paper bag, give them an optional difficulty that allows them to bypass tricky stuff, I don't care. If people want an experience, give them an experience, but don't drag the gameplay and level design down in the process. It's not like spectacle and gameplay can't coexist.
 

Lost_Paradise

Neo Member
I got another idea. They could make a game where the primary focus of the gameplay is to enter, explore, and raid tombs with complex puzzles. They could call it, I dunno, Human Hunter :p

I would love for that to happen :p but I got a feeling reading that AMA on reddit that the next game will have exactly the same focus on combat and easy puzzles (they don't want players to be stuck). They have a cool oportunity with the side tombs to please new and old fans.
 
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