Someone might have pointed this out, but the "first hidden tomb" that reviewer mentions is actually a DLC tomb meant as a bonus. Because of this it is the most elaborate tomb in the game once you buy it. Crystal Dynamics thought to put the DLC tomb in an area that appears near the beginning of the game for better or worse. It seems like the reviewer here had the DLC installed on his first playthrough and stumbled across the tomb, and thought it was part of the normal set. So that's why it stands out: its not a normal tomb, its a special DLC stage.
The point of him showing the tomb was the potential it showed with tombs that appear within the base game. The fact that the developers saw this potential later on and applied it only once in DLC fashion is frustrating. Each other tomb provides an interesting concept that is never expanded upon or really challenges you in any fashion. All are quite simple and never require much thinking. So provided that the developers saw that there is more potential within the gameplay elements shows good signs of growth and hopefully more elaborate tombs in the official sequel "Rise of the Tomb Raider"
It's also buggy. I don't know how you are meant to normally finish the first tomb. If you do ALL the steps, the platforming bugs out. You need to intentionally skip 1 step for the tomb to be finishable.
more like: First time kxlling a people. Lara: felling discussed. A few minutes later. Lara (while holding a solari with one hand and the ice axes in the other): I find you lack of respect disturbing. This is what i feels.
When I played this a few years ago I remember being so angry that Alex died over a screwdriver and a wrench!! Especially because when you read his journal, or whatever it was, you find out that he only went to impress Lara in the first place and you go to all the trouble of rescuing him just to leave him behind. His death just always felt weird to me. That being said, I really enjoyed the game as a whole so I can't complain too much.
I disliked most of the side characters in the 2013 reboot, and I think Alex especially, an "adorkable" hipster with a crush on Lara that gets saved by her only to make an heroic sacrifice for her, felt like something out of a bad self-insert fanfiction.
It's about the mindest, I never played the game with expectations of a deep well written story. All I wanted was a pure cinematic action experience (preferably not challenging at all) with a story that follows all the cliches and emotional tricks of pop corn action movies. So I never noticed any of those things that he mentioned in the review. I think it's obvious that this is the kind of game that they wanted to make and they didn't disappoint me.
@@dontstopmeenow Oh I remember these now. Back in the stone age of the 2010s, people on youtube would come up with channel names that don't exist and people would also go looking for them back then.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet (probably) but just in case... That first hidden tomb wasn't actually in the original release. It was DLC (or maybe some pre-order bonus - I forget). It was only widely available with the "Definitive Version". Which should go a ways to explain the intricacy when compared to the most of the "standard" tombs in the game.
Surprised you didn't mention the missed opportunity the game could have had with survival mechanism that was obviously set up but not taken advantage of. In the beginning when she lit up that fire, I was all excited because I taught I'd had to go scavenge for resources. But it was never brought up again. The same goes for the bow, I thought I had to go and learn with what little knowledge I had to build a bow and throughout the game find more parts and refine it or use better materials. But it was just collect X and open up a menu to make it better. I played the game on the hardest difficulty and it still felt easy. AI could have been better with enemies trying to flank you, or the level design built in such a way that you couldn't stay in one spot too often. And again, like many other games, there is no punishment for failure.
+DarkStormErx Man, I got excited about that game precisely because I saw bow hunting and assumed that there'd be an involved survival mechanism. Nope, I just needed those deer eyeballs to improve my shotgun accuracy. Weird.
@@gorjy9610 Nowhere near as common tho. Chickens were a god send. Meanwhile rats and rabbits are somehow harder to kill than humans with guns XD. I once spend a good five minutes shooting the same rat, after finding another one i decided to called it quits
If the game expected to be taken seriously, then the abdomen wound Laura took would be treated like the wound in the last of us that joel took from exactly the same scenario: falling into a piece of rebar, piercing lower abdomen. In the last of us, Joel survived this wound after being a delirious, anemic state for days while Ellie took care of the wound with a haphazard stitch job, bandaging, and antibiotics. Still a miracle, but atleast it's acknowledged that that's a VERY deadly wound. Laura just shrugs it off after a day. Joel also has lasting affects, in later sections it's shown that the wound still hurts and for the rest of that part of the game Joel's actions appear weaker and his skin stays pale, probably from blood loss.
Different levels of realism. This game's realism is more Uncharted than TLOU. If you want a thin girl like Lara capable of superhuman feats of acrobatics and parkour with endless endurance, you have to accept a different level of reality for her wounds. If she were wounded realistically the game couldn't progress. It's not how this universe works.
@@Absurdword perfectly said. It’s this types of comment (and reviewers) that feel like they’re taking gaming for granted because of how far they’ve come and want to patronize every aspect of it since they feel entitled to not have the characters still treated like polygons but real-fleshed humans. It just couldn’t simply be a videogame otherwise.
I played this game with my girlfriend and during all the game we threw jokes at how Lara must have at least a good thousand broken ribs with all of the falling and stuff so yeah I can agree that the damages received seem irrelevant. Ah good times.
Eh, consider the other mechanics like exploration and 3rd person shooting and cinematic set pieces and it makes more sense. Like, Uncharted's sequences would feel less impressive if instead of focusing on the spectacle you were worried about finding health packs.
@@FraserSouris I really appreciate how they brought that feeling of desperate survival to the mainstream so casuals like myself could get that rush with relative ease. That has to be a tough balance to pull off successfully. I'm finally about to finish Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, and while it definitely feels rushed places that bring down it's overall quality under the previous two entries it's still quite fun regardless. The voice acting performances have a few high points that are arguably the pinnacle of what the medium has seen up to now. Two scenes really stand out: Early in the game when Lara and Jonah engage in some very intense dialogue, and later toward the last third of the game two sibling characters go back and forth in a temple with one hoping to win over the other into fighting for their cause. Sorry, I know I'm rambling lol Watching this video really helped me gain a better perspective on the series as a whole. It's a ride I've had a lot of fun on!
OK it is time to write a response for comment posted 5 years ago. For me this whole survival game with health regeneration sounds like "You can't have your cake and eat it" thing. This game was advertise as more serious, focused on Lara survival on this island. BUUUT this type of gameplay wont sell, so lets just make Uncharted were survival part is delegated into cutscenes. That way we got game were Lara "in cinematic is unsteady and unsure" but in gameplay section she walks on that fallen tree like highly trained gymnast (no fear, no hesitation in her movements). She looks traumatised after her first kill, but 5 min later she wipes out whole group of enemy soldiers with ease. Tomb Rider 2013 Ludonarrative Dissonance is the smart way to say You can't have your cake and eat it. Also sorry for my english
I think you had a lot of good ideas about how to make the game mechanics and other elements tighter. The rebar incident in the beginning could have been the excuse to nerf Lara at the beginning, addressing several of your concerns.
I remember a series of videos where the guy would show moments like this and say "Okay, he's dead now; There is no way he survived this." I don't think game developers think their players are at all smart when they show their characters falling off buildings, being shot, etc and just shrugging it off.
A small thing to note: the first, best tomb that is talked about in this video was originally preorder DLC and not included in the last-gen base game. It is included as standard in the definitive edition. Last gen players are stuck with the 7 one-and-done tombs.
I just 100%d this game, it's a fun easy action adventure collectathon with nice visuals. Feels like playing a movie, uncharted with better combat would be a good comparison. Just ignore the story and the characters as they were pretty lame, I stopped giving a shit pretty quickly but stayed for the good gameplay and exploration, though the challenges were pretty annoying because you had no way of knowing where they are or what you needed in the first place, just google these if you want to 100% it
"third person shooters with cover mechanics are as much fun as you make them [...] its your own fault if you think the combat was boring" That's a really weird attitude to have, for someone who likes to think about game mechanics. If I have to put self-imposed rules on my own play in order to make the combat not boring, guess what? The combat must be boring. If the game designers give the player an optimal way of playing, that's the "correct" solution to that situation as far as game design is concerned. In the case of Reboot Raider, the combat system was really only competent for cover shooting. Any other options available to the player just didn't work well in most combat scenarios. It was hilarious to me that Lara Croft's 110lb of British steel was capable of stun-locking large, muscular men with a shoulder bump. She really doesn't make any sense in that game. It's a generational low point for games writing.
> If the game designers give the player an optimal way of playing, that's the "correct" solution to that situation as far as game design is concerned. I disagree with this statement but I do agree with your general sentiment. If you have to commit to rules that deviate far from the standard version of gameplay then something is wrong with the game. However, if you play the game in the most boring possible way, that may not have even been the intended way to do things--see: flying over almost every level in Super Mario World, or cheesing virtually every enemy with a bow and arrow in Dark Souls--then I don't think it's fair to condemn the game as boring when the player was the one who made it that way. I also disagree that the combat system only works with cover shooting. I made it fun for myself using dodge rolls and counters. Even in the sequel. It wasn't mind-blowing gameplay or anything, but it worked well enough that it feels like one of the intended ways to get through the game. Bringing up Lara's size/weight is a can of worms that shouldn't be opened. I can't think of a single video game character who stars in an action game who isn't fighting things much larger/stronger than them. It isn't worth scrutiny unless you want to do it to all those other games as well.
+Joseph Anderson That's a good point, about Dark Souls. My response would be that Dark Souls' melee mechanics work while Tomb Raiders' don't, but clearly we disagree on that. Your video has made me curious to play the sequel and find out if they fixed the stuff that grated with me. When the guys in Monster Hunter start hitting house-sized monsters, I'm okay with it because they clearly exist in an anime world where sensible rules don't apply. Tomb Raider wants to have her pseudo-realism cake and eat it too.
The problem actually lies in poor game design. If there's a single optimal way to get through combat... but that method is boring... Well, that should've been stripped out in PLAYTESTING. As in, some dev, somewhere, knew about it, knew it was boring, knew it was stupid, knew it was terrible... and did nothing about it. If your gameplay being fun has to rely on "the player just needs to play sub-optimally to have fun", then you've clearly done something VERY WRONG in your game design. It should be re-thought. I played with the bow all the way through the game (except instances where the game required I not use it) and... it was a pretty boring affair. Shoot guy in head, scramble to get some distance to do it again, rinse, repeat. Use cover and height to provide advantages over melee fighters (who generally didn't make it to your cover or never followed you anywhere you went, if you began to use the climbing mechanics) and the whole game was essentially a breeze. Even more fun? The only combat challenge I EVER had in the game... On Normal, even... was when the "invincible warriors" show up towards the end of the game in the sandstormy area whatever the fuck it is on your way up the mountain to the final boss. They showed up in such numbers that it became impossible for me to dispatch them all... So I just ran from them. And guess what? YOU DON'T HAVE TO KILL A SINGLE ONE OF THEM! Once I realized that they couldn't aim for shit and weren't as fast as I was... I scrambled passed them all and just kept moving. No reason to fight them, they didn't drop anything worth picking up, and combat was tedious by this point. I should probably also mention that I wasn't even doing "stop and pop" for most of the game. Hell, I was RARELY EVER USING COVER in the game. I found it boring. Even with the "scrambles" and "melee" fighting, I found it to be severely sub-optimal and time wasting. "I can shoot this guy in the head with my bow and he dies... Or I can spend 20 seconds scrambling around, hitting button prompts, and mashing my melee button to kill him". It was just... really terrible combat design. It felt less rewarding to engage in the melee combat you so enjoyed than it was to shoot the guys in the head with a bow. That's a problem. That's something that should've been figured out and fixed during Playtesting. Even worse is that it wasn't even fixed for the sequel... Why should I use my poison arrows on an enemy when I can headshot them? You know what use I found for my poison arrows? Groups of wolves. Only use for them. It kills all the wolves all at once since the AI tends to bunch them all up. The combat for these games is just... God-Awful.
I know i am a bit late to the party (this video), but this reminds me of a dispute of Total Biscuit with the coverage of Titanfall 2's Single Player campaign from other games media. He found it weak for the fact that long range cover shooting is far superior to the run and gun approach for which the game gives you a bunch of tools to work with (but you are not encouraged for). But i think TF2 and TR2 fall into the same category: Two styles are viable and i think a game is well done when it can do something like this and stay quite balanced.
I was hugely disappointed in Crystal Dynamics when I got to play this game. I adored their previous re-imagining of Tomb Raider with Legend, Anniversary and Underworld (LAU). Those games, while certainly not perfect, had the most crucial things fixed from Core Design's TR games, the biggest thing being how you control Lara and that they got away from the square block level design. LAU games had the perfect tone in them; a posh adventuring archeologist in massive ancient ruins solving puzzles and discovering mythological stuff and age old secrets. The tombs were the setting, not an add-on and the puzzles were the bread and butter, not an afterthought. Combat was there but it almost never took over from the acrobatics and puzzle solving. Lara as a character was also quite perfect: a badass aristocrat who knew her position in society, being high born and all that, making jokes here and there and keeping it light even in the face of some epic undertaking. I hated that Crystal Dynamics turned Lara into a killing machine, basically into a murdering psychopath. "Ooh, let's make it dark and gritty, yo!". No, god damn it! No! This game isn't Lara Croft Tomb Raider, it's Lara Croft and the Headshot Island. The devs certainly read, played and watched everything about Uncharted when making this and tried to some degree replicate those games. But they shouldn't have done it. We already have Uncharted series and it is in its own sub-genre a better series than this latest Tomb Raider reboot. And in the end, it's not even about Tomb Raider featuring too much gunplay, it's about the tone of it, how wrong it feels. If you look at Indiana Jones movies or Uncharted, in those movies both Indy and Nate kill a lot of people. But what makes it different from Tomb Raider reboot is the tone. It manages to keep the high adventure, light-hearted feel to it in most places. Indy blows up some Nazi trucks or a tank and you still get the awesome John Williams score in the background. Nate mows down dozens of enemies and then shoots shit with Sully afterwards, again with a great, adventurous score. But when Lara does it, it all seems like a downer. There's no action-adventure feel to it. It's just one crazy person acting completely out of her character (if you can even call her Lara Croft anymore) killing other crazy people. And the setting? Really lame through and through. The mythology wasn't strong. I couldn't give a crap about storm queens and human sacrifices or some giant samurai warriors. I suppose all the good ones were already done in the better Tomb Raider games (this of course is 100% subjective what comes to how interesting a mythology is to a person). The level design and the level navigating features felt more like something you slam onto a game that originally had none of those. A survivor sense? Pff... Weakness of level art and design if you have to have a special mode to show what is important in a level. I get "the clutter" point but come on, in a game that is supposedly about solving puzzles and traversing both horizontal and vertical spaces and you need the Batvision to even understand what you should do? But then again, it's the same with every modern game that relies too much in UI elements compared to level design. They can put a "hardcore mode" that removes all screen helps but if the levels aren't designed with that playstyle in mind in the first place, then you are in trouble, case and point, the latest Thief which makes me wonder exactly who is responsible of these awful decisions: The devs or Square Enix?
mbchudno Indeed. I really liked the scale of environments in that game, from the upside/down statues to the underwater vikings. That is what I call epic adventuring with a decent plot, lots of high-adrenaline stuff going on with the Indiana Jones style "elation" rather than the angsty, dark, brooding Lara this new series is portraying.
i find that there is way too much fighting in new series and puzzles are too simple. Gone are multi-room puzzles that drove me nuts in TR: U (in a good way), instead of them, they added mindless fighting sequences where game throws X number of enemies at you for no reason. This series used to have fighting as an afterthought and new direction of turning it into another Assassin Creed or Far Cry (both are great games) just suck simply because its not a Tomb Raider game anymore.
Not to mention that the puzzles were not only the main point gameplay-wise but a big deal in advancing the levels. Shooting mechanics were indeed always on the weaker side, clearly TR's shooting mechanics were made for fighting the occasional predator animal while the human enemies with guns were more tedious. They got better in the Legend-Anni-Underwold series but still were below the "traversing the tombs and solving puzzles". I feel that the new TR series is a functional but eventually quite shallow third person cover shooter what comes to shooting mechanics. It's there but it's nothing to write home about. I'd rather have had a good Uncharted series (which we have) and a good Tomb Raider series that is still Tomb Raider but now we have this lukewarm Uncharted by-the-numbers game that rolls from one set piece to another.
Hey guys I just finished Underworld after 2013 and I was blown away by how much superior it is to 2013 version. The first level alone is like if they took all tombs from 2013 and put them together. Great exploration. Fortunately this formula is becoming a little stale and they can probably do one more game with it (even then it'll be pushing it) after ROTR. I hope they go back after that.
I've finally gotten around to playing this game, and I immediately watched your video, as I put it off until after I played it, myself. I gotta say, I like you. We've got the same kind of eye for these kinds of things. Great critique, and keep up the good work!
If you just make a character suffer all the way through, the player will become numb to it. So what if she gets hurt? She got hurt 100 times and will get hurt 100 times over. I think if she either fell of the ship, got captured or fell on something, then it was fine. But no. Let's do all 3 right after another. Let's not give her a break. It just feels like they thought that if they keep hurting her, it will make her a bad ass character. They were trading suffering for actual character development. It can be combined but not to the exclusion of everything else.
Seriously, this. Assassin's Creed 1 explains SO MANY things in-universe. You need to be at Full Synchronization with Altair Ibn-La'Ahad in order to use Eagle Vision inside the Animus on your first playthrough. Why? Because this is a superhuman Awareness ability that Desmond's mind is simply too weak to comprehend. Same thing with the Apple at the end of the game, draining your Sync Bar. Altair's not actually losing HP. What's actually happening to his mind is so intense that Desmond's brain physically cannot Understand it, and he starts losing his grip on the simulation. Then, after Desmond uses Eagle Vision in the real world due to the Bleeding Effect, you can use it at any time while Replaying Missions without being at Full Sync. Why? Because being Fully Synced with Altair's mental state is no longer necessary: Desmond already has this ability in real life, so it's as simple as walking around. Same thing for why he can use it at any time in the later games, he already has it unlocked for his own brain. AC1 was the fucking BOMB. I hate how AC1 only got 1 sequel while AC2 got like four billion.
Leo K I think I've in the end may have gotten more enjoyment out of AC2 than AC1. But it's a bloody shame that instead of improving on a lot of ideas in AC1 they just dropped a quite a lot. I would've loved to see an AC where like in AC1 you'd have to collect some clues to get close to the person you'd need to kill, but rather than having these things set get a whole lot more freedom with it. Instead AC2 is basically a linear game. Considering al the animus stuff, it was very interesting but it basically lost its in game purpose and became more of a hindrance rather than having those games expand of the original idea of it.
PauLtus B A game that did non-cannon damage perfectly was Wolfestein: The New Order. Why? Simple: All damage is actually cannon to your character. Like, a plane hits you and puts you at 3 health? Whatever you just regenerate to 20 health. Then you use a med pack, but another plane hits you, but since you used the med pack you are still alive, and you even regenerate your health again. Seriously for christ sake you regenerate health even in cutscenes!
What the fuck is it with bows anyway? Why is it that ever since the hunger games happened, everyone needs to have a bow all of a sudden... Lara Croft doesn't need a bow, especially not as a signature weapon. Maybe as an improvised weapon before she finds guns, but she should have quickly favored firearms, particularly handguns, to establish one of her actual defining characteristics. Additionally; the acrobatics. This is completely underdeveloped here. She stumbles from setpiece to setpiece, but she doesn't have that typical acrobat vibe. In the old games, she used to do unnecessary but impressive stunts occasionally, just to show us that she enjoys climbing and jumping a lot. And it wasn't just practical no-nonsense climbing. She looked awesome and she knew it. Now if she had started out without these abilities and then gained or discovered them over time, would've been cool. But that isn't the case, she's very clearly a character who belongs into the hunger games, but not into the world of Lara Croft. Her origin story really should've started far beyond that boat anyway. Show her practicing acrobatics first. Maybe beginning as early as high school. Develop that important trait of her before putting her into the first adventure, in which she should really not need a bow. She doesn't necessarily need dual desert eagles, either - an unarmed adventure would've been a sufficient first game. Just some cool but non-overwhelming exploration of some ancient site, maybe in a more controlled situation, with helping mentors around, with only a hint about the supernatural business she'll eventually get into. Then make the sequel about discovering some opposing forces who wish to solve the same mystery, introduce more remote and animal infested sites, and therefore add guns - and give us a good explanation as to how she ended up going with dual pistols of all things. Maybe introduce her character trait of being a show-off, although perhaps not quite rightfully so, at first. She could even have that as - gasp - a character flaw! That she gets herself into situations that could've far easier been solved otherwise, and actually lampshade this. But eventually make it about her becoming more and more confident and maybe stubborn, in spite of her sometimes getting into trouble, because she ends up stronger for it each time, earning her right to show off in the end. She could still have some mentor characters who shake their heads at her refusing to bring backup, or use more effective weapons than dual pistols; which ought to only be cool and fun, but not necessarily the objectively best choice! You could have her firearms mentor constantly prove to her that their preferred weapon choices, like an assault weapon or a pistol held in both hands for increased stability and accuracy, would end up being objectively better - only for her to pull off a cool but needless stunt and tell them off, saying she prefers to do it her way. That'd show her as flawed but also impressively confident. Maybe show her conflict of interest between exploration and preservation. Have her interact with another mentor or friend who berates her about damages caused to structures, wildlifes et cetera. And show her conflict of ethics about not only the archeological integrity of what she's doing (she'd justify it with having a duty to discover the supernatural plot over preserving individual artifacts), but also about the way she deals with human life. Perhaps make her quick to kill opponents, but make her a loner because of her fear to drag companions into such situations. You could establish her about worrying about losing people, after maybe getting someone killed accidentally - which would be a good way to explain why she keeps doing all of this on her own, taking less-than-optimal routes in hindsight, but avoiding going through populated areas, employing guides, or calling for authorities, for fear of them being unable to cope with the environmental or supernatural dangers she is accustomed to. So much potential here for an actual background story to explain how this silly hero character of the 90s could have come about in a world with just enough difference to our own. And about the supernatural stuff: Make it a looming threat at first, and make it manifest more and more over time, but never to the point of it becoming contradictory to the story. As soon as the news are out, they ought to be out, so keep it to a scale that can possibly be hidden. Perhaps with alternative explanations that someone who wasn't there might be inclined to believe. Heck, have her fight dinosaurs again for all I care, but make it so nobody believes her. This could be a reason for her to try and collect as many artifacts. Perhaps she's got a really bad reputation among scientists and wishes to establish herself as a groundbreaking archeologist, but have her egocentrism and vanity be in her own way; perhaps make it so she ends up being at fault for never being able to prove her discoveries, because of her insistence of doing everything alone and her lack of documentation, preservation and proper procedure. Yet at the same time, make it so the player KNOWS she is right, KNOWS she keeps saving the world or whatever. But in a way that noone will give her credit for. You'd have a good character dynamic and struggle here, especially if you manage to establish a cast of secondary characters and NOT kill them off (again, with the exception perhaps of that one moment that made her want to go alone into her adventures and deny the help of her perhaps actually more experienced mentors - in their individual fields).
This is a very dumb comment. Bows are quiet and can be made when you don't have the tools to make a gun. It also fits thematically. Did you even think about it or are you just projecting your disdain for mainstream movies?
Lara Croft us known for her iconic dual pistols. It's like taking Clouds buster sword away and giving him a giant gun because it's more convenient or fits more
I see the gritty and mature shift in the series to which you refer, but I can't see how said shift gave you an expectation of realism. Later in your video you comment that this feels more like a super hero ascension story, and I think that's probably a good metaphor for the direction the devs wanted to take with the story. *Spoiler*: This is a world where terracotta figures stomp you with hammers and an ancient sun goddess that controls the weather was reborn into someone who just so happened to be in Lara's crew. I would argue that the protagonist of the game mirrors this contrast between the mature narrative and the ridiculous goings-on, as Lara constantly finds herself questioning what she sees, writing off certain possibilities because they can't possibly be true. By the end of the story, she has come to accept the supernatural, and also herself seems supernatural. Thanks for the videos. I appreciate your perspective on games I've both played and haven't :)
it's interesting listening to your reviews. Sounds like we're a similar age & have been playing games for about the same time. Big difference is, the older I get, the worse I seem to get at them. whereas you are dreaming for more challenging modes to really put your skills to the test, I'm fantasising about auto-aim & quest markers in more games. Also, I've become so used to the ridiculous stories that games have always had, that I don't even notice things like ludonarritive dissonance. Music is part of games that I absolutely obsessed over & very few critics ever bother to mention it. Interesting vids, nice to hear a differing opinion, keep up the good work.
It wasn’t the rebar spike that broke the realism for me, but rather the numerous falls that she takes, almost always landing on her back or her head or neck. The rebar spike is one of the more survivable injuries sustained by Lara. Although one would assume the spike to cause irreparable harm, there are many cases where similar injuries hardly even set back those who recieved them. The same cannot be said about the fall prior to the stabbing, where Lara falls about 50 feet onto the spike. A fall like that without cushioning and at the very least Lara wouldn’t be walking away for a while.
17:15 "I think that third person shooters with cover mechanics are as much fun as you make them" This is a cop-out and something holding third person shooters (and games in general) back. The gameplay is what's there, not something the player LARPs, giving himself handicaps like only using a certain weapon. If the combat in Tomb Raider (reboot) is easiest when treated as "whack a mole" then that's what it is and the designers failed to make engaging, challenging combat.
He responded to that with this idea " > If the game designers give the player an optimal way of playing, that's the "correct" solution to that situation as far as game design is concerned. I disagree with this statement but I do agree with your general sentiment. If you have to commit to rules that deviate far from the standard version of gameplay then something is wrong with the game. However, if you play the game in the most boring possible way, that may not have even been the intended way to do things--see: flying over almost every level in Super Mario World, or cheesing virtually every enemy with a bow and arrow in Dark Souls--then I don't think it's fair to condemn the game as boring when the player was the one who made it that way. I also disagree that the combat system only works with cover shooting. I made it fun for myself using dodge rolls and counters. Even in the sequel. It wasn't mind-blowing gameplay or anything, but it worked well enough that it feels like one of the intended ways to get through the game.
@@FraserSouris My position is that the intention of the developers don't matter. The game stands on its own. If you can fly over the whole level and this is easier and less fun than the "intended" way that's a pretty serious flaw. We can't always blame developers for these things, for instance if it takes speedrunners years to figure out an exploit you can't blame the devs for not preventing that. But that's why I specify, "easier". If it's easy to do then the devs should have noticed it and prevented it. I'm taking your word here, I haven't tried to fly past levels in Super Mario World or to cheese everything with bow and arrow in Dark Souls. Assuming it's true then those are serious flaws.
@@forasago The problem is that often, people dislike being forced into the fun playstyle. Take Xcom. In Enemy Unknown, The devs found that the most fun playstyle was to take risks and play agressive but players tended to play defensivly and take their time. Their solution in the sequel was to introduce a timer that would fail the mission if the players took too long. While this did solve the problem, players complained because many disliked being forced into a particular playstyle. Some of the most common mods for the game remove the timers. Take Gamer Maker's Toolkit's video for more: ruclips.net/video/7L8vAGGitr8/видео.html The solution then developers go for is "instead of punishing a player that is too slow, reward a player for doing it faster." In the case of Tomb Raider, they could make enemies overuse grenades to prevent players from playing defensivly but many players actually like that and dislike being forced out there. Instead they made extra mechanics and rewards for more skilled play and made it optional because that hurts the fewest amount of players
@@FraserSouris Sounds great in theory but in practice it just means the game is too easy for skilled players and too tedious for unskilled players. The cheese way is never fun. Better to remove the cheese way and add a lower difficulty for unskilled players (and remind players that they can downgrade the difficulty if they fail too often). Also since you brought up XCOM, the XCOM reboot had some serious, fundamental problems in the way it rewards and punishes the player in general. I didn't play the newest one but I'm not surprised that players didn't like being forced to play aggressively in a game where the odds for a "good" play to be successful are always so low and one instance of random bad luck perma-kills your team and ends the mission. Plus the AI cheats HARD in that game and I bet they didn't fix that either. Actually, I just remembered playing one of the DLC missions for XCOM that did in fact have a round limit. It was awful. The natural response to low odds is a defensive style. Clearly the XCOM devs have an obsession with really low odds. They want you to fail missions, lose team members etc. Well, to most people that's not fun, that's frustrating. If you lose due to factors outside of your control that is called GAMBLING. The XCOM devs' idea of "fun" is gambling.
@@forasago >"Better to remove the cheese way and add a lower difficulty for unskilled players (and remind players that they can downgrade the difficulty if they fail too often)
I played this game on hard with only the bow which definitely increases the challenge but is doable. It made those late sections against those monster guards a lot of fun.
On your criticism of the damage Croft receives: It's supposed to have some semblance of realism, but not be realistic. It is still pretty much an action-fantasy. Much like Die Hard. The injuries are way out of proportion, but of a nature that we are familiar with within our real word context. It's there to give the player/viewer a sense that the protagonist is persevering through a lot of hardship. Again, think Die Hard. Everyone else other than McClane seems to have a normal threshold for injury that they can receive. McClane on the other hand, can absorb more than what's reasonable. And yes, I admit that the divide is more exaggerated in Tomb Raider, but it's still within the spirit of the genre of Die Hard. TLDR: I agree with you that they overdid it, but I see where they're coming from, and why they made those choices. Sometimes you just have to hard sell.
+Moist Von Lipwig I kind of agree, in a hyper-violent game like this you have to exaggerate Lara's injuries in order to make her hardship believable. Maybe not ideal but an understandable choice.
+Moist Von Lipwig McClane of Die hard (1) was very realistic, not so much later in the series. Walking through that glass being very painful and leaving bloody footprints after. This impeded his ability to move around freely. Andersons point was that the game wasnt consistent with its realness. In cinematics damage received is long-lasting, while in gameplay it is disregarded. So when Lara takes a spike through her side in a cinematic, this should immediately send her into shock.
***** He would be dead 4 times as analyzed by a doctor in Honest Action series from Screen Junkies. Other than the elevator shaft drop, the other deaths can be removed due to his ability to take hits. I almost completelly agree with the OP. What I meant with very realistic is that each hit he receives can be seen in the next scene. By the end of the film he is very beaten down and not up for another fist fight. Perhaps it was not a fitting description for what I meant. When Lara took the initial spike through her side, according to cinematic-damage-convention, this should have impacted her greatly. But it did not in the last, thus breaking any tension that could be derived from caring about her well being. If a bullet through her side leaves no impact, why would we care she gets shot. Taking damage in player-controlled areas are non-canon and thus should not count.
+Moist Von Lipwig The Tomb Raider reboot takes itself very seriously. It deals with attempted rape, ptsd and murder but then you also have these over the top almost exploitation like gory deaths and silly moments. The tone of the game is all over the place, does it want to be a serious drama or a fun adventure story?
Suprised you didn't mention how platforming is non-existant in this game when it's impossible for the player to fail. Even by bringing up the original series you say how the controls are clunky but never say how you actually can control Lara as opposed to the new reboot where Lara just snaps onto platforms and canned animations of the character jumping for you. I think you should've played at least one of the Core made games before reviewing this since it was an integral element of the franchise. Also there's no tombs in the game, at most you get a single Legend puzzle room and that's it. At the end of the day they aren't even in the same franchise: Tomb Raider is an action platformer. Tomb Raider (2013) is a third person shooter with scripted set pieces.
I always thought that intro part when she got stabbed is unecessary or even weird (i mean, why there's a even a rebar inside a cave?), they can just knocked her head a little hard (it explain her dizziness too) Btw that timing based quick time is so annoying.
Thanks for your thoughts on the game. I do have more news to share what happened. The game went through a troubled development, through different iterations & different narrative influences ranging from Gary Paulsen's Hatchet to The Descent from 2005, and that is just what stuck to an extent. What was once considered reminds one of the horror game Amy, least plot wise among others. Needless to say the game engine upgrade and the development time from around 2009 to release in 2013 will drive spending up and buffing out inconsistencies gets pushed to the side. The slipped grip quick time events are from the 1st reboot trilogy by Crystal Dynamics (Legend, Anniversary and Underworld).
It's a good game but it's NOT a tomb raider game and that makes me really sad. They just took the character of Lara Croft and put in her a modern AAA formula which makes me very sad.
+wolflink9000 Agreed, it's an overhaul of the branding, not of the gameplay. I don't mind that type of game, however it really would be nice to see another title like the old ones. They were definitely unique.
They didn't even do that, her actual character is completely different and she bears almost no resemblance to pre-reboot Lara. The worst part is that the didn't even execute the "modern AAA formula", as you put it, very well. Playing the game I got nothing but Uncharted 2 and The Last of Us flashbacks and how those two games did everything in TR2013 better. U2 had better action gameplay and level design while TLoU had better scavenging. To what I got from the game was just a jumble of characters and mechanics close enough to their inspirations/contemporaries bud still different enough to be noticeably worse. Drove me absolutely insane while playing it.
I didn't get into the previous games (think I played 2 of them?), but overall I really liked the reboot. That said I had two big complaints... One was touched on early in this video. Lara takes a crap ton of damage in this game (even ignoring the player controlled parts) to the point where it felt like the devs had a torture porn fetish or something and it was both unbelievable and uncomfortable. The other is how quickly Lara seems to get used to becoming a mass murderer. This ludonarrative dissonance could be aimed at most games out there, but for some reason it bothered me more than most in this game. Could it be because this is an origin story and Lara is supposed to be just your average college student at the start? Is it because the incredible CG trailer (the one that starts the game) had me thinking that the game's story would be more serious and well thought out? Or could it be because they actually address this when she is forced to kill her first human, but then completely ignore the fact 10 seconds later? Probably a little of each. While I think a story that focuses on this more psychological aspect of a character could be awesome (cough, Spec. Ops. The Line, cough) there are easy ways Tomb Raider could have at least done a token service to this idea. Lara could have a few lines where she says things like, “It's them or me” or “They won't hesitate to kill you, so you can't hesitate either” while you're stalking enemies. This would show she is at least conflicted enough that she is trying to justify her brutal actions to both herself and the player. Better yet, if you managed to stealth through an area without killing anyone she could have a line about having a little less blood on her hands or how she's glad she didn't have to kill them. How about a way to knock out enemies instead of murderizing them? I think it would have added depth to the character without actually requiring a ton of extra work.
I have yet to encounter one video that comments on how Lara in pre-rendered cutscenes (07:03, 16:55) does not look like Lara in game cutscenes (01:08, 14:53). The jaw, the lips, the eye shape, the head width, the cheeks, it's all different, and NO ONE mentions that.
It's funny that you mention that you aren't an artist because this game is what made me accept that I am one. I've had a natural proclivity for art since I could hold a crayon, but that didn't begin to develop into a real passion until I was in high school. However, I was accosted by my family for wanting to pursue a career in something so risky, competitive, and relatively obscure. I gave up on it for several years, and it wasn't until a friend of mine recommended me this game that that passion came back. After the credits rolled, I spent a significant amount of time looking through the gallery of concept art, and a fire has been ignited in my gut ever since. The game definitely has its faults and isn't something I'd hold up as some kind of paragon of art direction, style, technical beauty, or game design, but it will still always have a very special place in my heart for essentially giving me my life back.
Most of your criticism towards the story, i agree with, but i was more forgiving. What really did for me was that last line. "I'm not going home". Oh really? Here you were, going on a dig as part of your academic program, only you nearly died thousands of times! You woke up in sacrificial chamber, impaled yourself, got chased by maniacs, killed a guy who tried to rape you, destroyed an entire cult of brainwashed freaks, annihilated a whole army of samurai, lost Roth, the closest thing you had to a father, among many other friends. Finally, you get to go home, ans spend years in therapy to recover from that ridiculously traumatizing ordeal. But nope, you go "I'm not going home" as in what, that was so fucking fun, let's do it again? Stupid ending.
While it's perfectly understandable that you wouldn't want to play through games you already didn't like as a child. i think your selling the control schemes of the original games short. obviously the tank-like onehanded control scheme was as un-intuitive as you remembered (and even more-so now as forward/back/strafe have become even more standardized.) Once you got past that though, lara was incredibly versatile and precise. she had all the normal movements, then a walk modifier, then by combining jumps and ledge-grabs with the modifier keys she could jump, dive, flip, roll, slide, cartwheel, even do a handstand when pulling herself up from ledges. Using the different combinations you could move pretty fluidly and gracefully to face the direction you wanted at any given moment even with the outdated basic wasd controls. (not sure if it's fair to call them outdated seen as while Quake did come out the same year, Tombraider 1 was certainly in development long before it released) as a result of this (and that the combat was weak) the game was able to focus much more entirely on intricate platforming with extremely precise jumps (that wouldn't be reasonable to expect of the player with the reboots' level of control precision). on well designed complex 3d levels that folded back into each other as you opened up new paths. On the subject of the the reboot, something I was surprised you didn't address was that its over 2 hours into the game when you finally leave what I'd consider the opening section and you're given a truly open area to explore. which I found extremely aggravating, seen as I felt the game was trying to sell itself as more of a 3rd person farcry/uncharted mix. and wouldn't let me play it until I got through the slog of dreadful frontloaded reviewer bait. After that I thought it was an ok game. (about average for a modern AAA singleplayer)
there amount of damage she takes in these new games is stupid like you mentioned at the beginning, but the stupidest thing that i hate in these games is that after her first kill she became a freaking terminator killing a whole army all alone by herself. The whole game would have been more fun with less enemies and a non lethal take down option. She kills so easily and without remorse that it makes hard for me to root for her, which is a shame because she is not a bad character, but i feel like she is just handled incorrectly.
Honestly I don't care about that myself, it's tough to play a game and be focusing on details like that at the same time. It is ludonarrative dissonance and when Lara is shocked at her first kill in the game, it was never gonna age well since this game is essentially a third person shooter anyway.
@@crashfan9997 if anything, it aged just fine as I appreciate the fact they even included it. As opposed to not having that crucial scene and just having her kill. Her dialogue with Roth about it shows she has to grow quickly accustomed to it if she is to SURVIVE.
i love all the tomb raider games that exist, i played the original when i was 5 and i fell in love, there is just something about it that i hope never gets lost
They're probably the first games I remember at all. I've watched my dad play games my whole life and watched for a while before playing because I just preferred the bonding that we got. The first game I ever played was the original Sims. I was pretty disappointed at the fact that neither of the new games really *feel* like a Tomb Raider. The puzzles are really far between and I wish there were more challenge tombs.
While playing I was thinking that water must be filled with deadly bacteria, Lara would die in hours from an infection, then I remembered it was a video game. Sometimes my head will go for too long
tbh, there were moments of subtle story telling, like one of the optional "Treasures" you find which is a wallet of the Main villain and a photo of him and his Family inside it, they could of made him sympathetic in some way in that his "scheme" is basically reincarnate Himiko in Lara's friend Sam so the storm subsides and the cult can go home, but that would of just painted Lara in the wrong, even though the cult were burning Females alive trying to find Himiko's descendant.. so I guess there's that black mark on their innocence lol.
the original character was much better. just a random rich person who decided to go on adventures. ya don't need this crazy emotional story. it was crazy wacky fun where you kill a TRex with pistols.
I have the same feeling with old games. I have fond memories of many old games, but when I play them after so many years, I find the controls to be so difficult. Just playing GTA Vice City, the moment controls are so clumsy it's nearly impossible to just move my character around.
LOL.I did that with ROTTR and MGS:V.You know they have fucked up the story when we have to use "head canon" to make sense of a game or get enjoyment out of it
I'm surprised you didn't mention the lack of usesage of the animal hunting system. There's even talent points for it, but you end but never having to use it.
You forgot to mention how the samurai are played up to be big and bad in the cutscenes and later get absolutely bullied when you're allowed to fight them.
One good compromise for the regenerative health issue is a threat system used by Brothers in Arms games and Uncharted games. As in when screen shows red, it means you are under increasing threat, not taking direct fire. COD’s invention of regenerative health is unforgiveably awful.
I find it interesting that it's this game in particular you would say (paraphrased) "of course cover shooters are boring if you sit in one cover the whole time" when this is one game where, when you sit in cover for even a short amount of time, enemies will throw molotovs and grenades, forcing you to move around, while avoiding the CoD: WaW pitfall - the grenades and molotovs are easy to dodge, ensuring that they actually make you move around rather than just being annoying. Maybe you never experienced this because you played the whole game aggressively but this one mechanic honestly elevates the cover shooting gameplay above most other cover shooters. Anyway, apart from that i thought this was a great video. Although it has many flaws, I do love this game. I'm playing Rise on and off right now and i'm honestly disappointed with it. It feels like they expanded in all of the wrong directions, at least that's my first impression of it.
i'm late to this party but when game has characters basically teleporting or magically always going around the faster way than the player it's not even a bad design it's a straight up failure it also implies to things happening out of nowhere just "because" insert "we needed conflict filler" here
Almost everything you said, I felt (mirrored) when I was playing. Especially what you said about that first tomb... it's done, lol XD. Oh so sad. You can't deny that this was a very well crafted game, but gaming in general always will have flaws. I am sick of the simple puzzles we get in them and, at this point, I'm very sick of the disconnect between the player, reality, and what the character on screen does.
I'll have to give you a like for solely listing the Tom Raider games. You have no idea how I confused I was with it and now I finally may find the one I've played
I already played throught this game before watching the video but I never noticed the guy that died for a wrench and a screwdriver. I laughed till I cried when that part came up 21:00 lmao
Ludonaritive dissonance Thanks dj peach cobbler for spamming that phrase to me, as well as charlaton wonder with immersive sims, regarding joseph's coverage of prey. Its so awesome seeing how much more game terminologies are being covered, and how more educated we are
TR 2013 had completely trash gameplay. They did an amazing job on graphics, story line and the combat controls but TR was never meant to be a minimalistis cover shooter with quicktime events. Puzzles and fantasy were always the heart of the franchise. For all the faults of the originals, the people who produced TR 2013 just wanted to make "all the money" off an Uncharted clone.
I know, I know, late to the party, but still: The bow is an artifact from developing pre-merger Tomb Raider. Before Eidos was bought up by Square Enix, Crystal Dynamics was working on Tomb Raider Ascession project, which was more of a survival horror than actual TR game and the project was a combination of The Thing, Shadow of the Collosus and Robinsonade type of story. Bow played a huge role in it, with detailed mechanics for it. Cue merger and cancellation of Ancession, while in the same time salvaging as much things as possible from it for the new project and rebooting. Hence why certain elements of TR'13 simply don't glue together with the rest of the game - because they literally come from different project.
The damage you recieve in the "regenerating health" games is a luck meter. Your luck is running out as you are getting into dangerous situations, and when it's down you get hit one time and die, or rather actually get hurt seriously which makes firther game events impossible.
Not only is it not uncharted, that lame ass excuse was retconned and isn't even reflected in Drakes dialog in any of the games prior to 4. It's like george lucas saying star wars was planned out from the start, luke/leia were set up to be lovers instead of brother/sister, and a plethora of other inconsistencies
the wrench and screwdriver made me go like WTF too when I replayed the game earlier this year, I was like "really?? did they just kill off a character for 2 of the most common tools possible???"
I think part of the problem is 99.9% of the combat in this game are non-canon to the story. They're simply there because gameplay reasons. This is why they seem so out of place while you're in control of Lara vs when she's in combat situations in cutscenes or scripted events where she's less aggressive and more on the fragile side. It's one of those things you have to suspend your disbelief in.
how does joseph barely mind the horrific deaths in the games he reviews XD its like >character gets horribly mutilated or eaten alive< "i guess people might not want to see the character die and that creates a little tension maybe :/"
I disliked this Tomb Raider game. A friend of mine was gushing about it, but at about every corner I saw things I heavily disliked. The combat was boring, the story was pretty dull and there were many many moments where I could've co-oped one of the exciting set pieces with my gf watching, by having her hold the analog stick in a direction and waiting 20 seconds. The collecting was boring and annoying, the messages about stuff i "COULD DO RIGHT NOW! LOOK AT YOUR MAP" were not only condescending but also very annoying after the third time. And there were so many instances that just took the wind out of it's own sails and stopped for something rather meaningless that could've been built in better. Giving examples would take a bit too long i guess. I hated hated hated how enemies had, what seems to be, an army supply of molov cocktails in their little tree house. A different friend of mine told me the sequel is much much better (and she is a fan of the tomb raider games, having played every single one of them.) She also disliked this game, but has played the sequel through for the 4. time now. So I'll give it a check. Nice video as always!
Remember when Lara Croft was an archaeologist? This game seems tragically out of touch. The gameplay is shallow and immature yet the subject matter and content is not suited for children. I think giving these sorts of products praise for being 'artistic' or 'telling a good story' is doing a disservice to the medium as a whole (especially when the entire experience feels lifted from other games released before it). It reeks like a project in highschool where none of the students spoke to eachother about their contributions until the day it was due, and they simply slapped what they had onto a slab of bristol board. It fails at being a survival game, a tense stealth game, an adventure game, a platformer, a gritty noir, and most importantly a tomb raider game. Nostalgia isn't a reason to give it a free pass.
I think you nailed it. The slap it all together approach was confirmed in the next game, which suffers even more for this than the first game. That being said, I'm a fan of this genre and felt this game was barely good enough to be worth playing through. Can't say the same for the sequels.
@Tiredofdumbfuks Well, I'm not as familiar with the two sequels, and as far as I can tell, they're not as good as the first one, so I won't disagree with you there. The story in the first one is fine. It's pretty unique, horrifying, and invigorating. The characters are pretty generic, but it's not that common to see such characters in a game such as this.
I know I'm really late to this video but I get the point about characters being overpowered. One of my favorite games has been kingdom come: deliverance, where you have to train a select skill like archery or sword fighting to be good in combat. You can't just replay the game and be able to kill enemies at the start. Something like that would have been nice in the tomb raider reboots. I'd love to see a video from you about KCD and see if others liked it as much as me, it wasn't perfect but quite good in many ways.
I disagree with you about making shooters with cover fun. If using cover is clearly superior to just running in and dying, the player will be pushed that way, so it’s not really their fault if they find that boring.
At 13:50, you can easily tell these wood houses, if you will have been around since WW2. And they maybe have rotted and became weak overtime. So breaking them wouldn't be too hard either. As far as the enemies go, Lara is a above average height woman that trained with an ex army personnel Roth all through her childhood, has been rock climbing and been pretty active and well built woman. She can fight with men who are malnourished for decades and who are delusional. There is something weak about a person who is so deluded and hopeful that you can use such hopefulness that borderlines insanity against them. Although, if they could have made Roth into an ex general friend of Lara's father who trains Lara under him after the death of her father, and also give Lara a back story on how she went into the army under Roth's supervision for 2-4, years, you could have given her incredible sense of awareness and strength some logic or context. The only thing we know is that Roth trained her, what training did she get? We don't know.
About the first point: I don’t understand why realistic games keep doing this. I could not believe Joel survived being impaled by a steel beam in TLOU. Or Ellie being able to use her arm after manually removing an arrow (with a head) from her shoulder. Removing something that has penetrated the deep layers of muscle is never recommended by any medical practitioner. The blood loss alone can kill someone, let alone the infection that will surely come with wounds this deep. Break a bone, but don’t impale characters.
I enjoyed this game quite a bit, but agree with many of the flaws mentioned. Same goes for its sequels. Despite their flaws, I still think they're a quality experience in the current landscape of games.
I dunno if anyone brought this up, but as far as I know, the "first hidden tomb" you mention was actually pre-order DLC which was eventually included in the Definitive Edition. I don't know why they decided to shove it into the first area, but for us plebs who got the original game without a pre-order, the first hidden tomb was a much simpler puzzle and their difficulty nominally escalated as the game progressed.
Someone might have pointed this out, but the "first hidden tomb" that reviewer mentions is actually a DLC tomb meant as a bonus. Because of this it is the most elaborate tomb in the game once you buy it. Crystal Dynamics thought to put the DLC tomb in an area that appears near the beginning of the game for better or worse.
It seems like the reviewer here had the DLC installed on his first playthrough and stumbled across the tomb, and thought it was part of the normal set. So that's why it stands out: its not a normal tomb, its a special DLC stage.
The point of him showing the tomb was the potential it showed with tombs that appear within the base game. The fact that the developers saw this potential later on and applied it only once in DLC fashion is frustrating. Each other tomb provides an interesting concept that is never expanded upon or really challenges you in any fashion. All are quite simple and never require much thinking. So provided that the developers saw that there is more potential within the gameplay elements shows good signs of growth and hopefully more elaborate tombs in the official sequel "Rise of the Tomb Raider"
Gotta love Joe. Even his mistakes prove his points.
I never saw the tomb until after the story lol
This game hid stuff well
It's also buggy. I don't know how you are meant to normally finish the first tomb. If you do ALL the steps, the platforming bugs out. You need to intentionally skip 1 step for the tomb to be finishable.
Anyone ever go back to the first tomb with a shotgun? What’s behind that door? I always forget to go back
"Lucifer Croft, Destroyer of Worlds"
holy shit man your videos are great.
more like:
First time kxlling a people. Lara: felling discussed.
A few minutes later. Lara (while holding a solari with one hand and the ice axes in the other): I find you lack of respect disturbing.
This is what i feels.
tbh I forgot about the rusty rebar impalement, maybe the writers did too.
They forgot about it 3 minutes later lol
people forget about worse. like fleets
@@mackmasters325 Is that a jojo reference?
Game of Thrones you wanker
Also, she gets her leg stuck in a bear trap like 15mins later, yet shrugs that off :D
My favourite moment was every time Lara kneeled down like a goblin to loot some small chest on the ground
When I played this a few years ago I remember being so angry that Alex died over a screwdriver and a wrench!! Especially because when you read his journal, or whatever it was, you find out that he only went to impress Lara in the first place and you go to all the trouble of rescuing him just to leave him behind. His death just always felt weird to me. That being said, I really enjoyed the game as a whole so I can't complain too much.
I disliked most of the side characters in the 2013 reboot, and I think Alex especially, an "adorkable" hipster with a crush on Lara that gets saved by her only to make an heroic sacrifice for her, felt like something out of a bad self-insert fanfiction.
It's about the mindest, I never played the game with expectations of a deep well written story.
All I wanted was a pure cinematic action experience (preferably not challenging at all) with a story that follows all the cliches and emotional tricks of pop corn action movies.
So I never noticed any of those things that he mentioned in the review.
I think it's obvious that this is the kind of game that they wanted to make and they didn't disappoint me.
@@vegurion2 i like the game a lot but a very hard mode would have been nice for those of us who want a challenge.
Omg yes! I was so disappoinyed with alex's death
he does give a reason why he chooses to go out with a bang
"Tombs in Space 3D"
"2 Tombs 1 Raider"
"Arts and Crofts"
I love this channel
I looked them up thinking wait there’s no way they’re real how did I not hear about them. Sad to say, they don’t exist :/
NinjaWalrus woosh
Dangerous J well yeah in hindsight I’m a fucking idiot but you never know man
"2 Tombs 1 Raider" LMFAO
@@dontstopmeenow Oh I remember these now.
Back in the stone age of the 2010s, people on youtube would come up with channel names that don't exist and people would also go looking for them back then.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet (probably) but just in case... That first hidden tomb wasn't actually in the original release. It was DLC (or maybe some pre-order bonus - I forget). It was only widely available with the "Definitive Version". Which should go a ways to explain the intricacy when compared to the most of the "standard" tombs in the game.
aaaah that explains it!
I was confused about that, having played the game ten times over, and never coming across that particular tomb.
Surprised you didn't mention the missed opportunity the game could have had with survival mechanism that was obviously set up but not taken advantage of. In the beginning when she lit up that fire, I was all excited because I taught I'd had to go scavenge for resources. But it was never brought up again. The same goes for the bow, I thought I had to go and learn with what little knowledge I had to build a bow and throughout the game find more parts and refine it or use better materials. But it was just collect X and open up a menu to make it better.
I played the game on the hardest difficulty and it still felt easy. AI could have been better with enemies trying to flank you, or the level design built in such a way that you couldn't stay in one spot too often. And again, like many other games, there is no punishment for failure.
+DarkStormErx Man, I got excited about that game precisely because I saw bow hunting and assumed that there'd be an involved survival mechanism. Nope, I just needed those deer eyeballs to improve my shotgun accuracy. Weird.
The first thing I upgraded was animal hunting exp but they rarely showed up after the beginning XD
@@hmcloud8487 there is lots of smaller animals, rats, rabbits, chickens....you get same (I forget, xp or scrap?) like for wolfs etc.
@@gorjy9610
Nowhere near as common tho. Chickens were a god send. Meanwhile rats and rabbits are somehow harder to kill than humans with guns XD.
I once spend a good five minutes shooting the same rat, after finding another one i decided to called it quits
If the game expected to be taken seriously, then the abdomen wound Laura took would be treated like the wound in the last of us that joel took from exactly the same scenario: falling into a piece of rebar, piercing lower abdomen. In the last of us, Joel survived this wound after being a delirious, anemic state for days while Ellie took care of the wound with a haphazard stitch job, bandaging, and antibiotics. Still a miracle, but atleast it's acknowledged that that's a VERY deadly wound. Laura just shrugs it off after a day. Joel also has lasting affects, in later sections it's shown that the wound still hurts and for the rest of that part of the game Joel's actions appear weaker and his skin stays pale, probably from blood loss.
Now i do agree the wound lara recieved was much smaller in comparison to joel's injury.
Different levels of realism. This game's realism is more Uncharted than TLOU. If you want a thin girl like Lara capable of superhuman feats of acrobatics and parkour with endless endurance, you have to accept a different level of reality for her wounds. If she were wounded realistically the game couldn't progress. It's not how this universe works.
@@Absurdword perfectly said. It’s this types of comment (and reviewers) that feel like they’re taking gaming for granted because of how far they’ve come and want to patronize every aspect of it since they feel entitled to not have the characters still treated like polygons but real-fleshed humans. It just couldn’t simply be a videogame otherwise.
@rockapartie all games do that, injuries in gameplay are non-canonical.
I played this game with my girlfriend and during all the game we threw jokes at how Lara must have at least a good thousand broken ribs with all of the falling and stuff so yeah I can agree that the damages received seem irrelevant.
Ah good times.
Ah and also the fact that in the hidden tombs you find some sweet sweet upgrades for your weapons, because video game.
AnimeGamer X fuck off
@@logbobtom1234 fuck off
@@golem4617 fuck off
@@straight1080 Fuck off
Having regen health is a game about survival made no sense to me.
Eh, consider the other mechanics like exploration and 3rd person shooting and cinematic set pieces and it makes more sense.
Like, Uncharted's sequences would feel less impressive if instead of focusing on the spectacle you were worried about finding health packs.
@@FraserSouris I really appreciate how they brought that feeling of desperate survival to the mainstream so casuals like myself could get that rush with relative ease. That has to be a tough balance to pull off successfully. I'm finally about to finish Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, and while it definitely feels rushed places that bring down it's overall quality under the previous two entries it's still quite fun regardless. The voice acting performances have a few high points that are arguably the pinnacle of what the medium has seen up to now. Two scenes really stand out: Early in the game when Lara and Jonah engage in some very intense dialogue, and later toward the last third of the game two sibling characters go back and forth in a temple with one hoping to win over the other into fighting for their cause.
Sorry, I know I'm rambling lol Watching this video really helped me gain a better perspective on the series as a whole. It's a ride I've had a lot of fun on!
OK it is time to write a response for comment posted 5 years ago. For me this whole survival game with health regeneration sounds like "You can't have your cake and eat it" thing.
This game was advertise as more serious, focused on Lara survival on this island. BUUUT this type of gameplay wont sell, so lets just make Uncharted were survival part is delegated into cutscenes.
That way we got game were Lara "in cinematic is unsteady and unsure" but in gameplay section she walks on that fallen tree like highly trained gymnast (no fear, no hesitation in her movements).
She looks traumatised after her first kill, but 5 min later she wipes out whole group of enemy soldiers with ease.
Tomb Rider 2013 Ludonarrative Dissonance is the smart way to say You can't have your cake and eat it.
Also sorry for my english
"Female goddess" lmfao
He has 2 Ph.D's so he knows what he talking about....right? that's how stuff work?
fucking lol
fileeditfileedit the word goddess is already gendered
When you're high on crack everything is funney
legion999 that's the joke
I think you had a lot of good ideas about how to make the game mechanics and other elements tighter. The rebar incident in the beginning could have been the excuse to nerf Lara at the beginning, addressing several of your concerns.
“nerf”
@@wakkjobbwizard In the same way my grandpa was OP so g o d hit em’ with the cancer nerf.
I love it so much when game characters get cosmetic damage as the story goes on ex.Tomb Raider, Batman Arkham games
Haha yes
I remember a series of videos where the guy would show moments like this and say "Okay, he's dead now; There is no way he survived this."
I don't think game developers think their players are at all smart when they show their characters falling off buildings, being shot, etc and just shrugging it off.
A small thing to note: the first, best tomb that is talked about in this video was originally preorder DLC and not included in the last-gen base game. It is included as standard in the definitive edition. Last gen players are stuck with the 7 one-and-done tombs.
Every time when she opens those tomb crate.
>2 Tombs 1 Raider
>Arts and Crofts
Classy.
I just 100%d this game, it's a fun easy action adventure collectathon with nice visuals. Feels like playing a movie, uncharted with better combat would be a good comparison. Just ignore the story and the characters as they were pretty lame, I stopped giving a shit pretty quickly but stayed for the good gameplay and exploration, though the challenges were pretty annoying because you had no way of knowing where they are or what you needed in the first place, just google these if you want to 100% it
Heck yes totally agree
"third person shooters with cover mechanics are as much fun as you make them [...] its your own fault if you think the combat was boring"
That's a really weird attitude to have, for someone who likes to think about game mechanics. If I have to put self-imposed rules on my own play in order to make the combat not boring, guess what? The combat must be boring. If the game designers give the player an optimal way of playing, that's the "correct" solution to that situation as far as game design is concerned. In the case of Reboot Raider, the combat system was really only competent for cover shooting. Any other options available to the player just didn't work well in most combat scenarios.
It was hilarious to me that Lara Croft's 110lb of British steel was capable of stun-locking large, muscular men with a shoulder bump. She really doesn't make any sense in that game. It's a generational low point for games writing.
> If the game designers give the player an optimal way of playing, that's the "correct" solution to that situation as far as game design is concerned.
I disagree with this statement but I do agree with your general sentiment. If you have to commit to rules that deviate far from the standard version of gameplay then something is wrong with the game.
However, if you play the game in the most boring possible way, that may not have even been the intended way to do things--see: flying over almost every level in Super Mario World, or cheesing virtually every enemy with a bow and arrow in Dark Souls--then I don't think it's fair to condemn the game as boring when the player was the one who made it that way.
I also disagree that the combat system only works with cover shooting. I made it fun for myself using dodge rolls and counters. Even in the sequel. It wasn't mind-blowing gameplay or anything, but it worked well enough that it feels like one of the intended ways to get through the game.
Bringing up Lara's size/weight is a can of worms that shouldn't be opened. I can't think of a single video game character who stars in an action game who isn't fighting things much larger/stronger than them. It isn't worth scrutiny unless you want to do it to all those other games as well.
+Joseph Anderson That's a good point, about Dark Souls. My response would be that Dark Souls' melee mechanics work while Tomb Raiders' don't, but clearly we disagree on that. Your video has made me curious to play the sequel and find out if they fixed the stuff that grated with me.
When the guys in Monster Hunter start hitting house-sized monsters, I'm okay with it because they clearly exist in an anime world where sensible rules don't apply. Tomb Raider wants to have her pseudo-realism cake and eat it too.
The problem actually lies in poor game design. If there's a single optimal way to get through combat... but that method is boring... Well, that should've been stripped out in PLAYTESTING. As in, some dev, somewhere, knew about it, knew it was boring, knew it was stupid, knew it was terrible... and did nothing about it.
If your gameplay being fun has to rely on "the player just needs to play sub-optimally to have fun", then you've clearly done something VERY WRONG in your game design. It should be re-thought.
I played with the bow all the way through the game (except instances where the game required I not use it) and... it was a pretty boring affair. Shoot guy in head, scramble to get some distance to do it again, rinse, repeat. Use cover and height to provide advantages over melee fighters (who generally didn't make it to your cover or never followed you anywhere you went, if you began to use the climbing mechanics) and the whole game was essentially a breeze. Even more fun? The only combat challenge I EVER had in the game... On Normal, even... was when the "invincible warriors" show up towards the end of the game in the sandstormy area whatever the fuck it is on your way up the mountain to the final boss. They showed up in such numbers that it became impossible for me to dispatch them all... So I just ran from them. And guess what? YOU DON'T HAVE TO KILL A SINGLE ONE OF THEM! Once I realized that they couldn't aim for shit and weren't as fast as I was... I scrambled passed them all and just kept moving. No reason to fight them, they didn't drop anything worth picking up, and combat was tedious by this point.
I should probably also mention that I wasn't even doing "stop and pop" for most of the game. Hell, I was RARELY EVER USING COVER in the game. I found it boring. Even with the "scrambles" and "melee" fighting, I found it to be severely sub-optimal and time wasting. "I can shoot this guy in the head with my bow and he dies... Or I can spend 20 seconds scrambling around, hitting button prompts, and mashing my melee button to kill him". It was just... really terrible combat design. It felt less rewarding to engage in the melee combat you so enjoyed than it was to shoot the guys in the head with a bow. That's a problem. That's something that should've been figured out and fixed during Playtesting.
Even worse is that it wasn't even fixed for the sequel... Why should I use my poison arrows on an enemy when I can headshot them? You know what use I found for my poison arrows? Groups of wolves. Only use for them. It kills all the wolves all at once since the AI tends to bunch them all up.
The combat for these games is just... God-Awful.
Peace Master plan hjj
I know i am a bit late to the party (this video), but this reminds me of a dispute of Total Biscuit with the coverage of Titanfall 2's Single Player campaign from other games media. He found it weak for the fact that long range cover shooting is far superior to the run and gun approach for which the game gives you a bunch of tools to work with (but you are not encouraged for). But i think TF2 and TR2 fall into the same category: Two styles are viable and i think a game is well done when it can do something like this and stay quite balanced.
I was hugely disappointed in Crystal Dynamics when I got to play this game. I adored their previous re-imagining of Tomb Raider with Legend, Anniversary and Underworld (LAU). Those games, while certainly not perfect, had the most crucial things fixed from Core Design's TR games, the biggest thing being how you control Lara and that they got away from the square block level design. LAU games had the perfect tone in them; a posh adventuring archeologist in massive ancient ruins solving puzzles and discovering mythological stuff and age old secrets. The tombs were the setting, not an add-on and the puzzles were the bread and butter, not an afterthought. Combat was there but it almost never took over from the acrobatics and puzzle solving. Lara as a character was also quite perfect: a badass aristocrat who knew her position in society, being high born and all that, making jokes here and there and keeping it light even in the face of some epic undertaking.
I hated that Crystal Dynamics turned Lara into a killing machine, basically into a murdering psychopath. "Ooh, let's make it dark and gritty, yo!". No, god damn it! No! This game isn't Lara Croft Tomb Raider, it's Lara Croft and the Headshot Island. The devs certainly read, played and watched everything about Uncharted when making this and tried to some degree replicate those games. But they shouldn't have done it. We already have Uncharted series and it is in its own sub-genre a better series than this latest Tomb Raider reboot. And in the end, it's not even about Tomb Raider featuring too much gunplay, it's about the tone of it, how wrong it feels. If you look at Indiana Jones movies or Uncharted, in those movies both Indy and Nate kill a lot of people. But what makes it different from Tomb Raider reboot is the tone. It manages to keep the high adventure, light-hearted feel to it in most places. Indy blows up some Nazi trucks or a tank and you still get the awesome John Williams score in the background. Nate mows down dozens of enemies and then shoots shit with Sully afterwards, again with a great, adventurous score. But when Lara does it, it all seems like a downer. There's no action-adventure feel to it. It's just one crazy person acting completely out of her character (if you can even call her Lara Croft anymore) killing other crazy people.
And the setting? Really lame through and through. The mythology wasn't strong. I couldn't give a crap about storm queens and human sacrifices or some giant samurai warriors. I suppose all the good ones were already done in the better Tomb Raider games (this of course is 100% subjective what comes to how interesting a mythology is to a person). The level design and the level navigating features felt more like something you slam onto a game that originally had none of those. A survivor sense? Pff... Weakness of level art and design if you have to have a special mode to show what is important in a level. I get "the clutter" point but come on, in a game that is supposedly about solving puzzles and traversing both horizontal and vertical spaces and you need the Batvision to even understand what you should do? But then again, it's the same with every modern game that relies too much in UI elements compared to level design. They can put a "hardcore mode" that removes all screen helps but if the levels aren't designed with that playstyle in mind in the first place, then you are in trouble, case and point, the latest Thief which makes me wonder exactly who is responsible of these awful decisions: The devs or Square Enix?
absolutely right. TR: U was amazing. by far was my favorite in the series.
mbchudno
Indeed. I really liked the scale of environments in that game, from the upside/down statues to the underwater vikings. That is what I call epic adventuring with a decent plot, lots of high-adrenaline stuff going on with the Indiana Jones style "elation" rather than the angsty, dark, brooding Lara this new series is portraying.
i find that there is way too much fighting in new series and puzzles are too simple. Gone are multi-room puzzles that drove me nuts in TR: U (in a good way), instead of them, they added mindless fighting sequences where game throws X number of enemies at you for no reason. This series used to have fighting as an afterthought and new direction of turning it into another Assassin Creed or Far Cry (both are great games) just suck simply because its not a Tomb Raider game anymore.
Not to mention that the puzzles were not only the main point gameplay-wise but a big deal in advancing the levels. Shooting mechanics were indeed always on the weaker side, clearly TR's shooting mechanics were made for fighting the occasional predator animal while the human enemies with guns were more tedious. They got better in the Legend-Anni-Underwold series but still were below the "traversing the tombs and solving puzzles". I feel that the new TR series is a functional but eventually quite shallow third person cover shooter what comes to shooting mechanics. It's there but it's nothing to write home about. I'd rather have had a good Uncharted series (which we have) and a good Tomb Raider series that is still Tomb Raider but now we have this lukewarm Uncharted by-the-numbers game that rolls from one set piece to another.
Hey guys I just finished Underworld after 2013 and I was blown away by how much superior it is to 2013 version. The first level alone is like if they took all tombs from 2013 and put them together. Great exploration. Fortunately this formula is becoming a little stale and they can probably do one more game with it (even then it'll be pushing it) after ROTR. I hope they go back after that.
I've finally gotten around to playing this game, and I immediately watched your video, as I put it off until after I played it, myself. I gotta say, I like you. We've got the same kind of eye for these kinds of things. Great critique, and keep up the good work!
If you just make a character suffer all the way through, the player will become numb to it. So what if she gets hurt? She got hurt 100 times and will get hurt 100 times over.
I think if she either fell of the ship, got captured or fell on something, then it was fine. But no. Let's do all 3 right after another. Let's not give her a break.
It just feels like they thought that if they keep hurting her, it will make her a bad ass character. They were trading suffering for actual character development. It can be combined but not to the exclusion of everything else.
The one game that got the "non-canon" damage done well was the first Assassins Creed. But they stopped that.
Seriously, this. Assassin's Creed 1 explains SO MANY things in-universe. You need to be at Full Synchronization with Altair Ibn-La'Ahad in order to use Eagle Vision inside the Animus on your first playthrough. Why? Because this is a superhuman Awareness ability that Desmond's mind is simply too weak to comprehend. Same thing with the Apple at the end of the game, draining your Sync Bar. Altair's not actually losing HP. What's actually happening to his mind is so intense that Desmond's brain physically cannot Understand it, and he starts losing his grip on the simulation. Then, after Desmond uses Eagle Vision in the real world due to the Bleeding Effect, you can use it at any time while Replaying Missions without being at Full Sync. Why? Because being Fully Synced with Altair's mental state is no longer necessary: Desmond already has this ability in real life, so it's as simple as walking around. Same thing for why he can use it at any time in the later games, he already has it unlocked for his own brain.
AC1 was the fucking BOMB. I hate how AC1 only got 1 sequel while AC2 got like four billion.
Leo K
I think I've in the end may have gotten more enjoyment out of AC2 than AC1. But it's a bloody shame that instead of improving on a lot of ideas in AC1 they just dropped a quite a lot. I would've loved to see an AC where like in AC1 you'd have to collect some clues to get close to the person you'd need to kill, but rather than having these things set get a whole lot more freedom with it. Instead AC2 is basically a linear game.
Considering al the animus stuff, it was very interesting but it basically lost its in game purpose and became more of a hindrance rather than having those games expand of the original idea of it.
PauLtus B A game that did non-cannon damage perfectly was Wolfestein: The New Order.
Why? Simple: All damage is actually cannon to your character.
Like, a plane hits you and puts you at 3 health? Whatever you just regenerate to 20 health. Then you use a med pack, but another plane hits you, but since you used the med pack you are still alive, and you even regenerate your health again.
Seriously for christ sake you regenerate health even in cutscenes!
What the fuck is it with bows anyway? Why is it that ever since the hunger games happened, everyone needs to have a bow all of a sudden... Lara Croft doesn't need a bow, especially not as a signature weapon. Maybe as an improvised weapon before she finds guns, but she should have quickly favored firearms, particularly handguns, to establish one of her actual defining characteristics.
Additionally; the acrobatics. This is completely underdeveloped here. She stumbles from setpiece to setpiece, but she doesn't have that typical acrobat vibe. In the old games, she used to do unnecessary but impressive stunts occasionally, just to show us that she enjoys climbing and jumping a lot. And it wasn't just practical no-nonsense climbing. She looked awesome and she knew it.
Now if she had started out without these abilities and then gained or discovered them over time, would've been cool. But that isn't the case, she's very clearly a character who belongs into the hunger games, but not into the world of Lara Croft.
Her origin story really should've started far beyond that boat anyway. Show her practicing acrobatics first. Maybe beginning as early as high school. Develop that important trait of her before putting her into the first adventure, in which she should really not need a bow. She doesn't necessarily need dual desert eagles, either - an unarmed adventure would've been a sufficient first game. Just some cool but non-overwhelming exploration of some ancient site, maybe in a more controlled situation, with helping mentors around, with only a hint about the supernatural business she'll eventually get into.
Then make the sequel about discovering some opposing forces who wish to solve the same mystery, introduce more remote and animal infested sites, and therefore add guns - and give us a good explanation as to how she ended up going with dual pistols of all things. Maybe introduce her character trait of being a show-off, although perhaps not quite rightfully so, at first. She could even have that as - gasp - a character flaw! That she gets herself into situations that could've far easier been solved otherwise, and actually lampshade this. But eventually make it about her becoming more and more confident and maybe stubborn, in spite of her sometimes getting into trouble, because she ends up stronger for it each time, earning her right to show off in the end.
She could still have some mentor characters who shake their heads at her refusing to bring backup, or use more effective weapons than dual pistols; which ought to only be cool and fun, but not necessarily the objectively best choice! You could have her firearms mentor constantly prove to her that their preferred weapon choices, like an assault weapon or a pistol held in both hands for increased stability and accuracy, would end up being objectively better - only for her to pull off a cool but needless stunt and tell them off, saying she prefers to do it her way. That'd show her as flawed but also impressively confident.
Maybe show her conflict of interest between exploration and preservation. Have her interact with another mentor or friend who berates her about damages caused to structures, wildlifes et cetera. And show her conflict of ethics about not only the archeological integrity of what she's doing (she'd justify it with having a duty to discover the supernatural plot over preserving individual artifacts), but also about the way she deals with human life. Perhaps make her quick to kill opponents, but make her a loner because of her fear to drag companions into such situations. You could establish her about worrying about losing people, after maybe getting someone killed accidentally - which would be a good way to explain why she keeps doing all of this on her own, taking less-than-optimal routes in hindsight, but avoiding going through populated areas, employing guides, or calling for authorities, for fear of them being unable to cope with the environmental or supernatural dangers she is accustomed to.
So much potential here for an actual background story to explain how this silly hero character of the 90s could have come about in a world with just enough difference to our own. And about the supernatural stuff: Make it a looming threat at first, and make it manifest more and more over time, but never to the point of it becoming contradictory to the story. As soon as the news are out, they ought to be out, so keep it to a scale that can possibly be hidden. Perhaps with alternative explanations that someone who wasn't there might be inclined to believe. Heck, have her fight dinosaurs again for all I care, but make it so nobody believes her. This could be a reason for her to try and collect as many artifacts. Perhaps she's got a really bad reputation among scientists and wishes to establish herself as a groundbreaking archeologist, but have her egocentrism and vanity be in her own way; perhaps make it so she ends up being at fault for never being able to prove her discoveries, because of her insistence of doing everything alone and her lack of documentation, preservation and proper procedure.
Yet at the same time, make it so the player KNOWS she is right, KNOWS she keeps saving the world or whatever. But in a way that noone will give her credit for. You'd have a good character dynamic and struggle here, especially if you manage to establish a cast of secondary characters and NOT kill them off (again, with the exception perhaps of that one moment that made her want to go alone into her adventures and deny the help of her perhaps actually more experienced mentors - in their individual fields).
This is a very dumb comment. Bows are quiet and can be made when you don't have the tools to make a gun. It also fits thematically. Did you even think about it or are you just projecting your disdain for mainstream movies?
Lara Croft us known for her iconic dual pistols. It's like taking Clouds buster sword away and giving him a giant gun because it's more convenient or fits more
I see the gritty and mature shift in the series to which you refer, but I can't see how said shift gave you an expectation of realism. Later in your video you comment that this feels more like a super hero ascension story, and I think that's probably a good metaphor for the direction the devs wanted to take with the story. *Spoiler*: This is a world where terracotta figures stomp you with hammers and an ancient sun goddess that controls the weather was reborn into someone who just so happened to be in Lara's crew. I would argue that the protagonist of the game mirrors this contrast between the mature narrative and the ridiculous goings-on, as Lara constantly finds herself questioning what she sees, writing off certain possibilities because they can't possibly be true. By the end of the story, she has come to accept the supernatural, and also herself seems supernatural.
Thanks for the videos. I appreciate your perspective on games I've both played and haven't :)
0:11 "Arts and Crofts - 2018".
Joe predicted Shadow of the Tomb Raider right down to the year.
0:28 holy shit that menu screen nostalgia.
it's interesting listening to your reviews. Sounds like we're a similar age & have been playing games for about the same time.
Big difference is, the older I get, the worse I seem to get at them.
whereas you are dreaming for more challenging modes to really put your skills to the test, I'm fantasising about auto-aim & quest markers in more games.
Also, I've become so used to the ridiculous stories that games have always had, that I don't even notice things like ludonarritive dissonance.
Music is part of games that I absolutely obsessed over & very few critics ever bother to mention it.
Interesting vids, nice to hear a differing opinion, keep up the good work.
It wasn’t the rebar spike that broke the realism for me, but rather the numerous falls that she takes, almost always landing on her back or her head or neck. The rebar spike is one of the more survivable injuries sustained by Lara. Although one would assume the spike to cause irreparable harm, there are many cases where similar injuries hardly even set back those who recieved them. The same cannot be said about the fall prior to the stabbing, where Lara falls about 50 feet onto the spike. A fall like that without cushioning and at the very least Lara wouldn’t be walking away for a while.
Yeah people seem to forget just how powerful gravity is, falling off even a low roof could easily kill you
17:15 "I think that third person shooters with cover mechanics are as much fun as you make them"
This is a cop-out and something holding third person shooters (and games in general) back. The gameplay is what's there, not something the player LARPs, giving himself handicaps like only using a certain weapon. If the combat in Tomb Raider (reboot) is easiest when treated as "whack a mole" then that's what it is and the designers failed to make engaging, challenging combat.
He responded to that with this idea
"
> If the game designers give the player an optimal way of playing, that's the "correct" solution to that situation as far as game design is concerned.
I disagree with this statement but I do agree with your general sentiment. If you have to commit to rules that deviate far from the standard version of gameplay then something is wrong with the game.
However, if you play the game in the most boring possible way, that may not have even been the intended way to do things--see: flying over almost every level in Super Mario World, or cheesing virtually every enemy with a bow and arrow in Dark Souls--then I don't think it's fair to condemn the game as boring when the player was the one who made it that way.
I also disagree that the combat system only works with cover shooting. I made it fun for myself using dodge rolls and counters. Even in the sequel. It wasn't mind-blowing gameplay or anything, but it worked well enough that it feels like one of the intended ways to get through the game.
@@FraserSouris My position is that the intention of the developers don't matter. The game stands on its own. If you can fly over the whole level and this is easier and less fun than the "intended" way that's a pretty serious flaw. We can't always blame developers for these things, for instance if it takes speedrunners years to figure out an exploit you can't blame the devs for not preventing that. But that's why I specify, "easier". If it's easy to do then the devs should have noticed it and prevented it. I'm taking your word here, I haven't tried to fly past levels in Super Mario World or to cheese everything with bow and arrow in Dark Souls. Assuming it's true then those are serious flaws.
@@forasago
The problem is that often, people dislike being forced into the fun playstyle.
Take Xcom. In Enemy Unknown, The devs found that the most fun playstyle was to take risks and play agressive but players tended to play defensivly and take their time. Their solution in the sequel was to introduce a timer that would fail the mission if the players took too long. While this did solve the problem, players complained because many disliked being forced into a particular playstyle. Some of the most common mods for the game remove the timers.
Take Gamer Maker's Toolkit's video for more:
ruclips.net/video/7L8vAGGitr8/видео.html
The solution then developers go for is "instead of punishing a player that is too slow, reward a player for doing it faster."
In the case of Tomb Raider, they could make enemies overuse grenades to prevent players from playing defensivly but many players actually like that and dislike being forced out there. Instead they made extra mechanics and rewards for more skilled play and made it optional because that hurts the fewest amount of players
@@FraserSouris Sounds great in theory but in practice it just means the game is too easy for skilled players and too tedious for unskilled players. The cheese way is never fun. Better to remove the cheese way and add a lower difficulty for unskilled players (and remind players that they can downgrade the difficulty if they fail too often). Also since you brought up XCOM, the XCOM reboot had some serious, fundamental problems in the way it rewards and punishes the player in general. I didn't play the newest one but I'm not surprised that players didn't like being forced to play aggressively in a game where the odds for a "good" play to be successful are always so low and one instance of random bad luck perma-kills your team and ends the mission. Plus the AI cheats HARD in that game and I bet they didn't fix that either. Actually, I just remembered playing one of the DLC missions for XCOM that did in fact have a round limit. It was awful. The natural response to low odds is a defensive style. Clearly the XCOM devs have an obsession with really low odds. They want you to fail missions, lose team members etc. Well, to most people that's not fun, that's frustrating. If you lose due to factors outside of your control that is called GAMBLING. The XCOM devs' idea of "fun" is gambling.
@@forasago
>"Better to remove the cheese way and add a lower difficulty for unskilled players (and remind players that they can downgrade the difficulty if they fail too often)
The story isn't any better in the second one but everything else is improved.
Story is worse in the second one
The shanty town with the castles on the mountains is actually so beautiful
I played this game on hard with only the bow which definitely increases the challenge but is doable. It made those late sections against those monster guards a lot of fun.
I've honestly never played a single game that you review, but man do I love these videos
On your criticism of the damage Croft receives: It's supposed to have some semblance of realism, but not be realistic. It is still pretty much an action-fantasy. Much like Die Hard. The injuries are way out of proportion, but of a nature that we are familiar with within our real word context. It's there to give the player/viewer a sense that the protagonist is persevering through a lot of hardship. Again, think Die Hard. Everyone else other than McClane seems to have a normal threshold for injury that they can receive. McClane on the other hand, can absorb more than what's reasonable. And yes, I admit that the divide is more exaggerated in Tomb Raider, but it's still within the spirit of the genre of Die Hard. TLDR: I agree with you that they overdid it, but I see where they're coming from, and why they made those choices. Sometimes you just have to hard sell.
+Moist Von Lipwig I kind of agree, in a hyper-violent game like this you have to exaggerate Lara's injuries in order to make her hardship believable. Maybe not ideal but an understandable choice.
+Moist Von Lipwig McClane of Die hard (1) was very realistic, not so much later in the series. Walking through that glass being very painful and leaving bloody footprints after. This impeded his ability to move around freely. Andersons point was that the game wasnt consistent with its realness. In cinematics damage received is long-lasting, while in gameplay it is disregarded. So when Lara takes a spike through her side in a cinematic, this should immediately send her into shock.
***** He would be dead 4 times as analyzed by a doctor in Honest Action series from Screen Junkies. Other than the elevator shaft drop, the other deaths can be removed due to his ability to take hits.
I almost completelly agree with the OP. What I meant with very realistic is that each hit he receives can be seen in the next scene. By the end of the film he is very beaten down and not up for another fist fight. Perhaps it was not a fitting description for what I meant.
When Lara took the initial spike through her side, according to cinematic-damage-convention, this should have impacted her greatly. But it did not in the last, thus breaking any tension that could be derived from caring about her well being. If a bullet through her side leaves no impact, why would we care she gets shot. Taking damage in player-controlled areas are non-canon and thus should not count.
+Moist Von Lipwig The Tomb Raider reboot takes itself very seriously. It deals with attempted rape, ptsd and murder but then you also have these over the top almost exploitation like gory deaths and silly moments. The tone of the game is all over the place, does it want to be a serious drama or a fun adventure story?
But why exaggerate the injuries if they will have little influence over the character and player? What's the point?
Suprised you didn't mention how platforming is non-existant in this game when it's impossible for the player to fail. Even by bringing up the original series you say how the controls are clunky but never say how you actually can control Lara as opposed to the new reboot where Lara just snaps onto platforms and canned animations of the character jumping for you. I think you should've played at least one of the Core made games before reviewing this since it was an integral element of the franchise. Also there's no tombs in the game, at most you get a single Legend puzzle room and that's it. At the end of the day they aren't even in the same franchise:
Tomb Raider is an action platformer.
Tomb Raider (2013) is a third person shooter with scripted set pieces.
I always thought that intro part when she got stabbed is unecessary or even weird (i mean, why there's a even a rebar inside a cave?), they can just knocked her head a little hard (it explain her dizziness too)
Btw that timing based quick time is so annoying.
Thanks for your thoughts on the game. I do have more news to share what happened.
The game went through a troubled development, through different iterations & different narrative influences ranging from Gary Paulsen's Hatchet to The Descent from 2005, and that is just what stuck to an extent. What was once considered reminds one of the horror game Amy, least plot wise among others. Needless to say the game engine upgrade and the development time from around 2009 to release in 2013 will drive spending up and buffing out inconsistencies gets pushed to the side.
The slipped grip quick time events are from the 1st reboot trilogy by Crystal Dynamics (Legend, Anniversary and Underworld).
It's a good game but it's NOT a tomb raider game and that makes me really sad. They just took the character of Lara Croft and put in her a modern AAA formula which makes me very sad.
+wolflink9000 Agreed, it's an overhaul of the branding, not of the gameplay. I don't mind that type of game, however it really would be nice to see another title like the old ones. They were definitely unique.
They didn't even do that, her actual character is completely different and she bears almost no resemblance to pre-reboot Lara. The worst part is that the didn't even execute the "modern AAA formula", as you put it, very well. Playing the game I got nothing but Uncharted 2 and The Last of Us flashbacks and how those two games did everything in TR2013 better. U2 had better action gameplay and level design while TLoU had better scavenging. To what I got from the game was just a jumble of characters and mechanics close enough to their inspirations/contemporaries bud still different enough to be noticeably worse. Drove me absolutely insane while playing it.
Imperium Americanum They made Lara a pornstar,basically.
It is basically an Uncharted game with Lara Croft. The new Tomb Raider game is a bit of an Uncharted clone too.
And Unchartered started out at Tomb Raider meets Gears of War, with a helping of Indian Jones.
I didn't get into the previous games (think I played 2 of them?), but overall I really liked the reboot. That said I had two big complaints...
One was touched on early in this video. Lara takes a crap ton of damage in this game (even ignoring the player controlled parts) to the point where it felt like the devs had a torture porn fetish or something and it was both unbelievable and uncomfortable.
The other is how quickly Lara seems to get used to becoming a mass murderer. This ludonarrative dissonance could be aimed at most games out there, but for some reason it bothered me more than most in this game. Could it be because this is an origin story and Lara is supposed to be just your average college student at the start? Is it because the incredible CG trailer (the one that starts the game) had me thinking that the game's story would be more serious and well thought out? Or could it be because they actually address this when she is forced to kill her first human, but then completely ignore the fact 10 seconds later? Probably a little of each.
While I think a story that focuses on this more psychological aspect of a character could be awesome (cough, Spec. Ops. The Line, cough) there are easy ways Tomb Raider could have at least done a token service to this idea. Lara could have a few lines where she says things like, “It's them or me” or “They won't hesitate to kill you, so you can't hesitate either” while you're stalking enemies. This would show she is at least conflicted enough that she is trying to justify her brutal actions to both herself and the player. Better yet, if you managed to stealth through an area without killing anyone she could have a line about having a little less blood on her hands or how she's glad she didn't have to kill them. How about a way to knock out enemies instead of murderizing them? I think it would have added depth to the character without actually requiring a ton of extra work.
Lara herself tells Roth how scarily easy it is to kill people but that she's left with no choice.
@@reng935 yeah she's in a kill or be killed situation so it didn't really bother me.
I agree those would be cool
Exactly I appreciate the fact they DID add small details & scenario to show the crescendo of “kill or be killed”.
I was just watching one of your videos for the first time and decided to check when the most recent one was uploaded.
This works.
I have yet to encounter one video that comments on how Lara in pre-rendered cutscenes (07:03, 16:55) does not look like Lara in game cutscenes (01:08, 14:53). The jaw, the lips, the eye shape, the head width, the cheeks, it's all different, and NO ONE mentions that.
Yeah and she looks different in each game in the series
It's funny that you mention that you aren't an artist because this game is what made me accept that I am one. I've had a natural proclivity for art since I could hold a crayon, but that didn't begin to develop into a real passion until I was in high school. However, I was accosted by my family for wanting to pursue a career in something so risky, competitive, and relatively obscure. I gave up on it for several years, and it wasn't until a friend of mine recommended me this game that that passion came back.
After the credits rolled, I spent a significant amount of time looking through the gallery of concept art, and a fire has been ignited in my gut ever since. The game definitely has its faults and isn't something I'd hold up as some kind of paragon of art direction, style, technical beauty, or game design, but it will still always have a very special place in my heart for essentially giving me my life back.
Most of your criticism towards the story, i agree with, but i was more forgiving. What really did for me was that last line. "I'm not going home".
Oh really? Here you were, going on a dig as part of your academic program, only you nearly died thousands of times! You woke up in sacrificial chamber, impaled yourself, got chased by maniacs, killed a guy who tried to rape you, destroyed an entire cult of brainwashed freaks, annihilated a whole army of samurai, lost Roth, the closest thing you had to a father, among many other friends. Finally, you get to go home, ans spend years in therapy to recover from that ridiculously traumatizing ordeal. But nope, you go "I'm not going home" as in what, that was so fucking fun, let's do it again?
Stupid ending.
I love this game so much. One of my favorites of all time.
Funny how you mentioned how this game's plot feels like some b-movie.
I kept referring to it as "LOST meets Big Trouble in Little China"
While it's perfectly understandable that you wouldn't want to play through games you already didn't like as a child. i think your selling the control schemes of the original games short.
obviously the tank-like onehanded control scheme was as un-intuitive as you remembered (and even more-so now as forward/back/strafe have become even more standardized.)
Once you got past that though, lara was incredibly versatile and precise. she had all the normal movements, then a walk modifier, then by combining jumps and ledge-grabs with the modifier keys she could jump, dive, flip, roll, slide, cartwheel, even do a handstand when pulling herself up from ledges.
Using the different combinations you could move pretty fluidly and gracefully to face the direction you wanted at any given moment even with the outdated basic wasd controls. (not sure if it's fair to call them outdated seen as while Quake did come out the same year, Tombraider 1 was certainly in development long before it released)
as a result of this (and that the combat was weak) the game was able to focus much more entirely on intricate platforming with extremely precise jumps (that wouldn't be reasonable to expect of the player with the reboots' level of control precision). on well designed complex 3d levels that folded back into each other as you opened up new paths.
On the subject of the the reboot, something I was surprised you didn't address was that its over 2 hours into the game when you finally leave what I'd consider the opening section and you're given a truly open area to explore. which I found extremely aggravating, seen as I felt the game was trying to sell itself as more of a 3rd person farcry/uncharted mix. and wouldn't let me play it until I got through the slog of dreadful frontloaded reviewer bait. After that I thought it was an ok game. (about average for a modern AAA singleplayer)
Gurl what? Front loaded reviewer bait? 🙄
there amount of damage she takes in these new games is stupid like you mentioned at the beginning, but the stupidest thing that i hate in these games is that after her first kill she became a freaking terminator killing a whole army all alone by herself. The whole game would have been more fun with less enemies and a non lethal take down option. She kills so easily and without remorse that it makes hard for me to root for her, which is a shame because she is not a bad character, but i feel like she is just handled incorrectly.
Honestly I don't care about that myself, it's tough to play a game and be focusing on details like that at the same time. It is ludonarrative dissonance and when Lara is shocked at her first kill in the game, it was never gonna age well since this game is essentially a third person shooter anyway.
@@crashfan9997 if anything, it aged just fine as I appreciate the fact they even included it. As opposed to not having that crucial scene and just having her kill. Her dialogue with Roth about it shows she has to grow quickly accustomed to it if she is to SURVIVE.
i love all the tomb raider games that exist, i played the original when i was 5 and i fell in love, there is just something about it that i hope never gets lost
They're probably the first games I remember at all. I've watched my dad play games my whole life and watched for a while before playing because I just preferred the bonding that we got. The first game I ever played was the original Sims. I was pretty disappointed at the fact that neither of the new games really *feel* like a Tomb Raider. The puzzles are really far between and I wish there were more challenge tombs.
i agree, though i do kinda like the new games
I like them a lot, too. :)
While playing I was thinking that water must be filled with deadly bacteria, Lara would die in hours from an infection, then I remembered it was a video game. Sometimes my head will go for too long
tbh, there were moments of subtle story telling, like one of the optional "Treasures" you find which is a wallet of the Main villain and a photo of him and his Family inside it, they could of made him sympathetic in some way in that his "scheme" is basically reincarnate Himiko in Lara's friend Sam so the storm subsides and the cult can go home, but that would of just painted Lara in the wrong, even though the cult were burning Females alive trying to find Himiko's descendant.. so I guess there's that black mark on their innocence lol.
Boy I would love a Mirror's Edge critique, honestly either one
the original character was much better. just a random rich person who decided to go on adventures. ya don't need this crazy emotional story. it was crazy wacky fun where you kill a TRex with pistols.
Jeffrey I loved shooting those dinosaurs with her two pistols that had infinite ammo for some reason
Your suggestion of leveling system sounds go great
I played this game with bow only the whole way through. Made it a lot more fun and challenging. Overall great game.
I have the same feeling with old games. I have fond memories of many old games, but when I play them after so many years, I find the controls to be so difficult. Just playing GTA Vice City, the moment controls are so clumsy it's nearly impossible to just move my character around.
I actually totally ignored the story and made up my own as i was playing... Made it more enjoyable.
LOL.I did that with ROTTR and MGS:V.You know they have fucked up the story when we have to use "head canon" to make sense of a game or get enjoyment out of it
I'm surprised you didn't mention the lack of usesage of the animal hunting system. There's even talent points for it, but you end but never having to use it.
You are my favourite Critic
You forgot to mention how the samurai are played up to be big and bad in the cutscenes and later get absolutely bullied when you're allowed to fight them.
Great review. Really some amazing moments in this game.
One good compromise for the regenerative health issue is a threat system used by Brothers in Arms games and Uncharted games. As in when screen shows red, it means you are under increasing threat, not taking direct fire. COD’s invention of regenerative health is unforgiveably awful.
"Lucifer Croft, destroyer of worlds" 😂
I find it interesting that it's this game in particular you would say (paraphrased) "of course cover shooters are boring if you sit in one cover the whole time" when this is one game where, when you sit in cover for even a short amount of time, enemies will throw molotovs and grenades, forcing you to move around, while avoiding the CoD: WaW pitfall - the grenades and molotovs are easy to dodge, ensuring that they actually make you move around rather than just being annoying. Maybe you never experienced this because you played the whole game aggressively but this one mechanic honestly elevates the cover shooting gameplay above most other cover shooters.
Anyway, apart from that i thought this was a great video. Although it has many flaws, I do love this game. I'm playing Rise on and off right now and i'm honestly disappointed with it. It feels like they expanded in all of the wrong directions, at least that's my first impression of it.
i'm late to this party but when game has characters basically teleporting or magically always going around the faster way than the player it's not even a bad design
it's a straight up failure
it also implies to things happening out of nowhere just "because"
insert "we needed conflict filler" here
Almost everything you said, I felt (mirrored) when I was playing. Especially what you said about that first tomb... it's done, lol XD. Oh so sad. You can't deny that this was a very well crafted game, but gaming in general always will have flaws. I am sick of the simple puzzles we get in them and, at this point, I'm very sick of the disconnect between the player, reality, and what the character on screen does.
I'll have to give you a like for solely listing the Tom Raider games.
You have no idea how I confused I was with it and now I finally may find the one I've played
You're bothered about wobbly camera work in video games. I immediately like you a lot more.
@WhoDarestheMAN gamer
...Why?
@WhoDarestheMAN gamer
Well it doesn't work for me.
Why so aggressive?
@WhoDarestheMAN gamer
Not everyone has your brain.
@WhoDarestheMAN gamer
I understand your reasoning.
Excite! I've been waiting for this for a while, really enjoying your critiques :D
I already played throught this game before watching the video but I never noticed the guy that died for a wrench and a screwdriver. I laughed till I cried when that part came up 21:00 lmao
Ludonaritive dissonance
Thanks dj peach cobbler for spamming that phrase to me, as well as charlaton wonder with immersive sims, regarding joseph's coverage of prey.
Its so awesome seeing how much more game terminologies are being covered, and how more educated we are
Dam I am on my 2nd run threw of your channel and it’s still as solid as I remember
subbed!! a really good analyst, you've opened my eyes on your uncharted 4 video on how its gameplay is mostly scripted but still a great game.
Great video and great channel as well! I'm really impressed how much effort you put into every review. Just awesome! Keep up the good work!
TR 2013 had completely trash gameplay. They did an amazing job on graphics, story line and the combat controls but TR was never meant to be a minimalistis cover shooter with quicktime events. Puzzles and fantasy were always the heart of the franchise. For all the faults of the originals, the people who produced TR 2013 just wanted to make "all the money" off an Uncharted clone.
If you played it like a cover shooter than that's your fault. I played it jumping and rolling everywhere on hard mode
I know, I know, late to the party, but still:
The bow is an artifact from developing pre-merger Tomb Raider. Before Eidos was bought up by Square Enix, Crystal Dynamics was working on Tomb Raider Ascession project, which was more of a survival horror than actual TR game and the project was a combination of The Thing, Shadow of the Collosus and Robinsonade type of story. Bow played a huge role in it, with detailed mechanics for it.
Cue merger and cancellation of Ancession, while in the same time salvaging as much things as possible from it for the new project and rebooting. Hence why certain elements of TR'13 simply don't glue together with the rest of the game - because they literally come from different project.
The damage you recieve in the "regenerating health" games is a luck meter. Your luck is running out as you are getting into dangerous situations, and when it's down you get hit one time and die, or rather actually get hurt seriously which makes firther game events impossible.
This isn't uncharted
Not only is it not uncharted, that lame ass excuse was retconned and isn't even reflected in Drakes dialog in any of the games prior to 4. It's like george lucas saying star wars was planned out from the start, luke/leia were set up to be lovers instead of brother/sister, and a plethora of other inconsistencies
Lol kids and their excuses
the wrench and screwdriver made me go like WTF too when I replayed the game earlier this year, I was like "really?? did they just kill off a character for 2 of the most common tools possible???"
Yeah I thought that too lol
Great video as always and I have to see that I thought many of the things you said while I was playing
I think part of the problem is 99.9% of the combat in this game are non-canon to the story. They're simply there because gameplay reasons. This is why they seem so out of place while you're in control of Lara vs when she's in combat situations in cutscenes or scripted events where she's less aggressive and more on the fragile side. It's one of those things you have to suspend your disbelief in.
how does joseph barely mind the horrific deaths in the games he reviews XD
its like >character gets horribly mutilated or eaten alive<
"i guess people might not want to see the character die and that creates a little tension maybe :/"
I disliked this Tomb Raider game. A friend of mine was gushing about it, but at about every corner I saw things I heavily disliked. The combat was boring, the story was pretty dull and there were many many moments where I could've co-oped one of the exciting set pieces with my gf watching, by having her hold the analog stick in a direction and waiting 20 seconds.
The collecting was boring and annoying, the messages about stuff i "COULD DO RIGHT NOW! LOOK AT YOUR MAP" were not only condescending but also very annoying after the third time.
And there were so many instances that just took the wind out of it's own sails and stopped for something rather meaningless that could've been built in better. Giving examples would take a bit too long i guess.
I hated hated hated how enemies had, what seems to be, an army supply of molov cocktails in their little tree house.
A different friend of mine told me the sequel is much much better (and she is a fan of the tomb raider games, having played every single one of them.) She also disliked this game, but has played the sequel through for the 4. time now. So I'll give it a check.
Nice video as always!
You're not alone.
ruclips.net/video/r5bB8g5R4dY/видео.html
I always enjoy hearing others perspectives tho.
Remember when Lara Croft was an archaeologist? This game seems tragically out of touch. The gameplay is shallow and immature yet the subject matter and content is not suited for children. I think giving these sorts of products praise for being 'artistic' or 'telling a good story' is doing a disservice to the medium as a whole (especially when the entire experience feels lifted from other games released before it). It reeks like a project in highschool where none of the students spoke to eachother about their contributions until the day it was due, and they simply slapped what they had onto a slab of bristol board.
It fails at being a survival game, a tense stealth game, an adventure game, a platformer, a gritty noir, and most importantly a tomb raider game. Nostalgia isn't a reason to give it a free pass.
I think you nailed it. The slap it all together approach was confirmed in the next game, which suffers even more for this than the first game. That being said, I'm a fan of this genre and felt this game was barely good enough to be worth playing through. Can't say the same for the sequels.
Well, without any significant nostalgia, I think it's the best of all the _Tomb Raider_ games, so I don't know what you're talking about.
@Tiredofdumbfuks Gameplay isn't all that makes a video game; it's also the story, characterization, set pieces, music, acting, and so on.
@Tiredofdumbfuks Well, I'm not as familiar with the two sequels, and as far as I can tell, they're not as good as the first one, so I won't disagree with you there.
The story in the first one is fine. It's pretty unique, horrifying, and invigorating. The characters are pretty generic, but it's not that common to see such characters in a game such as this.
@@georgeofhamilton Explain Mario
Haven't watched yet, but want to say: I did not enjoy this game very much at all. Interested to hear what you thought though!
Tomb Raider 2013 was a lot of fun
I know I'm really late to this video but I get the point about characters being overpowered. One of my favorite games has been kingdom come: deliverance, where you have to train a select skill like archery or sword fighting to be good in combat. You can't just replay the game and be able to kill enemies at the start. Something like that would have been nice in the tomb raider reboots. I'd love to see a video from you about KCD and see if others liked it as much as me, it wasn't perfect but quite good in many ways.
I disagree with you about making shooters with cover fun. If using cover is clearly superior to just running in and dying, the player will be pushed that way, so it’s not really their fault if they find that boring.
And the game pushes the player in that way . . .
Can't wait for the premiere of Arts and Crofts this year
The last three tomb raiders at the beginning got me laughing.
At 13:50, you can easily tell these wood houses, if you will have been around since WW2. And they maybe have rotted and became weak overtime. So breaking them wouldn't be too hard either.
As far as the enemies go, Lara is a above average height woman that trained with an ex army personnel Roth all through her childhood, has been rock climbing and been pretty active and well built woman. She can fight with men who are malnourished for decades and who are delusional. There is something weak about a person who is so deluded and hopeful that you can use such hopefulness that borderlines insanity against them. Although, if they could have made Roth into an ex general friend of Lara's father who trains Lara under him after the death of her father, and also give Lara a back story on how she went into the army under Roth's supervision for 2-4, years, you could have given her incredible sense of awareness and strength some logic or context. The only thing we know is that Roth trained her, what training did she get? We don't know.
I find the bow so much fun so I never use anything but it and the pistol
You can make a makeshift wrench and screw diver with the random rubble laying around
About the first point: I don’t understand why realistic games keep doing this. I could not believe Joel survived being impaled by a steel beam in TLOU. Or Ellie being able to use her arm after manually removing an arrow (with a head) from her shoulder.
Removing something that has penetrated the deep layers of muscle is never recommended by any medical practitioner. The blood loss alone can kill someone, let alone the infection that will surely come with wounds this deep.
Break a bone, but don’t impale characters.
I suddenly have the inclination to replay Tomb Raider now.
awesome vid
The game wasnt impressive or something, but I enjoyed it. I did asked myself while playing a lot of times "Is that girl immooortaaaal???".
I enjoyed this game quite a bit, but agree with many of the flaws mentioned. Same goes for its sequels. Despite their flaws, I still think they're a quality experience in the current landscape of games.
I came back just for the health monologue near the beginning
I didn't notice Alex died for a wrench and screwdriver O _ O lmao
I dunno if anyone brought this up, but as far as I know, the "first hidden tomb" you mention was actually pre-order DLC which was eventually included in the Definitive Edition. I don't know why they decided to shove it into the first area, but for us plebs who got the original game without a pre-order, the first hidden tomb was a much simpler puzzle and their difficulty nominally escalated as the game progressed.