I would put it more like the story is the throne. Because the throne could be beatiful and impressive but if the king that sits on it sucks, its worthless. But if the king is amazing the throne doesnt matter that much.
I would disagree with graphics being the throne as well, see above, the wicher 1 and kotor neither have good graphics, both are great games. (Some, including myself believe one of those games to be the best video game ever made.) The fact is, gameplay is king, because at the end of the day we are dealing with a game, and if that game does not play well or at all then its hardly a game at all. Story is queen, because its integral to enjoyment in many or most cases. And in the case of Adventure games and RPG's, story is important to immersion, as much so infact as continuity of mechanics, and world building. The throne? its just a chair, youre all focusing on the wrong thing.
the throne is the graphics then. because it's just a chair. It doesn't matter much anyways. But if it looks good then that's great. also... idk why witcher 1 gets shit for its gameplay. sure it wasn't amazing or anything but at least it was unique.
Why didn't Lara take a camera with her to record all the super natural shit she encounters to prove her father was right? Wouldn't that make sense and make the game better for it?
Don't bring logic into the Tomb Raider universe. The new installment is complete madness. Hungarian text on soviet outposts, Siberian natives talking perfect English etc the list goes on
Italian i can't think of any games who goes out of their way to use native languages to locations you interact with lol MGS snake eater did it with russian but that language is common enough in voice acting....thinking about it even in movie its incredibly rare i can actually only think of inglorious bastard that i watched that actually put that effort in
It's funny. I've noticed a lot of anime recently that includes the characters speaking English sometimes, but because they speak it so poorly I have trouble understanding it as a native English speaker. What's worse is that they often remove the English subtitles for those parts and replace it with Japanese. One of the characters was even supposed to be an American. Especially in the anime industry, it would seem pretty easy in this day and age to just hire an American voice actor but they just don't. I wonder if it's more difficult than it seems from the outside for some reason?
After you complete the game you suddenly have all of Lara's therapy sessions.... for some reason. Turns out the therapist was on Trinity's payroll and Ana was using him to manipulate Lara. Also, Lara was told that Sam doesn't want to see her from her doctors. Sounds to me like they're on the payroll too. Again important plot points that are in audio logs, but even worse it happens AFTER THE GAME. And you have no notification that you have them, I just happened to stumble upon them.
I just loaded up the game to listen to them and holy shit, that's awful. I wish I had known about them before making the video. It's the best proof of using audio logs as a crutch for story in the game.
Lol I completed the game and uninstalled it recently and had no idea about this. I even wondered at some point what happened to Sam and why only Jonah returned. Fucking dreadful design.
What? I actually really enjoyed the game and played around a lot after finishing the game to collect more items and do the Baba Yaga DLC. And this is the very first time I heard that this content exists. Crazy. And yeah, not great design if even someone who really liked the game and played it a lot can miss this.
Without fail, there are either things I forget to talk about or cut so the video doesn't end up two hours long: The knife and rebreather upgrades feel like padding--to give the player the illusion of progress. The knife shouldn't be necessary when Lara uses arrows for much more difficult tasks before getting it. The rebreather flat-out shouldn't work. Lara's lung capacity is apparently at the level of a 70 year-old chain smoker when it comes to swimming early in the game--until the ice river sequence when it's magically extended for only that part. If this had been increased, an upgrade could have been given that doubled this new acceptable length and still allow the gating of areas with longer diving sections. On the flip side, I like how Lara's equipment changes to reflect these upgrades. Her quiver gets bigger--the arrows bounce in it too which I thought was neat. When she gets the bow shooting skill upgrade she'll hold another arrow at the ready. All these little details are really good. I didn't speak much about level design. I think it's worthy of some praise--especially the larger areas. Having multiple paths around is fun. I think this could be taken further in the next game with unlocking more permanent routes over maps that you return to. This sort of thing could work well in larger dungeons. Surprisingly, I think the open-world-lite that the series has could take some lessons from Dark Souls of all things. I looked up the voice actress for Lara: Camilla Luddington. Fantastic job and someone who ISN'T Jennifer Hale no less, so I hope she does more work in other games. Charles Halford was great as Konstantin too, even if the character himself was lackluster. Lara really needs to stop saying "bastard" so much. The journal entries about hunting in the Geothermal Valley were good. The ones left by the assassin in the final sunken city section were fantastic--they made sense too, since he's leaving behind help for any who end up stuck like him, and he has downtime while recovering from his injuries.
+The False Rabbi Dragon's Dogma. I've also started on a short video for Factorio next week. After that depends on how long it takes me to do Dragon's Dogma. I really want to do the Witness. I also want to do the Witcher games but I don't think I have enough time to do all three games before Dark Souls 3, so I might find a different game to do in March and then Witcher after Dark Souls 3.
+Joseph Anderson Sounds cool. I can't speak for the first 2 games, but the Witcher 3 is probably going to take at least 100 hours to finish. I thought the reviewers were exaggerating on the length. This may not interest you, but InXile, a team made up of mainly former Black Isle and Obsidian kickstarted the spiritual successor to 1999's Planescape Torment, Torment: Tides of Numenera. It is currently on early access beta on steam. Planescape Torment doesn't have many video reviews on youtube on account of the game being so old (to put it in perspective, it was Black Isle's next project after finishing Fallout 2). Would it interest you to make a review of the game? Thanks for responding to my comment by the way.
Planescape Torment is a great game. I'd have to replay it to review it. I'm cautiously optimistic about Tides. I'd definitely be interested in doing a video on it and the first game leading up to its release, but only if I could do a good enough job to do it justice. I'll think about it going through the year.
Honestly having worked on some games the main problem is the designers don't get these desicions. They are dictated from publishers, who often give gameplay directives that have no relation to the project due to popular trends. That's why a ton of features these days often seem shoe horned or forced, because, well they were.
@@TheTillmanSneakerReview The problem with that thinking is that they are hiring creative people to make creative decisions...but then they stifle that creativity because a graph showed that Y would be more profitable (not better, just profitable) than whatever their team came up with.
@@TheTillmanSneakerReview I haven't played much of any of these annual series precisely because of this, but I can safely say that this is an issue tightly linked to the system we live under, and the fact that entertainment is a for profit endavour. Like, I get why this happens, companies are afraid to risk money to innovate, or change, or just straight up have fun, so the only change is in the safe direction - better graphics. But understanding why it happens doesn't have to mean I like it. In fact, it makes me dislike the system and consider how it could be brought down and what could replace it. -what I'm saying is, death to capitalism- Oh, and the same thing applies to the customer end. If you have to spend money on a game, people are generally less willing to experiment.
@@TheTillmanSneakerReview You're comments here really resonated, although I can't say I feel in much of a negative way. Gaming is bigger than ever, and an enormous chuck of the consumer market is casual. Although, people could be easily forgiven for thinking otherwise. The internet can be misleading with all the information from critics and the hardcore gaming crowd, both are which play many games and keep up with new releases. Being a casual gamer myself, I've learned what information I need to take away from reviews/discussions about a game and what to safely discard. Innovation, or lack thereof more specifically, is a big one since I haven't experienced a fraction of the games as those criticizing this area. Only those very passionate about video games will be compelled to make content so it's understandable, just something to be aware of more than anything.
@@TheTillmanSneakerReview There's a difference between convolution, and innovation. If I innovate something then I improve the quality of it without deviating from what it was meant to be. If I convolute it I add more to it and just make it needlessly complicated with very little benefit. CoD players complain when something is convoluted, making simple features which were already almost perfect needlessly complicated. I mean why didn't people call zombies now garbage despite the amount of changes they made to gameplay? People only complain the story is convoluted because it is when it could be told better.
Agreed. Watched both of his reviews to check out the games... they were both as horribly implemented as far as story goes as I've been expecting and the mechanics would probably be better utilized by the devs for lara croft go. I will not be buying any tomb raider games until the story legitimately makes some sense and the games design utilizing mechanics matches that. Until then I'll be checking some reviews until the cosmic ideas and machine guns die off from their current deux ex machina of conflict within the genre.
It would be closer to the original if you replaced the religious soldiers with some Soviet throwbacks; suppose there was a group of former Soviet soldiers living out in Siberia, working in secret to get to the immortal source thing, for the sake of restoring the USSR and conquering the world. Heck, the minute he said the game was set in Siberia, I had kind of expected that kind of a story, as opposed to the one that exists.
Colby Fowler It’s sad you have this opinion. You watch a video that’s heavily focused on criticism, because that’s his brand, so you don’t get to hear a lot of the positives about this game. The tomb raider series is genuinely enjoyable - he even said this himself in this video - even if most if not all of his criticism is very true and should’ve been applied throughout the games. Frankly, it‘s weird to judge a game you’ve never played just because you watched a video talking about almost solely on the flaws.
Are you planning on playing/making videos on Shadow of the Tomb Raider? I feel like everyone forgot about it since it came out around the same time as critical darlings Spider-Man and RDR 2, and critical shitstorm Fallout 76. It’d also be nice to have a trilogy of videos from you about the trilogy lol
@@jamescarr8196 Your comment has solved the puzzle. I thought Shadow was Rise or an expansion. I mean the sequel to the first reboot. I'd never know there actually are 3 games These companies need to learn how to market their products
Am I the only one who thinks it would have made more sense to have water based gameplay in the first game because it's on an island and fire based gameplay because it's in snowy mountains?
"Are you interested in a deep, compelling narrative, with many twists, and a plot that keeps you guessing until the end? If so, then you should avoid this game like the plague, because it has none of that." Instant thumbs up. Just hearing that was extremely cathartic given how utterly awful the story to this game was. I mean, I get it, it's Tomb Raider, it's not meant to be some philosophical masterpiece, but it was still pretty bad.
@@remingtonbianchi9866 I love the uncharted storys, the characters really make it for me and the plot of the treasures arent master peices but it make me interested enough to want to play more and find out The characters are amazing tho, by far the best thing about the uncharted series other then the action
@@remingtonbianchi9866 literally 👏 the gameplay in those are considerably lackluster and the stories themselves aren’t anything to write home about. Not to mention Uncharted 1 is one long glorified shooting gallery, and 3 a beat for beat carbon copy of 2
I hate how the tomb raiding parts are optional while the action parts are mandatory. they basically switched the formula. should be called "action lady" not tomb raider !
funny you say because all the people that love this game hate shadow cuz it’s more focused on how the old games where or actually raiding tombs which i found crazy that people played tomb raider for combat cuz shadow is the best of the three love the puzzles
I'm wondering if they watched this video and went with it. Too many coincidences, even their new accent put on exploration and tombs rather than combat.
Joseph has mastered story analysis, which makes sense since he's an author. He always seems to know what twists are coming up in a story; he calls them obvious, but I don't think they would be to the average gamer. So yeah, I guess I'm amazed that his prediction was correct, but not surprised.
I love it when a person can back their critiques by giving possible solutions to the problems and offering ideas of ways things could have been done better. As a whole I haven't felt that interested in the new tomb raider series, even though I absolutely love Uncharted but I think the reason for that is, Uncharted has much better written characters imo. Also I think Uncharted is able to get away with its unbelievable set pieces because Drake recognizes the insanity of his predicaments. I think the new Tomb Raider tries to be more grounded and as a whole more serious but I find the dumb actions of its characters and its insane set pieces to break any consistency in the tone. I think if these games focused more on exploring tombs and made exploration the main staple of the series, I would like the games better. The introduction of an evil faction really doesn't interest me, and neither does the large emphasis on combat.
Uncharted 2, 4, and Legacy are really the only ones to write home about. Even the gameplay for them are still seriously lackluster with little changes across them. The stories aren’t even ALL that, it’s the characters that make them. Hell, Uncharted 3 is a beat-for-beat carbon copy of 2.
Something about the new Tomb Raider games bugs me on a principle level, and it's that they're really not Tomb Raider games. They're Uncharted games, instead. Lara Croft herself is my biggest beef, especially the way she's being advertised. I always get the feeling that the publishers want to beat it into our heads that this is a "better," more "mature" depiction of Lara Croft because... Well, because she gets beaten, stabbed, shot, burned and nearly raped, judging by the promotional material for the first game, but let's go with "because she's not sexualised." While that's true, she's also missing a huge chunk of her character, as well. Maybe not from the old-old Tomb Raider games, but certainly as compared with Tomb Raider: Legend. See, I like Lara in Legend. She's most definitely the master of her own estate, in charge of a team of specialists that she employs. She's provably badass, exceptionally knowledgeable and genuinely charming, equally at home wearing combat boots as wearing high heels. More than anything else, Tomb Raider Legend gives us Lara Croft as a grown woman, accomplished and capable. A Japanese Yakuza mobster has a piece she needs? Not a problem! Not only does she know the man already, she also has friends in places high enough to get a shot at him. An artefact she needs is in a far-off country lost to difficult terrain? No problem - Lady Croft has the resources to get herself there. Tomb Raider: Legend was itself a reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, though sadly the followups of Anniversary and especially Underworld were... Not as good, let's say. And yet this re-reboot decided to go for an origin story, thus falling into what I like to call "an obsession with origin stories." I first noticed this trend with the Lone Ranger - a movie that's 90% content nobody asked for only to show us the actual Lone Ranger for a few minutes at the end and essentially sequel-bait. Rise of the Tomb Raider is the same, giving me a character I can't recognise as Lara Croft far too early in her life to be truly compelling... And doesn't even go as far as giving me the badass, confident character I was looking for. You'd think that's what the sequel would be about, but instead it's just more of the same damp, dreary narrative with Lara Croft kinda' sorta' seeming to have come into her own by the end. I'm sure whatever sequel Crystal Dynamics come up with if indeed there is one will similarly fail to give us a complete person until the very end, at which point we'll wrap up the story in wait for the next reboot. I'm really sick of this obsession with origin stories. I'm tired joining characters so early in their career that they fail to be recognisable or indeed even all that interesting, only to pretend to actually save that for the sequel. What's wrong with 90s approach to giving us fully-developed, fully-fleshed-out characters to play around with? Why must every story be about "coming of age" more or less? Why must they all feature what are - for all intents and purposes - wide-eyed kids learning about the harsh world for the first time? What, indeed, was wrong with Lara Croft as an adult, an accomplished archeologist and adventurer and a woman with a lifetime's worth of experiences behind her? Or, to spin this the other way, why even use the Tomb Raider license in the first place when the resultant games will be all but completely unrecognisable as Tomb Raider games in plot, setting, characters or gameplay? There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the new Tomb Raider series (aside from failing to interest me in the slightest, but that's subjective), but there's equally nothing "Tomb Raider" about it. Why bother call it that, aside from disconnected brand recognition? It'd be like me creating a reboot of Soul Reaver and setting it in modern times because I don't own the Vampire: The Masquerade license.
I like your take on origin stories.. It's a brilliant point that deconstructing an already fleshed out character will always make them more boring. But its a sacrifice to give the character some kind of arc or character growth.. It falls completely flat with the tomb raider game since Lara is as OP out the gate as she is by the end and they seem to have mistaken growth for getting beaten to shit.
I hated the pseudo choice after Constantine boss fight, I mean is there anybody who spared him? I killed thousand of people at this point and I'm supposed to not kill the main guy who antagonized me because "he's not worth it? "
@@mitchboland9591 Difference with that is that Abby isn’t meant to be a straight up villain like Constantine. There’s actual worth and reason in sparing the antagonist in TLOU2.
I'm surprised you didn't include my favorite scene in the game, during the nonsensical interrogation. When Jonah breaks free and grabs Konstantin's gun, Lara slams into the glass between them at max speed to shout "DO IT!" These two words are all it took for me to immediately love reboot Lara, a protagonist who has completely come to terms with the idea that killing people in self-defense is perfectly fine and that if you get the chance, you absolutely shouldn't take mercy on them.
It kills me that Jonah, after being told by Lara and the native people, and immediately after being made into a human punching bag by Konstantin, doesn’t know if Lara is in her right mind and hesitates killing him. It’s like bro you just got kidnapped and tortured by these guys and now your best friend is saying to shoot him because of how dangerous he is, it’s clear at that point the plot had really run its course (you are rescuing someone from a prison for a second time in the story at that point) and Konstantin only escapes because the plot needs him to in order to pad out an already bloated game.
I just finished Rise a few hours ago and instantly came here when I had the chance to hear what your thoughts were, and I think I agree 100% with everything you said. This game had so much potential - I really enjoyed the exploration, tombs and animal fights, and the combat/stealth was mostly pretty good, but they all fail to come together really well, or develop much further. The tombs always ended once they got interesting, and the exploration ended up resulting in lots of slow climbing under a limited, pre-determined pathway. It's made me realise how much I love the way Breath of the Wild used similar concepts to these. Optional tombs (shrines), climbing (completely open-ended in Zelda), survival elements, wild animals, etc. Breath of the Wild really made me feel like an explorer, a survivor, a puzzle-solver (even though I agree lots of the shrines are pretty weak), but Rise of the Tomb Raider just left me feeling a little empty, and wanting more. Like, you get an ability for the arrows where you can shoot them into walls and trees and climb on them! That should be a super fun, multi-purpose ability. Same with the grapple hook/wire thing. I should be able to scale any wall, take shortcuts, maybe even sequence-break like a Metroidvania, but I can't. It's an automated rope swing and a sometimes-useful ledge grabber, and that's it. Such a shame. I really, really hope the series gets more complex and less hand-holdy as time goes on. Make it more like Zelda or Metroid, and I think dropping the gritty realism might help a little if we're supposed to believe all of the set-pieces and supernatural elements. I'd personally love to see dinosaurs come back, with Lara being stuck on a tropical island and surviving against them. That's a dream come true, for me. Anyway, great stuff as always, Joe. Glad to be a subscriber and Patron.
The new dlc 20 year celebration with two hours of exploring croft manor, a dlc where your hunted by zombies in her nightmare. If you own the season pass you get this for free and all retro outfits and weapons. I think this makes the season pass worth it
I know you commented this a year ago, but I only just got around to playing the game this week. I noticed that all the listed retro outfits seem to have dissapeared, at least on the PC version.. do you have any idea why?
Thanks! I put a lot of hours in to keep the releases regular. I'm hoping the channel can become "work" if I treat it like "work". I love your videos by the way.
Hearing you talk about the way the story of the game should've gone sounds like they really took your criticism seriously and incorporated it into Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Do a Critique of that game.
17:03 I believe the poison arrow would kill him instantly. not just him, but also any other enemy with a helmet or some armor etc. poison arrow just kills them with one shot even on Survivor mode
Can we do a reboot of the reboot with you writing the story first and basing the gameplay around it? All of you're recommendations sounded a thousand times better than what the game ended up being.
"Corporate culture simply doesn't make masterpieces. We've learned that over and over again in the movie industry, why should we expect games to be any different? What we need is a culture shift where a game can be one man's project. Hollywood occasionally makes good movies because they follow the auteur theory - i.e. that the director is an artist and the picture is his art (as opposed to the director just being a hireling of the studio exec who greenlit the project). He gets a producer to supervise him, and writers and artists to work with, but overall (for good directors) the final decisions are left to him. Whereas in the vidya industry the people actually making the game don't have anywhere near as much power."
Except it is very hard to make games that are the products of one person and still sell milllions. Suppose you want to make a game like God of War 2018, it doesn't matter what your ideas are for the story and general mechanics are. The needs to make gameplay fun, technical limitations, budget concerns and even other gameplay concerns (like programming or world design or combat etc that the director may not be familar with) will be out of any directors' hands. Hell, even playtesting will force designers to change stuff. Even the most auteur driven games we currently have like God of War and Metal Gear frequently had their directors have to aquiese to others to make their games more fun.
@@TheCapitalWanderer for every Undertale, there are hundreds if not thousands of other games that never get known. Even Toby Fox never expected Undertale to succeed, expecting it to be “a niche 6/10 silly RPG”
The longer I'm thinking about it, the more I'm aware that (no offense) a random guy in the internet has a better grasp about story-telling than entire department full of people who are literally in story-telling business for their lives. And all the idiocity of the "plot" surfaces with double power, because it's the classic case of too many elements for the sake of the elements themselves, and not telling the story. I wish the game was how you describe the fix for it. It would FINALLY allow the franchise to get back on track and the next game finally being a "proper" Tomb Raider in the sense of having all the elements of the older takes on Lara, while in the same time having own identity. Sort like it's done in American comics book industry, where you have different itterations of the same character, all similar, but all with different background and different quirks of their personality. Instead, the game is just another part of a soul-less reboot that exists solely because the copyrights for the franchise switched hands and the new publisher decided to make a reboot, throwing in all the popular-at-the-moment elements and planning to make not just an origin story game, but stretching it up to 3 games. What for? And why really bother with pretending it has anything to do with Tomb Raider in anything else than the title? I remember when a decade ago I had nothing but contempt toward Legend, the first reboot of the franchise. But over time I've realised where the company was going, what was the general idea for the franchise and so on. It was clear there is a direction in all of this and people who are making the game care about something else than just using the title they've inherited for money-making (even if that's still their main, secondary and tertiary motivation). Now I've just see a game that exists solely to "look good" - with non-existing story (marketed in the same time as deep, engaging and taking itself extremely serious, which in my book isn't good for what is a pulp adventure series), barely any other gameplay than killing things and so heavily scripted at times it just feels like playing interactive movie and not a proper game. This game had a potential to change that. Instead it's more of the things from the first, but with slightly better graphics and even more nonsensical story that is even more serious than the previous one. What for? I understand the concept of making Lara compex character, but there is a massive dissonance between where the game wants to go with the story and what is actually happening in the plot. Lara comes out as flat and extremely one-dimensional in the process and the entire story makes less sense than TR2, THE most cheesy entry into the series.
22:20 - "Imagine if a racing game paused for a few seconds and took control away from you every time you took a corner." Well... This *kinda* sounds like the upcoming Need For Speed. At least how they showed it during E3. Assuming it still counts as a racing game.
Just finished it yesterday and completely agree. I do really love Lara's character, especially the way her moral compass 'grows' or is revealed throughout the game. There is one moment where Konstantin taunts you before he dies and you can walk towards him. I don't know what happens if you do but I walked away and it was a choice in a game that I really liked. I prefer choices like that to dialogue choices in games. There is something more impactful about it. P.s. How did the divine source get destroyed so easily? How did she know that would work. That was pretty weird. You'd think something so important and responsible for so many lives is destroyed like a peice of glass.
As always, absolutely amazing video: I never knew anything about any Tomb Rider's story, and the fix you applied convinced me immediately. The fact that you are a writer makes incredible sense, considering the way you look at things and the past work of yours I've experienced. Your consideration "Gameplay is King, but Story is Queen, and her trone is right next to his" is something unfortunately really hard to implement in the industry's mindset, I feel, but a sentence I will take with me in the future, and quote quite copiously :).
The biggest sin of this game is how comically easy it is, even for a big release meant to be accessible to casual players. This is a game where I struggled trying to decide what upgrades to get because they either seemed worthless (trying to alleviate inexistent problems) or things that would make Lara even more unfairly overpowered. To me the core of the Tomb Raider games has always been the process of arriving to a new location, taking in the environment and discerning the way forward. This was clear up until Underworld, with the opening level giving you that massive room with the kraken that you had to explore to find what exactly did you have to do to solve it. Even after the reboot I still look at the games the same way, and judging by what others thought of it and the demand for more tombs gameplay I'm not alone. The combat being so safe and easy doesn't do a lot to change my opinion. So it really aggravates me when the game tries is hardest to boycott its best moments, either by having Lara tell you the solution or constantly suggesting you to use the cheat vision. I decided never to use the survivor senses or the map when I started the game, only to soon encounter collectibles that were meant to be found by using them. Whenever I entered a tomb or what seemed like a puzzle section I always tried to examine it from afar, to avoid triggering Lara's hints, imagining how it would play out before I did anything. I spent a good while staring at the astronomical mechanism trying to guess how it worked and how I would have to interact with it, thinking back to similar sections in the Prince of Persia games (a series that took elements from Tomb Raider for its own reboot, while TR itself borrowed heavily from the original Prince of Persia; a similar relation to that between Uncharted and Tomb Raider). All of this was my own effort to make the game more engaging, but in reality you can go guns blazing wrecking everyone in the combat sections, and then use the survivor senses and interact blindly with objects to fly through the "puzzle" sections as well. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, being the successor to the Prince of Persia games, had some really nice tomb raiding segments where you went into secret catacombs beneath Rome or exploring temples, alone, in silence, the way it should be. It's bizarre that an Assassin's Creed game could be a better Tomb Raider game than the actual thing is nowadays.
Absolutely, I have a compulsive need to get every upgrade and ability in games like these, but like he said, 99% of all enemies die with a headshot from basic weapons.. so I ended up like an absolute tank with hardly any enemies to even come close to a challenge. By the end game I gave up on stealth as an advantage because I didn't need the help, and would charge headlong into any group of enemies I could find - just hoping that one of them might put me in some sort of danger.. but no. When I charged the final Grizzly in the final area and he dropped in seconds, I knew it was all over. I seriously wish they didn't design the difficulty for the lowest common denominator because this was a joke on the hardest setting.
21:55 There is a reason for this. This mode took a team at least "more than one day" to add to the game and during that time the issue of the story playing during score attacks definitely came up. I'm going to guess that it is loading assets during the scenes. I don't know what the problem is with having a loading screen pause (not black screen, just a loading buffer like on youtube videos) but a lot of people do not like them. Having those cutscenes trick people into thinking the world is seamless without loading screens is a very popular thing to do. I don't think this will be a problem in the future with high bandwidth lanes and high speed storage being part of the next generation of consoles. Until then we have to just accept the limitations of the hardware the games are played on.
Hey Joseph. I accidentally stumbled over your video on The Witness earlier today and absolutely loved your analysis of it. I almost never play video games (with the exception of the first three Tomb Raider games for nostalgic reasons, which funnily enough you disliked, and some occasional platformers), but your videos about them are so interesting and well-made (and with lots of well-timed humour) that I've been watching them non-stop since. Love your channel! :)
While I loved exploring and ogling at the game's environments, I also felt underwhelmed by the story and somewhat bored by the dialogue. None of the characters were awful, really, but most of them were forgettable. Lara's beleaguered campfire ruminations didn't surprise or illuminate either, and some of the audio files and journals were examples of lazy storytelling, as you explain here. One symptom of mediocre writing is wordiness, and there was some stuff that could have been nixed without much loss to the story. And yet, what was left out bothered me even more. The most interesting character for me, by far, was Konstantin, since we see glimpses of his love for his sister, the strength of his convictions, and his confessions that he doesn't actually enjoy being cruel, but believes his actions are necessary. (Of course, if someone wounded your hands in your sleep, I think you'd notice unless you were heavily sedated.) There's also the further complication that he has an agenda separate from the rest of Trinity, and this made me think the game could have gone in different direction with him. I also found Jacob to be a vague and disappointing figure. The entire plot seemed like a case of Black and White Morality, with the player clearly meant to be rooting for remnants, when what it really could have used was a case of Grey and Grey Morality instead. I know Trinity is supposed to be evil because we see them murder prisoners, and because their Konstantin is a ruthless sociopath, but what really makes Trinity in the wrong? Could their superior at the Vatican have knowledge of the undying army and want it contained/destroyed, not because he considers it blasphemous, but for the good of mankind? Lara herself speculates about the possibility of using the Divine Source to end suffering and death worldwide (though I wanted to ask her what made her think it could do this), and I'm not sure I understand Trinity's reasons for wanting to claim it. Do they want the same thing? What if they did? It all reminds me a bit of the morally myopic plot to Star Trek: Insurrection, in which a community on one planet holds the key to immortality and perfect health, and we're supposed to identify with them because the Federation would rather relocate them and use the planet's resources to benefit the cosmos at large. What if Jacob turned out to be evil, as suggested here, and he was secretly manipulating Lara into helping him to further his dark ends? What if the remnants turned out to be evil cultists themselves? What if Lara had convinced Konstantin of his sister's treachery and he did a Heel-Face Turn and helped her fend off the rest of Trinity? And what the heck is the Source anyway, and why didn't it affect Jacob as it did the deathless army? Or are we supposed to stayed tuned and given Square Enix our money so these questions can be answered in the next game? It also compounds the other issue I had with this game's story, and that was the obvious and overwhelming anti-religious theme of the story. It bothers me a bit that when the hero is a supposed prophet, the only people we see praying or speaking about God at all are obvious villains, and that these people are supposedly funded by the Vatican. Upon listening to every (spoken or recorded) monologue about this or that sin being justified if you're doing God's will, and exploring challenge tombs filled with the aftermath of botched exorcisms, I felt like the writers were bludgeoning me with a brick while saying, "See? Religion is dangerous because you can use it to justify atrocities!" It also bothers me that the prophet taught what is essentially an anti-prophecy about the unknowable nature of the divine. It's like Rhianna Pratchett's version of Thus Spake Zarathustra. I suppose you could argue that the remnants represent the "good" aspects of religion, but the teachings of the immortal prophet appear to be secular humanism, agnosticism, or perhaps deism. They don't speak much about god at all, there is no place of worship that I could identify in their camp at the geothermal valley, and no one is named Jacob's spiritual successor. Granted, Jacob utters a rather psalm-like prayer when he heals Jonah, but it seems to be undermined by his admission to Lara in the same scene that the source is not divine. The prayer itself could just as easily have been a charade. It's like Michael Moorcock's obvious anarchic biases (the only rulers he portrays sympathetically are reluctant rulers), but with religion. There are NO positive examples of religious faith anywhere in this game's world. Of course, I could just be reading too much into this. Perhaps the prophet's ruminations merely reflect his regrets after creating the undying army. Perhaps the remnants do practice an ancient and heretical splinter faith from the Orthodox church. Perhaps the power seat of Trinity isn't in the Vatican after all, but they are more like the Illuminati instead, infiltrating and allying themselves to various people and institutions who have no idea they're being manipulated. What's disappointing to me is that the game doesn't really make the answers to any of these questions clearer to me, and seems to end on exactly the same note as the last game, with more or less the same promises.
I loved that you pointed out the opportunity to learn the environment before attacking enemies because when i played the game the first time i felt the exact same and i was so pissed when i never had that chance again!
"Gameplay is king" - yet the whole gameplay there is is a generic TPS. Not to say the genre is bad or something, it's pretty decent, but they did pretty terrible job with it. I can't remember a single enjoyable shooting sequence in both new tomb raiders, besides the one you mentioned at the beginning of Rise. Playing through the rest of shooting sequences, I was pretty much praying that it ends quickly and some puzzle sequence or story-relevant event begins. The worst case was the "junktown", or whatever it is called in Tomb Raider 2013. It featured something that felt like hordes of enemies, that I had to shoot alone. I will forever wonder how this many people were even at this island and who's idea that was to send them all there and how the fuck couldn't they just use the simpliest tactic of surrounding and waiting against Lara. Instead what happened is: I kept shooting them all repeatedly in the head with the bow for 20 minutes. That's it. It was the best feeling in the world when this sequence have ended. And that's the problem with both new TRs. TPS parts are mostly badly designed. And the only good stuff, the main enjoyment in playing it are story moments (which IMO are mediocre as well, but much more compelling than shooting still) and puzzle/tomb raiding stuff. And as long as the worst parts of the game (shooting) are given priority over best parts (story and puzzles), I can never call these really "good" games. Yes, they took my time, got me engaged from the beginning to an end. But I can't call that an amazing experience in the end, neither do I have any desire to replay it, even after years. The devs either have to improve their TPS part drastically, to the point of maybe revamping them completely, or working on better AI, or making stealth more consistent, reasonable, and at least, possible throughout every encounter, not just few of them. Or, they just got to scrap the TPS part and make it a minor part of the game, instead focusing on things that are already fun, but just deserve more focus and attention and actual quantity (since quality is already kinda there). Otherwise, this series won't ever really jump over "mediocre" level, at least for me. Especially taking into account that there is quite the competition in form of games like Uncharted or The Last of Us, which might not have certain part as good as TR has, but instead feature a much better mixture of game elements simply resulting in a better product. Maybe not terribly better, but still better and more overall enjoyable for the same price.
I also found the beginning snow area where you hunt the soldiers extremely fun as well. I was severally disappointed that the rest of the game never capitalized on that at all.
14:08 I remembered this when I was playing the second section of Reaident Evil 7 (after you free yourself from the chair). I had the chance to sneak around the small area looking for ammo, a weapon or just a way out. That is until Jack shows up and you have to hide, except that you know the area and hiding spots. It got better for me when I was still looking for keys or something to get out, and someone knocks on the window, so I went to look and the story progresses. All of this felt organic and that I was making the decisions, that I was surviving the situation. That never happens again on Resident Evil 7.
My focus with a game like this is both satisfying controls, and compelling/unique scenarios to use those in. It seems with this game even more than the first, they put a lot of effort into trying to craft a cinematic story that would sell well in commercials, and then just ended up failing and wasting all of that effort because of the various oversights you mentioned. I've not played this yet, but from the footage throughout it seemed there was very little outside of aim at the head and shoot. The swinging/platforming with slo-mo mid-air combat, and the ability to fire real-time while climbing, hanging, sliding, and ziplining, would have been great. Stealth sections where you have to plan your approach and nail your shots, otherwise you're fucked, I'd have loved that. And then more of that Dark Souls style dodge to expose a weakness mechanic that you get with the animals. I'm sure I'll enjoy plaything through it, as I did the last game, but I definitely still question many of their choices. Maybe on their 3rd attempt they'll be competent enough to allow fucking FOV adjustment.
cant help but feel they are missing a trick and not having tomb raider be about the tomb raiding .... used to love the first games for the puzzles and platforming , when u actually had to direct your jumps and leaps .
I was a fan of the visuals on PC when the first two came out (omg 3D!) but do you really miss the tank controls? I really can't think of a better system than the Uncharted one they are using. Proper 3D platformer controls Super Mario 64 style wouldn't quite be right here.
I'll just add that from what I can tell, this game screams of shifted priorities. Lots of games start with neat ideas or cool concepts, and then those don't make it. Either dev time, producers, meddling, budgets, or QA get things shafted (bioshock infinite and Assassins Creed strike me as major examples of this, but i mentioned it with Dark Souls 2's light mechanic). I'm guessing that there was supposed to be some sort of survival mode mechanic in the main game, but it got shafted.
I find it incredibly ironic that most of the non-plot related suggestions that you had for future games were standard in the Tomb Raider games that came before 2013. I highly recommend anybody who wants bigger better puzzles check out Legend, Anniversary, or Underworld. I'm sure the games earlier than that have great puzzles too, but I can't stand the controls. Also if you want more animal enemies than people with guns, Anniversary is the way to go; I'm pretty sure Lara only kills like one human in that game. Tomb Raider games have never had good plot though, the plot is always just the bare minimum to give a reason to raid tombs. In fact, just about every game follows the same structure; Lara searches for the thing all game, is sad about her parents a lot, finds the thing, and then realizes she needs to destroy the thing for the good of humanity.
+Danica Templeton Word! I also think that the previous Tomb Raider Games had a better gameplay/story balance since they weren't trying to be "realistic" and "deep" while at the same time have a ton of action sequences. I also loved the combat of Tomb Raider legend, since there was no cover based shooting, instead there was auto-aiming and Lara had the ability to shoot enemies in slow-motion by jumping towards them. It wasn't realistic at all, but it was fun and it wasn't exactly the same combat as used in every other AAA game with guns in it.
Gertrud Bondesson The Legend Trilogy is my favorite iteration of Tomb Raider. No cover systems, comic violence, killer exotic animals, varied as hell locations, gigantic puzzles, and at the center of it an incredibly confident but emotionally unfulfilled Lara Croft who just wants closure on her mother’s loss. It was a good story that was tinged with this underlying tragedy and it made Lara very compelling to me. Things tended to drop into goofy action shenanigans a lot, but it was fun. The new grounded approach that 2013 did felt...wrong; adventurous youthful spirit and archaeology clashes with the obscene amount of graphic murder - this kind of game violence never phases me in other titles, but it feels alien to Tomb Raider.
I came from this other review where the RUclipsr was just swearing and being dramatic about his dislike for linear gameplay. Thanks to your video, I know what to expect. I'll buy the game for casual fun, and I won't be surprised. Thank you!
About the stealth thingy, i like your idea, but as a person that likes stealth, i feel like there should be a healthy mix between the two scenarios. What i would really is more combat and stealth combined in a sequence rather than segregated, but i don't know how to make it be good so i can't really expand on it. Now asking about something totally unrelated, have you ever heard or played The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky? I feel like it is kind of the opposite of "Gameplay is King", where the narrative and specially the world building takes a huge portion of the game, to the point where even as a fanboy, i think the gameplay is average. And would love to hear your opinion about it too, specially on what you think about the story and world building. It has 7 games but only 2 are translated on steam, although there is 7 titles, the two translated were supposed to be one game(it is really old so it had limitations) so there is a beginning and an end. Sorry if it is hard to understand. If you want i could try to explain a little better.
Never even heard of Trails in the Sky, sorry. I think that a game's priorities should be chosen carefully, and that if the story is the dominant force then the question should be asked why it's a game at all instead of a graphic novel/book/movie, or even a visual novel. You could argue that Telltale games are just visual novels with a more crafty user interface. Same goes the other way though: many games don't need stories. It's frustrating how many developers still include one without giving it the attention it deserves. No story at all would be better, or very light elements instead to get you started that then leave you alone.
I know I'm like over a year late on any discussion, but I am with you when it comes to learning a level and putting that to use when you revisit it with enemies that you need to take down. Like you said, most 'choose your own approach' games have you dropped in brand new maps where you have no knowledge of the layout. The game then consists of you sloppily improvising your way through the level, making mistakes and correcting them. You know the developers know this is a problem, because they give you sneak-o-vision and other cheating tools to get the upper hand. This doesn't fix the problem though, and instead feels more like damage control. Honestly, I think that since 'backtracking' has such a massive stigma, and game budgets are big enough to have every level be brand new, big game developers are too scared to try it. It's all about how reusing assets is contextualized. Mario 64 isn't terrible because you play every level 7 times, after all. A specific boss fight in The Last of Us in a certain burning building also required you to walk through it without any threats first before the boss fight begins. I really hope that game developers try more stuff like this in the future.
I love how honest, and mostly non-biased you are. Other "critics", reviewers, and analyzers don't get into the small details that make all the difference in story, gameplay, and dialogue. I'm glad that I came upon your channel and you've helped me to choose wisely and decisively when puchasing games, and not waste time and money over ones that aren't worth either. Plus they're very interesting and educational to watch.
I'm loving your game commentaries. Glad I found them. I've watched a couple of them now. Very professional, well written, interesting view points. Good stuff. also, great suggestion for a "Blood Dragon" type of experimental pure tomb game. I've been playing this series since the first one came out and I really loved the TOMBS. I get they have to compete these days but yeah, more tombs, please.
Love the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy. It had issues but I find myself getting sucked into the world they've crafted, huge fan of the ambiance and tone of these games. The gameplay is also varied and fun.
What recording software do you use? I'm thinking about doing an indepth review of Diablo 3 for my channel, but I can't find a good one to work...at all, like not even with that game, just work. XD
To record gameplay footage? I use Shadowplay. I think you need a recent-ish nVidia card to use it. A lot of people like either OBS or FRAPS. They might be better than what I use tbh.
Sorry to arrive late to this discussion but actually, FRAPs only benefits are not needing an nvidia card and being able to ramp up the quality to bizarrely high levels. This does however come at the cost of bleedingly high file sizes, even on lesser qualities. Shadowplay is a very good recorder imo and worth keeping
I know this is 4 years old but after playing halfway I feel the same way about this game. They went with the survivalist edge on the first game which really suits the story and the reboot of Lara's origin but I knew it was going to become a story issue if not handled right. The fact is that now they're relying on the same survival edge on a game where Lara is actually choosing to go to a dangerous place and killing others to get what she wants so her 'fighting to live' schtick is just not only unconvincing but also feels pretty freakin' silly in the context of this installment. The only way that Lara's reboot storyline works is if we can explore her psychological need for danger induced by the trauma of the first game. They really should have taken it in that direction - also TBH I will never be interested in an action/fighting/gun game with Lara Croft. She is the tomb raider after all and her silent exploration through grand, complex puzzles will always be more important to me. I guess that's why OG Lara having so much more initiative and self-possessed works better than being a 'survivor' because even if she's selfish it still feels more believable to me because the fact is that she is always putting herself in a dangerous situation for no real reason besides the fact that she wants to lol... (in my opinion)
+Joseph Anderson: Seriously love your work. I've been going on a bit of a binge watching your content and find even if I intend to play a game your critique is so entertaining I rarely worry about spoilers. I had a moment of concern with this one before pressing play (haven't got around to playing it) but I was so engrossed that I couldn't care less, and this coming from someone, like you, who prefers experiencing a game with as blank a slate as possible. Interestingly enough, you're critiques have made me look at buying two games I had very little interest in, Prey - didn't know much about it, and Fallout 4 - I get put off by excessive hype pre-release (sometimes even after release) and tend to put off a purchase indefinitely until calmer minds prevail. In otherwords, thanks for such great content, keep up the good work, and I'll be looking at buying one of your books. Hopefully as good a read as your critiques.
I know I'm late (I didn't play it until it was out for PS4, and it's months after that release, even), but I love your deconstruction of and suggestions for the story. I know it's too much to ask that game developers start watching all your videos, but hopefully, since commentary of the RotTR's story was almost unanimous in its critique, the next Tomb Raider will focus more on Lara as a character. I think the first game did this well - it could have been improved, but Lara shows compelling growth in the first game. I also wanted to write to say that your suggestions (in this and other reviews of yours) are impressive in how they demonstrate ways to improve the games without compromising what's already there.
Iv seen a couple of your videos now and i really feel the need to commend you not only for the effort put into making such detailed and in depth analysis, but for the amount of perspective it offers as a gamer. I can only say that if a lot of companies like IGN would take this approach to their reviews, that games today would be at a much higher standard and i wouldnt feel cheated out of a better experience so often. Ill get off my knees now, love the content keep up the great work.
13:45 if i may make a recommendation for a stealth game, check out Mark of the Ninja. Being a 2D stealth game, it allows you to instantly learn the layout of the land, and be a true stealth badass
A little late here but me too. The darker setting felt a lot more immersive to me for some reason. Also, this one ended when I thought it was at about the halfway point. I still really liked them both. I disliked the combat but for some reason I do in basically every modern game, I just want it over with to get back to story and exploration.
Yeah same. I liked that in the first game, it was Lara’s first experience and that she was forced to kill and murder all those people to leave the island. And I think it has more depth. Unlike rise of the tomb raider that there isn’t really like a plot like you already know what the story is going to be about from the start.
10:20 'there's no possible way for you to get lost in this tutorial section' Actually... I got to the other side of a snowfall-ish section by jumping rapidly and I didn't know that I was suppose to just walk over it to trigger a cutscene where I get pushed over to the edge (because you can jump onto the snow without triggering the cutscene, and any subsequent jumps will prohibit Laura from triggering the cutscene). To be fair, my mind went: If I just walk over this, I would be dead. I also can't run, so let's try jumping repeatedly... My memory may be mixing some of these up but the point is, yeah I did mess up and got lost for about 20-30 minutes on the tutorial section.
This is why I like the original run of Tomb Raider games, specifically 1-3. 1 is kind of a proof of concept. It is heavily flawed, especially with controls, but it was one of the first large scale attempts at a 3D 3rd person environment like that, so I excuse a lot because of that. Once you get used to the controls, the “Tomb Raiding” part of the game is fun and simple without too much convoluted half hearted story beats and it doesn’t have too much henchmen fighting, which works for the setting. Tomb Raider 2 improves on everything and is just fun. Some story there, but basically Lara is just a super cool, confident, slick, wealthy badass who hunts for treasure and ancient knowledge and it’s just a good time. Not saying the new games aren’t fun and awesome in their own right, but your overall assessment of this series is very much my feelings on it. Good critique. Thanks for the video!
Shadow of the Tomb Raider! I want to hear you TEAR that story apart. Like my God people got paid to write this “trilogy” which is honestly just 3 individual stories with the second and third being only linked by this “trinity” bs which isn’t even developed on well and Shadow also fails in so many other regards. I just played the game on Hard, I had high expectations hoping it would be a larger improvement on the series than the first->second one but NO game went backwards aside from the FEW guerilla stealth sections and the tombs which maybe I only found challenging cause survival instincts weren’t a thing and the environments kinda blended with the interactable objects.
You definitely aren't alone in wanting more cat and mouse section is areas where you spend so much time exploring. I am a stealth player, two of my favorite games are Dishonored and Deus Ex, especially Dishonored because of the amount of freedom you are given to move around the world. My favorite part of the game was that first cat and mouse section. I too was hugely disappointed that I never got to do it again.
When you said TR from 2013 was all about fire and 2015 is almost all about water I realized that next installment is circling around light (or it was air?). It seems each has their own dominant element so you can tell from which game some puzzle was, based on that element.
recently I had played rise of the tomb raider before watching this to see if some of the problems I had with it matched with anything that was said in the video, I was amazed to find that just about everything I had a problem with in the game was said in the video and I really don't like how the hero always manages to eavesdrop on the villains just as there spilling the beans about why they are there I swear its like their waiting for you to be in the same room as them or either above or below them before they spill their guts about everything from their plans to their motives, I still really enjoyed the game
I loved the audio logs, the voiceovers were great and I felt it immersed me even more. Comparing them to Shadow of the tomb raider which lacks a voiceover I completely agree.
Well this is a review and a critique. You can be pretentious as you like and try to separate yourself from a review but the two are often the same, or rather it's better to say that all critiques are reviews but not all reviews are critiques.
Great and thorough video. I love the new Tomb Raiders, I totally bought the whole immortal "Prophet" story and went out of my way to find all the interesting data/artefact thingies but I was a little let down by the generic ending. I agree with all of your critiques and hope that the next instalment can address them. Honestly I never pay any attention to DLC in these types of single player games, I just play them for the gameplay and story and don't feel much need to replay these games anyway.
Vladdie99 Well said, and unrelated, Alita was great. Last 3rd of the movie was rushed it seemed, but I love the manga and I think Robert Rodriguez and Weta Digital did a fantastic job bringing her to life on screen. And the choreography gets me everytime, I went to see it 11 times in theaters :p
@@tidyheidi9143 It's my favourite movie ever (I had not read the manga) and I'm madly in love with Alita! 😅😅 The last 3rd being rushed isn't a negative for me, it just makes it soo emotionally intense and rewatchable! But of course I would like an extended 2 Hour 30+ cut!
Found your channel off the Witcher video which I am eagerly looking forward to parts 2 and 3. I am also very curious as to what you thought about Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I think it improves on some of the things you touch on but then fails at others, curious to see your thoughts and your critique on it.
First of all I'd like to say what a fantastic video, your analysis is really spot on and hits every thing that bugged me about Rise, second I thought it was funny how much of a copy Rise is of Reboot, but what's really funny is the story is almost a literal a copy of Tomb Raider: Legend that was released in 2006, by the same developers. Lara's parents have a tragic backstory, Lara's mother goes missing, Lara's father goes crazy trying to find Lara's mother, general consensus of Lara's dad is he's nuts, Lara spends her life and also kinda goes crazy trying to prove him right and find her mother, Lara proves her father right and finds the proof he didn't and saves the world, the only difference is that Lara doesn't quite destroy the main artifact in the end, but in Legend the artifact was a weapon, and Lara wasn't nearly as melodramatic and asthmatic sounding as she is today so. TRL's version is definitely a bit more competent in it's presentation even though it's a shorter game, and no cliche evil step mom or recycled army of darkness. But I do like the flashbacks that we have of Lara's dad that wasn't present in TRL so I think they both have good elements to them.
I loved the gameplay of Legend, for despite being short and linear it was fun every single minute and it always felt like something was going on and I made progress while playing it. The open-world elements and crafting just slowed Rise of the Tomb Raider down in my opinion, and much of the stuff felt like the generic padding that infests all AAA games these days. Note to developers: Quantity is not the same as Quality.
Most of these comments are very old but I want you to know I loved your critiques. I hope you also do Shadow of the Tomb Raider. If I can make a suggestion, a PS4 controller-paired with Steam's controller configuration-can make shooting much smoother. If you go into the Standard tab and select the Gyro sensor, you can set it to camera mouse and have it set up so that "Left Trigger Full Pull" will activate the sensor. This way, you can get more precise aiming (a la Breath of the Wild) but only while holding the Aim button: L2. Thanks for doing what you do, man.
I’m late to this party but I just finished 100% the game tonight. Your criticism is 100% accurate and I found myself spitting out your exact opinion seconds before you would say it throughout this video. The woodland area section at the beginning was extremely enjoyable for me, for exactly the reason you described. The enemy has you outgunned and out numbered, but you have knowledge of the area and hunting skills. Doing that scenario again in the main Siberian hub and the Geo Valley would have been incredible. Lara as a character is great and I’m upset that the story detracted from time that could have been spent on her. Lastly, that restructuring of the game story and beats you run through at the end, sounds like an absolute dream version of this game- that I wish I got to play. I’m starting Shadows tomorrow and I’m holding my breath. Bloodborne PC port when?
While I admittedly have not played the game, I think this is a really good review. Btw, have you watched Mark Brown's Game Maker's Toolkit on Tomb Raider? He talks about how he thinks the climbing mechanics of at least the 2013 game have taken a step back in complexity from the original series. I was wondering about your thoughts on the subject. I know you don't want to compare the original and new games but I am still curious.
I don't know why but I've just discovered all your stuff and its great. I would like to know what you think of the new game though: Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I posted my own review of it and I wasn't very impressed particularly story-wise, so I thought it would be right up your alley. But of course, I'm just a regular guy who liked the reboot series and I do like gameplay over story type stuff...
You know what would be amazing, a hybrid between Tomb Raider and Dark Souls (1). The way the story is told in Dark SOuls, through gameplay and scenery is the best way you can tell a story. But it couldn't hurt to replace the nameless character with a known quantity like Lara. And it would mesh with your own idea, of making a large tomb. The first dark souls is basically one giant map (excluding the DLC) you can navigate almost without loading screens.
I remember Lara complaining and trembling before she is chase by the helicopter, falls into the river and gets rescue by jacob, after that not a single complain or tremble so when I saw that he cures Jona I thought he did the same to Lara and that gave her Immortal like powers, and the reason he doesn't use the power with rest of his people is because he is trying to make things right and not create another another army of Immortals but he feels guilty about not saving the mother of Sofia and when he feels how much Lara remembers him about his wife he can't restrain himself from saving her, and with Jona he doesn't stand watching Lara suffer about it and also saves him.
I know I am late but the game came out on PS4 only a few weeks ago. One point towards the story and the shoehorned enemies: If I remember correctly, if you collect all collectibles (ha!) in Tomb Raider (2013) there's one specific spot towards the end where the existence of the "caches" is explained through a note from guy working for Trinity who tries to research and capture the supernatural elements for Trinity's case.
Is maybe the reason the early section of this game is done so well is to get good review scores? Many reviewers have an incentive to rush their article to be first and so they may be biased in their review towards the early sections of the game. This may also be why so many games these days open with way too long of cutscenes and story-jamming just to be "striking" or "immersive". This however, does not explain why the quality of the early game can't also be placed everywhere else in the game too. My guess is short deadlines and the pressure of modern games to be visually great as a development priority rather than spend more of their already short precious money and time into level design.
![SCAAR Mod Installation [Witcher 3]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3TqRz3U_mI8/mqdefault.jpg)
![SCAAR Mod Installation [Witcher 3]](/img/tr.png)
I love that quote.
"Gameplay is king, but story is queen and her throne is right next to his."
I would put it more like the story is the throne. Because the throne could be beatiful and impressive but if the king that sits on it sucks, its worthless. But if the king is amazing the throne doesnt matter that much.
disagree, games with awful gameplay still get recognition when they have a good story, witcher 1 and kotor are good examples
then I'd think that the graphics would be the throne then
I would disagree with graphics being the throne as well, see above, the wicher 1 and kotor neither have good graphics, both are great games. (Some, including myself believe one of those games to be the best video game ever made.)
The fact is, gameplay is king, because at the end of the day we are dealing with a game, and if that game does not play well or at all then its hardly a game at all. Story is queen, because its integral to enjoyment in many or most cases. And in the case of Adventure games and RPG's, story is important to immersion, as much so infact as continuity of mechanics, and world building. The throne? its just a chair, youre all focusing on the wrong thing.
the throne is the graphics then. because it's just a chair. It doesn't matter much anyways. But if it looks good then that's great. also... idk why witcher 1 gets shit for its gameplay. sure it wasn't amazing or anything but at least it was unique.
Why didn't Lara take a camera with her to record all the super natural shit she encounters to prove her father was right? Wouldn't that make sense and make the game better for it?
DARTH VIRAL because she prefer to steal and blow up antiques
Don't bring logic into the Tomb Raider universe. The new installment is complete madness. Hungarian text on soviet outposts, Siberian natives talking perfect English etc the list goes on
Italian i can't think of any games who goes out of their way to use native languages to locations you interact with lol MGS snake eater did it with russian but that language is common enough in voice acting....thinking about it even in movie its incredibly rare i can actually only think of inglorious bastard that i watched that actually put that effort in
It's funny. I've noticed a lot of anime recently that includes the characters speaking English sometimes, but because they speak it so poorly I have trouble understanding it as a native English speaker. What's worse is that they often remove the English subtitles for those parts and replace it with Japanese. One of the characters was even supposed to be an American.
Especially in the anime industry, it would seem pretty easy in this day and age to just hire an American voice actor but they just don't. I wonder if it's more difficult than it seems from the outside for some reason?
She does in the new one
After you complete the game you suddenly have all of Lara's therapy sessions.... for some reason. Turns out the therapist was on Trinity's payroll and Ana was using him to manipulate Lara. Also, Lara was told that Sam doesn't want to see her from her doctors. Sounds to me like they're on the payroll too. Again important plot points that are in audio logs, but even worse it happens AFTER THE GAME. And you have no notification that you have them, I just happened to stumble upon them.
I just loaded up the game to listen to them and holy shit, that's awful. I wish I had known about them before making the video. It's the best proof of using audio logs as a crutch for story in the game.
Army of Won What? I got them midgame not after.
Lol I completed the game and uninstalled it recently and had no idea about this. I even wondered at some point what happened to Sam and why only Jonah returned. Fucking dreadful design.
What? I actually really enjoyed the game and played around a lot after finishing the game to collect more items and do the Baba Yaga DLC. And this is the very first time I heard that this content exists. Crazy. And yeah, not great design if even someone who really liked the game and played it a lot can miss this.
@@axayd square enix went the assassin's creed syndicate route and showed what happened to sam in comic books.
Without fail, there are either things I forget to talk about or cut so the video doesn't end up two hours long:
The knife and rebreather upgrades feel like padding--to give the player the illusion of progress. The knife shouldn't be necessary when Lara uses arrows for much more difficult tasks before getting it. The rebreather flat-out shouldn't work. Lara's lung capacity is apparently at the level of a 70 year-old chain smoker when it comes to swimming early in the game--until the ice river sequence when it's magically extended for only that part. If this had been increased, an upgrade could have been given that doubled this new acceptable length and still allow the gating of areas with longer diving sections.
On the flip side, I like how Lara's equipment changes to reflect these upgrades. Her quiver gets bigger--the arrows bounce in it too which I thought was neat. When she gets the bow shooting skill upgrade she'll hold another arrow at the ready. All these little details are really good.
I didn't speak much about level design. I think it's worthy of some praise--especially the larger areas. Having multiple paths around is fun. I think this could be taken further in the next game with unlocking more permanent routes over maps that you return to. This sort of thing could work well in larger dungeons. Surprisingly, I think the open-world-lite that the series has could take some lessons from Dark Souls of all things.
I looked up the voice actress for Lara: Camilla Luddington. Fantastic job and someone who ISN'T Jennifer Hale no less, so I hope she does more work in other games. Charles Halford was great as Konstantin too, even if the character himself was lackluster.
Lara really needs to stop saying "bastard" so much.
The journal entries about hunting in the Geothermal Valley were good. The ones left by the assassin in the final sunken city section were fantastic--they made sense too, since he's leaving behind help for any who end up stuck like him, and he has downtime while recovering from his injuries.
+Joseph Anderson What is the next game you are planning to review?
+The False Rabbi Dragon's Dogma. I've also started on a short video for Factorio next week. After that depends on how long it takes me to do Dragon's Dogma. I really want to do the Witness. I also want to do the Witcher games but I don't think I have enough time to do all three games before Dark Souls 3, so I might find a different game to do in March and then Witcher after Dark Souls 3.
+Joseph Anderson Sounds cool. I can't speak for the first 2 games, but the Witcher 3 is probably going to take at least 100 hours to finish. I thought the reviewers were exaggerating on the length. This may not interest you, but InXile, a team made up of mainly former Black Isle and Obsidian kickstarted the spiritual successor to 1999's Planescape Torment, Torment: Tides of Numenera. It is currently on early access beta on steam. Planescape Torment doesn't have many video reviews on youtube on account of the game being so old (to put it in perspective, it was Black Isle's next project after finishing Fallout 2). Would it interest you to make a review of the game? Thanks for responding to my comment by the way.
+Joseph Anderson It's just a matter of time bro. Your content is amazing, the audience will come :)
Planescape Torment is a great game. I'd have to replay it to review it. I'm cautiously optimistic about Tides. I'd definitely be interested in doing a video on it and the first game leading up to its release, but only if I could do a good enough job to do it justice. I'll think about it going through the year.
Honestly having worked on some games the main problem is the designers don't get these desicions. They are dictated from publishers, who often give gameplay directives that have no relation to the project due to popular trends. That's why a ton of features these days often seem shoe horned or forced, because, well they were.
@@TheTillmanSneakerReview what separates companies is this "what they are told to do", it may bring both good and bad
@@TheTillmanSneakerReview The problem with that thinking is that they are hiring creative people to make creative decisions...but then they stifle that creativity because a graph showed that Y would be more profitable (not better, just profitable) than whatever their team came up with.
@@TheTillmanSneakerReview I haven't played much of any of these annual series precisely because of this, but I can safely say that this is an issue tightly linked to the system we live under, and the fact that entertainment is a for profit endavour.
Like, I get why this happens, companies are afraid to risk money to innovate, or change, or just straight up have fun, so the only change is in the safe direction - better graphics. But understanding why it happens doesn't have to mean I like it. In fact, it makes me dislike the system and consider how it could be brought down and what could replace it.
-what I'm saying is, death to capitalism-
Oh, and the same thing applies to the customer end. If you have to spend money on a game, people are generally less willing to experiment.
@@TheTillmanSneakerReview You're comments here really resonated, although I can't say I feel in much of a negative way. Gaming is bigger than ever, and an enormous chuck of the consumer market is casual. Although, people could be easily forgiven for thinking otherwise. The internet can be misleading with all the information from critics and the hardcore gaming crowd, both are which play many games and keep up with new releases. Being a casual gamer myself, I've learned what information I need to take away from reviews/discussions about a game and what to safely discard. Innovation, or lack thereof more specifically, is a big one since I haven't experienced a fraction of the games as those criticizing this area. Only those very passionate about video games will be compelled to make content so it's understandable, just something to be aware of more than anything.
@@TheTillmanSneakerReview There's a difference between convolution, and innovation. If I innovate something then I improve the quality of it without deviating from what it was meant to be. If I convolute it I add more to it and just make it needlessly complicated with very little benefit. CoD players complain when something is convoluted, making simple features which were already almost perfect needlessly complicated. I mean why didn't people call zombies now garbage despite the amount of changes they made to gameplay? People only complain the story is convoluted because it is when it could be told better.
Your "fix" is not a fix. Its a different game. One that i actually want to play.
Agreed. Watched both of his reviews to check out the games... they were both as horribly implemented as far as story goes as I've been expecting and the mechanics would probably be better utilized by the devs for lara croft go. I will not be buying any tomb raider games until the story legitimately makes some sense and the games design utilizing mechanics matches that. Until then I'll be checking some reviews until the cosmic ideas and machine guns die off from their current deux ex machina of conflict within the genre.
It would be closer to the original if you replaced the religious soldiers with some Soviet throwbacks; suppose there was a group of former Soviet soldiers living out in Siberia, working in secret to get to the immortal source thing, for the sake of restoring the USSR and conquering the world. Heck, the minute he said the game was set in Siberia, I had kind of expected that kind of a story, as opposed to the one that exists.
i agree it would have been so much better
Colby Fowler It’s sad you have this opinion. You watch a video that’s heavily focused on criticism, because that’s his brand, so you don’t get to hear a lot of the positives about this game. The tomb raider series is genuinely enjoyable - he even said this himself in this video - even if most if not all of his criticism is very true and should’ve been applied throughout the games. Frankly, it‘s weird to judge a game you’ve never played just because you watched a video talking about almost solely on the flaws.
Agreed, except I don't think Jacob needs to be the bad guy..
Are you planning on playing/making videos on Shadow of the Tomb Raider? I feel like everyone forgot about it since it came out around the same time as critical darlings Spider-Man and RDR 2, and critical shitstorm Fallout 76. It’d also be nice to have a trilogy of videos from you about the trilogy lol
God I hated shadow hahah
@@jamescarr8196 Your comment has solved the puzzle.
I thought Shadow was Rise or an expansion. I mean the sequel to the first reboot.
I'd never know there actually are 3 games
These companies need to learn how to market their products
@@JonatasAdoM well I’m glad I could help out lol
Am I the only one who thinks it would have made more sense to have water based gameplay in the first game because it's on an island and fire based gameplay because it's in snowy mountains?
Fire was the theme of the first game tho. Water goes with the glacier theme cus, well, it IS water.
"Gameplay is King, but Story is Queen" - coolest and truest comment I've ever heard to be said about games.
"Are you interested in a deep, compelling narrative, with many twists, and a plot that keeps you guessing until the end? If so, then you should avoid this game like the plague, because it has none of that."
Instant thumbs up. Just hearing that was extremely cathartic given how utterly awful the story to this game was. I mean, I get it, it's Tomb Raider, it's not meant to be some philosophical masterpiece, but it was still pretty bad.
They ruin the game because they are trying to make it into a philosophical masterpiece.
I don’t understand how he was blowing Uncharted for being so good, and yet Tomb Raider is basically the same type of game (good action bad story)
What even is the story? I'm 40% of the way through and have no idea what it is
@@remingtonbianchi9866 I love the uncharted storys, the characters really make it for me and the plot of the treasures arent master peices but it make me interested enough to want to play more and find out
The characters are amazing tho, by far the best thing about the uncharted series other then the action
@@remingtonbianchi9866 literally 👏 the gameplay in those are considerably lackluster and the stories themselves aren’t anything to write home about. Not to mention Uncharted 1 is one long glorified shooting gallery, and 3 a beat for beat carbon copy of 2
I hate how the tomb raiding parts are optional while the action parts are mandatory. they basically switched the formula. should be called "action lady" not tomb raider !
funny you say because all the people that love this game hate shadow cuz it’s more focused on how the old games where or actually raiding tombs which i found crazy that people played tomb raider for combat cuz shadow is the best of the three love the puzzles
38:19
Can't believe Joseph predicted Shadow of the Tomb Raider's story.
I'm wondering if they watched this video and went with it. Too many coincidences, even their new accent put on exploration and tombs rather than combat.
Joseph has mastered story analysis, which makes sense since he's an author. He always seems to know what twists are coming up in a story; he calls them obvious, but I don't think they would be to the average gamer. So yeah, I guess I'm amazed that his prediction was correct, but not surprised.
"Gameplay is king,
but Story is queen,
and her throne is right next to his."
This quote was the final push that convinced me to subscribe.
This was fantastic. Man even though I still love this game, I wish we got your version of the story instead of this. Great job dude.
lol "arts and crofts"
Casey Edwards 2 tombs 1 raider
I love it when a person can back their critiques by giving possible solutions to the problems and offering ideas of ways things could have been done better. As a whole I haven't felt that interested in the new tomb raider series, even though I absolutely love Uncharted but I think the reason for that is, Uncharted has much better written characters imo. Also I think Uncharted is able to get away with its unbelievable set pieces because Drake recognizes the insanity of his predicaments. I think the new Tomb Raider tries to be more grounded and as a whole more serious but I find the dumb actions of its characters and its insane set pieces to break any consistency in the tone. I think if these games focused more on exploring tombs and made exploration the main staple of the series, I would like the games better. The introduction of an evil faction really doesn't interest me, and neither does the large emphasis on combat.
Uncharted 2, 4, and Legacy are really the only ones to write home about. Even the gameplay for them are still seriously lackluster with little changes across them. The stories aren’t even ALL that, it’s the characters that make them. Hell, Uncharted 3 is a beat-for-beat carbon copy of 2.
I *love* your idea for the story alot more than what was actually there
Something about the new Tomb Raider games bugs me on a principle level, and it's that they're really not Tomb Raider games. They're Uncharted games, instead. Lara Croft herself is my biggest beef, especially the way she's being advertised. I always get the feeling that the publishers want to beat it into our heads that this is a "better," more "mature" depiction of Lara Croft because... Well, because she gets beaten, stabbed, shot, burned and nearly raped, judging by the promotional material for the first game, but let's go with "because she's not sexualised." While that's true, she's also missing a huge chunk of her character, as well. Maybe not from the old-old Tomb Raider games, but certainly as compared with Tomb Raider: Legend.
See, I like Lara in Legend. She's most definitely the master of her own estate, in charge of a team of specialists that she employs. She's provably badass, exceptionally knowledgeable and genuinely charming, equally at home wearing combat boots as wearing high heels. More than anything else, Tomb Raider Legend gives us Lara Croft as a grown woman, accomplished and capable. A Japanese Yakuza mobster has a piece she needs? Not a problem! Not only does she know the man already, she also has friends in places high enough to get a shot at him. An artefact she needs is in a far-off country lost to difficult terrain? No problem - Lady Croft has the resources to get herself there.
Tomb Raider: Legend was itself a reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, though sadly the followups of Anniversary and especially Underworld were... Not as good, let's say. And yet this re-reboot decided to go for an origin story, thus falling into what I like to call "an obsession with origin stories." I first noticed this trend with the Lone Ranger - a movie that's 90% content nobody asked for only to show us the actual Lone Ranger for a few minutes at the end and essentially sequel-bait. Rise of the Tomb Raider is the same, giving me a character I can't recognise as Lara Croft far too early in her life to be truly compelling... And doesn't even go as far as giving me the badass, confident character I was looking for. You'd think that's what the sequel would be about, but instead it's just more of the same damp, dreary narrative with Lara Croft kinda' sorta' seeming to have come into her own by the end. I'm sure whatever sequel Crystal Dynamics come up with if indeed there is one will similarly fail to give us a complete person until the very end, at which point we'll wrap up the story in wait for the next reboot.
I'm really sick of this obsession with origin stories. I'm tired joining characters so early in their career that they fail to be recognisable or indeed even all that interesting, only to pretend to actually save that for the sequel. What's wrong with 90s approach to giving us fully-developed, fully-fleshed-out characters to play around with? Why must every story be about "coming of age" more or less? Why must they all feature what are - for all intents and purposes - wide-eyed kids learning about the harsh world for the first time? What, indeed, was wrong with Lara Croft as an adult, an accomplished archeologist and adventurer and a woman with a lifetime's worth of experiences behind her?
Or, to spin this the other way, why even use the Tomb Raider license in the first place when the resultant games will be all but completely unrecognisable as Tomb Raider games in plot, setting, characters or gameplay? There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the new Tomb Raider series (aside from failing to interest me in the slightest, but that's subjective), but there's equally nothing "Tomb Raider" about it. Why bother call it that, aside from disconnected brand recognition? It'd be like me creating a reboot of Soul Reaver and setting it in modern times because I don't own the Vampire: The Masquerade license.
I like your take on origin stories.. It's a brilliant point that deconstructing an already fleshed out character will always make them more boring. But its a sacrifice to give the character some kind of arc or character growth..
It falls completely flat with the tomb raider game since Lara is as OP out the gate as she is by the end and they seem to have mistaken growth for getting beaten to shit.
I hated the pseudo choice after Constantine boss fight, I mean is there anybody who spared him? I killed thousand of people at this point and I'm supposed to not kill the main guy who antagonized me because "he's not worth it? "
lol I didn't even know that was a choice, I killed him instantly
Not worth the energy and time
Did it on my second play through for the achievement
Years later, this same complaint can be directed towards The Last of Us 2
@@mitchboland9591 Difference with that is that Abby isn’t meant to be a straight up villain like Constantine. There’s actual worth and reason in sparing the antagonist in TLOU2.
I'm surprised you didn't include my favorite scene in the game, during the nonsensical interrogation. When Jonah breaks free and grabs Konstantin's gun, Lara slams into the glass between them at max speed to shout "DO IT!" These two words are all it took for me to immediately love reboot Lara, a protagonist who has completely come to terms with the idea that killing people in self-defense is perfectly fine and that if you get the chance, you absolutely shouldn't take mercy on them.
It kills me that Jonah, after being told by Lara and the native people, and immediately after being made into a human punching bag by Konstantin, doesn’t know if Lara is in her right mind and hesitates killing him. It’s like bro you just got kidnapped and tortured by these guys and now your best friend is saying to shoot him because of how dangerous he is, it’s clear at that point the plot had really run its course (you are rescuing someone from a prison for a second time in the story at that point) and Konstantin only escapes because the plot needs him to in order to pad out an already bloated game.
I just finished Rise a few hours ago and instantly came here when I had the chance to hear what your thoughts were, and I think I agree 100% with everything you said. This game had so much potential - I really enjoyed the exploration, tombs and animal fights, and the combat/stealth was mostly pretty good, but they all fail to come together really well, or develop much further. The tombs always ended once they got interesting, and the exploration ended up resulting in lots of slow climbing under a limited, pre-determined pathway.
It's made me realise how much I love the way Breath of the Wild used similar concepts to these. Optional tombs (shrines), climbing (completely open-ended in Zelda), survival elements, wild animals, etc. Breath of the Wild really made me feel like an explorer, a survivor, a puzzle-solver (even though I agree lots of the shrines are pretty weak), but Rise of the Tomb Raider just left me feeling a little empty, and wanting more.
Like, you get an ability for the arrows where you can shoot them into walls and trees and climb on them! That should be a super fun, multi-purpose ability. Same with the grapple hook/wire thing. I should be able to scale any wall, take shortcuts, maybe even sequence-break like a Metroidvania, but I can't. It's an automated rope swing and a sometimes-useful ledge grabber, and that's it. Such a shame.
I really, really hope the series gets more complex and less hand-holdy as time goes on. Make it more like Zelda or Metroid, and I think dropping the gritty realism might help a little if we're supposed to believe all of the set-pieces and supernatural elements. I'd personally love to see dinosaurs come back, with Lara being stuck on a tropical island and surviving against them. That's a dream come true, for me.
Anyway, great stuff as always, Joe. Glad to be a subscriber and Patron.
The new dlc 20 year celebration with two hours of exploring croft manor, a dlc where your hunted by zombies in her nightmare. If you own the season pass you get this for free and all retro outfits and weapons. I think this makes the season pass worth it
I know you commented this a year ago, but I only just got around to playing the game this week. I noticed that all the listed retro outfits seem to have dissapeared, at least on the PC version.. do you have any idea why?
Really fantastic stuff. No idea how you have so much high-quality content coming out so fast but it's truly impressive. Can't wait to see what's next.
Thanks! I put a lot of hours in to keep the releases regular. I'm hoping the channel can become "work" if I treat it like "work". I love your videos by the way.
This aged terribly
@@mellowvalentine9354 It must have become too much like "work".
@@mellowvalentine9354 I mean, 47 minutes to a single video having 3 hours and being better researched than some researchs out there..
@@JonatasAdoM it wasnt about it not being high quality. It’s about it coming out “fast”
Hearing you talk about the way the story of the game should've gone sounds like they really took your criticism seriously and incorporated it into Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Do a Critique of that game.
17:03 I believe the poison arrow would kill him instantly. not just him, but also any other enemy with a helmet or some armor etc. poison arrow just kills them with one shot even on Survivor mode
The audio is fine but I gotta say. I'm still loving this series. Keep em coming!
Your analyses are fantastic. I haven't even played any of the games you review, but still love them :)
Can we do a reboot of the reboot with you writing the story first and basing the gameplay around it? All of you're recommendations sounded a thousand times better than what the game ended up being.
"Corporate culture simply doesn't make masterpieces. We've learned that over and over again in the movie industry, why should we expect games to be any different? What we need is a culture shift where a game can be one man's project. Hollywood occasionally makes good movies because they follow the auteur theory - i.e. that the director is an artist and the picture is his art (as opposed to the director just being a hireling of the studio exec who greenlit the project). He gets a producer to supervise him, and writers and artists to work with, but overall (for good directors) the final decisions are left to him. Whereas in the vidya industry the people actually making the game don't have anywhere near as much power."
Except it is very hard to make games that are the products of one person and still sell milllions.
Suppose you want to make a game like God of War 2018, it doesn't matter what your ideas are for the story and general mechanics are. The needs to make gameplay fun, technical limitations, budget concerns and even other gameplay concerns (like programming or world design or combat etc that the director may not be familar with) will be out of any directors' hands. Hell, even playtesting will force designers to change stuff.
Even the most auteur driven games we currently have like God of War and Metal Gear frequently had their directors have to aquiese to others to make their games more fun.
@@FraserSouris undertale,helltaker, and touhou would like to have a chat with you
@@TheCapitalWanderer for every Undertale, there are hundreds if not thousands of other games that never get known. Even Toby Fox never expected Undertale to succeed, expecting it to be “a niche 6/10 silly RPG”
Story is queen... I must say, one very nice way of saying it and one I might use myself, as a game writer student.
Really hope you do Shadow of the Tomb Raider one day. Would love to hear your thoughts on it.
The longer I'm thinking about it, the more I'm aware that (no offense) a random guy in the internet has a better grasp about story-telling than entire department full of people who are literally in story-telling business for their lives.
And all the idiocity of the "plot" surfaces with double power, because it's the classic case of too many elements for the sake of the elements themselves, and not telling the story. I wish the game was how you describe the fix for it. It would FINALLY allow the franchise to get back on track and the next game finally being a "proper" Tomb Raider in the sense of having all the elements of the older takes on Lara, while in the same time having own identity. Sort like it's done in American comics book industry, where you have different itterations of the same character, all similar, but all with different background and different quirks of their personality.
Instead, the game is just another part of a soul-less reboot that exists solely because the copyrights for the franchise switched hands and the new publisher decided to make a reboot, throwing in all the popular-at-the-moment elements and planning to make not just an origin story game, but stretching it up to 3 games. What for? And why really bother with pretending it has anything to do with Tomb Raider in anything else than the title? I remember when a decade ago I had nothing but contempt toward Legend, the first reboot of the franchise. But over time I've realised where the company was going, what was the general idea for the franchise and so on. It was clear there is a direction in all of this and people who are making the game care about something else than just using the title they've inherited for money-making (even if that's still their main, secondary and tertiary motivation). Now I've just see a game that exists solely to "look good" - with non-existing story (marketed in the same time as deep, engaging and taking itself extremely serious, which in my book isn't good for what is a pulp adventure series), barely any other gameplay than killing things and so heavily scripted at times it just feels like playing interactive movie and not a proper game.
This game had a potential to change that. Instead it's more of the things from the first, but with slightly better graphics and even more nonsensical story that is even more serious than the previous one. What for? I understand the concept of making Lara compex character, but there is a massive dissonance between where the game wants to go with the story and what is actually happening in the plot. Lara comes out as flat and extremely one-dimensional in the process and the entire story makes less sense than TR2, THE most cheesy entry into the series.
22:20 - "Imagine if a racing game paused for a few seconds and took control away from you every time you took a corner."
Well... This *kinda* sounds like the upcoming Need For Speed. At least how they showed it during E3. Assuming it still counts as a racing game.
Just finished it yesterday and completely agree. I do really love Lara's character, especially the way her moral compass 'grows' or is revealed throughout the game.
There is one moment where Konstantin taunts you before he dies and you can walk towards him. I don't know what happens if you do but I walked away and it was a choice in a game that I really liked. I prefer choices like that to dialogue choices in games. There is something more impactful about it.
P.s. How did the divine source get destroyed so easily? How did she know that would work. That was pretty weird. You'd think something so important and responsible for so many lives is destroyed like a peice of glass.
As a native Bulgarian speaker, i can assure you: That is exactly how you pronounce "Baba Yaga". You are not pronouncing it wrong :)
As a polish speaker, I agree.
However, the DLC takes place in Siberia, and that's not how it's pronounced in Russian
As always, absolutely amazing video: I never knew anything about any Tomb Rider's story, and the fix you applied convinced me immediately. The fact that you are a writer makes incredible sense, considering the way you look at things and the past work of yours I've experienced.
Your consideration "Gameplay is King, but Story is Queen, and her trone is right next to his" is something unfortunately really hard to implement in the industry's mindset, I feel, but a sentence I will take with me in the future, and quote quite copiously :).
btw your jokes are on point lately. writing and delivery both. A++
God damn it man! They should have just copied MGS 3! Survival mechanics & Ambush combat... ffs!
i've watched like 3 of your super long vids and havn't felt bored on any! i love your input!
The biggest sin of this game is how comically easy it is, even for a big release meant to be accessible to casual players. This is a game where I struggled trying to decide what upgrades to get because they either seemed worthless (trying to alleviate inexistent problems) or things that would make Lara even more unfairly overpowered.
To me the core of the Tomb Raider games has always been the process of arriving to a new location, taking in the environment and discerning the way forward. This was clear up until Underworld, with the opening level giving you that massive room with the kraken that you had to explore to find what exactly did you have to do to solve it.
Even after the reboot I still look at the games the same way, and judging by what others thought of it and the demand for more tombs gameplay I'm not alone. The combat being so safe and easy doesn't do a lot to change my opinion. So it really aggravates me when the game tries is hardest to boycott its best moments, either by having Lara tell you the solution or constantly suggesting you to use the cheat vision.
I decided never to use the survivor senses or the map when I started the game, only to soon encounter collectibles that were meant to be found by using them. Whenever I entered a tomb or what seemed like a puzzle section I always tried to examine it from afar, to avoid triggering Lara's hints, imagining how it would play out before I did anything. I spent a good while staring at the astronomical mechanism trying to guess how it worked and how I would have to interact with it, thinking back to similar sections in the Prince of Persia games (a series that took elements from Tomb Raider for its own reboot, while TR itself borrowed heavily from the original Prince of Persia; a similar relation to that between Uncharted and Tomb Raider). All of this was my own effort to make the game more engaging, but in reality you can go guns blazing wrecking everyone in the combat sections, and then use the survivor senses and interact blindly with objects to fly through the "puzzle" sections as well.
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, being the successor to the Prince of Persia games, had some really nice tomb raiding segments where you went into secret catacombs beneath Rome or exploring temples, alone, in silence, the way it should be. It's bizarre that an Assassin's Creed game could be a better Tomb Raider game than the actual thing is nowadays.
Absolutely, I have a compulsive need to get every upgrade and ability in games like these, but like he said, 99% of all enemies die with a headshot from basic weapons.. so I ended up like an absolute tank with hardly any enemies to even come close to a challenge. By the end game I gave up on stealth as an advantage because I didn't need the help, and would charge headlong into any group of enemies I could find - just hoping that one of them might put me in some sort of danger.. but no. When I charged the final Grizzly in the final area and he dropped in seconds, I knew it was all over. I seriously wish they didn't design the difficulty for the lowest common denominator because this was a joke on the hardest setting.
21:55 There is a reason for this. This mode took a team at least "more than one day" to add to the game and during that time the issue of the story playing during score attacks definitely came up. I'm going to guess that it is loading assets during the scenes. I don't know what the problem is with having a loading screen pause (not black screen, just a loading buffer like on youtube videos) but a lot of people do not like them. Having those cutscenes trick people into thinking the world is seamless without loading screens is a very popular thing to do.
I don't think this will be a problem in the future with high bandwidth lanes and high speed storage being part of the next generation of consoles. Until then we have to just accept the limitations of the hardware the games are played on.
Hey Joseph. I accidentally stumbled over your video on The Witness earlier today and absolutely loved your analysis of it. I almost never play video games (with the exception of the first three Tomb Raider games for nostalgic reasons, which funnily enough you disliked, and some occasional platformers), but your videos about them are so interesting and well-made (and with lots of well-timed humour) that I've been watching them non-stop since. Love your channel! :)
I just don't understand why it has to be such a serious, sad story. Why can't Lara just go and look for treasure because she can and wants to?
While I loved exploring and ogling at the game's environments, I also felt underwhelmed by the story and somewhat bored by the dialogue. None of the characters were awful, really, but most of them were forgettable. Lara's beleaguered campfire ruminations didn't surprise or illuminate either, and some of the audio files and journals were examples of lazy storytelling, as you explain here. One symptom of mediocre writing is wordiness, and there was some stuff that could have been nixed without much loss to the story. And yet, what was left out bothered me even more.
The most interesting character for me, by far, was Konstantin, since we see glimpses of his love for his sister, the strength of his convictions, and his confessions that he doesn't actually enjoy being cruel, but believes his actions are necessary. (Of course, if someone wounded your hands in your sleep, I think you'd notice unless you were heavily sedated.) There's also the further complication that he has an agenda separate from the rest of Trinity, and this made me think the game could have gone in different direction with him.
I also found Jacob to be a vague and disappointing figure. The entire plot seemed like a case of Black and White Morality, with the player clearly meant to be rooting for remnants, when what it really could have used was a case of Grey and Grey Morality instead. I know Trinity is supposed to be evil because we see them murder prisoners, and because their Konstantin is a ruthless sociopath, but what really makes Trinity in the wrong? Could their superior at the Vatican have knowledge of the undying army and want it contained/destroyed, not because he considers it blasphemous, but for the good of mankind?
Lara herself speculates about the possibility of using the Divine Source to end suffering and death worldwide (though I wanted to ask her what made her think it could do this), and I'm not sure I understand Trinity's reasons for wanting to claim it. Do they want the same thing? What if they did? It all reminds me a bit of the morally myopic plot to Star Trek: Insurrection, in which a community on one planet holds the key to immortality and perfect health, and we're supposed to identify with them because the Federation would rather relocate them and use the planet's resources to benefit the cosmos at large.
What if Jacob turned out to be evil, as suggested here, and he was secretly manipulating Lara into helping him to further his dark ends? What if the remnants turned out to be evil cultists themselves? What if Lara had convinced Konstantin of his sister's treachery and he did a Heel-Face Turn and helped her fend off the rest of Trinity? And what the heck is the Source anyway, and why didn't it affect Jacob as it did the deathless army? Or are we supposed to stayed tuned and given Square Enix our money so these questions can be answered in the next game?
It also compounds the other issue I had with this game's story, and that was the obvious and overwhelming anti-religious theme of the story. It bothers me a bit that when the hero is a supposed prophet, the only people we see praying or speaking about God at all are obvious villains, and that these people are supposedly funded by the Vatican. Upon listening to every (spoken or recorded) monologue about this or that sin being justified if you're doing God's will, and exploring challenge tombs filled with the aftermath of botched exorcisms, I felt like the writers were bludgeoning me with a brick while saying, "See? Religion is dangerous because you can use it to justify atrocities!"
It also bothers me that the prophet taught what is essentially an anti-prophecy about the unknowable nature of the divine. It's like Rhianna Pratchett's version of Thus Spake Zarathustra. I suppose you could argue that the remnants represent the "good" aspects of religion, but the teachings of the immortal prophet appear to be secular humanism, agnosticism, or perhaps deism. They don't speak much about god at all, there is no place of worship that I could identify in their camp at the geothermal valley, and no one is named Jacob's spiritual successor. Granted, Jacob utters a rather psalm-like prayer when he heals Jonah, but it seems to be undermined by his admission to Lara in the same scene that the source is not divine. The prayer itself could just as easily have been a charade. It's like Michael Moorcock's obvious anarchic biases (the only rulers he portrays sympathetically are reluctant rulers), but with religion. There are NO positive examples of religious faith anywhere in this game's world.
Of course, I could just be reading too much into this. Perhaps the prophet's ruminations merely reflect his regrets after creating the undying army. Perhaps the remnants do practice an ancient and heretical splinter faith from the Orthodox church. Perhaps the power seat of Trinity isn't in the Vatican after all, but they are more like the Illuminati instead, infiltrating and allying themselves to various people and institutions who have no idea they're being manipulated.
What's disappointing to me is that the game doesn't really make the answers to any of these questions clearer to me, and seems to end on exactly the same note as the last game, with more or less the same promises.
Skill Up mentioned your channel, it is now one of my favorites. Great work.
I loved that you pointed out the opportunity to learn the environment before attacking enemies because when i played the game the first time i felt the exact same and i was so pissed when i never had that chance again!
Great video, man.
"Gameplay is king" - yet the whole gameplay there is is a generic TPS. Not to say the genre is bad or something, it's pretty decent, but they did pretty terrible job with it. I can't remember a single enjoyable shooting sequence in both new tomb raiders, besides the one you mentioned at the beginning of Rise. Playing through the rest of shooting sequences, I was pretty much praying that it ends quickly and some puzzle sequence or story-relevant event begins. The worst case was the "junktown", or whatever it is called in Tomb Raider 2013. It featured something that felt like hordes of enemies, that I had to shoot alone. I will forever wonder how this many people were even at this island and who's idea that was to send them all there and how the fuck couldn't they just use the simpliest tactic of surrounding and waiting against Lara. Instead what happened is: I kept shooting them all repeatedly in the head with the bow for 20 minutes. That's it. It was the best feeling in the world when this sequence have ended.
And that's the problem with both new TRs. TPS parts are mostly badly designed. And the only good stuff, the main enjoyment in playing it are story moments (which IMO are mediocre as well, but much more compelling than shooting still) and puzzle/tomb raiding stuff. And as long as the worst parts of the game (shooting) are given priority over best parts (story and puzzles), I can never call these really "good" games. Yes, they took my time, got me engaged from the beginning to an end. But I can't call that an amazing experience in the end, neither do I have any desire to replay it, even after years. The devs either have to improve their TPS part drastically, to the point of maybe revamping them completely, or working on better AI, or making stealth more consistent, reasonable, and at least, possible throughout every encounter, not just few of them. Or, they just got to scrap the TPS part and make it a minor part of the game, instead focusing on things that are already fun, but just deserve more focus and attention and actual quantity (since quality is already kinda there). Otherwise, this series won't ever really jump over "mediocre" level, at least for me. Especially taking into account that there is quite the competition in form of games like Uncharted or The Last of Us, which might not have certain part as good as TR has, but instead feature a much better mixture of game elements simply resulting in a better product. Maybe not terribly better, but still better and more overall enjoyable for the same price.
'junktown' fuck lol. shantytowns is what you meant and your comment is so true
Your rewrite of Rise's story is incredible. I love it. I may have actually enjoyed the game had it been like this.
Nobody:
RUclips algorithm: here's a video from 8 years ago
lmao i kinda love it when that happens
Damn the little you said at the end on your revision of the story is such a much needed fix that the story needs...
I also found the beginning snow area where you hunt the soldiers extremely fun as well. I was severally disappointed that the rest of the game never capitalized on that at all.
The amount of effort you put into these critiques is incredible. Thank you so much.
14:08 I remembered this when I was playing the second section of Reaident Evil 7 (after you free yourself from the chair). I had the chance to sneak around the small area looking for ammo, a weapon or just a way out. That is until Jack shows up and you have to hide, except that you know the area and hiding spots. It got better for me when I was still looking for keys or something to get out, and someone knocks on the window, so I went to look and the story progresses. All of this felt organic and that I was making the decisions, that I was surviving the situation. That never happens again on Resident Evil 7.
Trinity was referenced and hinted at in the Tomb Raider (2013). They were always going to be the bad guys.
My focus with a game like this is both satisfying controls, and compelling/unique scenarios to use those in. It seems with this game even more than the first, they put a lot of effort into trying to craft a cinematic story that would sell well in commercials, and then just ended up failing and wasting all of that effort because of the various oversights you mentioned.
I've not played this yet, but from the footage throughout it seemed there was very little outside of aim at the head and shoot. The swinging/platforming with slo-mo mid-air combat, and the ability to fire real-time while climbing, hanging, sliding, and ziplining, would have been great. Stealth sections where you have to plan your approach and nail your shots, otherwise you're fucked, I'd have loved that. And then more of that Dark Souls style dodge to expose a weakness mechanic that you get with the animals.
I'm sure I'll enjoy plaything through it, as I did the last game, but I definitely still question many of their choices. Maybe on their 3rd attempt they'll be competent enough to allow fucking FOV adjustment.
"the ability to fire real-time while climbing, hanging, sliding, and ziplining, would have been great." Uncharted has you covered
cant help but feel they are missing a trick and not having tomb raider be about the tomb raiding ....
used to love the first games for the puzzles and platforming , when u actually had to direct your jumps and leaps .
I was a fan of the visuals on PC when the first two came out (omg 3D!) but do you really miss the tank controls? I really can't think of a better system than the Uncharted one they are using. Proper 3D platformer controls Super Mario 64 style wouldn't quite be right here.
I'll just add that from what I can tell, this game screams of shifted priorities. Lots of games start with neat ideas or cool concepts, and then those don't make it. Either dev time, producers, meddling, budgets, or QA get things shafted (bioshock infinite and Assassins Creed strike me as major examples of this, but i mentioned it with Dark Souls 2's light mechanic).
I'm guessing that there was supposed to be some sort of survival mode mechanic in the main game, but it got shafted.
I find it incredibly ironic that most of the non-plot related suggestions that you had for future games were standard in the Tomb Raider games that came before 2013. I highly recommend anybody who wants bigger better puzzles check out Legend, Anniversary, or Underworld. I'm sure the games earlier than that have great puzzles too, but I can't stand the controls. Also if you want more animal enemies than people with guns, Anniversary is the way to go; I'm pretty sure Lara only kills like one human in that game.
Tomb Raider games have never had good plot though, the plot is always just the bare minimum to give a reason to raid tombs. In fact, just about every game follows the same structure; Lara searches for the thing all game, is sad about her parents a lot, finds the thing, and then realizes she needs to destroy the thing for the good of humanity.
+Danica Templeton
Word! I also think that the previous Tomb Raider Games had a better gameplay/story balance since they weren't trying to be "realistic" and "deep" while at the same time have a ton of action sequences. I also loved the combat of Tomb Raider legend, since there was no cover based shooting, instead there was auto-aiming and Lara had the ability to shoot enemies in slow-motion by jumping towards them. It wasn't realistic at all, but it was fun and it wasn't exactly the same combat as used in every other AAA game with guns in it.
Gertrud Bondesson The Legend Trilogy is my favorite iteration of Tomb Raider. No cover systems, comic violence, killer exotic animals, varied as hell locations, gigantic puzzles, and at the center of it an incredibly confident but emotionally unfulfilled Lara Croft who just wants closure on her mother’s loss. It was a good story that was tinged with this underlying tragedy and it made Lara very compelling to me. Things tended to drop into goofy action shenanigans a lot, but it was fun. The new grounded approach that 2013 did felt...wrong; adventurous youthful spirit and archaeology clashes with the obscene amount of graphic murder - this kind of game violence never phases me in other titles, but it feels alien to Tomb Raider.
I came from this other review where the RUclipsr was just swearing and being dramatic about his dislike for linear gameplay. Thanks to your video, I know what to expect. I'll buy the game for casual fun, and I won't be surprised. Thank you!
About the stealth thingy, i like your idea, but as a person that likes stealth, i feel like there should be a healthy mix between the two scenarios. What i would really is more combat and stealth combined in a sequence rather than segregated, but i don't know how to make it be good so i can't really expand on it.
Now asking about something totally unrelated, have you ever heard or played The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky? I feel like it is kind of the opposite of "Gameplay is King", where the narrative and specially the world building takes a huge portion of the game, to the point where even as a fanboy, i think the gameplay is average. And would love to hear your opinion about it too, specially on what you think about the story and world building. It has 7 games but only 2 are translated on steam, although there is 7 titles, the two translated were supposed to be one game(it is really old so it had limitations) so there is a beginning and an end.
Sorry if it is hard to understand. If you want i could try to explain a little better.
Never even heard of Trails in the Sky, sorry. I think that a game's priorities should be chosen carefully, and that if the story is the dominant force then the question should be asked why it's a game at all instead of a graphic novel/book/movie, or even a visual novel. You could argue that Telltale games are just visual novels with a more crafty user interface.
Same goes the other way though: many games don't need stories. It's frustrating how many developers still include one without giving it the attention it deserves. No story at all would be better, or very light elements instead to get you started that then leave you alone.
I know I'm like over a year late on any discussion, but I am with you when it comes to learning a level and putting that to use when you revisit it with enemies that you need to take down.
Like you said, most 'choose your own approach' games have you dropped in brand new maps where you have no knowledge of the layout. The game then consists of you sloppily improvising your way through the level, making mistakes and correcting them. You know the developers know this is a problem, because they give you sneak-o-vision and other cheating tools to get the upper hand.
This doesn't fix the problem though, and instead feels more like damage control.
Honestly, I think that since 'backtracking' has such a massive stigma, and game budgets are big enough to have every level be brand new, big game developers are too scared to try it.
It's all about how reusing assets is contextualized. Mario 64 isn't terrible because you play every level 7 times, after all. A specific boss fight in The Last of Us in a certain burning building also required you to walk through it without any threats first before the boss fight begins. I really hope that game developers try more stuff like this in the future.
I enjoyed the story section of this video very much! Learning about the complexities of video game writing is interesting.
I was hoping he'd do a full review including how comfortable his chair was
I love how honest, and mostly non-biased you are. Other "critics", reviewers, and analyzers don't get into the small details that make all the difference in story, gameplay, and dialogue. I'm glad that I came upon your channel and you've helped me to choose wisely and decisively when puchasing games, and not waste time and money over ones that aren't worth either. Plus they're very interesting and educational to watch.
I'm loving your game commentaries. Glad I found them. I've watched a couple of them now. Very professional, well written, interesting view points. Good stuff. also, great suggestion for a "Blood Dragon" type of experimental pure tomb game. I've been playing this series since the first one came out and I really loved the TOMBS. I get they have to compete these days but yeah, more tombs, please.
Love the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy. It had issues but I find myself getting sucked into the world they've crafted, huge fan of the ambiance and tone of these games. The gameplay is also varied and fun.
What recording software do you use? I'm thinking about doing an indepth review of Diablo 3 for my channel, but I can't find a good one to work...at all, like not even with that game, just work. XD
To record gameplay footage? I use Shadowplay. I think you need a recent-ish nVidia card to use it. A lot of people like either OBS or FRAPS. They might be better than what I use tbh.
Sorry to arrive late to this discussion but actually, FRAPs only benefits are not needing an nvidia card and being able to ramp up the quality to bizarrely high levels. This does however come at the cost of bleedingly high file sizes, even on lesser qualities.
Shadowplay is a very good recorder imo and worth keeping
Audio is fine, video is great. *presses thumb up*
I know this is 4 years old but after playing halfway I feel the same way about this game. They went with the survivalist edge on the first game which really suits the story and the reboot of Lara's origin but I knew it was going to become a story issue if not handled right. The fact is that now they're relying on the same survival edge on a game where Lara is actually choosing to go to a dangerous place and killing others to get what she wants so her 'fighting to live' schtick is just not only unconvincing but also feels pretty freakin' silly in the context of this installment.
The only way that Lara's reboot storyline works is if we can explore her psychological need for danger induced by the trauma of the first game. They really should have taken it in that direction - also TBH I will never be interested in an action/fighting/gun game with Lara Croft. She is the tomb raider after all and her silent exploration through grand, complex puzzles will always be more important to me. I guess that's why OG Lara having so much more initiative and self-possessed works better than being a 'survivor' because even if she's selfish it still feels more believable to me because the fact is that she is always putting herself in a dangerous situation for no real reason besides the fact that she wants to lol... (in my opinion)
+Joseph Anderson: Seriously love your work. I've been going on a bit of a binge watching your content and find even if I intend to play a game your critique is so entertaining I rarely worry about spoilers. I had a moment of concern with this one before pressing play (haven't got around to playing it) but I was so engrossed that I couldn't care less, and this coming from someone, like you, who prefers experiencing a game with as blank a slate as possible. Interestingly enough, you're critiques have made me look at buying two games I had very little interest in, Prey - didn't know much about it, and Fallout 4 - I get put off by excessive hype pre-release (sometimes even after release) and tend to put off a purchase indefinitely until calmer minds prevail.
In otherwords, thanks for such great content, keep up the good work, and I'll be looking at buying one of your books. Hopefully as good a read as your critiques.
I know I'm late (I didn't play it until it was out for PS4, and it's months after that release, even), but I love your deconstruction of and suggestions for the story. I know it's too much to ask that game developers start watching all your videos, but hopefully, since commentary of the RotTR's story was almost unanimous in its critique, the next Tomb Raider will focus more on Lara as a character. I think the first game did this well - it could have been improved, but Lara shows compelling growth in the first game. I also wanted to write to say that your suggestions (in this and other reviews of yours) are impressive in how they demonstrate ways to improve the games without compromising what's already there.
Iv seen a couple of your videos now and i really feel the need to commend you not only for the effort put into making such detailed and in depth analysis, but for the amount of perspective it offers as a gamer. I can only say that if a lot of companies like IGN would take this approach to their reviews, that games today would be at a much higher standard and i wouldnt feel cheated out of a better experience so often. Ill get off my knees now, love the content keep up the great work.
"the game runs but you wish it didn't"
I choked on an ice cream
13:45 if i may make a recommendation for a stealth game, check out Mark of the Ninja. Being a 2D stealth game, it allows you to instantly learn the layout of the land, and be a true stealth badass
I liked the 2013 Tomb Riader better for some reason. This one was pretty boring, imo. Maybe I'm just tired of the same ole', same ole'
A little late here but me too. The darker setting felt a lot more immersive to me for some reason. Also, this one ended when I thought it was at about the halfway point. I still really liked them both. I disliked the combat but for some reason I do in basically every modern game, I just want it over with to get back to story and exploration.
Yeah same. I liked that in the first game, it was Lara’s first experience and that she was forced to kill and murder all those people to leave the island. And I think it has more depth. Unlike rise of the tomb raider that there isn’t really like a plot like you already know what the story is going to be about from the start.
Chores, not achievements..
10:20 'there's no possible way for you to get lost in this tutorial section'
Actually... I got to the other side of a snowfall-ish section by jumping rapidly and I didn't know that I was suppose to just walk over it to trigger a cutscene where I get pushed over to the edge (because you can jump onto the snow without triggering the cutscene, and any subsequent jumps will prohibit Laura from triggering the cutscene). To be fair, my mind went: If I just walk over this, I would be dead. I also can't run, so let's try jumping repeatedly... My memory may be mixing some of these up but the point is, yeah I did mess up and got lost for about 20-30 minutes on the tutorial section.
This is why I like the original run of Tomb Raider games, specifically 1-3. 1 is kind of a proof of concept. It is heavily flawed, especially with controls, but it was one of the first large scale attempts at a 3D 3rd person environment like that, so I excuse a lot because of that. Once you get used to the controls, the “Tomb Raiding” part of the game is fun and simple without too much convoluted half hearted story beats and it doesn’t have too much henchmen fighting, which works for the setting. Tomb Raider 2 improves on everything and is just fun. Some story there, but basically Lara is just a super cool, confident, slick, wealthy badass who hunts for treasure and ancient knowledge and it’s just a good time. Not saying the new games aren’t fun and awesome in their own right, but your overall assessment of this series is very much my feelings on it. Good critique. Thanks for the video!
Damn, hit a lot of points which I wouldn't have thought about ! Good Job!!
Shadow of the Tomb Raider! I want to hear you TEAR that story apart. Like my God people got paid to write this “trilogy” which is honestly just 3 individual stories with the second and third being only linked by this “trinity” bs which isn’t even developed on well and Shadow also fails in so many other regards. I just played the game on Hard, I had high expectations hoping it would be a larger improvement on the series than the first->second one but NO game went backwards aside from the FEW guerilla stealth sections and the tombs which maybe I only found challenging cause survival instincts weren’t a thing and the environments kinda blended with the interactable objects.
You definitely aren't alone in wanting more cat and mouse section is areas where you spend so much time exploring. I am a stealth player, two of my favorite games are Dishonored and Deus Ex, especially Dishonored because of the amount of freedom you are given to move around the world. My favorite part of the game was that first cat and mouse section. I too was hugely disappointed that I never got to do it again.
When you said TR from 2013 was all about fire and 2015 is almost all about water I realized that next installment is circling around light (or it was air?). It seems each has their own dominant element so you can tell from which game some puzzle was, based on that element.
recently I had played rise of the tomb raider before watching this to see if some of the problems I had with it matched with anything that was said in the video, I was amazed to find that just about everything I had a problem with in the game was said in the video and I really don't like how the hero always manages to eavesdrop on the villains just as there spilling the beans about why they are there I swear its like their waiting for you to be in the same room as them or either above or below them before they spill their guts about everything from their plans to their motives, I still really enjoyed the game
I loved the audio logs, the voiceovers were great and I felt it immersed me even more. Comparing them to Shadow of the tomb raider which lacks a voiceover I completely agree.
Well this is a review and a critique. You can be pretentious as you like and try to separate yourself from a review but the two are often the same, or rather it's better to say that all critiques are reviews but not all reviews are critiques.
I actually paused the video and went and played the game and came back. I thoroughly enjoyed it and your critique.
Great and thorough video. I love the new Tomb Raiders, I totally bought the whole immortal "Prophet" story and went out of my way to find all the interesting data/artefact thingies but I was a little let down by the generic ending.
I agree with all of your critiques and hope that the next instalment can address them. Honestly I never pay any attention to DLC in these types of single player games, I just play them for the gameplay and story and don't feel much need to replay these games anyway.
Vladdie99 Well said, and unrelated, Alita was great. Last 3rd of the movie was rushed it seemed, but I love the manga and I think Robert Rodriguez and Weta Digital did a fantastic job bringing her to life on screen. And the choreography gets me everytime, I went to see it 11 times in theaters :p
@@tidyheidi9143 It's my favourite movie ever (I had not read the manga) and I'm madly in love with Alita! 😅😅 The last 3rd being rushed isn't a negative for me, it just makes it soo emotionally intense and rewatchable! But of course I would like an extended 2 Hour 30+ cut!
Found your channel off the Witcher video which I am eagerly looking forward to parts 2 and 3. I am also very curious as to what you thought about Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I think it improves on some of the things you touch on but then fails at others, curious to see your thoughts and your critique on it.
I think some devs saw this video and applied it to Shadow. Especially the part where you discuss Lara's potential arc. Bloody fantastic!
First of all I'd like to say what a fantastic video, your analysis is really spot on and hits every thing that bugged me about Rise, second I thought it was funny how much of a copy Rise is of Reboot, but what's really funny is the story is almost a literal a copy of Tomb Raider: Legend that was released in 2006, by the same developers. Lara's parents have a tragic backstory, Lara's mother goes missing, Lara's father goes crazy trying to find Lara's mother, general consensus of Lara's dad is he's nuts, Lara spends her life and also kinda goes crazy trying to prove him right and find her mother, Lara proves her father right and finds the proof he didn't and saves the world, the only difference is that Lara doesn't quite destroy the main artifact in the end, but in Legend the artifact was a weapon, and Lara wasn't nearly as melodramatic and asthmatic sounding as she is today so. TRL's version is definitely a bit more competent in it's presentation even though it's a shorter game, and no cliche evil step mom or recycled army of darkness. But I do like the flashbacks that we have of Lara's dad that wasn't present in TRL so I think they both have good elements to them.
I loved the gameplay of Legend, for despite being short and linear it was fun every single minute and it always felt like something was going on and I made progress while playing it. The open-world elements and crafting just slowed Rise of the Tomb Raider down in my opinion, and much of the stuff felt like the generic padding that infests all AAA games these days. Note to developers: Quantity is not the same as Quality.
Remember how the entirety of trinity was killed off off screen in Shadow of the Tomb Raider? Yeah... That was great...
Most of these comments are very old but I want you to know I loved your critiques. I hope you also do Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
If I can make a suggestion, a PS4 controller-paired with Steam's controller configuration-can make shooting much smoother.
If you go into the Standard tab and select the Gyro sensor, you can set it to camera mouse and have it set up so that "Left Trigger Full Pull" will activate the sensor. This way, you can get more precise aiming (a la Breath of the Wild) but only while holding the Aim button: L2.
Thanks for doing what you do, man.
31:07 Yeah but Trinity is mentioned in Tomb Raider 2013 as well
I’m late to this party but I just finished 100% the game tonight. Your criticism is 100% accurate and I found myself spitting out your exact opinion seconds before you would say it throughout this video. The woodland area section at the beginning was extremely enjoyable for me, for exactly the reason you described. The enemy has you outgunned and out numbered, but you have knowledge of the area and hunting skills. Doing that scenario again in the main Siberian hub and the Geo Valley would have been incredible. Lara as a character is great and I’m upset that the story detracted from time that could have been spent on her. Lastly, that restructuring of the game story and beats you run through at the end, sounds like an absolute dream version of this game- that I wish I got to play. I’m starting Shadows tomorrow and I’m holding my breath. Bloodborne PC port when?
While I admittedly have not played the game, I think this is a really good review.
Btw, have you watched Mark Brown's Game Maker's Toolkit on Tomb Raider? He talks about how he thinks the climbing mechanics of at least the 2013 game have taken a step back in complexity from the original series. I was wondering about your thoughts on the subject. I know you don't want to compare the original and new games but I am still curious.
I don't know why but I've just discovered all your stuff and its great. I would like to know what you think of the new game though: Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I posted my own review of it and I wasn't very impressed particularly story-wise, so I thought it would be right up your alley. But of course, I'm just a regular guy who liked the reboot series and I do like gameplay over story type stuff...
You know what would be amazing, a hybrid between Tomb Raider and Dark Souls (1). The way the story is told in Dark SOuls, through gameplay and scenery is the best way you can tell a story. But it couldn't hurt to replace the nameless character with a known quantity like Lara. And it would mesh with your own idea, of making a large tomb. The first dark souls is basically one giant map (excluding the DLC) you can navigate almost without loading screens.
I remember Lara complaining and trembling before she is chase by the helicopter, falls into the river and gets rescue by jacob, after that not a single complain or tremble so when I saw that he cures Jona I thought he did the same to Lara and that gave her Immortal like powers, and the reason he doesn't use the power with rest of his people is because he is trying to make things right and not create another another army of Immortals but he feels guilty about not saving the mother of Sofia and when he feels how much Lara remembers him about his wife he can't restrain himself from saving her, and with Jona he doesn't stand watching Lara suffer about it and also saves him.
I know I am late but the game came out on PS4 only a few weeks ago. One point towards the story and the shoehorned enemies: If I remember correctly, if you collect all collectibles (ha!) in Tomb Raider (2013) there's one specific spot towards the end where the existence of the "caches" is explained through a note from guy working for Trinity who tries to research and capture the supernatural elements for Trinity's case.
Yes, I did remember correctly:
- www.ign.com/wikis/tomb-raider/GPS_Secrets
- tombraider.wikia.com/wiki/GPS_Secrets
Is maybe the reason the early section of this game is done so well is to get good review scores? Many reviewers have an incentive to rush their article to be first and so they may be biased in their review towards the early sections of the game. This may also be why so many games these days open with way too long of cutscenes and story-jamming just to be "striking" or "immersive".
This however, does not explain why the quality of the early game can't also be placed everywhere else in the game too. My guess is short deadlines and the pressure of modern games to be visually great as a development priority rather than spend more of their already short precious money and time into level design.