Tomb Raider

[LARF]

Just had my Collector's Edition delivered, really great package with loads of downloadable content and my very own Lara to play with :-)

Will feedback on the gameplay tonight once I get it home.

[Zappanalé]

Putting aside all the arguments about the character, the game itself is hella sweet. A little heavy on collectables, maybe, but both the combat and the exploring parts are great.

[Professor Bear]

I'm on early days with it, but it does all right when it's riffing on Uncharted (hey, turnabout is fair play).  Otherwise it seems to be a mish-mash of game elements held apart by too much uninteresting cutscene basil that looks gorgeous and has a great soundtrack, it's just a pity about the voicework and that awful story.  Even by TR standards it is pretty shonky, even if "I went looking for adventure but adventure found me" had me laughing like a snobby drain.

[Richmond Clements]

Can't wait for this. Well, that's not strictly true. I can wait. I can wait until it's cheap.

[Link Prime]

Can't wait for this. Well, that's not strictly true. I can wait. I can wait until it's cheap.

And also: if I could find a shop that actually sells games within 8000 miles.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Having a very bad time with this on PC. It looks great but the gameplay is a little difficult to say the least.

You have to press certain action keys ie F [usually for an attack] E [for interact and sometimes Mash and unbelievably; the the Arrow Keys left and right for some Mash up too. You need hands the size of a Gorilla and the general opinion on the STEAM Community pages is to play the game with gamepad or xbox 360 pad connected to your PC.

Well I'm not paying £20 plus just to play a Computer game that cost £25 so I'm sorry to say it is definately not taking up any more Giga Bytes on my Machine.

You have been warned.

[radiator]

You're doing it wrong.

[LARF]

Only played it for two hours this week and got to the bit where Lara's got knocked on the head by the bad guys...

It is a beautiful game, tad annoyed with all the Dragon's Lair shinanigans with the buttons esp. at the beginning but happy with it so far.

I hate wolves BTW.

[Gothmog]

It's certainly a good looking game and there's plenty of enjoyment to be had even though I've never been a fan of QTEs but I'd be enjoying it a hell of a lot more if there was an option to turn off the shaky cam.

It's kind of de rigueur to have the camera attached to a helium balloon in a draft effect for cut scenes nowadays but having constant camera bob/weave during gameplay in 3rd person perspective is a step too far in my opinion.
I'm sure it's all intended to give it a gritty, intense feel but  it's just giving me the feeling of impending motion sickness that's never been a problem for me before.

Also some of the death scenes feel like I've stumbled upon somebody's private snuff movie collection as Lara moans and feebly flaps against the instrument of her doom while her life inexorably slips away.  Kind of unsettling for a game but maybe I'm just getting old.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

You're doing it wrong.

Your right. I was in a bad mood after a pretty draining week and my tantrum got the better of me. I've reloaded it and after a little perseverance I killed the big, bad wolf who was a massacring me yesterday.

Much better now. I've even managed to upgrade my Bow and pistol.   

[Professor Bear]

Also some of the death scenes feel like I've stumbled upon somebody's private snuff movie collection as Lara moans and feebly flaps against the instrument of her doom while her life inexorably slips away.  Kind of unsettling for a game but maybe I'm just getting old.

It's not just you.  They got Conan O'Brien to play some of the more death-heavy bits of the early part of the game for a promo spot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCe8-1dbXZc
The bit at 4:44 where the guy beside him is visibly mortified that someone has picked up on the slight undercurrent of sexualisation is hilarious, especially when you notice that 20 seconds later there's a jump where something has been cut out of the footage and Conan relates to his audience that he's been asked to stop drawing attention to the way the game pervs on its main character.

I have found it to be a pretty good game once you're past the snuffering-porn, though it is a laughably easy one, the puzzles especially so.  It learns the wrong lessons from Uncharted in that there's too much QTE compared to previous TR games (worse, this is often combined with shakycam and water/mud/blood splashing on the screen so the only actual challenge is coming from trying to see what you're supposed to be doing), the menus are hilariously busy and slam onto the screen with a whooshing noise like the titles in an action movie trailer, and it does that thing where the character doesn't feel they're 100 percent in synch with the backgrounds and/or objects in the environment and she jumps and skips through bits of animation every now and then, but unlike Uncharted, it goes on for ages and isn't quite as fast to play through - combined with some nods to RPG mechanics and some backtracking to go looking for collectables with your newest bits of equipment, it feels a bit meatier, though when the [spoiler]supernatural stuff[/spoiler] rears its head it feels oddly intrusive despite being a TR mainstay.

[Pete Wells]

I'm enjoying it, but it should have been called Tomb Raider: The Passion of the Croft. Where the Passion of the Christ showed Jesus getting the shit kicked out of him for its duration, this game seems to be be doing the same to poor Lara. By the end of it I think she's gonna be Dredd at the finale of The Cursed Earth...

[bluemeanie]

I loved it. Loved the story too.

Yeah, they put her through the shit but thats why at the end she's the Lara Croft we know.

Rambo had to go through Vietnam etc

Anyway, great game.

[JamesC]

I'm about halfway through and I absolutely love it. Something that's very unusual is that when I find a book or an artifact I actually want to read it or examine it.

I think that people have made too big a deal of the violence. It doesn't seem too bad to me!

[torque]

It is a really great game - top return to form for the franchise. Still remember playing the original back on the PS1.