I lost steam in Rise and never finished it. Really disliked the story and Lara as a character in it. I had liked the first reboot game quite a bit too. Not sure what that means for me and this third game.
I do recall being annoyed with the Tomb Raider series for the impatient hint system. I’ll be taking my time, trying to solve a tomb puzzle and Lara blurts out, “Hey, I wonder if I should check behind that waterfall for a lever or something!”. Grrr. I think I eventually figured out how to turn that feature off.
But overall, Tomb Raider and Uncharted are the two game series I will automatically play. Even if the story is meh, these games feature enough beautiful scenery and fun puzzle-solving to make them worthwhile to play.
Rise of the Tomb Raider was one of my favorite games in a long time. I remember it being so refreshing to play it after I played through Uncharted 1-3 - going from those completely linear games with “mushy” and annoying combat, to Tomb Raider which was semi-open world and with some really satisfying combat, was so nice.
It was also really beautiful!
Nah, see Tom’s review
Furthermore, this is still that familiar gameplay. There’s so much gratifying gunplay/archery, now with fancy upgrades that would make Sam Fisher proud. Once you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that this may as well be a Call of Duty game for all the balls-out combat
I also liked it despite some shortcomings already mentioned in this thread. Looking forward to the new game
There are only two things that really stick out on Rise I didn’t like: the last boss fight, where I didn’t realize I really needed to stock up on ammo before hand. I had gotten a little used to boss fights where there was some mechanic or QTE event. I almost restarted the game just to get to reset it.* The other is I couldn’t get 100% on zones without going back.
I don’t really remember the story either way.
*The lesson I learned is the next time a game tells me “you are passing the point of no return” I will make sure I am kitted out.
I will be totally peeved – peeved I tell you! – if this one doesn’t ship with zombie horde mode and survival mode. I also want those cards and scoring system back. That stuff was great.
Shoot, I may have to go reinstall.
-Tom
Thanks to @Vesper I got to play RoTR, and while it is still a murder simulator, there are plenty of tombs to raid.
Which brings me to the central problem of Tomb Raider: it is about RAIDING, not preserving. She pretty much destroys every tomb she raided. And everything Lara takes she puts them into a “museum”, or shall I say treasure vault. This Lara Croft is no archeologist, she is an imperialist. An empowered female imperialist, with a rather fitting British accent echoing the Victorian era, but an imperialist nonetheless.
And a murdering imperialist, albeit fighting another bunch of murdering imperialists. The focus on combat is as disappointing as ever IMO.
I liked those modes a lot too. Even though it quickly became rote I also like the randomized tower puzzles in the zombie mode. It feels like a little taste of what a procedurally generated tombs would be like.
What I didnt like was the very fiddly always online services that was integrated into anything related to the cards. It frequently would not load or would kick me out of sessions for no reason.
That was a double-edged sword. The tombs were great, and as you say much more/better than the first game. But that just made the combat all the more annoying. After the first few hours, my heart sank every time I came across a group of enemies in Rise, because I knew the fun bits were going away for the next 20 minutes while I fought wave after wave of enemies. In the first game, there was less tomb-exploring, but a lot more environmental exploring (as opposed to backtracking).
Yeah the second game was absurdly combat centric when it did not need to be.
Tom’s review isn’t the final word :)
Perhaps, but my point was that the gameplay had not changed all that much from the first one, while you were making it seem that the amount combat was very different from the first, which just isn’t true.
Again, I would disagree. There was a huge amount of combat in the first one - the burning village, the section where Lara tries to reach the helicopter, the village where she first had to heal herself and then fight here way through, the fight to the very high radio tower, etc. There’s no real difference between the two - in fact, I remember fewer “set pieces” - in the second one.
Having played both, I remember it quite differently than you do. So does Tom. The second one has a lot more emphasis on combat.
They are both combat-heavy, but the second one does have more. That said, it’s not like the first one is all peace and love. They give “Lara is conflicted” a passing mention, but she goes nuts near the end with machine guns.
Overall I liked the story better in the first one, but enjoyed both.
I will be pre-ordering this one for a day one delivery, though. These games are right up my alley.
Are you going to make me link this yet again? :)
The “Lara Croft goes from zero to Call of Duty in 60 seconds” complaint drives me crazy! It’s almost as bad as the “videogames need stronger female characters” complaint.
-Tom
I get The Descent reference in Tomb Raider. There is a specific scene where Lara climbs out of a pool of blood soaked water that is basically cut-and-pasted from The Descent. And Crystal Dynamics wants me to know it. Wink Wink.
I thought we are supposed to be horrified by the transformation at the end of the Descent, when she planted THAT axe into THAT leg (no spoiler!). That was supposed to be more horrifying than all the mindless beasts tearing at them, showing how madness blurs into each other. It is not supposed to be an empowering transformation. Same with Lara, it is not supposed to be empowering and satisfying that she can finish off a tough guy with a shotgun melee. It is horrifying. That to defeat the enemy she became one.
I’m guessing this is NOT the narrative Crystal Dynamics is trying to sell, but that’s my take.
That wasn’t a leg. Oh, uh, spoiler.
Clearly, I need to replay the original.
I think you you need to rewatch The Descent. Juno’s death* is a comeuppance. She has cheated with her best friends husband and now she has lied about abandoning the other women to be killed by the bat people. In the morale calculus of a horror movie, she’s getting what she deserves. But more importantly, Shauna Macdonald is demonstrating, after her literal baptism in blood, that she has been transformed from someone incapacitated by grief into someone powerful, violent, willing to stand up for herself, and – most importantly – determined enough to survive.
As for Lara in the Tomb Raider game, you might be horrified at the violent deaths of the men trying to murder Lara, but that’s not how the game wants you to react. You’re supposed to thrill to her transformation from vulnerability to violence. That’s clearly the intent, even if it didn’t work for you personally.
-Tom
* stupidly retconned out of the sequel