That new Tomb Raider

The digital version has always online DRM. You need to be signed in to play it.

would it have to be the account that purchases it?

alright just read about it. guess i won't buy it digital then and just wait for a price drop. thanks for the heads up

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

The digital version has always online DRM. You need to be signed in to play it.

Fuck that, any game that has that i will make a point of not buying the digital version.

Alright, so thought I'd give this a go. Glad I did, because it's fantastic. The graphics are wonderful, Lara herself is much more relatable as the naive young girl out of her depth than she ever was before and the level design is excellent.

Sure, maybe it is a little combat heavy in parts and there's not much actual raiding of tombs - at least not beyond the two optional areas I've thus far encountered - but it's an incredibly polished adventure with tight controls and a pretty interesting narrative.

i see so many people complain about this game

I didn't complain, I said it was fantastic. It's not perfect, but it's a very impressive game.

i wasn't referring to you

man, this game is such a joy, and it has quite some lenght to it too, haven't finished it yet. but I'm having such a blast playing this.

also, some of these heavy actions scenes are so over the top it's quite ridiculous, but I really enjoy them.

I want to say that this is trying to be Uncharted but Uncharted was trying to be Tomb Raider in the first place.

Anyway game is decent, too combat heavy, especially once you get the rifle, and there's a huge disconnect between gameplay and what happens in cutscenes (think going from Rambo to an emotional wreck and back again in the space of minutes) but, at the end of the day, it's still fun.

Just beat it, and what a really enjoyable adventure it was. Yes, it was a little combat heavy in parts and the optional tombs were both infrequent and way too short, but almost everything it tried it got right.

The island was fantastically realised, the graphics were great, the character models (Lara taking a leaf out of Arkham Asylum's book and getting more and more battle scarred over time) and voice acting were top drawer which really invests you in the story, which while a little cliche and predictable in parts is told with such extravagance you can't help but get swept along for the ride. It's quite a long game too, I reckon most players will be clocking in at least twenty hours on a first play through, more if you take time to explore off the beaten path to find all the collectibles.

I also feel more empathy with Lara herself than any of the other games have even gotten vaguely close to, and can't wait to see what Crystal Dynamics follow this up with.

Also,

Spoiler:

I really like the audio in this one too, the voice work is great imo. especially these documents that are narrated by whoever wrote them, that's a nice little touch.

the sound design in some areas is brilliant too, like this tense music starts to play, and of course you know stuff is gonna go down, but still, I usually don't really pay attention to stuff like that, but I've been really picking up on it in this game.

I've been playing it with my Turtle Beach headset, and the surround sound is immense - you can hear fires crackling, water dripping, thunder crashing, birds chirping in trees, and often you'll hear guards way before you see them.

Lara's voice actress was especially good; she gave the character real heart, and the change from stuttering and frightened girl to willing heroine was handled with little more than a subtle shifting of tone as her confidence increased.

I finished with 96% completion, so I'm going to go back and find the few missing collectibles and then I might seriously consider playing through it again.

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

The digital version has always online DRM. You need to be signed in to play it.

are you sure about this? i just read an article that it was a mistake

ok, i expected a bit more from the ending, but all in all, it was a great experience and I still got lots to do, cause I finished with like 68% completion, so there's still lots of stuff to discover.

68%? My OCD wouldn't let me move on from an area until I was sure I'd done all I could there. Personally, I really liked the ending. A little vague perhaps in regards to where exactly Lara herself goes next, but everything in this self-contained story was neatly wrapped up.

well, i mean,

Spoiler:

and yeah, I'm at 68%, cause well, I have a youtube channel and do walkthroughs with commentary, so I try not to get sidetracked too much and stick to the main story cause it'd be a bit boring otherwise I think.

The last battle here reminds me of [PROTOTYPE 2]

Gameplay feels like a good mix of these:
Assassin's Creed 2
Uncharted 2
Just Cause 2 (the parachute segment and the communication tower with snow segments)

The longbow is my favorite weapon, that and her aviator costume made me think of the Hunger Games main protagonist, and her face looks a bit inspired by Jennifer Lawrence

I finished the main story with 75% completion yesterday. Is there anyway to replay missions or start a New Game+?

Borrowed this from my sister (and she borrowed the HD collection from me).

Only played for a couple hours and already Lara has been crushed by a giant rock, choked to death, and had her neck ripped open by a wolf. It's really unpleasant to see that stuff, more so than I thought it would be. Which I suppose is the point, but that all happened because I failed QTEs, which is just annoying.

I've decided I'm going to never use the Survival Instincts. I'm glad they made the "stuff you have to interact with glows" thing that a lot of games resort to completely optional.

Also, despite the QTEs, it does a lot of nice stuff to give it that "cinematic" feel. Stuff that will hopefully become more widespread. Like more unique animations. Maybe it's just clever camera work but Lara's movement (walking and running any way) looks very natural. The repition of whatever animation cycles she has isn't very obvious.

Also, having to characters do little characterful things without taking control away. Lara will brush her hand along a wall when you're walking, or put her arms up when you walk near fire. Basically, idle animations that happen as you're playing rather then when you stand still for 5 minutes. It's a really nice touch.

It's a very good looking game too.

This feels like the most violent game I've ever played. As in it's the game in which I feel the violence the most. God knows how a Tomb Raider game ended with that honour. Why do the deaths need to be so gruesome? Whatever happened to just running out of health and ragdoll physics? I don't want to see Lara get her head impaled on a giant spike.

The enemies don't get it any easier either. The lucky ones just get shot with arrows but the stupid ones who run up to me get sand thrown in their eyes and then bludgeoned to death with a rock.

The puzzles and platforming don't match up to the earlier titles of course, but it's still a very good game. Rather than just being Uncharted with weaker setpieces, which is what it looked like for a while, it's Uncharted with much better level design and exploration. And better combat too, actually.

I liked the set pieces a lot more than Uncharted too to be honest.

Finished the game. My biggest complaint is the lack of any real bonus content. No outfits or gold weapons to unlock, which should be standard for Tomb Raider games.

Other than that, the ending was a bit annoying because there was a proper boss battle, but not against the main villain, and then the main villain was just a QTE fight. That's two games in a row that did that to me. I'd rather have a normal cutscene that a QTE.

A few minor complaints. One time a character told me how to solve the puzzle while I was trying to figure it out. I hate that shit. But it only happened once. Also, there's a few times where a platform collapses and you have to jump to safety, or grab onto a wall while falling, stuff like that, and a lot of the times when that happens the game goes into slow motion. This isn't a movie. Slowing down the gameplay isn't impressive, it just makes it easier for the player which means succeeding is actually less satisfying. It didn't do that every time though, and the exceptions were much more fun because of it.

There weren't nearly as many QTEs as I was expecting, given a lot of the complaints. A lot of them were as I described above, a regular gameplay action but in slow motion with a prompt. Like, in the game there's wooden barriers that can be destroyed with the shotgun. The "slide" levels also have these wooden barriers, so naturally you have to shoot them before you hit them. But the game goes into slow motion and shows a prompt to shoot them whenever you have to do so. I guess that's what people were complaining about, and it's fair complaint, but those aren't really QTEs. It's normal gameplay and you're pressing the normal buttons when you would have to press them anyway, except in slow motion with the game reminding you what button shoot is in case you suddenly forgot.

Nearly all of the actual QTEs happen in very early in the game, which the rest at the very end. It's triangle every single time too, which at least means I can ignore the prompt and watch the scene since I know what to press. They happen in combat too, but you have to trigger it yourself. If you dodge at the right time and you can counter attack by pressing triangle when prompted. Dodging itself isn't a QTE though.

I would have liked it if they had kept the grab button, rather than Lara automatically grabbing ledges when you jump at them. You still have to do it when latching into walls with the axe, but it would have been better to keep it for everything. It gave the other TR games a little something extra.

But all the bad bits were few and far between. The level design was still great and the platforming still fun, even though both were simpler than in the previous titles. I'm definitely buying it for myself.

when lara gets dirty, can you jump in some water to get her clean?

That does happen at one predetermined point, but otherwise no.