Sulphur on 14/9/2018 at 20:07
I finished the prologue and can only offer a word on the presentation at this point because when I impulse purchase, it's usually due to shallow reasons: I wanted grefx, I sure as hell got grefx. The detail and art direction on this thing is through the fucking roof, combined with a TXAA solution that presents an image so clean, I think I'm in love. RotTR had terrible specular aliasing and jaggies all over the fucking place; this looks like an unblemished work of art everywhere you point the camera. The photographer mode is a good addition - it'd be a sin not to have the option for a freecam in a game this good-looking.
Nameless Voice on 16/9/2018 at 00:46
I like the multiple difficulty sub-options, like System Shock 1 had.
That's a feature I've planned to implement in my own games.
Inline Image:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/957468055312366734/677564775E20843CAECA7951E335CB1702FF6C2F/Though I've quickly come to realise that I made a mistake by picking Very Hard on all of them, since one of those disables all checkpoints, which means that dying towards the end of the prologue mission threw me all the way back the beginning. That's a but much for me.
Sulphur on 16/9/2018 at 06:34
Interesting, it didn't let me choose Very Hard. Some of those options seem pretty hardcore - base camps become usable with limited resources? Sounds like quite a thing. I wouldn't mind setting the puzzles to max difficulty, though even on Hard Lara drops almost no hints as to how to go about them, which is refreshing. The puzzles aren't any kind of brainscratchers so far, but the game letting you figure them out on your lonesome makes them instantly more compelling.
I'm about 20% in and so far most of it's been exploration, hunting, and discovering crypts and tombs salted with a little bit of cold-hearted butchery and a fair bit of conversation - the story's still nonsense, but the game's pretty open about the fact that a large part of Lara's personality is that she's unaware of how much of an asshole she is, from her selfishness to her awkward interactions with some Peruvian natives. I like the fact that the experience skews less towards combat, because the forest location is gorgeous and I can't get enough of it, but combat tends to pull focus away from taking in and navigating the sights. And they've expanded the underwater component significantly in terms of flooded areas and lakes actually figuring into exploration and resources in an organic fashion. I'm enjoying it for the actual Tomb Raiding at this point.
Nameless Voice on 16/9/2018 at 18:26
You can't select Very Hard difficulties directly, you can only select the "Deadly Obsession" preset for overall difficulty, which sets all the rest to Very Hard.
I wouldn't mind the limited resources, but the being unable to save for an entire level part? No, that's just too much.
Sulphur on 3/11/2018 at 14:08
While I'm taking a break from it to finish off Metro: Last Light, I'm finding Shadow of the TR to be something I like a lot. Once I ignore the story and uneasy horror movie vibe (there's more skulls and decaying bodies in isolated areas in this game than in the whole of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, making for a very uneasy, stereotyped outlook on Mayan and Incan culture), the meat of the game's in traipsing around, working out improbable mechanical puzzles, and taking in absolutely gorgeous graphics every other minute.
Which brings me to something that I didn't mention, because the relative absence of it is interesting: combat. TR 2013 and RotTR were pretty heavy on the combat; I'd say the balance swung more in favour of combat than any actual tomb raiding. With SotTR, the balance swings the other way. There's far fewer combat encounters in this game than in either previous entry -- which is not to say that you don't end up killing hundreds of people, you still do that; it's just that it's confined to these occasional pockets of forced encounters, which makes this actually feel a little like an oldschool TR game. This is a pace-killer if you're expecting combat to be as regularly thrown into the mix as Uncharted or the last two TRs, and while I really don't mind lolloping around a huge jungle environment, exploring crypts and tombs and marvelling at the volumetric lighting and water caustics, everyone else might not be as inclined to appreciate those details.
I was curious as to how it's doing, and no surprise: it's already seen two sales since launch, and Steam reviews complain about mostly the same things - underwhelming story, not enough combat, skill system sucks because you don't get to use combat skills often. It's currently sitting at a mixed rating at ~5K reviews, which as you can tell is probably not great. And yet the thing that bugs me the most is this: no one talks about the actual platforming being MIA. I know I do, but it's fairly obvious that unless you're Nintendo, the skill caps that oldschool platforming institutes aren't a good way to make your game accessible to more people.
So... what does this all mean? If I were a publisher, the assumption I would make from all this is that the demographic trends were right, and CD was justified in making the first two TRs combat-heavy platformer-lite experiences. Violence sells and is easy to market; tricky platforming and tombs can't compete with that. Tomb raiding may be able to exist in combination with violence, but for its budget, a TR game simply can't just be about jumping around exotic locations any more if it wants to survive; the audience needs its shooten' and killin' and mass-murderin'. Which is disappointing to realise, because if there was a series that could have pivoted away from that it, it would have been TR. It's ironic because I probably have Uncharted to thank for opening this particular Pandora's Box, but Uncharted 2 ranks above every TR game I've played in history, so maybe... I was part of the problem?
Anyway, Shadow of the Tomb Raider looks great, did I mention that? Just the opening hours have great bloody lances of sunlight glancing off ancient statues and altars suspended above dark inky voids, and all you can do sometimes is just stop and stare from a distance. It also has a large hub brimming with the kind of detail and layered design that sets my dopamine receptors abuzz. Last of its kind as it may be, I'm probably returning to it soon enough.
froghawk on 3/11/2018 at 14:28
Sounds like they finally made a new TR game that would appeal to me.
twisty on 3/11/2018 at 14:53
I'm looking forward to playing it, and even more so after reading that as I found the combat a drag. I don't think any of the Tomb Raiders have had an amazing story really and I've played every one of them, including all the dlc.
Renault on 3/11/2018 at 15:19
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I was curious as to how it's doing, and no surprise: it's already seen two sales since launch, and Steam reviews complain about mostly the same things - underwhelming story, not enough combat, skill system sucks because you don't get to use combat skills often. It's currently sitting at a mixed rating at ~5K reviews, which as you can tell is probably not great.
I've read in a couple of places now that that majority of negative reviews are
because the game went on sale only month after release. People who paid full price are (justifiably) upset. Metacritic has it rated at 77, which is quite a bit higher than it's current Steam rating (65). Seems like a bad precedent to set, because who will buy their stuff on day one now (which is what I'm assuming most companies want)?
Usually when I consider ratings on games, I like to think Steam is the best representative, because the reviews are coming from actual gamers like us, and not some corporate web site. But when you see something like this, which is a bunch of angry fan boys watering down the rating on something that has nothing to do with actual game quality, it makes me wonder.
Sulphur on 3/11/2018 at 15:52
SotTR's reviews fluctuated between 'Mostly Positive' and 'Mixed' before the sales, but now it's a steady 'Mixed' because user reviews are apparently the easiest way for irate people to be heard and cause some collateral damage.
In my experience, a good majority of the user reviews on Steam are useless at best and harmful at worst. One game got review-bombed because its DLC was 2 hours late; Firewatch got review-bombed because they issued a DMCA notice on PewDiePie in an effort to get his Firewatch Let's Play taken down; Agony, a game that had some pretty awful content cut from its final release (involving graphic rape) got torn down not just because it's a fantastically terrible game from all appearances, but because the devs 'lied' to them. Now that Steam's relaxed its stance on adult content, they've released the Unrated version and it's currently at... yup, Very Positive. (To get a Mostly Positive rating alone, a title needs >70% positive reviews, IIRC.)
And then there are the discussion forums which, if you wade into them, are essentially teenagers ranting at each other. Honestly, I'd take a well-written review from someone who seems to have sense over any user ratings on any platform, because accounting for mass stupidity and/or banal whinging is tedious.
Renzatic on 3/11/2018 at 18:03
I recently came across a one star review for The Incredibles 2 while checking to see if it was available for streaming. The guy was just asking a question wondering whether some character or other was in the movie, and said he'd remove the review once he got the answer.
THAT'S NOT WHAT REVIEWS ARE FOR, DIPSHIT!