Tomb Raider (2013)
Okay, let's just start this by saying I felt Tomb Raider was a good, solid game. Not perfect, but good and better than expected.
I think I might have played an earlier game. TR2 maybe? Not sure. Platform-and-shoot games weren't really my thing at the time, and while I was aware of them, they just never seemed something I'd be interested in. When I heard of a prequel/reboot, I didn't look real closely. When people screamed "OMG! Brutality toward women!" about some released footage, I... well, sorta rubbed my head and went on with life. But... I saw enough to be interested.
Comparisons have been made to Uncharted, and that's probably fair. The action-platforming-QTE mix is similar, the main character goes through all sorts of hell, things are discovered... all that jazz. It also reminds me of the Metal Gear Solid games in that there's a story that I want to follow (though MGS gets a little crazy at times) and there's gameplay that I enjoy and want to get into more, but the two sort of conflict. When the story is in full gear, options are limited - the direction of travel is pretty much direct and linear and the encounters are pretty well scripted. Yet the gameplay is at its best when you can roam freely around a wide open area, avoiding or encountering opposition based on your actions. Balancing the two is difficult, but this game does it pretty well after getting into things.
"After getting into things" is a fairly major point. The story and gameplay are the most opposed in the opening hour or two of the game. Progress is tightly controlled, with lots of scripted scene and quick time events - and the QTEs are not a strong suit here, especially when suddenly throwing a new button to press into the mix in a "do this or die" moment. As with many QTE scenes, the ones here tear attention away from what's happening to try to make out the key prompts, and that's part of what is bad about them. But... as the game progresses, it opens up more, and the brutal QTEs lighten up or become less frequent. The game does manage to find a balance that, for my money, is better than most I've seen.
Now, it is more a survival story than "tomb raiding," with the latter being a side event at most. There's a lot of harsh situations and a nearly-unending onslaught of cultists and such. Honestly, it's a little ridiculous if you stop to think about just how many people there are on this little island, and how they have these sprawling compounds and ship hulls hoisted into the air and... well, yeah. That's the way it is for most games. In a "realistic" game, the hero would probably be mowed down. And if they weren't, the bad guys would start saying "y'know, this person has a kill count in the hundreds, maybe I just want to get out of the way now." But... if you don't think about that too much, it's not bad. From a gameplay perspective, encounters are paced pretty well overall. Admittedly, Lara goes pretty fast from shock of her first kill to gunning down cultists left and right, but that's really another story-gameplay issue - as an interviewed writer pointed out, they kept the player from having a gun for an hour or more already, so they sort of felt pressured to allow the player to start fighting back. I would wish, however, that there were a little more option to avoid killing people.
When you get down to it, though, I liked the gameplay more often than not. I liked the story. The graphics are pretty damn awesome (at least on Ultimate). This Lara Croft is an action hero badass (which involves Con as a primary ability score!) here. It actually made me think I almost want to see Jhazza in a story like this, gaining her transformative powers along the way as she cheats death time and again largely through perseverance. There are some gender elements in the story, but the big deal made about threat of rape wasn't (either that scene was changed or people jumped to the wrong conclusion), and I felt most of Lara's interactions with her enemies were gender-irrelevant.
Addendums:
While use of the middle mouse button as both alt-fire (press) and weapon select (scrolling) was awkward a few times, kudos to the designers for probably the most satisfying in-game bow. It felt as though it behaved about right in the game itself and it was easy enough to de-ready the weapon without accidentally firing off a shot (as I've done in many other games).
Much as I like the game, make no mistake that it's fairly bleak. There are some beautiful views, but moments of "happiness" are pretty scarce as most of the game is protagonist versus the whole island.
I think I might have played an earlier game. TR2 maybe? Not sure. Platform-and-shoot games weren't really my thing at the time, and while I was aware of them, they just never seemed something I'd be interested in. When I heard of a prequel/reboot, I didn't look real closely. When people screamed "OMG! Brutality toward women!" about some released footage, I... well, sorta rubbed my head and went on with life. But... I saw enough to be interested.
Comparisons have been made to Uncharted, and that's probably fair. The action-platforming-QTE mix is similar, the main character goes through all sorts of hell, things are discovered... all that jazz. It also reminds me of the Metal Gear Solid games in that there's a story that I want to follow (though MGS gets a little crazy at times) and there's gameplay that I enjoy and want to get into more, but the two sort of conflict. When the story is in full gear, options are limited - the direction of travel is pretty much direct and linear and the encounters are pretty well scripted. Yet the gameplay is at its best when you can roam freely around a wide open area, avoiding or encountering opposition based on your actions. Balancing the two is difficult, but this game does it pretty well after getting into things.
"After getting into things" is a fairly major point. The story and gameplay are the most opposed in the opening hour or two of the game. Progress is tightly controlled, with lots of scripted scene and quick time events - and the QTEs are not a strong suit here, especially when suddenly throwing a new button to press into the mix in a "do this or die" moment. As with many QTE scenes, the ones here tear attention away from what's happening to try to make out the key prompts, and that's part of what is bad about them. But... as the game progresses, it opens up more, and the brutal QTEs lighten up or become less frequent. The game does manage to find a balance that, for my money, is better than most I've seen.
Now, it is more a survival story than "tomb raiding," with the latter being a side event at most. There's a lot of harsh situations and a nearly-unending onslaught of cultists and such. Honestly, it's a little ridiculous if you stop to think about just how many people there are on this little island, and how they have these sprawling compounds and ship hulls hoisted into the air and... well, yeah. That's the way it is for most games. In a "realistic" game, the hero would probably be mowed down. And if they weren't, the bad guys would start saying "y'know, this person has a kill count in the hundreds, maybe I just want to get out of the way now." But... if you don't think about that too much, it's not bad. From a gameplay perspective, encounters are paced pretty well overall. Admittedly, Lara goes pretty fast from shock of her first kill to gunning down cultists left and right, but that's really another story-gameplay issue - as an interviewed writer pointed out, they kept the player from having a gun for an hour or more already, so they sort of felt pressured to allow the player to start fighting back. I would wish, however, that there were a little more option to avoid killing people.
When you get down to it, though, I liked the gameplay more often than not. I liked the story. The graphics are pretty damn awesome (at least on Ultimate). This Lara Croft is an action hero badass (which involves Con as a primary ability score!) here. It actually made me think I almost want to see Jhazza in a story like this, gaining her transformative powers along the way as she cheats death time and again largely through perseverance. There are some gender elements in the story, but the big deal made about threat of rape wasn't (either that scene was changed or people jumped to the wrong conclusion), and I felt most of Lara's interactions with her enemies were gender-irrelevant.
Addendums:
While use of the middle mouse button as both alt-fire (press) and weapon select (scrolling) was awkward a few times, kudos to the designers for probably the most satisfying in-game bow. It felt as though it behaved about right in the game itself and it was easy enough to de-ready the weapon without accidentally firing off a shot (as I've done in many other games).
Much as I like the game, make no mistake that it's fairly bleak. There are some beautiful views, but moments of "happiness" are pretty scarce as most of the game is protagonist versus the whole island.
From what I have seen, you want to master the QTE's because Lara's demise is so grisly if you fail you feel bad.
ReplyDeleteThere certainly is that. Restarting isn't too painful (well, running off a new computer with an SSD main drive anyway), but the clips are a bit on the grisly side in many cases. Somehow, I think I've seen QTEs that were less offensive back in... Indigo Prophesy and Heavy Rain maybe? Gimmicky, but not offensive. Increasingly, though, I find you get them in tense, dramatic, visually exciting moments - and that's exactly the worst time to be pulling a player's attention to little button indicators. You have to focus on the mechanic prompts to get through the scene rather than all that spiffy in-character action. Tomb Raider has a few early QTEs that are worse than usual because they do something like: - I've mashed the moment keys, I've even mashed E when prompted... now in this QTE I have a split second to hit F or have to relead and replay the scene. That's a harsh way to teach a new element. - Yay, I've mastered the basics of QTEs, now to avoid being mauled by a wolf, the screen prompts to mash the left and right movement keys. Okay, I've done that before.... Why do I keep dying? After reading some forum posts, I followed some advice and instead of hitting the keys faster, tried to match the prompt speed on the screen. This worked, but it took total focus on the prompts and no other QTE in the game seemed to behave that way. I'm not quite as anti-QTE as Yahtzee, but it's difficult to make them an interesting variation in gameplay rather than an annoying distraction.
ReplyDelete