Tomb Raider Options

[_Pax._]

So, I've been playing the game for several hours now (8, according to Steam). My impression is generally positive, though it's not "blowing my mind" or anything. Decent story, IMO, that does a good job of turning "ordinary college girl" Lara Croft into, well, the Tomb Raider. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Some of the "timed event" things - close-quarters struggles with various enemies - are supremely annoying, and I could wish for a bit more open-world-ness at some points.

But overall, I'm enjoying it.

[CanRay]

Just rented, will review later.

[_Pax._]

I've hit a few pretty catastrophic bugs, and a few that were minor irritations.

Minor:

• An arrow was stuck to Lara's hand - not 'cause she got shot, just, it got stuck there. Looked awkward, clearly game-engine-y. Had to save, exit, and restart the game to fix this
• Have been able to see through "chinks" in the terrain once or twice.
• Had some texture issues in one ruined hut; wall was visible from one angle, but not the other side.
• A few texture-flicker errors with Lara's hair during cutscenes.

Major:

• at a few points (early on, mid-rope-slide) the graphics engine locked up, temporarily.
• just now, pretty far into the main storyline, the sound cut out entirely, mid-shotgun-blast.

Game-stoppers:

• Had one, complete and total program lockup. Had to forcibly terminate the program.
• that sound-cutout I mentioned above, was accompanied by a "combat mode refuses to end" problem - because the end-of-danger sound couldn't play. Had to reload the checkpoint - fortunately, lot zero progress, but still ...

[_Pax._]

Aaaaand ... I'm done. During the climactic battle sequence, Lara finally gets to do her signature twin-pistol-wielding schtick. Got a huge pile of XP for winning ... not that it matters, because, you know, game over.

End credits are not skippable, that's a strike against the devs IMO. Especially since they've been runnign for FIVE SOLID MINUTES now, and show no signs of ending anytime soon. Jeeze.

EDIT: oh, this is even worse, they friggin PAUSE when you alt-tab to another application. Good lord!

EDIT2: ... and then fade into a balck screen, with music playing. And still not skippable. WTH?

[CanRay]

Glad I rented it if it lasts so short.

So far, no major problems running on my PS3. Interesting storyline, intriguing artifacts, and a really, really badly beat up Lara Croft!

[_Pax._]

Okay, now that I've had some time to sleep after a marathon play session, my thoughts about Tomb Raider 2013:

When I finished the storyline, my game was at 80% complete. I fooled around for a while, picking up the remainign relics, documents, and GPS caches; some tasks were too tedious for my tastes, and one GPS cache I couldn't figure out how to get to. Nonetheless, I managed a 93% completion before finally saying "good enough, I'm done".

The Good
Gameplay is smooth and intuitive, hidden objects aren't punishingly-well-hidden, and on Easy, ammunition was plentiful enough that it was no concern, other than "right, everyone but me is dead, time to go through their pockets for loose change". (I suspect it's a much bigger deal on higher difficulties - which I'll find out soon enough.)

The story was "proper" Tomb Raider in theme and atmosphere - a good mix of history, hollywood archaeology, and mythology-but-it's-real hocus pocus. And more: it was sufficiently engaging that I didn't deviate from the storyline, to go "just explore", until about three quarters of the way through. It did leave some room for improvement (some real choices along the way might have been nice - "do I go save A, or try to retrieve B while it's briefly accessible?"

The salvage mechanic, and weapon upgrades, was similar. Decent, engaging, but could have used some "pick one of these 2-3, and lose access to the other ones" decision points, IMO.

Visually, the game is gorgeous. With my new computer, I turned everything up to 11 straight off (but had to dial it back one notch, see below).

The Bad
The game feels cramped, and more than a little short; it's all on the one island, not one inch of which looks suitable for farming or herding, which would have been required to support the Yamatai (the ancient civilization whose ruins you generally explore). Fishing is god and all, but for a culture that maintains a standing army and navy, yeah ... um ... farmland, where is it?

The control layout for KB&M needs improvement. I'm going to dig out my Xbox controller before playing again. This exacerbates the third "Bad":

Timed Events. These things were a serious PITA, partly due to KB control layout, and partly because several of them were completely unavoidable; they were part of "Story gates", either you get past them or you can't progress the story.

Once-only access to certain areas, just a few, is another concern. One part, an ascent up a mountain village/road, is stupid about not letting you go back: there's a rope ladder attached to a cliff, which you climeup to get to the higher area. And you can't climb back down; trying, by any means, is instant death. Bugger.

There aren't really many alternate paths (see my lament about the absence of decision-points, above), so I suspect the replay value will be fairly low.

The Ugly
Bugs, it has them. Despite a strong, new/recently-built, very up-to-date machine, I had a couple hard lock-ups. And a couple of graphics locks that were temporary (as I believe I mentioned above), as well as one complete sound failure. With a computer like mine, this simply should not happen.

Also, those damnable end credits. They're 12 minutes long. TWELVE. MINUTES. Unskippable, short of CTRL+ALT+DELETE, and they bloody pause when you alt-tab away from the game.

And, either I had another lockup, or, they end in an equally-unskippable black screen of nothing (with the same music still playing).

[_Pax._]

Glad I rented it if it lasts so short.

I played it on Easy (which let me just run-and-gun through a lot of fight sequences), and it took me 14 hours to hit that 93% mark. 12 hours to complete it, I think.

For my Normal plythrough, I expect I'll need to be a lot more cautious about combat - focus on the Bow, and creep around more.

[CanRay]

Just beat it on normal, 78% completion. I'm not good at timed events, so it's likely the GPS Containers (Annoyingly small things) and tombs I've missed out on. You *CAN* still "Run 'n' Gun", but cover is your very good friend. Silence and sneaking are better, but not always an option. I like the selection of weapons given in the game, even if I am scratching my head as to how a few parts turns a Japanese Type 100 into an AK-Clone (Then again, you might have just found the parts of an AK and assembled it, which I'll grant is good enough.).

Hunting for XP was actually a bit fun, even if wolves are f***ing annoying. They don't typically attack humans, but they explain that part in the game.

Considering how she looks at the end of the game, however, I'm surprised that Lara is able to wear a sleeveless dress ever again... She's gotta be more scarred up than I am!

EDIT: Now, to have a crossover with Nathan Drake...

[_Pax._]

Actually, the GPS containers are just TINY. And most of the tombs, there might be some "get th timing right", but it's not the "mash F when the circles match" kind of thing. My 80%-to-93% jump involved a lot of GPS caches, relics, and documents; I'd done all the tombs on the way through, anyway.

Also, each map has 1 or 2 specific "do these things for big bonus XP" tasks. Lighting all the firebowls of the Himiko statues in the Mountain Village, for example. Or, finding and shooting down all the Grim Totems around the first Forest area. That sort of thing.

However ... I just got another hard crash ... this time the program gave me a popup, claiming to be "out of memory" ... nevermind that I've got 3GB on my video card and another 16GB of system memory. Oh, and a 240GB SSD, which is almost as fast as DDR3 RAM anyway. >:P Which tells me, the damned thing has an out and out memory leak. Way to release a professional program, eh? /facepalm

[CanRay]

Considering the lack of bugs on my end, I think it's more a matter of "Way to release a pathetic port of a console game to PC."

Which, sadly, is how the industry is going. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Wounded Ronin]

LOL, I wasn't even aware there was a new Tomb Raider game because I'm out on a small Pacific island. Watched, with great difficulty, due to low bandwidth, the trailer.

Read the author's commentary. Sounds like interesting character development and quality writing.

People have a problem with Lara grunting? That's probably the VA's fault. Maybe the actress wasn't really athletic so while they recorded her doing athletic things she made more noise than a female MMA athlete might. Oh no! Anti-feminism!

Wish I could play it. Oh well, maybe in a couple years.

Motivates me to spend more time out in the jungle. I'm still trying to find the time to do a little project and make myself a ghille suit from locally available materials.

[Adarael]

I've been loving the game. Oddly, in contravention of all the horror stories, I've not had even one glitch or crash on either my work PC or my home PC. Which is extra odd, because one runs an Nvidia 660ti, and the other a Radeon 7850.