A mostly very fun roller coaster ride that keeps getting in its own way.
Replayed this over the long weekend as a companion to playing through the old TR I-III remaster.
As a re-imagining of a post-Uncharted Tomb Raider, this hits a lot of high points. At its best, it's thrilling, but it keeps stumbling and undermining itself. Dramatic cinematic scenes sometimes just cut away at a key moment, like they didn't have the technical capability or budget to animate what they wanted to, so they just... didn't show it? Exposition is also oddly clunky and abbreviated at times. Ludo-narrative dissonance is common in games like this, but here it reaches the level of plot hole: e.g. Alex's courageous self-sacrifice is more confusing than dramatic since we just got finished destroying a damned fortress and wiping out a small army as a righteously pissed-off Lara, so why is she letting the computer geek who can't shoot for shit take one for the team when we've battled our way out of tougher corners than that several times over?
The games tendency towards torture-porn has been commented on many times, and it can be a bit much. For me, it's so extreme it kind of tips over into comedic. The island is practically carpeted with skeletons. There's thousands! And way more recently butchered corpses and pools of viscera than makes any kind of sense for the population of this island. Where did they all come from?!
Mechanically, it's a lot of fun. The platforming can feel a little floaty, but it still feels kinetic. Combat is satisfying, probably the biggest point where it surpasses its influences, although the game is not long enough to justify the size of its skill tree: I feel like several abilities I got to use, like, once, max (a problem that got worse as the trilogy wore on). That's not a complaint about the length, I'm perfectly happy with a 10-15 hour main story in a game like this, but the progression systems should be balanced to fit the game. On the downside, this being a collect-a-thon of mostly-pointless "challenges" and GPS trackers and what-not is an unnecessary distraction that I guess we got because skill trees and collect-a-thons is what AAA games are nowadays.
So it's a good time, but it can't quite reach the heights of the better Uncharted games it's influenced by.
Replayed this over the long weekend as a companion to playing through the old TR I-III remaster.
As a re-imagining of a post-Uncharted Tomb Raider, this hits a lot of high points. At its best, it's thrilling, but it keeps stumbling and undermining itself. Dramatic cinematic scenes sometimes just cut away at a key moment, like they didn't have the technical capability or budget to animate what they wanted to, so they just... didn't show it? Exposition is also oddly clunky and abbreviated at times. Ludo-narrative dissonance is common in games like this, but here it reaches the level of plot hole: e.g. Alex's courageous self-sacrifice is more confusing than dramatic since we just got finished destroying a damned fortress and wiping out a small army as a righteously pissed-off Lara, so why is she letting the computer geek who can't shoot for shit take one for the team when we've battled our way out of tougher corners than that several times over?
The games tendency towards torture-porn has been commented on many times, and it can be a bit much. For me, it's so extreme it kind of tips over into comedic. The island is practically carpeted with skeletons. There's thousands! And way more recently butchered corpses and pools of viscera than makes any kind of sense for the population of this island. Where did they all come from?!
Mechanically, it's a lot of fun. The platforming can feel a little floaty, but it still feels kinetic. Combat is satisfying, probably the biggest point where it surpasses its influences, although the game is not long enough to justify the size of its skill tree: I feel like several abilities I got to use, like, once, max (a problem that got worse as the trilogy wore on). That's not a complaint about the length, I'm perfectly happy with a 10-15 hour main story in a game like this, but the progression systems should be balanced to fit the game. On the downside, this being a collect-a-thon of mostly-pointless "challenges" and GPS trackers and what-not is an unnecessary distraction that I guess we got because skill trees and collect-a-thons is what AAA games are nowadays.
So it's a good time, but it can't quite reach the heights of the better Uncharted games it's influenced by.