First off, let me thank THE LEADER GUY, RageInu for graciously letting me borrow a game that was going to be purchased eventually and stuck in the backlog. Thus, the pseudo preemptive title.
I also told Rage to write a review for this, being his game and having beaten first, but alas after multiple suggestions to do so...
Aww, Lara. Some of us have fond memories of this little lady from way back in the day. Stoic adventurer and raider of tombs, Lara has always had a place in my heart for the games she platforms in. Rebooted to a younger version, a few cup sizes smaller, and naive as hell, well at first...for like a minute. Releasing with grand reviews, this title truly lives up to the hype. Having getting my adventure fix from the Uncharted series, thanks Ranvier, you could see where this new Tomb Raider was trying to rebuild from it's past. Old Tomb Raider series begets Uncharted, Uncharted series begets new Tomb Raider. Taking many of the cues that makes Uncharted such a great series. There were a few stumbles when they try to flesh out Lara, the young, to Lara the adventurer that awaits.
This game is f*cking beau-ti-ful, the story gets going on a ship headed to the Dragon's Triangle looking for a lost island of Yamatai (f*ck this a real place?, I thought it was made up, huh!?, very cool, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamatai http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Sea), near Japanese waters. Legends and myths surround the island, as Lara and crew head toward the supposed whereabouts. Storm hits, and the Endurance (ship), goes down with the crew scattered about and Lara is on her own fighting to get back to her crew mates. Now, Lara mind you, is on her first voyage to parts unknown, so she is kind of lacking in the self-confidence department. Washed ashore alone, you find that this island is not all it is cracked up to be. Home to a large population and kingdom at one point in history to a military installment during WWII. Just all sorts of f*cking cool scenery, broken ruins of buildings, rusting metal from years of shipwrecks and plane crashes, crumbling from age. Lara fights her way to regroup with her crew mates.
The game designers tried to make you care about the trials of Lara, you know, her first animal kill, she kills a deer, says sorry, then rips that bitch open with an arrow head. She then can slaughter any animals she wishes without remorse. Crows, bunny rabbits, warthogs, crabs, gulls, nothing is above Lara's blood lust. Then she kills her first human enemy, weeps for like a good fifteen seconds and she is good. Let the blood feast begin! Bats nah an eyelash to the hundreds that follow, I do mean hundreds. Murdering cold bitch. Lara starts to murder in inventive and just outright violent sadistic ways. Stabbing arrows into knees, shotguns to the bottom of the chin, climbing axes to skulls and pulling people off high ledges. Cold, Lara, just cold. These care about Lara scenes made me laugh, because of the immediate got 99 problems but murdering ain't one feeling throughout the rest of the game. Sure, she is a survivor, just trying to save her own skin. It would be different the if the developers worked up to the killer inside, by sticking to stealth and avoiding conflict.
The game play is tight. The tools needed to explore the island are just like the original adventurer. Way, way above average, agility, acrobatics, strength, endurance all needed to perform some really great platforming sections and the reaching of high places. You start off with just a bow you scavenge off a body in the woods, simple sticks tied together primitive. Slowly gaining a pistol, shotgun, rifle and the fifth is the climbing ax if you count that. While traveling the island you find crates of junk, finding parts to upgrade your weapons to some serious hardware. The bow is by far the most deadly, but has the whole pulling the string back thing, so there is a little delay to death. You also acquire skills to make you much deadlier or more proficient within the environment of the island. Much of the levels are comprised of platforming to a section, meeting a group of enemies, deciding how to kill them and moving on. Go charging in, or, slowly pick off the group. While, not particularly dense in its approach this is satisfying as you have many options within these encounters and how they play out.
The island is a lush living and dying environment. Wildlife scurries about, trees blow in the wind and the past is crumbling around you. There is just so much history on this island. Through the game I felt the island was more interesting than the plight of Lara. The island is the story. You just want know the whole story to find out more. Scattered through the areas or documents telling of it's past, little snippets of the deeper mystery of the island. It was really worth trying to find all these stories, not to mention nice cheevos. I will say this is the most gruesome game I have played in a awhile. There are only a few areas where the bodies of the past aren't strewn all over, leading to some really foreboding ends on this island. The music is great also, eerie sounds, whispers in the dark and great crescendos of tense moments.
This is Tomb Raider, right? F*ck the tombs were a let down. In games past these were giant puzzles that needed resolved for you to move on. You could spend a good deal of time trying to figure the old puzzles in the tomb out. The developers must be saving this for the next game, ( I do hope they do ), because new Tomb Raider tombs suck. Most are simple caves, that have been re-purposed from the island inhabitants. I can only remember one where it truly showed the history that lay within and wasn't desecrated. The puzzles within these "tombs" are a joke, thirty seconds of trial and error and you figure it out. I so wanted the tombs to be the challenge that lay just beneath the surface to this great game.
Tomb Raider is a f*cking great game. The action is tight, the story is interesting and the island is a wondrous place of mystery and history. Anybody who likes the Uncharted/Indiana Jones-esque adventure should play this game. Gold standard GOOD INU. I can only hope they add a little more puzzle and a little less murder in the next one. I saw a body count video_SPOILER ALERT_
http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/03/30/tomb-raider-vs-tomb-raider-battle-of-the-bodycounts
and it gets a little ridiculous for my tastes. Like I said, hundreds. Lara is a cold, cold murderous bitch, but, I love this game.
SWS out.
thats the uncharted model.. i think i looked at the stats on one of the uncharted games and if memory serves my kill coutn was around 1,000 minions. Sounds good, ill have to pick it up and play it, looking for another adventure game and have been toying with the idea of playing uncharted 2 despite the backlog of mediocre games i have lying around.
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