It’s fitting that thematically this new Tomb Raider is about adapting, changing and ultimately surviving. It’s as true of Lara Croft’s journey as it is of this game’s attempt to make the series relevant again and fit within modern expectations.
Tomb Raider is a legacy game, one that produced a massive impact at the time, remains an important franchise and made the protagonist an icon. For all its importance, the way that other games handle the core concepts of shooting and climbing has progressed since the series was at it’s most notable. Adventures based on what Tomb Raider began have entirely changed how we think about it’s systems. We use weapons in different ways now, emphasising defense through finding cover as much as attack, we traverse environments completely differently, not needing as complex a set of rules about different methods of jumping.
This game is the result of recognising where design currently resides. This doesn’t feel much at all like the previous entries and that’s entirely a move for the better. This feels much like the sum of other parts. Learning lessons of effectiveness from other sources in recent memory and distilling down what made them successful.
Lara’s arsenal of weaponry is limited to five things and their alternate attacks. There’s no swan diving. There’s a variety of different upgrade mechanics that grow her abilities as well as the effectiveness of her gear. You can fast travel. You can backtrack and use newly discovered equipment in old areas. There are collectables. There are hidden areas with optional puzzles. There’s a vision mode that shows you the direction you should be heading toward. Some enemies carry riot shields and some are heavily armoured. This is a game that has learned lessons based on paying attention and displays that knowledge effectively. Every step it takes toward modernisation is the correct one.
That’s not to say that it eshews everything that makes Tomb Raider what it was. There’s still environmental puzzles that have to be solved by understanding the objects in your environment, piecing them together, turning things on at the right time and jumping over to somewhere else before everything resets. Some of these puzzles actually provided significant challenge, though that was a fault of not paying enough attention to all of the signposted possibilities.
It’s not just mechanically a more interesting experience. Narratively it offers so much more. The journey of Lara Croft is one that, although eventually becoming somewhat overblown for the purposes of providing a video game, has some necessary realism at the outset. She spends an hour being brutally ill-prepared for life on the island that she’s crash landed on. She’s hurt repeatedly, but from that hurt there’s growth, there’s the gradual unravelling and revealing confidence hidden behind layers of self doubt. She earns the ability to be seen as the character she’s always been.
That overblown nature does eventually feel at odds with the personal story at the heart of the game. She begins as someone distraught over the idea of taking a life, but proceeds to take hundreds more within the course of the game. This is an issue with a game needing to provide violence as an activity, but by no means is this a suggestion that the plot should have been altered to limit the amount of dissonance. The game makes violence fun and provides it, the game also provides a worthwhile story. The two things conflict, but not in a way that can’t mentally be overcome.
The environments are rich in colour and life regardless of which area you’re in. There’s some that display beach-side vistas of waves crashing against ocean wreckage, others that display disgusting viscera of near-stomach churning mounds of assorted human remains. The level of detail is staggering. The PC version allows players to turn on “Tress FX” technology that purports to make Lara’s hair far more realistic and reactive to movement and wind, rendering strands separately. This technology hasn’t quite reached the point where it works as intended yet. The constantly shifting hair can become a distraction and is better switched off. It’s worth seeing for the novelty but doesn’t quite provide the experience as advertised.
As it’s an attempt at a modern video game, Tomb Raider has to include a multiplayer mode in order to increase the sense of value. Those are the rules. Regularly in other games this comes with a sense of disappointment and the feeling the assets or production time could have been used elsewhere. That’s not really the case here. There’s no shortage of content in the singleplayer and the multiplayer is enough of a draw in itself.
The multiplayer’s strengths are in it’s simplicity. It doesn’t try too hard to break a mould. It carries the same gradual upgrade system over from Call Of Duty 4 that’s become the standard for the industry. The action barely differs from what you do in the single player with all your abilities carrying over, but the equipment varying based on your loadout.
Multiplayer modes have alternative goals for each sides. In one, the team of survivors needs to collect medical supplies while the island tribe just needs to kill enough of the other team. The teams are asymmetrical in their abilities too, each of which filling roles that are better suited to attacking or defending. The “Solari” have access to long range weaponry while the survivors are based on close range damage. The multiplayer is at worst inoffensive and at best actively recommendable, but it’s still not the strongest reason one should pick up the game.
Tomb Raider is an excellent game. It’s an excellent game because it takes cues from other excellent games. There’s nothing you’ll find in here that wasn’t instigated elsewhere and it doesn’t ever surpass these other sources, but it’s well iterated and will provide you with an experience you shouldn’t miss.
Tomb Raider is a legacy game, one that produced a massive impact at the time, remains an important franchise and made the protagonist an icon. For all its importance, the way that other games handle the core concepts of shooting and climbing has progressed since the series was at it’s most notable. Adventures based on what Tomb Raider began have entirely changed how we think about it’s systems. We use weapons in different ways now, emphasising defense through finding cover as much as attack, we traverse environments completely differently, not needing as complex a set of rules about different methods of jumping.
This game is the result of recognising where design currently resides. This doesn’t feel much at all like the previous entries and that’s entirely a move for the better. This feels much like the sum of other parts. Learning lessons of effectiveness from other sources in recent memory and distilling down what made them successful.
Lara’s arsenal of weaponry is limited to five things and their alternate attacks. There’s no swan diving. There’s a variety of different upgrade mechanics that grow her abilities as well as the effectiveness of her gear. You can fast travel. You can backtrack and use newly discovered equipment in old areas. There are collectables. There are hidden areas with optional puzzles. There’s a vision mode that shows you the direction you should be heading toward. Some enemies carry riot shields and some are heavily armoured. This is a game that has learned lessons based on paying attention and displays that knowledge effectively. Every step it takes toward modernisation is the correct one.
That’s not to say that it eshews everything that makes Tomb Raider what it was. There’s still environmental puzzles that have to be solved by understanding the objects in your environment, piecing them together, turning things on at the right time and jumping over to somewhere else before everything resets. Some of these puzzles actually provided significant challenge, though that was a fault of not paying enough attention to all of the signposted possibilities.
It’s not just mechanically a more interesting experience. Narratively it offers so much more. The journey of Lara Croft is one that, although eventually becoming somewhat overblown for the purposes of providing a video game, has some necessary realism at the outset. She spends an hour being brutally ill-prepared for life on the island that she’s crash landed on. She’s hurt repeatedly, but from that hurt there’s growth, there’s the gradual unravelling and revealing confidence hidden behind layers of self doubt. She earns the ability to be seen as the character she’s always been.
That overblown nature does eventually feel at odds with the personal story at the heart of the game. She begins as someone distraught over the idea of taking a life, but proceeds to take hundreds more within the course of the game. This is an issue with a game needing to provide violence as an activity, but by no means is this a suggestion that the plot should have been altered to limit the amount of dissonance. The game makes violence fun and provides it, the game also provides a worthwhile story. The two things conflict, but not in a way that can’t mentally be overcome.
The environments are rich in colour and life regardless of which area you’re in. There’s some that display beach-side vistas of waves crashing against ocean wreckage, others that display disgusting viscera of near-stomach churning mounds of assorted human remains. The level of detail is staggering. The PC version allows players to turn on “Tress FX” technology that purports to make Lara’s hair far more realistic and reactive to movement and wind, rendering strands separately. This technology hasn’t quite reached the point where it works as intended yet. The constantly shifting hair can become a distraction and is better switched off. It’s worth seeing for the novelty but doesn’t quite provide the experience as advertised.
As it’s an attempt at a modern video game, Tomb Raider has to include a multiplayer mode in order to increase the sense of value. Those are the rules. Regularly in other games this comes with a sense of disappointment and the feeling the assets or production time could have been used elsewhere. That’s not really the case here. There’s no shortage of content in the singleplayer and the multiplayer is enough of a draw in itself.
The multiplayer’s strengths are in it’s simplicity. It doesn’t try too hard to break a mould. It carries the same gradual upgrade system over from Call Of Duty 4 that’s become the standard for the industry. The action barely differs from what you do in the single player with all your abilities carrying over, but the equipment varying based on your loadout.
Multiplayer modes have alternative goals for each sides. In one, the team of survivors needs to collect medical supplies while the island tribe just needs to kill enough of the other team. The teams are asymmetrical in their abilities too, each of which filling roles that are better suited to attacking or defending. The “Solari” have access to long range weaponry while the survivors are based on close range damage. The multiplayer is at worst inoffensive and at best actively recommendable, but it’s still not the strongest reason one should pick up the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment