Showing posts with label Tomb Raider. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tomb Raider. Show all posts

Wednesday 24 October 2018

Shadow of the Tomb Raider Review

In the shadow of boredom


Lara Croft has traversed many kilometres in her existence. First, she presented herself to us in her blocky form in 1996, but as the polygons got more rounded in the later games, it ultimately led to her demise, in the form of barely playable catastrophe named Angel of Darkness. Originally, AOD was meant to become this grand trilogy, but Eidos had to scrap the rest due to bad sales and low quality of the game. Lara has pretty much disappeared from our sight after this terrible ordeal.

Meanwhile, Eidos was thinking on how resurrect our popular heroine and ordered Core Design and Crystal Dynamics with something exciting. Both studios produced a prototype of an anniversary version of the very first TR, but Core has not learnt its lesson. According to the leaked footage, they were clinging onto the old 3D control scheme, where Lara is basically stuck to the ground and has to slowly turn to switch directions (famously known as the tank controls), while Crystal has shown much modern approach to gameplay. They have moved the emphasis from hanging onto the ledges into automatic grabs and climbing. What has happened after, is history. Legend, Anniversary and Underworld were a successful reboot trilogy, however, failed to reach the success of the original TR.



2013 has brought us yet another reboot of the brand, again in the reigns of CD. This time, they have shown us a much more vulnerable side to Lara, stranded on a mysterious japanese island, her very first adventure with a new group called Trinity in her way. While this part contained a lot of shoot-outs and almost no tombs, the game was widely well received equally by most players and reviewers. After this success, we were given Rise of TR, which gave us a breath taking introduction in the mountains and beatiful Syria and Siberia. Some aspects got better, some worse, but as Crystal was working on the new Avengers game, the next TR game was given to the hands of Eidos Montreal. This for me was the first warning sign, that maybe I should wait for reviews first. So what could have possibly gone wrong with Shadow of Tomb Raider?

We have more tombs, less action and still, the game does not function well on its own. It is difficult to pin-point which aspect Montreal has failed on, but everything which made the previous two games fun such as exploration and discovery of new weapons and tools is just midlessly thrown into the game. I had no sense of Lara herself being motivated or growing throughout the adventure. Yes, you still discover the old forgotten cities and temples, but it does not have the same drive as in the previous titles. You´ll definitely won't be making the infamous sigh which Lara cheesily produced before which is a bit of a surprise as I have seen many reviews giving this game a 9/10. Another thing which made me scratch my head was the arsenal of weapons Lara can get. It feels redundant as there is no reason to buy or upgrade any other weapons besides the ones you find. SOTR suffers overall due to poorly thought out level design and while technically it is well made, it is missing the playfulness of the previous games.



The first big change that you'll notice is the unlocking of the abilities. The skill tree is now shown across the whole screen and you don't need to switch between three categories anymore. On one side, it is a good change but now the icons of the main categories are covering up half the screen for no reason and the actual skills are laid out in a grid like system. In the end, I've found it more confusing than useful. The worst thing about the skill tree is its efficiency. Besides some of the basic first skills you unlock automatically during the story, most of the skills are unneccesary like certain prolonged effects of berries or survival instict upgrades. The only one which was worth investing into was holding your breath for longer period of time (which you get for free anyway in one of the challenge tombs), the rest you can completely forget about as they barely do anything interesting.

One of the new additions in the game is the ability to dress into costumes with separate top and bottom parts as you can now combine different outfits together. Some of them possess certain attributes such as the hide from jaguar which makes you less visible to enemies and the boots from animal skin are less noisy. It is a nice addition but again, it didn't really matter in the end. In one of the hub cities you will be actually forced to wear a tribal costume, which wouldn't be such an issue if you were not in it for almost half of the game. This undermines this whole new system of combining these outfits, so most of them you won't be able to wear.

Swimming in the previous games was mostly focused on the surface but Shadow has finally added submerging fully and it is quite well presented. Lara will get to chance to swim a lot and you will find underwater passages quite often. You can speed up your swimming underwater as many times you might be pressed for time to find an air bubble to replenish your air supply. There are also eels patrolling some routes so you need to be careful and hide in the weed to avoid them. It is a bit of a shame that breathing the trapped air animation is exactly the same every time.


I didn't like such prominent focus on combat in TR 2013 and Rise, especially the passages where you could not avoid and the game made you into Rambo. In Shadow, you can count these on your hand. On one side, I find it nice that the authors listened to the complaints but now we fell into the exactly opposite extreme. The spaces where Lara is facing Trinity soldiers are a lot tighter and in some moments you have to use your knife and stealth approach only. Interesting addition is applying mud to your face and clothing, so Lara can blend in with the environment a lot easier without being seen. Stealth kills are a fun to perform but Shadow suffers from the corner syndrom (so typical for AC series), so all you have to do is to be stand against the wall and press a button to kill all the unsuspecting enemies. I am glad that they have added more ways to kill the enemies but it could have been better and more freely incorporated with the rest of the game.

Some enemies (most of them towards the end) are wearing helmets, making headshots practically impossible without alerting everybody around, which is not fun if you enjoy using the bow. Another new gadget is the thermal goggles, which some enemies start using later on and only if you cover yourself in mud you won't be seen when hiding in vegetation. However, there is an issue when trying to aim for when enemies are up close. The target reticular is a bit big and it can be difficult to shoot things in front of you. I have also noticed a strange way Lara equips the shotgun which miraculously just jumps straight into her hands which looks quite jarring.



Overall pacing of the game is uneven and after a pretty hectic beginning, all goes to a halt. Which, as such, is not a bad thing but when the game offers you two pretty big hubs to explore and there is no combat, everything slows down too much and you find yourself doing the boring sidquests in the hope of receiving something of value. Nope, sometimes you get a piece of outfit, sometimes just a mark on your map where a rare animal is or a challenge tomb is hidden. Things you can find easily yourself as the maps are very restricted and linear. TR 2013 had its charm in its uncharted island and Rise in its superb snow effects and they both have what Shadow is lacking – variability. Yes, both of these ran out of steam about halfway through, had too much action, explosions and had predictable story but at least the gameplay as such was still fun and environments were interesting to look at.

With a game titled TR I would also expect minimum bugs. I was especially looking forward to the fight with the jaguars. The music got more intense as I was drawing near the jaguar's nest but as soon as I got there, something was off. I found my foe crouching in the grass in the middle of the arena, just standing still, occasionally letting out a roar. Confused, I started to fire arrows into its back but the beast did not care at all. Only after I walked really close, it suddenly shot out of its position directly into a… wall. Luckily, the animal came to its senses and started attacking but the whole excitement of this fight evaporated. I haven't seen this bug since but it was a big letdown to see this within the first two hours of the game. Another issue happenes when you play the game under DX11. For some reason, as soon as you enter the first cave in the game, there is a horrible stutter, making it impossible to play. Only setting the game on a higher priority in the task manager remedied this but previous titles did not suffer from this problem.


Graphically, Shadow is on a similar level as Rise, there are not many major improvements. At the beginning I was enjoying walking in a deep mud and quite dense dark jungle enveloped in a light mist. All of the atmosphere was gone as soon as the sun came up and the whole feeling of being stranded kinda dissipates. Some views in the game are still nice but in comparison to its older siblings, I had barely pressed F12 besides getting a few screenshots for this review. Maybe it is due to jungle for not being as interesting during daylight as darker environments. Unfortunately, the music is again forgettable. I guess the days of iconic melodies from the nineties are long gone now and replaced with a bunch of repetetive tribal motives. Less is sometimes more and I would have enjoyed the silence of Lara's footsteps and occasional mysterious cries or squeals coming from the depths of the tombs instead. The constant drumming can get irritating when you are trying to focus on climbing or just absorbing the atmosphere around you.

The story of TR was never its strong point. Even going back to the oldest TR games or the previous trilogy, the story was always the weakest part. It is a bit confusing why is it such a hard thing to craft a more compelling story than the premise of finding an artifact and get home. Even employing Rhianna Prattchett for TR 2013 did not help much but it at least they gave us a backstory on the various Endurance crew survivors through logs and camera footage. Rise had a bit less of it but Shadow completely gives up pretending to make you care. In the beginning, Lara is trying to cope with her deed which caused a major cataclysm, costing hundreds of lives by stealing a sacred mayan dagger from its final resting place. This apparently puts a whole prophecy in motion which will ultimatley lead into the destruction of the world if Lara does not prevent it. She regrets the whole ordeal for like few minutes, shouts a bit at her companion Jonah and then goes back to the peaceful exploration of the cities and fetching side quests. Any sense of urgency is just not present well here. Trinity are forgettable as ever together with their leader whose motivations do not make much sense.


The only moment which stuck in my mind was when Lara finally gets angry with everything and there is a cool scene of her rising up (those who played know exactly which one), but there simply isn't such an iconic moment till the end of the game after this. The finale was a letdown as well. You just run to the end of the level while things explode and helicopters can't hit you if you keep moving (because plot armour) and the final confrontation is just completely emotionless. Even when the devs had a chance to make a meaningful impact, everything is suddenly all okay. There is just no progress, no lesson learned and Lara just moves on as if nothing happened, just another day with an a new artefact in her possession. The post credit scene does not give us any resolution or a hint of what is Lara up to next. That is not until you witness the alternate ending which got released with the game by accident and that gives us a lot more closure just by adding two little nods to the old games.

The game is also a lot shorter, almost twice as short as Rise of TR, which came as a bit of a surprise. I was expecting a longer experience, but on one hand I was happy that I didn't have to play more of this game due to lack of fun factor. It was supposed to be the pinnacle of the new reboot series but instead, it fell short. I can feel that the authors tried to play it safe while not changing too much and just adding bits and pieces here and there but in the end, it just felt hastily tacked on and without much cohesion. Possible explanation could be the DLC packages and first one called the Forge will add a new area and a co-op mode. However, not even NG+ mode will save it for me and while I felt that I wanted to replay TR 2013 and Rise again, Shadow left me with a bland aftertaste. Alas, I've just found the game boring as a long term fan of TR series. There were simply a lot more things I didn't like about it. I can just hope that the authors will improve upon their mistakes, that is if Square Enix will even give them the next game after questionable quality of this . As it stands now, it is a pale shadow of the Tomb Raider legacy.


6/10

- uninteresting characters and story
- jungle becomes a chore after a while
- boring gameplay
- fetch sidequests
- barely any action
- unnecessary skill tree
- linear progress

+ more tombs
+ some locations look good
+ underwater swimming
+ mud camouflage and stealth

Saturday 3 June 2017

Help fund the Tomb Raider Suite orchestral recording!

Lara Croft needs you!

Nathan McCree wants to bring you a remastered orchestral soundtrack from Tomb Raider 1 - 3 and for it to happen, he needs our help! Donating any kind of amount will get us closer to the goal and get yourself some awesome goodies in the process like a CD jewel case or vinyl.

Help fund the project on Kickstarter!

Monday 10 April 2017

Tomb Raider Suite Live in Concert


Just a few weeks before the performance I was on facebook, browsing through people's posts as usual. It was then, when I saw it. I previously bought tickets for Pokémon Symphony Orchestra in Apollo on 19th of December and then when I saw that Tomb Raider Suite will be performing first time ever, I was a bit dissapointed I didn't know about it a lot earlier. About a week before the event, I got time off for Sunday as well, so thought why the hell not and bought tickets for TR concert as a Christmas present for me and my fiance.

On the night of 18th, we arrived at Apollo with quite a big crowd of Lara fans gathering around the theatre. Getting in was pretty easy as we flashed our tickets past the doors, bought the programme and made way to our seats. Surprisingly we were offered better seats as not enough tickets have been sold apparently. Indeed that was true as minute before the opening the theatre was less than half filled with many empty seats around. The darkness settled in and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra started playing the Tomb Raider tunes, then Shelley Blond made an appearance and was our elegant host throughout the entire musical journey. It is hard to describe this entire experience in word, but I'll try my best. The expert composer himself, Nathan McCree, made an appearance in an unexpected interview at the start, which made us really excited for the whole experience. Throughout the concert they were also displaying various gameplay segments from the games which made the feelings and nostalgia really strong.


Everything began with Tomb Raider 1, released in 1996, and its memorable and completely unforgettable main tune. As the orchestra started playing it, many tears were shed. It was beatifully and masterfully performed and with the crisp sound of all the instruments, the chants, everything felt absolutely right. They immersed us in most of the TR1 tracks you remember and even added a little twist. For example the T-Rex hunt theme was made longer, as McCree was finally able to realize the tracks in their full lengths, as he explained later, not being limited by the length or bit size of the individual pieces.

Then Shelley Blond narrated us the success story of TR2 and the orchestra opened with a brilliant rendition of its main theme. They even pulled the track which I thought would be really difficult to do, I don't remember the official title, but you all sure remember it when it plays as Lara sets her first steps within the temple of Xian. There I have also learned that one of my beloved TR2 tracks is actually called Vertigo, which plays when Lara tries to reach higher ground in a house in Venice. It was also prolonged and it was pure joy listening to it. Very popular was the snowmobile trick, or Skiddo, as McCree labelled it. I did not think that an orchestra coud pull successfully pull it off but it was completely the opposite and many heads rocking back and forth was the proof of it.

After that, we finally reached Tomb Raider 3 and its main theme. Again, it was masterfully played and brought so much nostalgia to me personally. TR3 was the very first true 3D game I have ever played and as such, holds a dear place in my heart. I was a bit surprised that the Jungle cutscene with the crazy scientist Tony was performed as well and it fit the orchestra like a glove. Spooky Jungle is another one of my favourites and worked well. Also the mysterious sounding Puzlle Element track made a great appearance. Of course you could not have a TR3 experience without Geordie Bob track, which was again perfectly performed and loved every bit of it. At the end, McCree made another appearance and the audience clapped and screamed with excitement. The last performance was a medley of everything we heard so far and I wished for it never to end. There were also fun parts in between where they have included one of the TR fans' reactions to the game's beatiful music which were really hilarious.

Overall, the entire experience was completely unique, deeply personal and something to witness in your lifetime, especially if you are a TR fan. Being able to see the brilliant songs made live by an amazing orchestra and its conducter, Robert Ziegler, see Shelley Blond, Meagan Marie and Nathan McCree (even Winston made a surprise fun appearance!) in person was worth every pound spent on this event. The only downside was that there were not enough people witnessing this masterpiece maybe due to not enough of promotion, which is a shame. I only hope that there will be more concerts and a CD produced from this, because such experience must be shared with everybody. Thanks to everybody involved in this project and my gratitude goes to Nathan, Shelley and Meagan for letting us see them in person and getting their autographs (asking about LOK was a joke, btw).

PS: And how did this masterpiece sound like? Have a look! Mr. McCree kindly uploaded a recording of his new track, In the blood:



He also uploaded three tracks to soundcloud.com if you want to listen.
 More info about the concert, pictures and its aftermath also found here.

Sunday 27 September 2015

Lara Croft and the Faces of Evil

I did a little bit of research on Lara Croft figures recently and the results I found, in some cases, were really amusing. It is amazing how much of bad merchandise is out there but given Lara´s popularity, it is not suprising. What is surprising is the price on some of these items is way too high for the „quality“ of the build and accuracy to Lara herself. This article is just for fun with my descriptions below:



  1. Exhibit no.1 seems to have been sleep deprived for days and the surprised look on her face does not help the impression either. Her ponytail is also very thick and resembles more like another substance. 2/10

  1. This statue looks a bit better than no.1, however, the exaggerated features (especially the „neandertal“ brow) look really odd. 3/10
  2. This poor figurine has seen its better days for sure. The makers obviously heard nothing of body proportions and her giant shorts and shoulders make her look like she just fell of a cliff and this is her mangled corpse. There are straps on her chests for some reason and she wears a really thick red lipstick on her tiny face. One of the worst entries on this list indeed. 1/10
  3. This one is supposed to represent Lara from the movies, so it tries to look more like Angelina Jolie, which I do not think was fully conveyed. 5/10
  4. This is quite rare and expensive figure (around 70 dollars). While the body seems faithful and accurate to what she is like in Tomb Raider Anniversary, her face is quite atrocious with giant nostrils and bags under her eyes. 6/10
  5. Lara here isn´t too bad, however, her face does seem a bit off and her thick eyebrows and prolonged forehead does not help either. 5/10
  6. This Lara has huge eyes and lips resulting in a bit of a grotesque look unfortunately. 4/10
  7. Lara here looks quite alright, the only problem is a very long neck and a big „hair bump“ on her head. 7/10
  8. This was a set including a crocodile and Lara. Given her vacant look on her face, she does not seem to be too scared of holding crocodile´s mouth open like that. 4/10
  9. This Lara from Legend is one of the more expensive ones but it looks really good and worth the money. 10/10
  10. Another rendition of Angelina Jolie´s Lara, very bland looking. 4/10
  11. This was doubted „voluptous“ in the description, but the look on her face is more offputting if anything else. 5/10
  12. This „terminator-look“ Lara is another Angelina Jolie figurine, while a bit more distinct than the other two, the prolonged forehead makes her look like she is balding. 3/10
  13. This is a TR3 catsuit Lara. Her chin seems to be a bit too short, but it is not too bad otherwise. 7/10
  14. This is TR2 wetsuit Lara and I dare to say one of the best looking ones on the list in terms of being truthful to the in-game renders. Not too expensive as well, I really recommend it! 9/10
  15. The new Tomb Raider reboot got its own figures as well and this one has a lot of joints and accessories. It seems to be quite faithful to the game, so another good one to pick up! 8/10
  16. Angelina Jolie clones were quite a few and this one does not fall out of the line either. It seems just as bad as the others with a hint of trying to go for realism, which did not really pay off in the end. 4/10
  17. Lara even got herself to be a bad bear plush toy, if that´s your kind of thing.
  18. Based on Angel of Darkness, this statue seems alright. 7/10
  19. This is what happens to Lara when she rolls around in mud too much. The paint job on this figure is very sloppy, there are much better TR 2013 figures out there than this. 4/10
  20. Cheap version of no.10, this figure is trying to be faithful to Legend, but not as successfully. She seems to have too much of a make-up on her face and the eyes are quite off as well. 5/10
  21. Underworld rendition of Lara is actually quite alright and one of the better cheap ones. 8/10
  22. If this is the expression Lara has each time she exercise, then I rather not see it. It´s not one of the worst, but not exactly spectacular either. 4/10
  23. This is a very expensive statue released for the Temple of Osiris game and damn, it looks awesome (her hair seems to be a bit too big though). 9/10
  24. This is a very big statue and is very expensive. Her face seems alright but it is not quite looking like Lara though. 6/10
  25. TR4 Lara from the intro cinematic has her face covered to protect her from sand, but her very strangely shaped chest section takes the attention. 4/10
  26. Another Jolie Lara, one of the better ones I´d say. 4/10
  27. Angel of Darkness statue, quite large, but not really sure it´s any better than no.19, her jaw line seems to be too wide. 6/10
  28. TR3 Lara with a weird tiny nose, not much else to say here really. 5/10
  29. This is what would happen when you would try to inflate her head like a baloon... 2/10
  30. The only young Lara on this list with her head melted into her neck and with weirdly protruding breasts. 3/10

Bonus points for people who spotted the Lara Croft men´s underwear in the picture. Who would wear it anyway? 

Disclaimer: All the pictures are from Ebay listings and belong to their respective owners.

Thursday 20 December 2012

Steam Holiday Sale and end of the year (or the world?)

Steam started its annual holiday sale today. Legacy of Kain series are on sale too, so you can buy the whole pack for 11,97e. Strangely, the LOK series are not part of the Square Enix collection pack, which on the other hand has older Tomb Raider titles. Which games will you or have you bought so far? Enjoy the holidays and I hope you will play some good games!

In the previous poll, 67% of people who voted like the new Defiance texture pack, so I am glad you tried it out. Be sure to vote on the new poll too. I personally own pc versions of SR1 and 2 on gog, Defiance on a dvd from game magazine. I got also SR on Steam as a gift (thanks Merty!), but don´t plan to buy them there as well. I have all of the games on PlayStation. What about you? Feel free to leave a comment on where you got your LOK games from.

My ps1/2 LoK collection