Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)

Не осилил.

Опять тоже самое: метроидвания, тупой сюжет, страдания и лудо-нарративный диссонанс. Вот только в этот раз сместили акценты и всё сломалось — играть стало тупо скучно.

В игре просрали стрельбу, причём на нескольких уровнях сразу. Во-первых, целиться почему-то неудобно. Прицел двигается либо слишком резко, либо, со сглаживание мыши в настройках, — слишком плавно. Во-вторых, перестрелок в игре стало слишком мало. А баланс навыков и оружия под это никто не менял. Зато можно обмазываться грязью и прятаться в зарослях, растущих на стенах. Вот только зачем мне тогда все боевые навыки и большой арсенал с прокачкой пушек?!

Многие хвалят гробницы, мол они стали больше и интереснее. Неа. Загадки остались такими же простыми, но стали нудными и не всегда очевидными. Если раньше ты сразу понимал, что надо делать, то здесь можно просто не заметить нужный уступ, потому что читаемость окружения стала в разы хуже. Не знаю как этого добились. Конечно, можно по отдельности настроить сложность загадок, исследования и боёв, но... Нахер надо, всё равно скучно играть.

Eidos took their chances to make Shadow of the Tomb Raider a distinct and great game. While it did not fully work out for me, I can recognize and appreciate the effort.

• I could not relate to Lara - while she is most likely depicted as obssessed with Trinity consciously, I find her "flat", unidimensional.
• The charged dialogues sometimes felt as if first the writers had decided to have them, then made them happen - ideally, you do that but want the dialogue to appear to emerge naturally.
• I could not stop thinking how little sense made to me those underground and underwater claustrophobic tunnels: found everywhere, full of skeletons, being used as shrines, and apparently in use.
• Not many of the skills seemed worth purchasing to me - I finished the game with most of the points earned unspent... although I admit I played the game in the default difficulty settings.
• Finally, I liked the story of the first game, and the tombs of the second one, better. And I still miss the QTEs.

That said...

• The game feels very real, the graphics are really great
• Some good dialogues
• The born of Lara Croft theme pushed further
• Rambo like action and fast action sequences
• Stealth and non traditional "cover system"
• An incredible final chapter conluding with a great final boss fight

A 7/10 for me.

This was supposed to be the culminating part of the new Tomb Raider series. The final and the best. Unfortunately it’s not and it’s a dissapointment. Not a bad game, though I was expecting more.

On a visual and game play level this is pretty much the same thing as the previous titles. If you have not played the previous ones - it’s technically not necessary to play them but I would advise doing so as the game touches on a lot previous events specifically touching on the ongoing Lara’s fight against the Trinity.

This time the adventure will take Lara to South America and she’ll get to explore some ancient mayan tombs. The story is not better and not worse from the previous - a standard save the world kind of thing. I do however feel that Trinity as an organisation looks a bit silly in this installment. From a powerful secret organisation it’s reduced to what’s shown here (as not to spoil some parts of the story).

Lara does what Lara always does. Climbing, running, fighting, hunting - the usual stuff.

How is it different from the past ones? The setting is nice. Many annoying underwater sections. Climbing has been a little refined with some new abilities. The stealth feels a little bit better than previously. Puzzles are fine. Skill tree is a huge misunderstanding. Too few challenge tombs in the base game - best part of the game hidden in the season pass. Cool escape the flood sections - nice looking and entertaining. Claustrophobic sections of squeezing through tight spaces making you feel really uncomfortable - cool.

So what’s bad? Too many water levels. Even more so - the water levels have air pockets where you can take a breath and go on - but the moment you do that the camera changes from back to front to show the animation of reaching for breath. What it does is that it confuses you which way you were going and where you should go which made me swim back a couple of times. Because everything looks the same underwater.

Also the jumping is bad. Especially the more cinematic ones - sometimes I couldn’t make the jump that I thought was obvious and searched for alternatives wasting some time. Other times a jump that looks impossible even within game standards is doable and Lara at times seemed to magnetically attracted to the ledge in an unnatural way.

And last thing - skill tree. Weird looking with a lot of useless skills. The game has little to no hunting yet a whole section almost devoted to animal hunting - why? The skills themselves feel weak and I’ve just spent points to get rid of the exclamation mark on the camp menu.

Don’t get me wrong - it’s a really good game. Not the best in the series for sure - but still a solid title worth picking up.

Oh - and so I don’t forget - this game has the most ridiculous Rambo style scene featuring Lara which makes no sense but is so cinematically awesome yet cheesy that I’d hesitate calling it the best moment of the entire series.

I finished all the season pass tombs and I'm really impressed about that. The tombs are the best part of this trilogy and I'm glad they went all-out for the DLC. Some of them are kinda 'meh', but some of the best challenges of the game are there. The Serpent Heart has an amazing section across water and The Path Home has the best puzle of the trilogy (IMHO).

I really hope this is not the end of new-Lara. I love the character so much (I even named my cat after her!). What about an older Lara in the next game? I'm all for that!

Anyway, have a new batch of captures.

I'm back in this game to try to get 100% and play the extra Tombs from the season pass (and because I really missed Lara). It's kinda fun and chill exploring this world without enemies or danger.

Anyway, I'm expending most of my time in photo mode, as usual. Have some few captures.

I enjoyed my time with this game but I can't help but feel the story was completely ridiculous in places and re-treads familiar territory. For anyone who has also played the Uncharted games it feel particularly grating that it just follows conventions and tropes.

It does hit some emotional moments and character depths but still never feels compelling enough to convince me these characters are any more than voice actors and fancy graphics.

The game should have been darker and made Lara question the tempest of darkness swirling inside of her. She should have been fighting internally not with the past, but with herself and her capabilities. That would have been a story worthy of the 'shadow of the tomb raider' title.