Simon_Jester wrote:Random thought: maybe they just had to wait for the guys who played Tomb Raider in the '90s as a bunch of hormone-overcharged adolescents to grow up enough that they could play the game for nostalgia without expecting a one-dimensional bikini babe character like they got when they were fourteen. Sadly, this seems to have taken 15 years...
I would say this depends on whether oyu mean 'growing up' in a 'getting older' sense, or in a more psychological/social sense, because I've known plenty of people (myself included) who became 'adults' yet still acted pretty juvenile. That sort of development is highly variable (and some never outgrow it well into middle age or older. I've got relatives that way, for example.)
I think it would be interesting to know just how many people play this game (or played previous tomb raiders) and how much that influenced character portrayal and development. I never played the old Tomb Raider games (and I certainly haven't played the new one) so my experience with alot of this is second hand and probably less reliable.
besides my own bad platform skills which equal hundreds of post death reloads. So far theres once in the intro movie, once when she frees herself from hanging upsidedown by the pirate/thuggee, and right after finding the radio/survival pack and camcorder belonging to Sam. Oh and the bomber comes loose just before that (damn I was thinking archologists tried to preserve history not destroy everything with fire....
The scariest folk song lyrics are "My Boy Grew up to be just like me" from cats in the cradle by Harry Chapin
How many times does Lara fall off of things in order to be Dramatic and Exciting Setpiece?
Quite a lot, naturally. They are forgettable, so much so that I am having trouble recalling it to count. What I remember is some of the more memorable locations and set-pieces (like the windmill or The Pit).
Thing is, you can tell whether the area you are entering is about to be QTE-filled story-railroad by the map: if there are no collectibles or artifacts, then you are about to get go through some heavily-scripted event.
While QTEs are annoying, what I recall is that they were well-done as QTEs go (ie, not done like in RE4 where they popped out of nowhere in a second or like in C. Barker's Jericho where the promps were small and annoyingly difficult): you could tell when they were coming and you had a reasonable time to do it.
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If you imagine everyone shares your attitude toward QTEs, you'll probably be surprised. It's a bit sad when you can't even make a post without mentioning this element.
Vendetta, everything about DS3 got tiresome. It's just a Bad Game.
Tomb Raider avoids two of the cardinal sins of QTEs by having them follow mechanically from game play and having decently long times to react, so it's using the same controls to do cinematized versions of what you normally do with the buttons. It isn't enter arbitrary key combo you can't see if you watch the cinematic to pass, it's use the control that does something appropriate to the situation to do that something in a cinematic. It makes them feel a lot more like part of the game, which isn't the worst thing for a cinematic heavy action game.
Like many things it can be done well or poorly; it's the focus you give them that surprises me. I guess you're playing on PC.
Can you talk about other parts of the game without a QTE soapbox? My understanding is that the plot is ineffective, the characters flat and the game short. How does this math your experience?
My understanding is that the plot is ineffective, the characters flat and the game short. How does this math your experience?
How someone experiences a story is different from person to person. To me, the story was good because it worked as the game's story: the gameplay tried to revolve around it and it explained the setting.
As a story by itself, it can be seen as stereotypical and predictable "treasure hunter" fare. I am not familiar with that genre of movies, or many games, so I don't know just how much so it is typical.
I liked some of the ship-crew's moments*, but those are pretty few. The main antagonist to the story will be someone I growled about how he doesn't get that he's insane (which I guess means he is at least somewhat good as an antogonist, because I quickly grew to dislike him), but that's about as much to him. There will be a massive plot hole about him in the end, but it won't be noticeable. Spoiler
The end of the game is by killing the last, undead earthly Vessel of the Queen. By fire, naturally, Lara just walks up to her and torches her. The plot hole, is why didn't Father Matthias try to do that also? He managed to get to the Queen's corpse on his own, and probably multiple times if he tried to sacrifice girls to the Queen directly.
An arguable defense, is naturally that Father Matthias is so crazy that he didn't think of that. That by the time he figured out that the Queens cause the storms, he was so crazy by whatever that the thought was literately unthinkable.
Still, if he could get there, why can't others too? Why hasn't any one else not think of doing that before Father Matthias formed the Solarii? There were organized, armed forces on the island before after all.
The more definable moments, is that of Lara herself. I like small tidbits like how she is enthusiastic about a treasure's historic context, and that she isn't reaching for the golden stuff when she finds a treasure chest. Most of her characterization is when she attempted to be portrayed as human, mostly by making her go roll in the mud or have something sudden and dangerous happen. Spoiler
*"That's nothing, pal! I grew up in Glasgow!"
And yes, the "!" should have been there.
How short the game is, partly depends on how you play. If you give in to the nagging urgency the plot tries to give you and skip on all the collectibles, you'll be finished with the game on a weekend and perhaps a few off-hours week-days. If you do collect all the collectibles (which is relatively easy as they are highlighted), then you'll be finished only slightly latered, perhaps making the game last a few more weekdays if you play only a few hours on a workday.
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Stark wrote:Is that a really long way of saying 'they're easy'?
I can see why they let poor players turn them off in RE6.
No, it was a really long way of saying they don't feel like press x to not die. They feel like part of the game. I'm partly trying to talk through why I didn't mind them when I do in some cases and it's such a bugbear for so many people.
I had a similar discussion with Tolya the other day, and I almost feel the other way; heavily checkpointed QTEs (as in games like RE6) that result in deaths are false results, because you just get put back to the exact same spot to do it again - only now you know what to do. Nothing is lost or gained either way so they're basically meaningless. I mean I rule at QTE because 'skills' but in may situations they're basically redundant (might as well just kill the player and make them respawn automatically lol).
Its much easier for people to deal with them in action contexts, where rather than it be 'mash A to not get raped' its 'do whatever to explode a car or open a door', something you consensually decided to do. To be relevant QTEs have to contribute something, whether its a feeling of engagement (as in most Japanese games) or whatever. Games like Jericho are balls, but everything about it sucked so singling out the QTEs for sucking is useless. Games like Asura's Wrath which have whole sequences built around QTEs can still be awesome (unless you have no button-pressing abilities, which is what I think is behind most QTE-focused complaining).
Mercenaries was a so-so game which used QTEs for stealing military vehicles ; Which I think was a p. good implementation, since it was something you had to CHOSE to do. If you didn't want to do QTEs you could just buy vehicles for ingame monies and had them delivered to you.
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Connor MacLeod wrote:I think it would be interesting to know just how many people play this game (or played previous tomb raiders) and how much that influenced character portrayal and development. I never played the old Tomb Raider games (and I certainly haven't played the new one) so my experience with alot of this is second hand and probably less reliable.
Tomb Raider was a huge thing when it popped and IIRC EIDOS was about to crater until Tomb Raider bailed them out. No "bikini clad warrior" was going to accomplish that. What did was that Tomb Raider was a fucking great game in almost all aspects and I only recall a few minor annoyances.
However, like many Brands that are created, even the developers don't understand why they were great games. So, instead of another puzzle game with some combat that looked and sounded awesome, we got an even more hilariously proportioned heroine and SHIT-LOADs more combat and less puzzles. And it didn't help that every fucking publication everywhere was trying to convince us Tomb Raider was great because Lara Croft was fuckable. I had so many hours in the original Tomb Raider, but I couldn't be bothered to play TR2 for more than an hour or so. It was just so bland.
On a related note, and this is probably a load of bullshit because I hold grudges, but I partially blame the reaction to TR1 and 2 for why developers usually don't bother with female leads because they can't understand their own audience. It's like they honestly believed TR was popular because of boobs, rather than excellent graphics, soundtrack, controls, and gameplay (you know, actual important stuff) in addition to boobs. Then when it doesn't break sales charts because of said boobs, it's "women leads don't sell," not "we made a shitty cash-in sequel, sorry."
TheFeniX wrote:
On a related note, and this is probably a load of bullshit because I hold grudges, but I partially blame the reaction to TR1 and 2 for why developers usually don't bother with female leads because they can't understand their own audience. It's like they honestly believed TR was popular because of boobs, rather than excellent graphics, soundtrack, controls, and gameplay (you know, actual important stuff) in addition to boobs. Then when it doesn't break sales charts because of said boobs, it's "women leads don't sell," not "we made a shitty cash-in sequel, sorry."
The original Tomb Raider was a good game because it had fun combat and fun puzzles by the standards of the day, but I can hardly blame game devs for getting the impression that it was popular because people were fapping to Lara. There were an absolute shit-ton of creepers who were very vocal about being into the game for precisely that reason. Remember all the bullshit online about the "nude raider" cheat codes that didn't exist? or entire porn sites popping up dedicated to it? Yes, developers got the wrong impression of why people enjoyed Tomb Raider, but that impression did not form in a vacuum. They pandered to a very vocal market that they thought would get them sales, so fans are hardly blameless in the equation.
And this is why you don't watch anything produced by Ronald D. Moore after he had his brain surgically removed and replaced with a bag of elephant semen.-Gramzamber, on why Caprica sucks
Darksider wrote:The original Tomb Raider was a good game because it had fun combat and fun puzzles by the standards of the day, but I can hardly blame game devs for getting the impression that it was popular because people were fapping to Lara. There were an absolute shit-ton of creepers who were very vocal about being into the game for precisely that reason. Remember all the bullshit online about the "nude raider" cheat codes that didn't exist? or entire porn sites popping up dedicated to it? Yes, developers got the wrong impression of why people enjoyed Tomb Raider, but that impression did not form in a vacuum. They pandered to a very vocal market that they thought would get them sales, so fans are hardly blameless in the equation.
The Internet is full of fucked up people: news at 11. And this was 1996 Internet which was barely starting to break out of the "only good for porn and pirating" era. Oh man.. Geoshitties.
I would think developers could bother reading actual reviews rather than the "sex sells, so sell it" pop culture bullshit that sprung up around Lara Croft. It was like gaming finally had something visible (what with 3d modelling) that they could show to the general masses and say "look, gaming is mature: BOOBIES!" And if you're pandering to sex addicts at the expense of gameplay, you have no one to blame but yourself when your IP starts going to shit. This all because EIDOS (Core, really) thought a woman would fit into the role for TR better because the emphasis on "not combat" is more fitting for a woman. The gender (really any characterization) of the protagonist for TR was dead last on their priorities and didn't affect the quality of the game. And since Croft was popular and they started to focus on her in subsequent games.... we saw a nice descent into mediocrity for the brand for reasons that are pretty damn evident.
And it wasn't just a group of "creepers" getting in on this, shit rags like GamePro (I think) started cranking out Croft centerfolds and every gaming convention ended up with some random model in a Croft getup. Maybe I was just super-mature for my age (highly unlikely) but I never got the impression from the game or the average player that Lara was this trend-setter. Instead, it was like every review mag and marketer was trying to convince me I liked TR1 because Croft was HAWT. Had Core and EIDOS focused on what actually made TR1 great, then the series might be more than "these games that gave teenagers boners."
But seriously, when did "we pander to idiots" become a defense for boring and mediocre games? It's even worse for EIDOS because unlike Activision and Epic (among others), their mindless pandering didn't keep making them millions because it was totally off-base.
Fans didnt design the marketing. The devs made several attempts to make the game more 'serious' (starting with TR2) but they usually combined this with a move away from the core platforming gameplay and got confused responses. Even pretty good games like Legends weren't big sellesr, probably because many people wouldn't even look at a Tomb Raider game.
