OFFICIAL Tomb Raider (Discussion)

[Drone]

how does it compare to the Old Tomb Raider games? better? great re-imagining? similar? or they messed it up?

I loved all of the games up until the last two.

It's hard to say exactly. They are fundamentally different so it's virtually impossible to compare them. However, here are some aspects (good and bad):

1) It has lame elements from Underworld, such as:
white ledges, invisible walls, linearity, blackouts, no free climbing, no open world, no sprint, no tough secrets, no swimming! That was the biggest letdown about this game. It killed realism.

2) It's relatively easy game, at least for those who used to beat tough puzzles from old games. I remember that I've spent months (!) playing The Last Revelation and Angel of Darkness (for those who have no idea: it's Tomb Raider 4 and Tomb Raider 6) but TR2103 is indeed million times harder and better than LAU trilogy.

3) (for the first time) TR has day/night cycles which is amazing. You can revisit areas in different periods of time. It also has amazing weather effects. This is a big plus for TR.

4) This game is a total reboot but you can still recognize some nice elements from previous TR games which is really good. Even though Lara is no longer an anti-heroine, she's now just a good girl killing everyone around.

5) Characters are kinda lame in this game but the main protagonists Lara and Roth are quite cool. However Lara suffers way too much in this game but in the next second she's good to go lol. Wish I had such regeneration abilities.

6) Level design is beautiful. Beach, shanty town, forest, mountains are amazing. However there are some really crappy booooooring and cartoonish places like rivers of blood and shores of skulls Like they literally killed billion people on that damn island. Laboratory was a lame place as well. A huge building with zero equipment, what a lab is that. Geothermal caverns ain't good either with some cartoonish green gas lol.

7) This game lacks sense of danger. It's full of QTE and automatism. In 99% Lara won't miss ledge, you're virtually unable to throw her from the cliff. You no longer need to carefully choose timing and spacing to make a jump. You just jump and Lara will grab automatically. It's really lame. Sometimes she can't die lol.

8) Really amazing elements are not there: no monkey swing, no commando crawl, no tightrope walking, no rope swinging and all those good ol' acrobatics. Instead just lotsa ledge hopping like in Underworld .. meh.

9) Autoheal and checkpoints killed realism. You no longer need to care about HP. It reduces challenge.

10) No proper stealth system. So you just grab a gun and see how Lara turns to Rambo.

Verdict: 8.5/10

It's still a nice game. Must-play game for a TR fan. It's better than Underworld. I like this new direction. If the next game will have more puzzles and tombs and less shooting it will rock.

 

[GSquadron]

@lyn
The old tomb raider games were a whole another game. I think they are better.
Video games are becoming tremendously corrupted lately, so even without any swimming, running, Lara's home, medipacks, vehicles and much more, this game is the best of the moment.

The last two tomb raider games, were not games at all.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

how does it compare to the Old Tomb Raider games? better? great re-imagining? similar? or they messed it up?

I loved all of the games up until the last two.

Hard to say what you loved most in the older ones when the two you mentioned a dislike for are pretty much polar opposites. I can only assume that you don't care much about the elaborate death trap relic puzzles and intricate platforming Anniversary had, because Underworld went a very tame direction in that regard.

This one is tame in most every regard, and feels like an eye candy graphics/physics demo with lots of linear, scripted cinematic on rails segments that are very repetetive. The only sense of open world play is the fast travel feature, which allows you to complete collectible and tomb challenges more expediently, and that quickly becomes boring.

At first the combat and nav tools feel more visceral, realistic and innovative than the random creatures and terrain features of past titles, but the constant idiocy of the weak willed cult followers, reuse of the same contrived tools and weaponry, along with an abundant supply of weapons and ammo, make it more repetetive and casual than dynamic and challenging.

The real disappointment however comes in the form of very, very underwhelming tombs. Instead of say one elaborate tomb per area like we're used to seeing, there's at least twice as many micro tombs, each having one simple, easy to figure and navigate puzzle.

By the time you've gotten 100% completion on one run through, there's no incentive to play through most of the tombs on subsequent runs, unless they happen to be directly on your path. You can also skip a lot of the challenges and still have plenty for upgrades.

This game over equips you even on the Hard mode, and it's RPG elements are as over sold as is the feeling of challenge. They start out leading you to believe you'll need to be a hunter/gatherer to survive, stopping at camps to eat, heal, etc, but in reality there's only a couple scripted moments in the game where Lara has to look for food and med supplies. The rest is optional hunting/gathering for mere small amounts of added XP.

 

[Xzibit]

The real disappointment however comes in the form of very, very underwhelming tombs. Instead of say one elaborate tomb per area like we're used to seeing, there's at least twice as many micro tombs, each having one simple, easy to figure and navigate puzzle.

By the time you've gotten 100% completion on one run through, there's no incentive to play through most of the tombs on subsequent runs, unless they happen to be directly on your path. You can also skip a lot of the challenges and still have plenty for upgrades.

Hello, DLCs

Outfits. You have to complete the game wearing different outfits see which one makes you look best.
High heel challenge, No dirt on tank-top challenge. How long you can go without panting challenge.


The only real disappointment I had was

Spoiler

when a certain someone dies and you have 2 pistols and you decide to hand one away. I was like NO!!!

The ending says it all...

Hopefully the next one adds to this making it a bit more challenging because it was a good reboot into Laaarah becoming Lara Croft

 

[Frag_Maniac]

The only real disappointment I had was

Spoiler

when a certain someone dies and you have 2 pistols and you decide to hand one away. I was like NO!!!

The ending says it all...

Hopefully the next one adds to this making it a bit more challenging because it was a good reboot into Laaarah becoming Lara Croft

Yeah, I didn't even tocuh on the disappointing ending, the game was underwhelming enough without that. I kept thinking through my disappointment of the game that the ending might at least...

Spoiler

...offer a boss fight against this mighty Sun Queen they kept going on about, but they couldn't even manage that.

 

[KainXS]

I have just finished playing it and I think that the game is kinda easy, in my opinion the previous tomb raiders(not the one before this one) were more fun and challenging then this one. This game feels like uncharted to me with a tomb raider twist and I don't like that, that said I don't think its a bad game, its a game that will hold your hand till the end with an iron grip but I had some fun with it.

Its not that video games are becoming corrupted, the problem is that the majority of people have probably not played the previous titles, and do not see that games in a whole have become easier, less imaginative, and more linear and their are many many many examples of this, but its not corruption this is just an "evolution(sadly)" of the current generation. Kids of today don't like hard games that you have to lose and learn in.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Kids of today don't like hard games that you have to lose and learn in.

Yup, sadly that's the reality. Such players have become the target audience it seems.

 

[WhiteNoise]

The original couple of Tomb raiders were great games. #1 being the best of the bunch, mind blowing at the time of release for me.

This TR game is more like Uncharted +

And that is perfectly fine with me. I am loving every %#$@*!& second of this game.
But it isn't as challenging but meh...that doesn't bother me any.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

I really don't see why they couldn't have appealed to a broader audience with this game. For instance most of the tombs are optional vs manadatory, so why not put in at least half a dozen tombs that aren't even accessible unless you play on Hard, and very challenging in puzzles and platforming like the old ones.

Instead they completely flip flopped to the new generation of players whom don't really care whether a game has such challenges, and that makes it clear they care more about the profit margin than their traditional TR fanbase.

 

[GSquadron]

 

[Xzibit]

That player deserves to die if he fails at staying on pier platforms and the boat.

I tried playing the game again without TressFX and got 4 zones in before it got annoying to see her screwed up hair. It just doesnt have the same effect. Might aswell just play the game in LOW settings.

 

[Drone]

It's kinda annoying that they use the same scripted death animation for different situations.

 

[OnePostWonder]

An update for Tomb Raider was released.

Steam

I thought this was neat:

"While we expect this patch to be an improvement for everyone, if you do have trouble with this patch and prefer to stay on the old version we made a Beta available on Steam, Build718.4, that can be used to switch back to the previous version." Kudos to Square Enix/Crystal Dynamics for going the extra distance on that one.

 

[Fluffmeister]

New nVIDIA 314.21 drivers posted too:

http://blogs.nvidia.com/2013/03/lara-croft-joins-geforce-with-45-performance-gain/

 

[Eric_Cartman]

I just picked this up this weekend and all I have to say is TressFX sucks balls! Her hair looks totally shit, it hovers several inches above her shoulders in some cases, and still clips right through her in others. It is total crap. Plus with TressFX turned off I get a steady 60FPS, with it on it drops to 30FPS and sometimes dips lower than that. A 30FPS drop isn't worth hair that looks like spaghetti noodles glued to Lara's head...

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I just picked this up this weekend and all I have to say is TressFX sucks balls! Her hair looks totally shit, it hovers several inches above her shoulders in some cases, and still clips right through her in others. It is total crap. Plus with TressFX turned off I get a steady 60FPS, with it on it drops to 30FPS and sometimes dips lower than that. A 30FPS drop isn't worth hair that looks like spaghetti noodles glued to Lara's head...

Its a new technology, give it time for Christ sake.

And its an improvement over the way hair is done in games since about 2005

 

[Frag_Maniac]

I just picked this up this weekend and all I have to say is TressFX sucks balls!

Are you even using the patch just released? One of the main things it fixes is excessive TressFX movement and the hair no-clipping you mentioned. Also, Tessselation causes the most FPS drop, not TressFX.

Trivia:

Did you guys know originally they were going to call this game Tomb Raider Ascension, and it was to have giants, horseback riding and a little girl that tags along with you? That would have sucked even worse.

 

[GSquadron]

^
Lol, looks like they are so empty with ideas, they are just combining games together.
It feels so Skyrim with assassin's creed and I laughed at this game so much.
Anyway, I have heard that Assassin's Creed new game, is going to be a girl...
Maybe pasting Tomb Raider's models too?

Tomb Raider's most important point was not the open world, but a closed world, where they can add extremely difficult puzzles.

Now that I think of it, it is not Tomb Raider the only one who completely lost it, but even Syphon Filter. (I know its old)
Other games are not heard anymore, like Vagrant Story.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Yeah I was telling somone on another forum the same. He seems to think Crystal Dynamics can do no wrong lately and wants horses in the next one. I say they are experimenting and struggling to come up with sound ideas that actually fit the TR universe well.

 

[Eric_Cartman]

Its a new technology, give it time for Christ sake.

And its an improvement over the way hair is done in games since about 2005

I don't care how new it is. People give PhysX crap for dropping framerates 10 FPS when it is generating a bunch of extra stuff on the screen, and no one gives a crap that TressFX is rendering one thing and one thing only and it is killing performance.

And going back to normal looks better, so no it isn't an improvement over the way hair has been done.

Are you even using the patch just released? One of the main things it fixes is excessive TressFX movement and the hair no-clipping you mentioned. Also, Tessselation causes the most FPS drop, not TressFX.

Yes I'm using the latest patch. And I can leave tesselation on and say above 60FPS and it affects everything in the environment. I turn TressFX on and performance tanks and it affects one useless thing in the game. Screw that.

 

[Xzibit]

I don't care how new it is. People give PhysX crap for dropping framerates 10 FPS when it is generating a bunch of extra stuff on the screen, and no one gives a crap that TressFX is rendering one thing and one thing only and it is killing performance.

And going back to normal looks better, so no it isn't an improvement over the way hair has been done.

Yes I'm using the latest patch. And I can leave tesselation on and say above 60FPS and it affects everything in the environment. I turn TressFX on and performance tanks and it affects one useless thing in the game. Screw that.

People give PhysX crap because its only accelerated through CUDA API which only works if you have a certain type of GPU. Plus the effects it acceleratates arent always on screen.
Lara Crofts hair is 99.9% of the time on screen.

TressFX is DirectCompute which will work on any GPU that supports DirectX 10/11 so if your performance drops blame which ever GPU you have that its not strong enough at the resolution your playing at.

Normal hair is horrible and no differant then the hair seen in games the past decade.

Its like saying low resolution textures are better because high resolution textures slow down my computer and take up more memory.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Yes I'm using the latest patch. And I can leave tesselation on and say above 60FPS and it affects everything in the environment. I turn TressFX on and performance tanks and it affects one useless thing in the game. Screw that.

You don't really get an idea of how resource hungry each feature is until you disable them one at a time while running the bench. I did that with TressFX (vs Normal) , SSAO Ultra (vs High), VSync, Precision and Tesselation. The one that caused the lowest min FPS in the benchmark was Tesselation by far. Average FPS doesn't tell the whole story.

 

[Eric_Cartman]

People give PhysX crap because its only accelerated through CUDA API which only works if you have a certain type of GPU. Plus the effects it acceleratates arent always on screen.
Lara Crofts hair is 99.9% of the time on screen.

TressFX is DirectCompute which will work on any GPU that supports DirectX 10/11 so if your performance drops blame which ever GPU you have that its not strong enough at the resolution your playing at.

Normal hair is horrible and no differant then the hair seen in games the past decade.

Its like saying low resolution textures are better because high resolution textures slow down my computer and take up more memory.

People constantly complain about PhysX having horrible performance.

And PhysX effects involve the environment, so just because it goes of the screen that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be accelerated, because when it comes back on the screen it has to be in the right location.

And it is nothing like saying low resolution textures are better because high resolution hurts performance.

My argument is multifaceted.

High resolution textures actually make the games look better.

TressFX doesn't make the game look better, I already said that.

It makes her hair look like crap, it looks like Medusa, it looks worse than setting it to normal.

And I'm running a 660Ti, if that isn't strong enough then the technology is worthless.

You don't really get an idea of how resource hungry each feature is until you disable them one at a time while running the bench. I did that with TressFX (vs Normal) , SSAO Ultra (vs High), VSync, Precision and Tesselation. The one that caused the lowest min FPS in the benchmark was Tesselation by far. Average FPS doesn't tell the whole story.

That is fine, but with Tesselation on I can maintain 60 FPS.

When I enable TressFX, even with Tesselation off, any time Lara is on screen the game never goes above 30FPS.

The cut scenes make this obvious.

When another character is talking the framerate is over 60FPS at all times.

The instant the camera goes to Lara the framerate drops below 30.

TressFX is complete crap.

If it kills performance just to render hair, it is useless, period.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

People constantly complain about PhysX having horrible performance.

And PhysX effects involve the environment, so just because it goes of the screen that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be accelerated, because when it comes back on the screen it has to be in the right location.

And it is nothing like saying low resolution textures are better because high resolution hurts performance.

My argument is multifaceted.

High resolution textures actually make the games look better.

TressFX doesn't make the game look better, I already said that.

It makes her hair look like crap, it looks like Medusa, it looks worse than setting it to normal.

And I'm running a 660Ti, if that isn't strong enough then the technology is worthless.



That is fine, but with Tesselation on I can maintain 60 FPS.

When I enable TressFX, even with Tesselation off, any time Lara is on screen the game never goes above 30FPS.

The cut scenes make this obvious.

When another character is talking the framerate is over 60FPS at all times.

The instant the camera goes to Lara the framerate drops below 30.

TressFX is complete crap.

If it kills performance just to render hair, it is useless, period.

Look at your system specs, and maybe try the new beta drivers from NVidia that boost performance in Tomb Raider with TressFX by about 60% on average.

Also TressFX is DirectCompute accelerated. your GTX660ti like my 680 but even worse are weak with DirectCompute which is why performance is hit so hard with it enabled. :shadedshu

 

[OnePostWonder]

People constantly complain about PhysX having horrible performance.

And PhysX effects involve the environment, so just because it goes of the screen that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be accelerated, because when it comes back on the screen it has to be in the right location.

And it is nothing like saying low resolution textures are better because high resolution hurts performance.

My argument is multifaceted.

High resolution textures actually make the games look better.

TressFX doesn't make the game look better, I already said that.

It makes her hair look like crap, it looks like Medusa, it looks worse than setting it to normal.

And I'm running a 660Ti, if that isn't strong enough then the technology is worthless.



That is fine, but with Tesselation on I can maintain 60 FPS.

When I enable TressFX, even with Tesselation off, any time Lara is on screen the game never goes above 30FPS.

The cut scenes make this obvious.

When another character is talking the framerate is over 60FPS at all times.

The instant the camera goes to Lara the framerate drops below 30.

TressFX is complete crap.

If it kills performance just to render hair, it is useless, period.

So far, given the way you write and especially your avatar, I've read all your posts in my head in Cartman's voice. Even if your arguments aren't successful, you are.