Shadow of the Tomb Raider
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Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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Finished it tonight. Not bad. The story was basically like Rise which was all over the place. I couldn’t stop laughing at Ol Jonah Friend Zone McPonytailz in every scene. Just move on dude Jesus. Everywhere you go she gets you shot at or crashes a plane on some poor persons hut.
However graphics and action were great and that’s what I wanted. Motherfuckin vistas in 4k.
7.5/10
However graphics and action were great and that’s what I wanted. Motherfuckin vistas in 4k.
7.5/10
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Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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Game is OK so far - I got to the part with the Yaxxil attack you in the temple. I'll keep playing but so far this game is the least engaging of the trilogy for me.
My big complaints so far:
too much swimming. this mechanic is just dogshit in any game
open word: by this point in RIse, you already got to the Soviet Installation and the Geothermal Valley both were big hubs for exploration and collecting. So far in Shadow, im still on the rail track.
not enough shooting/killing
the whole premise of a hidden city, where everyone still lives as they did 500 years ago, and you get to walk around with them, barter, take quests and talk in perfect English. the whole thing is just absurdly preposterous.
My big complaints so far:
too much swimming. this mechanic is just dogshit in any game
open word: by this point in RIse, you already got to the Soviet Installation and the Geothermal Valley both were big hubs for exploration and collecting. So far in Shadow, im still on the rail track.
not enough shooting/killing
the whole premise of a hidden city, where everyone still lives as they did 500 years ago, and you get to walk around with them, barter, take quests and talk in perfect English. the whole thing is just absurdly preposterous.
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Yes the swimming is repetitive but easily overlooked. The English part was just bad writing which I can overlook but dock them in a review. Now the open world part is what pisses me off because it’s a pain to do what you did in tomb 1 and 2.
Vorph
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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I think the problem people have with the open world is that they got rid of most of the metroidvania aspects, which makes for a game that seems more linear (even though it's really just an illusion of non-linearity in the previous games). Personally I'm sick of that shit so it doesn't bother me. Having to remember all the places I couldn't get to because I didn't have tool X and need to revisit later on is just tedious, especially in this game with its ungodly long load times every time you fast travel to a campfire. What there is of it in Shadow is more than enough.
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Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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And theres a constant faint stink of SJW bullshit with the constant variation of "Noble Savage Myth" being regurgitated when Lara talks to herself and 10 minutes later im in a temple where they are sacrificing humans.
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Dandai
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I'm probably as sensitive to SJW bullshit as anyone is. and I never felt more than prickle of my spidey-sense. They actually had some tongue in cheek moments that would've set off even the mildest trigglypuff. It was a pleasant surprise.
As Vorph said, the metroidvania aspects were much more limited this time around. That was a little disappointing for me, but I don't think it was detrimental to the game as a whole. I was fine with the swimming, but stealth swimming was too much. I'm sure that was a relic of the initial design meetings where they said "ok, Rise of the Tomb Raider ++ - GO!". And once they'd spent the money to implement it, they didn't want to take it out, despite it being not fun... at all.
Edit: IMO they did a good job objectively stating what happened in the 1600s with the Spanish and not editorializing. No one ever says anything remotely close to something apologetic about colonization or taking advantage of natives or anything like that. The closest they come is with the company hiring locals and then leaving, but it's not presented as "fuck the greedy white man" - it's actually explicitly stated that it's a local, South American company.
Alls I'm sayin is, give it a chance and don't treat every potential affront as intentional, and I think you'll be as pleasantly surprised as I was.
As Vorph said, the metroidvania aspects were much more limited this time around. That was a little disappointing for me, but I don't think it was detrimental to the game as a whole. I was fine with the swimming, but stealth swimming was too much. I'm sure that was a relic of the initial design meetings where they said "ok, Rise of the Tomb Raider ++ - GO!". And once they'd spent the money to implement it, they didn't want to take it out, despite it being not fun... at all.
Edit: IMO they did a good job objectively stating what happened in the 1600s with the Spanish and not editorializing. No one ever says anything remotely close to something apologetic about colonization or taking advantage of natives or anything like that. The closest they come is with the company hiring locals and then leaving, but it's not presented as "fuck the greedy white man" - it's actually explicitly stated that it's a local, South American company.
Alls I'm sayin is, give it a chance and don't treat every potential affront as intentional, and I think you'll be as pleasantly surprised as I was.
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Load times arent bad for me but I got a SSD. Also in this game there is tons of places you go to that screws you with "You need this tool to proceed." In fact I was just talking to
sukik
about this. In the older games you could hit up the Tombs pretty much whenever but in this game alot of them are blocked off because you don't have a tool. I dunno I could be wrong
Dandai
did them before he finished. I am guessing he got to hidden city and got all the knives and stuff before going back for mop up. I like to complete tombs while I am there and not go back.I also didn't really get too much of a SJW vibe off this game. Pretty bad writing at times but maybe it's because I spent half the time laughing when ol Friend Zone McPonytailz was on the scene.
Maybe the next game can be a prequel about Friend Zone surfing on Easter Island or something.
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Yeah defintely not getting that on the X with a SSD (akin to Witcher 3 load times) but load times are slower than previous games that's for sure.
spronk
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I'm almost done and the last third of the game makes up for the really boring first two thirds. The game is not immersive at all, as everyone has said its pretty ludicrous that everyone talks in English, TO EACH OTHER, and Lara constantly evades capture even though she is the only white chick with a posh British accent for the closest 1000 miles. Its just so dumb.
The biggest flaw in the game is how much shit they scattered fucking everywhere. You can't take 3 steps without having 20 things to loot all around you. So the game loop is basically use Lara vision, loot shit, lara vision again, move 2 feet, loot some more, rinse and repeat. Yeah, its all optional shit you don't "need" but what kind of asshole gamer doesn't want to loot every single thing he can? Its also super immersion breaking how all these people tell you how poor they are and how life sucks and then you just stroll up behind them and casually take their six bars of jade which you sell for enough to feed a family for 10 years. Like motherfucker, why didn't you go sell your jade instead of leaving it out on the floor? You deserve to go extinct. The setting just sucks, I can't get behind giving a shit about any single character other than maybe getting Jonah laid (i thought he was gay for a while, a game where he is the power top in a threesome with lara would be epic and make SJWs happy).
Games like Yakuza, God of War, Spider-Man, Persona, Assassins Creed, etc I love because I feel 100% immersed in that world and really get into the character, world, and atmosphere. That has not really happened at ALL with this game, I felt way more immersed in the previous two TR games but here everything constantly throws you out of the world, not to mention the bad guy is total shit and all the stuff going on with Trinity makes ZERO sense as far as game story is concerned.
Some of the challenge tombs are ok, most are super boring but the galleon was fun but short. Again, something feels "missing" with them, like you don't really feel satisfied when you finish one because you didn't get something interesting, just another immersion breaking "wtf?" thing where completing a challenge tomb lets you turn Ancient Mayan secrets into "I CAN SHOOT AN AK-47 BETTER NOW" (da fuq)
The skills system is utter garbage, not once have I thought "oooh there is a skill i really want, time to collect points I can't wait to buy it". its all worthless garbage I never use. Their bizarre implementation of all these super drug things is just weird, you don't really need to use any of them and they last so little they are junk. Plus combat is a mess, I can't even imagine it on the hardest difficulty but on normal I can barely see shit around me and either its all super easy with a gun or its super insanely hard with big swarms.
Not really worth a buy at MSRP or even 50% discount, maybe when the full GOTY edition with the extra 7 challenge tombs and missions is on sale for 75% off in a year you can pick it up and finish the game, but I can't really come up with any reason to play now.
Plat'ing the game isn't awful but it does require two play throughs, as trophies are tied to difficulty (boo). I'm probably not gonna bother, even though I have like 80% of the collectibles done at this point.
The biggest flaw in the game is how much shit they scattered fucking everywhere. You can't take 3 steps without having 20 things to loot all around you. So the game loop is basically use Lara vision, loot shit, lara vision again, move 2 feet, loot some more, rinse and repeat. Yeah, its all optional shit you don't "need" but what kind of asshole gamer doesn't want to loot every single thing he can? Its also super immersion breaking how all these people tell you how poor they are and how life sucks and then you just stroll up behind them and casually take their six bars of jade which you sell for enough to feed a family for 10 years. Like motherfucker, why didn't you go sell your jade instead of leaving it out on the floor? You deserve to go extinct. The setting just sucks, I can't get behind giving a shit about any single character other than maybe getting Jonah laid (i thought he was gay for a while, a game where he is the power top in a threesome with lara would be epic and make SJWs happy).
Games like Yakuza, God of War, Spider-Man, Persona, Assassins Creed, etc I love because I feel 100% immersed in that world and really get into the character, world, and atmosphere. That has not really happened at ALL with this game, I felt way more immersed in the previous two TR games but here everything constantly throws you out of the world, not to mention the bad guy is total shit and all the stuff going on with Trinity makes ZERO sense as far as game story is concerned.
Some of the challenge tombs are ok, most are super boring but the galleon was fun but short. Again, something feels "missing" with them, like you don't really feel satisfied when you finish one because you didn't get something interesting, just another immersion breaking "wtf?" thing where completing a challenge tomb lets you turn Ancient Mayan secrets into "I CAN SHOOT AN AK-47 BETTER NOW" (da fuq)
The skills system is utter garbage, not once have I thought "oooh there is a skill i really want, time to collect points I can't wait to buy it". its all worthless garbage I never use. Their bizarre implementation of all these super drug things is just weird, you don't really need to use any of them and they last so little they are junk. Plus combat is a mess, I can't even imagine it on the hardest difficulty but on normal I can barely see shit around me and either its all super easy with a gun or its super insanely hard with big swarms.
Not really worth a buy at MSRP or even 50% discount, maybe when the full GOTY edition with the extra 7 challenge tombs and missions is on sale for 75% off in a year you can pick it up and finish the game, but I can't really come up with any reason to play now.
Plat'ing the game isn't awful but it does require two play throughs, as trophies are tied to difficulty (boo). I'm probably not gonna bother, even though I have like 80% of the collectibles done at this point.
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you going to do that no save playthrough? Dunno if I got that in me. Also how are your load times on the X?
Sounds like its not optimized on playstation then because mine runs fine too.
spronk
FPS noob
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you can still save on the hardest difficulty, but only at camps and it costs resources to build a camp. If you do it on a NG+ it may not be too hard, especially with most skill trees, weapons and stuff unlocked. I might give it a try, dunno. No problems on load times on X either.
Mission 17, Downpour, is absolutely fantastic, much of the game trailer scenes are cut from that mission, and I wish more of the game played like that one.
Mission 17, Downpour, is absolutely fantastic, much of the game trailer scenes are cut from that mission, and I wish more of the game played like that one.
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