Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider - the final chapter from Eidos Montreal

Pound Meat

Prophet
Joined
Aug 10, 2018
Messages
4,748
Location
Flavortown
She'll finally become Lara Croft at the end of this one, right? With guns and stuff.
 

TheHeroOfTime

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
2,879
Location
S-pain


ayy lmao so this is trailer that caused an incredilby retarded controversy in a spanish videogames magazine. Because they said Lara was a dog in it, by the word "perra". In spanish "perra" is also a synonym of "bitch".

yep, we are not getting a good time here. sjw shits are getting in our contruy recently :negative:
 

Melcar

Arcane
Joined
Oct 20, 2008
Messages
35,215
Location
Merida, again
I always liked to make Lara crawl like a bitch.

Edit:
Saw the trailer. Don't see a problem with it. Like always, SJWs have noting better to do. Get a fucking job you fucks.
 

A horse of course

Guest
I look forward to receiving this in a Humble Bundle and giving it away for free in 8ish months.

I bought the GOTY editions of the previous two for a discount, and it was worth it. Not buying it full-price considering the continual shrinkage of Lara's tiddies. I'm an ethical consumer.
 

Echo Mirage

Arcane
Joined
Aug 19, 2013
Messages
1,560
Location
Tirra Lirra by the River
Never pay full price for a Tomb Raider game at release. It will be 25% off by November and in steep sale by the new year, by next November you can get the full game with DLC for the price of a pizza.
 

ortucis

Prophet
Joined
Apr 22, 2009
Messages
2,015
I look forward to receiving this in a Humble Bundle and giving it away for free in 8ish months.

I bought the GOTY editions of the previous two for a discount, and it was worth it. Not buying it full-price considering the continual shrinkage of Lara's tiddies. I'm an ethical consumer.

Yeah, I bought Rise of the Tomb Raider for like 4 USD on steam sale. It's fun enough, but I just find the names of these games funny. I honest have no idea which fucking game is a sequel and which isn't, mostly cause I always found Tomb Raider series boring as a kid and don't really pay much attention to the franchise.

Tomb Raider Legend
Tomb Raider Anniversary
Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider




They are really struggling to make "tomb robbing" sound cool with these juvenile titles. Expecting "PANTS OF THE TOMB RAIDER" when the series is rebooted for the 50th time after this new game.
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
I look forward to receiving this in a Humble Bundle and giving it away for free in 8ish months.

I bought the GOTY editions of the previous two for a discount, and it was worth it. Not buying it full-price considering the continual shrinkage of Lara's tiddies. I'm an ethical consumer.

Yeah, I bought Rise of the Tomb Raider for like 4 USD on steam sale. It's fun enough, but I just find the names of these games funny. I honest have no idea which fucking game is a sequel and which isn't, mostly cause I always found Tomb Raider series boring as a kid and don't really pay much attention to the franchise.

Tomb Raider Legend
Tomb Raider Anniversary
Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider




They are really struggling to make "tomb robbing" sound cool with these juvenile titles. Expecting "PANTS OF THE TOMB RAIDER" when the series is rebooted for the 50th time after this new game.


You missed Tomb Raider Underworld which is probably the best "modern" Tomb Raider.
 

ortucis

Prophet
Joined
Apr 22, 2009
Messages
2,015
Only Tomb Raider I personally enjoyed a lot was Angel of Darkness, which was hated by the fanbase. But it came free with my 9600XT back in the day and I really loved the music and the atmosphere of the Parisian streets (along with whole murder mystery angle). I ripped the music from the disc and still have it on Foobar playlist. It was also the Tomb Raider where the developers were actually trying to have a interesting plot and characters.

Only other Tomb Raider I've enjoyed after is the Tomb Raider (2013) and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Then again, both are basically ripping off Uncharted with tomb raiding taking a backseat. I never really enjoyed TR games until they made tomb raiding optional. I'd rather stare at the drying paint on a wall than raid a lifeless tomb.

:smug:
 
Last edited:

TheHeroOfTime

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
2,879
Location
S-pain
Thong of The Tomb Raider

377d9cc9ecdb7ba5531f429157e6ae0d.jpg
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,227
Edgy. If you had actually played the last two games you would know that isn't true.

I only played the first one and I honestly do not remember even one instance of a hazard in a "platforming" segment.

There was, though pretty rare. Yet you wisely put "Platforming" in quotes, and we should do the same for "hazard". Basically, everything is all piss easy and semi-automated and as a result the "hazards" aren't memorable or consequential at all.
 
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
183
Location
The Doomed Dominion
Japanese weather god has zombie samurais and you shoot them.
White thousand year old Jesus living with other filthy hippies up in the mountains then you shoot a helicopter.
 

TheHeroOfTime

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
2,879
Location
S-pain
IGN Germany posted their anaylisis of the game before the launch by mistake

https://de.ign.com/shadow-of-the-to...omb-raider-im-test-ein-horrortrip-fur-lara-cr

FINAL THOUGHTS
Instead of daring to experiment in the final reboot trilogy, Eidos Montréal focuses on the new Lara's strengths to finish the story. This decision pays off. Shadow of the Tomb Raider outperforms its predecessor in every respect and adds another dimension: more content, more tombs, more puzzles, more story and fewer shooting. Even the secondary characters are more likeable this time, and more than just a means to advance the plot of the game. Only the attached dialogue system bothers me a bit. Here, Eidos Montréal has missed the opportunity to give me as a player the opportunity to form "my personal" Lara in the talks. In the end, however, the game rewards me with an action-packed finale, and all that remains to be said is: Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the playful and narrative highlight of the reboot trilogy - and rightly so.
 

Boleskine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
4,045
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/09/10/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider-review/

But, at the same time, Paititi presents us with another more complicated factor. No matter how clumsily they’ve wrung their hands trying to pretend it’s not the case, this absolutely just is a story about some white lady waltzing in to a city of brown people and fixing everything for them. Clearly Eidos Montreal have spent a squillion hours researching and desperately trying as hard as they can to present and represent everything as respectfully as they can, providing a complicated and intricate representation of a culture that eschews the racist tropes of portraying anything as “primitive” (hello Far Cry 3). This is a richly sophisticated place, even if people are living in straw huts and wearing loin cloths. And yet…

The game’s opening shows Lara’s insatiable desire to solve the mysteries that had equally obsessed her late father, and that she’ll pursue this in the face of potentially terrible consequences. In the first playable scenes you aid Lara in mystically unleashing a series of catastrophic pre-apocalyptic disasters, the second of which is a terrible storm that has done damage to the region in South America. The idea being, the crappy things that are happening are sort of Lara’s fault, and anyway, the invasive forces of Trinity are trying to do far worse things than she is. So she needs to put them right, right? That’s clearly what they hoped would make it not feel like the hoary old colonialism thinking that, despite it all, the game undeniably is. Lara is dressed in the clothes of the region’s deities and leaders, by the locals, presumably because no one as white and British as her could possibly have just done it themselves?

Yes, in the end the game is about running and jumping and shooting arrows at heads and crawling through grotesque pits of severed corpses and falling through an infinite series of roofs, so yes it’s another nu-wave Tomb Raider game, and the rest is only decoration. But it’s a decoration that left me just constantly weighed with the unpleasant sense that no matter how awkwardly it was trying, it really is a bit of a racist old cliché.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-10-shadow-of-the-tomb-raider-review

Shadow of the Tomb Raider review - latest reboot makes small strides but remains a shadow of the originals

Slick and overly downbeat, Lara's latest sees the reboot trilogy end just as it began.


Care of a battered hand-me-down disc, Tomb Raider 2 is one of the very first games I remember playing that had something resembling character. Lara Croft was an unstoppable force, smirking in the face of danger and racing forward to the next challenge. She was beautiful and curvaceous, yes, and intelligent too. She was also a millionaire who could afford home gyms and butlers and walk-in freezers - she didn't need the money or the infamy that all these dusty old relics provided. That's why I loved her; she did it all and risked everything just for the thrill of the hunt, and had a damn good time while she did it.

We're promised a darker take on both Lara's personality and her treasure-hunting impulses, but it never pays off and things quickly take on the same narrative beats we've seen before in the previous two games. This interpretation of Lara already felt far too one-note, and it turns out taking an already stony-faced character and then loading them with the guilt of causing the death of hundreds of people does not a dynamic, relatable or likeable heroine make. It only serves to render Lara more morose, which would be fine if the game ever found an effective channel for her grief other than the two extremes of murderous rampage and awkward sulk.

And while Eidos Montreal has doubled down on the character's ferocity, it's led the studio to cast around for other ways in which to ground and humanise her. This effort mostly falls on the broad shoulders of her friend, Jonah. The story relies heavily on players caring about him, but it's hard to when the one facet of his personality we're beat around the head with is that he is Lara's best (and only) friend and seems willing to risk almost certain death just to humour even her most taciturn of whims. He's also her employee, if that gives you any indication as to the current state of Ms Croft's extensive social circle. Other characters are more interesting, including an Incan queen whose blend of lofty imperiousness and sense of selfless duty is far more compelling than Lara's own, and a young but capable prince eager to prove himself.

The majority of Shadow of the Tomb Raider takes place in the Peruvian jungle, which deftly steals the show from the off. It's a gorgeous backdrop, lush and teeming with life. The set pieces are incredible creations, making the most of the jungle setting but also sweeping you off to sparkling mountain vistas and rappelling into cavernous underground labyrinths. You can tell that care has been taken to make each stop on Lara's journey feel less like a corridor and more like an open space where players can explore and stay a while, even when in reality it's just a matter of scooping up whatever resources have been scattered around before continuing down the one set path that's been laid out for you.

jpg


But it's when the game genuinely does open up that the real fun begins. Paititi is a wonder, a vibrant hub location that seems to get bigger the more you explore. Here you'll find multi-part side missions that place Lara in the role of councillor, mediator and murder mystery private investigator. You'll find crypts and challenge tombs that you'll swear weren't there just moments before, you'll find merchants to barter with for new toys to play with and new outfits to craft, and talking to locals will unlock secret caches and animal hunting grounds on your map. Certain locals will only talk to you while wearing the appropriate garb, and better knowledge of ancient dialects will be necessary to read the riddles that will point you in the direction of treasure, which all means that when the game actually leaves you alone to explore rather than shooing you along the main storyline at a brisk pace, you can really stop and appreciate how beautiful and intricate it actually all is.

Shadow has a much more pronounced balance between combat and tomb raiding too - not only in the main campaign, where ornate and often challenging puzzles are perhaps even more prolific than lengthy fight sequences, but in optional extras like Challenge Tombs and Crypts. These can be found sometimes quite far off the beaten path, offering additional adventuring to those brave enough and/or well equipped enough to heed the call. Rewards vary in usefulness, a crafting recipe here, some new boots or a cape there, but really it's the experience they provide - uninterrupted spelunking without any of the story guff - that will keep you seeking them out for more.

The same lightweight XP system from before is still at play in Shadow, albeit in slightly new garb. Players can pour Skill Points into a branching Skill Tree, which feels utterly superfluous given that any skills you really need are unlocked as you continue through the main story anyway. The crafting system has been streamlined further, meanwhile, so that you can cook up consumables like arrows and performance-enhancing drugs on the run with a couple of simple button presses. Lara's arsenal of weapons is much the same as before - you've got assault rifles, shotguns and handguns which you can upgrade or add to via crafting or visiting merchants, but as always, it usually comes back to your trusty bow to see you through most predicaments.

jpg


The combat is markedly updated in Shadow. It plays up to the central theme of fear, with Lara the one doing all the scaring as a predator with a bit of Predator about her, slathering herself in mud and pressing against outcrops of vegetation to avoid detection, brutally picking off enemies one by one. Taking to the treetops allows her to hang her foes from the uppermost branches, or new fear arrows will poison them into doing her dirty work for her, turning their guns on their comrades before choking to death themselves. This renewed emphasis on stealth means that altercations quickly turn sour if you're spotted, but there is a way to claw back the upper hand if you remain undetected again for long enough. This careful remodelling of Lara as some kind of deadly jungle cat falls apart slightly during sequences that throw scores of melee-only foes at you within impossibly confined spaces, all but forcing you to fall back to blasting enemies in the face with a shotgun, but sections that treat open-world combat almost like a deadly puzzle to be solved do much better at selling Lara as a one-woman murder factory, for better or for worse.

In terms of new traversal mechanics, nothing here will feel particularly new to series stalwarts. Which is fair; as the final instalment of a trilogy, Shadow understandably wants to build upon an established formula, not reinvent it entirely. Lara's dual pickaxes are now joined by fancy footwear that allows her to overhang climb, she can now use air pockets to gulp for breath down long forgotten flooded passageways, and to complement the game's themes of descending into darkness Lara can use new rappelling gear to, well, do just that, as well as wall-run to new heights. On their own these new touches seem barely worth mentioning, but when inserted into Lara's already impressive repertoire of skills, they allow for greater inventiveness on the part of the developers to craft more intricate puzzles and elaborate environments, which make up pretty much all of the best moments Shadow of the Tomb Raider has to offer.

All this is good if predictable stuff if you're just here for the tombs, which makes it more of a shame that those hoping for a stirring final act to close out the trilogy will likely be disappointed. The script is littered with trite cliches, clanking dialogue and predictable plot points we've not only seen multiple times before, but multiple times before in this very series. More than one climactic moment is completely derailed or undermined by bizarre staging, and try as it might with soft-focus flashbacks and a couple of rictus-like grins, Shadow just cannot make this Lara Croft likeable or relatable.

jpg


It's been three games and this reboot has yet to show Lara exhibiting any real passion or enjoyment for what she does - it all comes across as a duty she's obligated to fulfil. Instead of focusing on the thrill of discovery and the wonder of far-flung forgotten corners of the world, this series was all about a contrived revenge story that no-one asked for. Shadow of the Tomb Raider's big problem, much like the two previous games, is that there's far too much darkness and not enough levity to relieve the tension and allow us to actually enjoy these characters or get to know them beyond their current predicament. What food does Lara like? What music does she listen to? How much could she absolutely clean up if she decided to chill out, open an Instagram account and be #blessed? I'm only half joking with the last one, but you get my point. Lara is athletic, she's smart, and she's unwaveringly heroic, but if she acted more like an actual human being and less like the Terminator with a Rosetta Stone plugin, the series would be much better for it.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider ends this reboot on much the same note that it began, which for its fans may not be such a bad thing. This is a well-crafted and polished experience, and when the game actually gives you full control and leaves you alone to seek out its quieter mysteries, it can render you wide-eyed with wonder. And this Tomb Raider may have motivation and purpose and a vague semblance of an emotional arc but it all rings hollow, particularly when elsewhere there's repetition and an overall lack of new ideas. This Lara has forgotten herself and forgotten the joy and the thrill.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom