Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics' 4th)

[MechDeus]

I thought multi was just fine, but if I'm playing a competitive multiplayer game for any length of time, it's just not going to be Tomb Raider or Uncharted or Bioshock 2 or Mass Effect 3.

Mass Effect 3 doesn't have competitive multiplayer, so that goes without saying. :smileyface:

From what I've heard the TR multi is pretty undercooked anyway.

[icarusfall]

If you like watching women get injured, boy do I have a game for you...

I like this game aside from a little framerate issues

[Mzo]

I don't know if I can handle having an erection for the 20+ hours it takes to beat the game.

[GohanX]

Mzo, this is a prequel, but Lara is still 21.

[icarusfall]

She's all mud-covered, bleeding, and vulnerable.

It really is pretty hot.

[Jeremy]

I don't know if I can handle having an erection for the 20+ hours it takes to beat the game.

I wish the game kept track of how long you've been playing, because according to Raptr, I've played it 21 hours over the past 48 hours FOR A RENTAL. Granted, at least a few hours of that was spent in menus while running errands, but still - that's a lot of gaming time for such a short timeframe. Really loved the game as a whole. They could've cut a few characters and the narrative would've been better for it. Everyone who dies but Roth feels like a token characters, and the other characters outside of Sam feel like that anyway.

Multi-player is certainly...a thing you can play to kill time and as it turns out, farm XP in a boring fashion to make the game easier. I'm glad they didn't lock it behind an online pass since playing it allowed me to fully review the game, but it doesn't really add much to the experience. It feels far behind Uncharted 3 with its changing environments, and while there's technically variety, everything outside of free for all is just either TDM or a slightly altered version of it.

[Darmonde]

Played through this, and in general, my thoughts match most others here. I had a giant thing written here but I cut out a bunch of it to try to make it readable.

Overall, the one feeling that nagged at me while I was playing is that the game felt unfinished. There is this cast of characters that they probably wanted to be important, but their stories end up just getting barfed out quickly in journals. I remember talk about hunting to stay alive- its nothing but quick achievements and a tiny (pointless) XP grind. There are 'food' boxes throughout the game that give you 20 xp each (my guess is you were supposed to not regen health, and food was meant to heal you). I am pretty sure developers had some bigger plans for these things that just didn't happen. Plus there are some relatively complex puzzles to burn down those hanging boxes. And there is nothing there can couldn't be gotten in a box lying on the ground? There are probably a bunch of other examples, but if you're looking, I think you can see a lot of things that were started that got chopped.

In general, I feel like the devs of this game, probably across many different teams, had tons of ideas of what they wanted in this game, but in the end, they ONLY had 10 years of development time so they cut out EVERYTHING extra and made the base game incredibly nice to look at. I can just imagine level designers saying 'yeah, they told just to add this into the level for feature XYZ, but it got cut. So now its a box with 15 salvage it.'

I had fun with the game. It doesn't seem like they used their time and resources well though.

edit: I was exaggerating with the 10 year statement, I actually had no idea how long it was being made. I was curious so I just looked it up, and it was 5 years.

Also I cut out one point I really wanted to make, which is the optional tombs are shockingly easy, and they give you about 5 different ways to find them, so they're almost impossible to miss.

[Diff-chan]

An actual game sitting on the shelf can't match what the designers (or gamers) have in their head. That's just reality.

[MechDeus]

I had a giant thing written here but I cut out a bunch of it to try to make it readable.

I get it.

[Darmonde]

An actual game sitting on the shelf can't match what the designers (or gamers) have in their head. That's just reality.

I'm not talking in general, of course I know this happens. I'm saying in this game its very obvious, and its to the point that they couldn't cleanly hide the half done ideas.

I get it.

I don't get it. =(