Shadow of the Tomb Raider

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

"Not actual gameplay footage"

[Sledgstone 8,672]

The engine and mechanics of the first 2 games are rock solid. As long as the plot is good and there's a good supporting cast this game will be amazing. But... they can't do that exclusive time release bull shit again. That 1 year deal with Xbox was complete ass. Any game company that does that again will lose my business for life. I have a back log of games and will probably always have a back log, so if I kick one game company to the curb then fine, I have plenty of other games. I still haven't bought the latest final fantasy because of the tomb raider 1 year deal. Square Enix basically burned a bridge with me. 

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

No timed exclusive release despite being on the xbox conference. They literally have no 1st party support and have to use 3rd party games as a front.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

The gameplay looks good and the trailer didn't give away much of the plot which is nice. But the graphics look like a bit of a downgrade. Lara looked a bit more realistic in the first 2 games.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I picked this up during the a black friday sale and I'm sure as hell glad I didn't drop the full retail price on this. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a complete downgrade from the previous two games in the trilogy. Its very unfortunate. The graphics took a hit, Lara's skin looks like shes made of plastic and her hair often looks bland and in some scenarios her hair almost looks like shes standing in front of a blue/green screen. Maybe thats an issue with the HDR setting, I'm not sure. I loved hunting and crafting upgrades for my weapons and accessories in the first two games.  Thats all gone now because hunting is pointless except for getting some pelts for some vestige gear.. and the vestige gear seems pointless to me because I seem to be locked into two outfits for 30% of the game so far because of blending in with the inhabitants of a city that I'm in. Hunting is nothing like it was in the first two games. Before you could shoot a boar or a deer, see it run away if you didn't get a clean shot, see the blood trail it left while you track after it in the woods.. In Shadow, as soon as you take a shot at an animal, that animal and any others in the area all make a quick b-line exit straight to what I call a "wall burrow" Every animal goes in the burrows and disappear. wtf. It completely negates hunting. Instead, Lara is now a gatherer. She has to gather every resource node.. plants, wood, dead animal pelts, random coins and cloth and even drying pelts and arrows from villagers. And when I got to the main city of the game, I realized I could "gather" from the city and sell everything to the merchants. And when I say "gather" I mean "steal". When you can literally walk up to a merchant, walk behind them, loot some cloth and oil off the floor/shelf that is behind them, walk right back up to them and sell it.. thats called theft. wtf where the developers thinking. And its not just that, I'm walking into people's houses, taking anything I see, sometimes gold, their bundles of wood next to their doors or fire pits.. and then I sell it to the merchants in the city. wtf. And then the merchants sell me all the upgrade stuff. Need a bigger quiver, go steal shit, sell stolen items and then buy that quiver. wtf. This is nothing like the first 2 games. In the other games you had to go kill a bear, harvest it's hide, gather more resources and then craft the new quiver at a camp site. I think the developer of this game gave up on all of that.

I'm 50% through the game now and I'm quite disappointed. The combat took a serious hit too. As in theres hardly any.  Halfway through the game and I've had only a handful of enemy encounters. I'd say a good 10 hours of this game so far has been wandering around these two shit villages/cities, gathering things, selling things and talking to people to unlock side quests to find tombs and to get more skill points. Even that is annoying because these cities are dirty. The first city has literal garbage all over the place and the second city, all the people are so dirty they're mostly wearing burlap sacks.  I'm hoping the plot gets better as a the game progresses, because so far this doesn't feel like a tomb raider game at all except for the climbing and navigating the maps. The only positive thing I can say is that the tombs are challenging puzzles and have been decent although lately it feels like a rip off of Legend of Zelda, because I've already done a water temple, fire temple and wind temple..

[Sledgstone 8,672]

I finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider last week. Ehh. The combat finally kicked in near the end but overall I wasn't impressed with this game.  I've already said my complaints, but the games wasn't all bad. The tombs and exploration is where the game shined. That and the graphics.. the landscape, HDR, lighting effects, etc.. but not the character models. The characters all looked horrible, but damn if the location you were in didn't look stunning. And swimming was done amazingly well, aside from the first swimming location and running out of breath too easily until you get some holding your breath upgrades. Water, swimming and the use of water in tombs was all done exceptionally well. The extra challenge tombs that come with the complete edition didn't appeal to me as much as I thought they would. Mostly because they can be played with multiple players with matchmaking because they are designed to be either played solo or with an extra player. Theres also an online scoreboard for timed runs. Because of this design choice the extra challenge tombs aren't really exploration based and I didn't see any artifacts or anything like that to interact with. Overall it was an ok game, but my expectations were definitely way to high after playing the first two over the past couple years which caused my enjoyments issues. The first two games definitely excelled in combat, whereas this one focused more on puzzle solving with tombs. Just seemed so off putting to do such a drastic shift.

Oh, and the ending sucked IMO.