Tomb Raider: How Are You Not Dead Yet?

Gamers are growing up.  You can feel it in the wind, or you can look at the lineup of "M" rated games that are being released to record sales and critical acclaim.  And here sits Tomb Raider, with a 92% completion as my first run.  I sit here in awe, in contemplation and in nostalgia in the wake of my play through, attempting to gather my thoughts into something coherent.

Rebooting a series is risky.  Rebooting a beloved franchise is beyond risky.  There's a small number of people more opinionated and or blinded by nostalgia than gamers.  It's not enough to say that the games we played as children were a part of our experience growing up.  The games we played defined our childhood.  We gamers sit in a strange new dawn of reconciling our love of the past with the frightening prospect of the new.  Sometimes things work out for the better.  The new Mario games are generally good, the franchise has evolved and gamers seem pretty receptive of that change.  Sonic, however, is dying a slow, painful and extremely public death in the third dimension.

For every series that gets a successful reboot, and I would define those as those in a new series that weren't immediately shit on by gamers, there are many that died on the path.  To say that Tomb Raider has succeeded in this quest is a rather gross understatement.

That's new

In a small amount of preparation for this game, I loaded up Tomb Raider 2 for the PSX in an attempt to grab a comparison, however fair you may feel that is.  That idea was a bad one.  I was never a big Tomb Raider fan growing up.  I'd chalk at least 80% of that up to having an N64 growing up and the last 20% to it not really being my genre.  Exploration/Platform games on the PS1 were bad, really bad.  I can't even play my beloved Syphon Filter anymore because of the horrifyingly bad controls.  I have this problem a lot when I go back to play games I loved growing up.  Call it being jaded or callous, but the controls were seriously bad.  I do not like the original Tomb Raider games, at all.  They're oddly designed, plagued with bad controls and an even worse camera and lack a lot of focus that was needed in older games to thrive. 

But this new one, I'm not even sure how to begin, it's enthralling.  The game makes a whole lot of really good decisions and has some of the best game feel in a long time.  I'm always wary of third person games and my reasoning behind that is how it confines movement.  Cameras are hard in third person games.  You have two choices, let the player control the camera, which never has the right sensitivity, it's too high for aiming and far too low for looking at stuff, or you set the camera yourself, at which point you will infuriate about 80% of people who play the game because it's not perfect for them.  And this problem doesn't just pertain to the camera, player movement is an issue as well.  Modern third person games almost marry themselves to cover based shooting.  And while a lot of people shit on cover based shooting, it's really the only viable option for this view.  There's always something a bit hard about aiming in third person and if you don't believe me, go play Resident Evil 4, arguably the best over the shoulder shooting game out there, go ahead, I'll wait.

Done?  Okay, see how long it took you to get the hang of the aiming?  That's what third person does.  It's a disorientating viewpoint to use.  But Tomb Raider hits it right.  Fairly solid camera controls and nice aiming.  I thought about this point a lot when I was playing as it was not as easy as I expected to nail every head shot first time when I realized that the level design was actually what was making it difficult and not the aiming.  And thus I found something more enthralling than, "This good game" to harp on about.  Scale and confined exploration, some of the best I've seen.

Do you see that level?  That's the game, you're about to spend the next 20 minutes climbing all over that.  The scale in this game is unmatched.  The levels feel genuinely massive and it's not a gimmick.  Tomb Raider has an extremely good handle on the Z-axis in it's levels.  Vertical scaling goes a long way to making things seem huge and Tomb Raider does not hold back.  The areas themselves are actually rather tightly confined.  There's unpassable walls, things to fall off of and insta-gib but you won't feel it.  The word, "epic" is vastly over used in modern language, but this is what it should truly mean, the levels are epic.  Truly noteworthy pieces of design.  Unless the game was trying to be claustrophobic, which is does exceedingly well, you would never know.  The areas are vast, incredibly varied, and interesting to explore.

But now is the time to migrate into story land.  I rather liked it.  A lot of AAA titles these days tend to feel the supernatural is a bit childish and is often forsaken in lew of a more "realistic" storyline.  I'm not sure I like that.  I'd vastly prefer a good story to a realistic one and while a lot of people felt the Tomb Raider storyline was a bit over the top, I feel it sits nicely in a spot between realism and supernatural.  The characters are rather self aware and it makes the game that much better.  It plays the card of, "We know this is absurd and so do the characters, but that's the story."  But I liked playing straight man to an absurd world.  It explains why these people are opposing you and explains why you're even bothering to play along.  It's a simple story on the surface, but a bit of exploring writes a really nice undertone of, "We get this is absurd, but here's how it is" sort of slant to it.  It's an appropriately complex storyline given the context of the game. 

And as I delve into the story I must again commend the game for it's mature theme.  "M for Mature" is a pox on the gaming world.  That mark means that it's violent or, god fucking forbid, it has some sort of sexual content to it, it speaks nothing to the actual content of the game.  Tomb Raider tells a stark tale of perseverance and growth.  It does have the occasional gory scene, like these

It's not over the top, seriously.  It's not just some gimmick to land itself an "M" rating.

But the last part that truly impressed me, something that I didn't know I was missing until it was laid out in front of me, progression.  In case you missed it, this is the most hidden version of a Metroidvania game I've ever seen, and I'm ecstatic that it was included.  There's a progression to the items that allow you more exploration.  Items get upgraded in a timely fashion to allow exploration.  You aren't given the rope arrows straight away, you aren't given the accender, you aren't given more than half the abilities from the start. You must earn these items and then use them to explore further.  It restricted the game in a nice way and makes you feel as though you're actually making progress.  I feel as though it's one of the strongest parts of the game.  Exploration is rewarded without being forced on you.  It's up to you whether to get damn near everything in the game and for people like me, that's just what I'm looking for. 

Before I post all my random screenshots, I feel somewhat obligated to say that there may not be some posts for a while.  This month I'm slated to go through no less than four very extensive dental surgeries and as a result I will be strung out on prescription pain killers for the better part of a month.  My plan, as I can not work during this period, is to play a lot of my backlog.  And while there may be some opiate induced posts, I can not guarantee the quality nor the frequency of posts.  I hope all 100 and some of you subscribers won't be overly disappointed.  Now for random screen shots.

Promo shot

Foreshadow much?

Why are pre-rendered cutscenes still a thing?

10th broken rib today

EXPLOSIONS!!!!

The Stanley Parable: Huh...

Uh, yeah, so this exists.  Define "Game" because I'm not entirely convinced this is one.  The Stanley Parable exists as a lot of things.  It's a thought experiment, a parody of gaming tropes, a story telling platform, a philosophical look at life and one mindfuck of an experience.  I'll try as hard as I can not to "spoil" anything, but if I just dumped all my screenshots out at once there'd be so little context and sense to them that I'm not sure it would spoil anything, the experience here is the important part.

Home

The game has a narrator and you play as Stanley.  End of sense making.  I'm finding it difficult to write anything meaningful about the game because it's just so different from anything else I've played.  It has a very self-aware sense to it, like it knows exactly what you're going to do.  The game has choices in it to some extent as your choice is only tangentially related to your experience.  One of the more odd things about the game is "failing" is exactly as or more interesting than "succeeding".  Make a choice you're not supposed to and the game changes as does the "story".   To give a sense of how this game exists is to look at one particular achievement and that is to complete the game in less than 4 minutes and 22 seconds.  My play time is 98 minutes and yet I felt that it would probably be entirely possible to do such an achievement.  The game exists within itself and is cyclical.  If you understand the movie "Primer" then you may be able to sort it all out.  I saw a lot of content and even beat the game before I beat the game but if you asked me to replicate my actions that brought me to that particular place in the world, I would have a very difficult time. 

I spent at least 5 minutes in here

Any attempt to be clever or do something that would normally be game breaking is actually still just a part of it.  The writing is fantastic as is the narrator.  It's equally funny and creepy and has layers nested upon layers nest upon even further layers and the second you think you have it sorted is when something new pops up that throws that all out the window.  The challenge exists in ignoring everything games have ever taught you while being mindful that you're actively ignoring them.  I don't understand why The Stanley Parable is good, I just know that it is.  It's nothing you haven't seen and it's nothing you have seen, but it's a ride very much worth taking.

Kerbal Space Program: I'll Think of a Title Right After This Intercept Manuever

I've been on the fence about reviewing this game as it's still in development.  But there was recently a "Career" mode added in and I feel like it's far enough along to actually have an idea of what the final game will be like, and it's going to be like crack.  Frustrating, insanely complex, analytical crack.

Do you remember the last game that blew you away with depth?  I don't mean what passes for depth now.  RPG elements in shooters does not count as "depth".  I'm talking Morrowind, Alpha Centauri and anything Paradox has put our pretty much ever.  Where right when you feel you have a handle on the game you realize you haven't even scratched the surface?  Well that's the spirit that Kerbal Space Program captures.  In the beginning, you basically just try to make rockets that don't instantly explode and see how high you can get them to go.  Which is insanely fun in it's own right.  The first time you actually leave the atmosphere carries a huge sense of accomplishment.

IT LANDED!

And it has this wonderfully cartoonish sense of humor.  You control these little green goblin men called "Kerbals" and basically act as NASA with the theme of "We want a space program, but we don't want to spend a lot of money..."  Eventually you'll get bored of just building crazy rockets and look up some tutorials or do some of the ones in game and things start to get weird.  Now getting out of the atmosphere is a given, but whether or not you calculated fuel consumption and exit vectoring to land yourself in stable orbit becomes your goal.  And then that becomes the norm and you start planning gravitic slingshots to catch and intercept to the moon just so you can get an orbit around that.  You'll start to understand the meaning and purpose of a pro-grade burn at your orbital perapsis and elipsotic vectoring.  Then you'll make it, you'll land something on Mun, and god damn is it going to feel good.  It took everything you had to make it to the Mun.  Several hundred rocket designs, precise planning from the second you lift off, complex maneuvering, retro-grade landing burns, escape velocities, but then you scroll out on the celestial map and you are humbled.

There's 9 more planets.  And to scroll out far enough to see them, you find that the Mun you just landed on isn't even far enough away to warrant it's own dot.  But the best part is it's all possible, all of it.  Deep space probes, space stations, satellites with massive solar arrays and you haven't even started, but you will because it's so damn compelling.  I've had this game for a while but it's still causing me late nights and making me neglect essentially all the games I just bought because I don';t want to play anything else.  I'll load something else up, but 20 minutes later, KSP is back up because I just though of a new rocket design.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm due to start my ion burn on my deep space probe.

Yeah, figure out how that happened.

Filler Post: Please Ignore

This is going to be a terrible post, I'm sorry, but, I have a purpose here.  I have garnered a small amount of... followers?  Subscribers?  I haven't a damn clue as to what to call people who follow me or bookmark me or anything like that.  But I have gained a very strange amount of fame from my top X lists and I'm unsure how to handle it.  And I feel like I have a need to explain how posts are going to be handled because of the people who are now tracking me. 

The posts are going to be strange.  That's as far as I can get.  I grabbed 20+ games from the Steam holiday sale and they're going to show up here, eventually.  I'm not going to depart from my review style which is about 2-3 months late but it seems to be what people want.  But I wanted to warn everybody.  I don't review new games, hardly ever.  Unless you're a brand spanking new IP that I decided warranted a review you're going to be late here.  The PM's I've been getting are about 70% supportive, 10% wondering why I don't review new games (I'll give you a hint, I don't get review codes, I do this for free, I get paid absolutely nothing for this blog), 5% asking whether or not I "Recommend" a particular game (If you don't pick up on whether or not I "like" a game, you don't get my reviews at all)   And 15% asking something stupid like if I can give out of 10 reviews so people can get what I like, and not a snowball chance in fucking hell am I going to give any numerical review scores.  If you want, at any point, an out of 10 review, leave, right now, it's never going to fucking happen.  I despise out of any number ranking systems.  I'm never going to, at least in a  serious sense, going to give numerical reviews as I'd prefer to delude myself to having integrity.   And I understand that people are going to pass me up because of that but I don't care.  I'm going to stick to my guns on this point in particular.  There's no numerical representation that can understand gaming.  It's just plain not going to happen.  It works with music and movies because of the limited scope of user interaction that is experienced, but not for games.  I can not, in any good conscience, express my entire experience in some stupid ass out of X list. 

But the long and the short of it is I love this blog.  This is the best part of my week and I'm completely serious.  I love reviewing games and if even one person looks at my post I feel I'm made an impact.I want to keep writing and despite the fact that I suck at it, I love every single second of it.  I spend all of my gaming time thinking of clever shit to say on this blog.  I go into games thinking how I'm going to review things and while the screenshots may be sparse, I take about 5 times as many screenshots as I post.  I love every person that checks this blog and indulging my insanity.

As I've gained viewers, I feel a need to produce more and more professional content and I will  as I add content.  I've recently acquired a 1TB hard drive  and I'm toying with the idea of adding videos to my reviews, the only thing holding me back is the crazy new content ID system from YouTube.