Well, I wasn't impressed. I feel a bit guilty for this, probably because I really wanted to love this game as I'd been looking forward to it so much, but I was expecting.. well, I don't know what I was expecting, but when folk said 'return to form' to the original Tomb Raider, I was hoping for the same excitement I felt when playing that great game, way back when.
It seems what they actually meant was 'more or less exactly the same' as the original Tomb Raider, but perhaps with prettier backgrounds. Zero game evolution! Ten years on, and the gameplay is still reliant on lots of swinging and jumping, still peppered with lots of (very) bad FMV. Her transport of choice is no longer a faceless bike but a Ducati (Monster?) complete with matchingly-branded Ducati leathers. The original music has been replaced with some bad techno, and I finished the whole thing in ten hours.
The problem with TR:L is that it relies on lots of tricksy sequencing, which goes something like: jump-jump-shimmy-jump&swing [miss] - die, wait for loading screen to pass, repeat. There's super heavy reliance on death as a punishment for missing a jump, rather than - say - a fall, requiring a climb. Death should be final! Who wants to see the loading screen every time you make a mistake or can't see where you're going? Not me. Bad design :(
Actually - pressing jump really fast over a long open stretch makes Lara do a long flic-flac sequence complete with triple spin dismount. That was cool. I did that loads.
Not quite what was expected but game is nice. Looking forward to sequels...
Posted by: Dado | June 05, 2006 at 11:27
bummer sounds disappointing. :*(
Posted by: Maharet | June 05, 2006 at 15:43
I agree that it was a little disappointing, but I do also think it continued the franchise about as well as it probably could have done. I honestly don't know what a new Tomb Raider game can possibly do to make the fans happy. When they try to evolve too much, the game invariably loses it's "Laraness" and feels misplaced in the TR setting. When they try to recapture the essence of the original game, the whole thing just feels like a rehash with no new ideas. I don't think there's really any room to make a better game than Legend anymore. I honestly think the whole TR setting has just become a game-design cul-de-sac.
Posted by: Dom | June 05, 2006 at 16:37
No hope for the remake of TR 1?
Even though I'm not a fan of the series and never owned any of the games, I'm temped :S
Posted by: Dark_Jedi | June 05, 2006 at 20:23
Could have relied less on the punishing death jump gameplay and more on exploration, balancing risk/reward, and physics gameplay.
I think this had a lot of potential, and the next design may really be able to take the leaps that some had hoped to see in this installment.
Let's give the team credit for coming together and making this game happen during a rocky transition - and express our hopes that the next one really does step in a new direction.
Lara has a lot of potential. She can be a leader, when it comes to design.
Posted by: roBin | June 05, 2006 at 21:12
One thing that always springs to mind about the original Tomb Raider was that even though it had its moments (two fisted gunning, exploring fantastic tombs), the model for puzzles was just completely crazy. By the time I had finished it I swore that I would never push another box or flip another pointless lever in a game, and every time I've done it since I think "This is tomb raider !@#$".
I don't expect its easy to re-make a 'classic' that had so many problems to begin with.
Posted by: alan | June 06, 2006 at 01:37
My flatmates and I played it through together, and still went for every collectible item when we'd finished. Shame about the PS2 version bug where you can't collect one last item in the England level.
I agree that the game didn't quite live up to its potential, but some of the puzzles and set-pieces elicted "ooohs" and "aaahs" of appreciation.
It's still fun to swan-dive off a cliff face-first into the ground though.
Posted by: Seb Potter | June 06, 2006 at 09:16
So I'm currently playing through TRL to review it. It's frustrating - bits of it are so good, and bits of it are so.. .mediocre.
Compared to TR1, the death-punishment thing is quite fair - it's very generous on auto-alignment, auto-grab, and contextual one-handed grab. I also find that of the times I've fucked up, only about 20% were down to controls - most of the time, it was my fault.
The load time sucks, though - I honestly think if loading after death was faster, ie, instantenous, I wouldn't be so annoyed, nor would perhaps you.
The tricksy sequencing is the fun, it's just the punishment is disproportionate. Sands of Time offers you not only time-rewind, but *very fast reload after death* - making its tricksy sequencing all the more fun.
Main problem: combat. The Tomb Raiding is lovely - some beautiful graphics on my PS2, really enjoyable platforming, and then I have to jump sideways shooting guys for five minutes. It was alright in TR1, in TR2 there was too much, and then they got combat-heavy and I gave up. Every fight bores in my in TRL.
Most of all, the boss fights bore me. They seem really out of place.
But the levels, the exploring; despite the stupid-load-time-after-death, the rest is fun. Especially Tokyo; vertical scale worked nicely there. And the Ghana waterfall was cool.
I'm not sure what you mean by "death should be final" - you don't, presumably, mean save-game-frying final? I think you're suggesting that death should be a big punishment for doing REALLY bad (swandiving into concrete, losing a fight), not for tiny mistakes. I'm not sure - I think in this game, the platforming is a big component of gameplay, and bar awkward controls, death should be a punishment for platforming badly. Cf Ninja Gaiden, where platforming is incidental and the combat is the main focus - in NG, there's no punishment for falling, you can fall infinitely far, because it's not core gameplay. I liked that.
Posted by: tom | June 06, 2006 at 12:41
I sort of do mean death should be final. We've all got so used to respawning, I think maybe it's making game design lazy. If Lara falls, why wouldn't she have an auto-opening mini parachute, amongst all her other gadgets? Or perhaps grapples, bungees, spring-heeled shoes goddamnit? ;)
I think if the loading screen hadn't been so slow and so frequent, I would have enjoyed this game far more than I did, as you say. And as Robin says, may the next one be even better...
Posted by: Alice | June 06, 2006 at 18:48
Heh, I like the bungie rope idea. Fits quite nicely - a logical extension of the "auto-grabbing a ledge you walk off" thing.
I do see your point. It's also the whole "Lara just wouldn't swan-dive into concrete even if I asked her" problem; this character is supremely talented and acrobatic, so why on earth would they jump in the wrong direction? Answer: because that way Dragons Lair lies.
It does still feel like a game you wrestle with the controls of, and more deaths have been due to poor control than to user error, I believe.
Still, I'm remembering how hellishly unforgiving TR1 was: a seperate grab button, no automatic grab when you walk off ledges, pixel-perfect collision detection. TRL is certainly surprisingly easy, I'd say.
I'm in England. It's OK, but I liked Japan and Ghana best so far; Kazakhstan was a bit dull.
Have we mentioned how appalling the motorcycle bits are? They're very Metal Arms, but not as much fun. Ugh. They fill me with fear...
Posted by: tom | June 07, 2006 at 10:30