Quick Look: Rise of the Tomb Raider

It's nice to see a cool lady to hang out with the cool dudes doing action cool dude stuff and the lady doing cool lady action lady stuff.

This looks pretty great. Looking forward to playing it in about...12 months? I have the last one on PS3 from PS Plus so maybe I'll give that a try.

@danryckert drowning is not blissful, it's actually an extremely distressful way to die

I couldn't skip that particular cutscene because the next scene that it would have dumped us into is a huge spoiler, but please keep complaining that I did something to try to look out for everyone watching the video and didn't stop to explain exactly why.

Next time you want to complain about something incredibly trivial on the Internet, stop for a minute and remind yourself that you don't actually know everything about everything. Don't be the type of person that makes interacting with others on the Internet so shitty.

@concretecharlie: The last one is so good. It is definitely worth playing. The guys on here didn't like it that much but sometimes I think they get a bad taste for a game when they have to plow through it either for review or GOTY discusion.

The common complaint about the first game was that there was too much shooting and no exploration, but that was not my experience at all. If they were trying to mainline the story, it may well have felt that way, but I was trying to find all the hidden treasures and objectives and I'd say my time with it wound up being 1/4 shooting/action 3/4 exploration. I would enter an area, shoot up the bad guys for 10-15 minutes and then spend the next 45 hunting around for tombs and trinkets. There were some very tricky environmental navigation puzzles and well hidden collectibles in that game. It was all optional, but it did go toward leveling up all your skills and weapons so it never felt trivial.

It did start out very, very scripted and quick-timey, but once the first hour is over it opens up quite a lot.

Anyway, I know you have it free on PS3 but if you have a PS4, the Definitive Edition is worth shelling out some money for. They really did a number on it. It looks waaay better. In fact, I'd say that it is still one of the best looking PS4 games out there.

I really hope this isn't a response to what I had posted and instead to what zombie said. I was merely stating the obvious from what I saw in the quicklook.

@acidbrandon18: He is obviously replying to you. He's saying he couldn't skip the scene - not because there wasn't a button prompt - but because using that prompt would have lead to a spoiler.

Well damn. @brad taking people to task for some dumb comments.

@acidbrandon18 I'm sure it was directed towards both of you. Your comment is very condescending and the other guy just straight up called him illiterate. Not cool.

BTW guys, a cistern is a water tank - a toilet bowl is a good example #themoreyouknow

wow, almost missed this one.

Well I hope it is more directed towards Zombie, because I didn't mean any disrespect in my comment. It was just what I saw in the video and it didn't feel he was clear on why he couldn't skip the cutscene. If he said something like "yo, if I skip this we'll see some major spoilers." I wouldn't have commented in the first place. But as a viewer that is how I interpreted the situation.

I beat my dog in a fight all the time so I'm pretty sure I could handily defeat a pair of mangy wolves.

@brad3000: Thanks, I'll check it out.

wolves can have a bite of up to 1250 PSI, whilst strongest dogs (rottweilers) can only manage about 320 PSI

good luck fighting the wolf dan

This looks exactly like the stuff you do in the first hour of the game. This does not give me any encouragement for continuing beyond where I am in the game. :/

Like.. the same water stuff . . . the pulling levers down by jumping and clinging on to them... the same float on a pallet in the water thing... the same "make water fill up this area" thing... with exactly the same aesthetics/environment.

I was also disappointed by the story, which seemed practically cloned right from Uncharted... which was pretty much cloned from . . . every other adventure movie of the last fifty years. Even the bad guy you come across in the first hour seemed (and dressed) almost identical to the bad guy from one of the Uncharted games. Or maybe that was Far Cry 3. . . . Shit, I can't remember.

I'm also really really really really really really really tired of every game having to involve aliens, zombies, or ghosts/supernatural stuff. Everything short of sports games pretty much involves those, even when they'd be better served by not doing so. (For example, why does Fallout need zombies/enormous weird mutants that can't be explained by simple radiation? Why does Uncharted need those weird supernatural blue dudes?). You could play a drinking game about that crap -- even extending to some sports games!

This seems like it has the right balance of cinematic/tightness to open world elements that I'm in the mood for. Will definitely get this on PC.

@branthog: i agree i want to see some more stuff grounded in reality. in retrospect the last of us actually turned out to be one of the more grounded post apocalypse games despite fungus zombies, but i would love a post apocalypse story that didn't have to rely on that stuff. The road: the game perhaps?

In fallout's defense i think it was mostly done in service to having some enemy variety, as well as being beholden to the fiction of the original games.

I sort of wish MSGV had these kind of environments and moves.

Looks like they may have fixed the camera in this game? Man would that be great. The bobbing camera of the first game is the only thing in any video game that has ever made me motion sick.

When Brad entered that cave and you heard that hammering sound, did anyone else immediately think blacksmith?

This Quick Look was really...really aimless. I appreciate that some games are harder to show off than others, but part of these Quick Looks are meant to display a number of things, the upgrade system was not shown, none of the story and the first 35 minutes is really nothing. The Quick Look is long without content.

It was legitimately frustrating to me to watch Brad stumble through puzzles that required the use of game mechanics that he didn't remember. It's not normally the case and the stuff of GB is real good but I thought I would just make my frustration known if only for my own edification.

Your Arkham Asylum reference was spot on, @danryckert. AA is the last game I remember, where I happily went back and forth the whole map to dig up all the collectibles and such.

I just finished this tonight and hell, I might put this up as my personal GOTY! It doesn't really do anything new or remarkably amazing and the plot, while servicable, has it's share of weak points, but man if I had a whole lot of fun playing it the whole time! I also can't state enough times how gorgeous the whole thing looks. Even if pretty graphics have never been the selling point for me, it really adds to the athmosphere when you see how much work they've put in locations that are completely optional for you to explore!

I'm sure Naughty Dog will manage pull-off some great things with Uncharted 4, but playing this might've raised my expectations on a couple of levels.

pretty sure Dan doesn't know what a wolf is, they aren't that common and you rarely see pictures of one next to a human for size. Wolves aren't like house pets, i really hope he doesn't go out of his way to fight one to prove something.

I think the campaign sounds/looks great, but the Expedition/Card Packs look like the equivalent of the previous game's MP - an extra unnecessary mode that most people will probably ignore.