Quick Look: Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

Way back in Resident Evil 4 they did some f'd up stuff to Leon. Decapitations, face being melted off, I think he may have gotten ripped in half. This kind of thing is not new.

I am disappointed with no fur bikini costume. T____T

Wow was the difference between the two versions striking. PS4 version just looks silky smooth and seems much more alive.

The new face actually looks like all the promotional material faces. Her in game face in the original didn't look anything like the art, or even the model.

Not worth the $60 for me. If I really want to replay Tomb Raider, I'd still rather play the PC version on max settings at 2560x1440 at 60 FPS. That said the PS4 version is definitely much smoother than the XB1 version which was pretty much what we expected.

Whoa, does the Giant Bomb video player support 60fps? Because the difference going to the PS4 is readily apparent.

It seems like they improved the TressFX implementation quite a bit. It does less crazy stuff and it looks like they reduced the number of individual strands, which is actually an improvement. I'm guessing the toned it down a bit to get it running better on the consoles; TressFX is basically unusable in the PC version, at least on nVidia cards. Even on my GTX 680 it was like a 20fps hit and just not worth it. It would be nice if they patched the PC version to use the console's TressFX implementation, but that probably won't happen.

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Regarding a Mass Effect trilogy remake - I desperately want this, but only if they almost completely redesign the gameplay systems and side content of Mass Effect 1. The glut of barely distinguished weapons and armors plus the lackluster skills need to go in favor of a total conversion to ME3's gameplay systems. So do the uncharted worlds and cut/paste structures, which should replaced with relatively small one-off maps for the notable side missions like the way they're handled in ME2 & 3. But just so the Mako isn't forgotten entirely, throw in a couple Mako specific maps like the Firewalker DLC for ME2.

ME2 they wouldn't have to do much at all (in mechanics terms) except make the skill/weapon system match ME3's.

@anund said:

I think it's less that Lara's a girl and getting roughed up, and more the fact that it kinda seems like they're beating her up to prove how tough a girl can be, just because she's a girl. Drake gets fucked up, but he gets fucked up because he gets in ridiculous situations, not because he's a macho man.

This has so many more definitions my eyeballs are bleeding! Over 3 billion definitions!

I found this version of Lara totally unappealing. I like the don't-give-a-fuck millionaire adventuring bad-ass Lara and I kind of hate how she was supplanted by Nathan Drake as the video game action hero. When she was shouting "why are you doing this to meeeee?" I had to chuckle and shake my head.

Just so you know the game may be the same resolution on both platforms but it runs on 30 FPS on XONE and 60 on PS4.

Not entirely sure I see where the comments about the last moments of the story are coming from.. the rest of the game makes no effort to hide that it's going in that direction and its par for the course with Tomb Raider.

DAD BRAD

Must say I completely disagree about the violence and death stuff. I think it is necessary. I also think the only reason anyone has any problem with it is because she is a woman. Yet here is a studio treating lara with the same equality as a man would be in the same situation.

Note that also Lara doesn't have a romantic interest, and in fact is the savior of most of the male survivor that are on the island. She defies a lot of tropes that a good majority of female game characters fall into. This is Square Enix treating there lead with respect that so many people are wanting to see and if you're intention is telling a story about survival having horribly graphic death animations are part of that formula. It gives you that small extra incentive to stay the fuck alive. I think it would be disrespectful to pull back on that stuff simply because people have a hard time seeing violence like that enacted on a woman. Because hey, if you have that reaction to it #1. You aren't a psychopath #2. That was the intended effect.

P.S. - Brad is bad at dad.

"Brad's back with higher resolution" How is this higher res, when they did the original quick look on PC?

The original game had grisly death animations for landing on spikes, it's nothing new.

I also thought the beginning of Uncharted 2 was equally dumb. We know Nathan Drake's a tough dude, he doesn't need to take a gunshot wound of top of everything else to prove that.

I see the hair still isn't anywhere as good as Alice:Madness Returns'.

@darji: The average is 29.84, It may hitch in isolated portions to go down to that 18 but essentially it is almost always 30. Again, I reiterate, not flame warring as I have a PS4

I prefer the higher variable frame rate but it's misleading to say the the version than averages 29.84 drops "a lot" and the one that averages 51 drops "every once in a while."

But now a girl cries in pain through it so it's just too much and akin to torture porn.~

Who's Laura?

Yes, Jennifer Lawrence should raid more tombs, Brad.

I'm really not feeling the 60fps on PS4. It looks a little bizarre and disorienting all cleaned and sped up. I'm not so sure this game needs the jump to 60 for an action/adventure game.

@legendarychopchop: lol.

The camera shake while walking and during cut scenes is still nauseating!

With regards to the 'sexism' conversation: People were weirded out at all the violence against Lara because she's a woman, but 90% of that conversation was directly the result of the publisher showing everybody a video where she fights off a guydoing a lot of creepy shit that implied he was going to molest or rape her. People historically haven't tried to rape men in games, and when you use sexual assault for shock value you're benching on the sex and violence against women to market your product through the "Oh I'm so controversial, you have to play me!" method of advertisement. The rest of the shit that goes on in the game is as gratuitous as any other video game, but the reason the conversation has been steered in the direction that it has is a result of that video the publishers put out. Blame those guys for framing the game with a conversation about sexual assault and sexism and, if you hate it so much, stop peddling it on every forum you visit. I didn't hear brad and vinny going off about how it was sexist, I heard them talking about how it was gratuitous, and some of the people here seem to be reading 'sexism' into everything they and everybody else says.

Oh it's just the baby fat the designers have given Lara is making him wanna "protect her". See, it's working!

I loved this game. Played it on PC with all the bells and whistles on, and it looked and played great. My one beef (which I now know has been addressed by the DLC) was the fact that she ran around in a tank top the whole game. I mean... It's freezing, it's raining... Why not raid the corpse of the first baddie you kill and take the arctic coat he's wearing? You take everything else from his body, so why not his coat? i also agree with Brad on his other point, more tombs! The first game was so great and there wasn't hardly any combat in that game. It was just puzzles and raiding tombs.

I still think the PC version looks better than this. I played it on PC and that was fine by me, enjoyed throughout. I disliked the old Tomb Raider games because I always thought they were difficult and all the timing-puzzles were irritating. As far as I know there were no outfit options in the standard game.

The problem with TressFX is that you know...hair has weight. I'd probably get this on PS4 if I had one, great game and I only played thru it on 360.

And yeah RE4 had some fuuuuuuucked deaths. I remember that horrible cage sequence where it was like the big hanging cage over a abyss and the cage was sort of like a maze and some crazy creepy cultist dude was chasing after you.

@anund: Talk about strawman argument: They never said that the tank top is "sexist", they said that it was silly that she kept on using it when in the snow section and didn't, you know, maybe take the clothes of one of the bad guys she killed or something. There's also the very noticeable "game-y" aspect of her shivering in the very beginning, and just going about her business after that. It has nothing to do with her gender, you just made that up.

As for the violence in the game; Uncharted is cartoon violence, Lara gets killed in extremely brutal ways that are, in my opinion, out of character for the game. It's just shock value, nothing more. I think people would comment on it just as much if Nathan Drake got impaled through the fucking head when he died.

My god reading these comments makes me so damn happy I could care less about framerates and other PC master race crap, this game is great btw. Also, Brad is totally right that outfit menu was not in the original version.

I'd rather have a smooth 30fps frame rate than one that jumps from 30-60. That being said, no plans on getting this since I already played through this on PC. Actually forced a 30fps limit using NVidia Inspector.

To be fair, Resident Evil 4 was super silly compared to this game. Tomb Raider is a gritty, serious origin story. Resident Evil 4 is a pretty camp zombie story. It fits RE4 to have crazy stuff like decapitations and being torn apart, just as it fits in sci-fi monster games like Dead Space. It doesn't fit when they're trying to tell a semi-believable story about a girl surviving against the odds.

are framerates sexist

So you do care about that stuff if you could care less.

Dat difference. If this comes on sale, I think I'll be really tempted to pick it up for PS4. Definetly replaying when/if it becomes a Plus title.

oh my goodness brad can you just not talk? like ever? you go on and on about the "unnecessary" violence in this game. how "torture porn" it is. i cant believe that was your grasp of it. at the same time, you get off on tearing zombies apart about 50 million times in dead rising 3. ive watched you countless times in other games enjoying all types of over the top decapitations and dismemberment. but for some reason, you dont approve of the violence in this game. TR's depictions of death and pain are closely on par with real life. they are serious. when you witness them you should feel something. it should bother you. i applaud this game for showing what it did and the way it did.

So judging from the comments this game is about rape, torture porn, and realistic hair. Count me in.

I'm so sick of hearing about all the controversy surrounding this game because it puts a female character in a traditionally male role and kicks the shit out of her over the course of the game. Do these people not realize that expecting special treatment for a female character just because she's a woman is in itself sexist? Irony.

Oh Brad.

My GOTY 2013. I think I'll fire it up again on 360.

They probably would have turned a profit faster if they hadn't invested in that forgettable MP.

Definitive Look.