Quick Look: Shadow of the Tomb Raider

I honestly think "tall grass make you invisible" might be my least favorite trope in modern triple A games.

Its basically the new random waist high walls.

BEST INTRO EVER!!

Shitty comment.

@vdortizo: No.

Shit looks super nice. Pretty excited for a new TR

Essentially identical to Rise, looks just as tedious as well.

"Everybody loves swimming sequences in games, right? Now let's introduce forced stealth to that!" Uggggggh.

no

You are entitled to your own opinion.

She can’t even pronounce her own name correctly (or Brad for that matter), what a shame.

This series reboot honestly makes me think about the 'what would we think about this/how big a deal would this be if sent back in time to 2005' conversation. In context 2018, like farcry 5's release, I find myself completely unable to find any excitement for a third Tomb Raider reboot game- or several other franchises that seem to be chasing the high-production predictable output at this point. I feel bad for studios that set overall ambitions as high as to promise a trilogy, when there are so many video games angling for the same serious tone and graphical trophyholding spot, only to find themselves like, lost in the numbers, no matter what mechanical, or small iterative tweaks they make to distinguish themselves after a grand 're-defining' comeback. It feels forced maybe? I just get no feelings of joy out of any of this, and I have to wonder, with a saturated genre, does each game IP with yearly-sequel-drops have to leap and bound excel past it's previous iterations, and it's competition to even stand out? Is it circumstance and luck too as far as proximity to other similar vibe'd games? I think this is getting dangerously close to the ratings discussion as far as scores, so I'll trail off here and say that I'm glad video games are getting made, but sometimes ask myself if, from a studio's perspective, if they even actually want to make these games in hopes of mainstream success and progression of format, or if they throw money at a formula because they feel they have to, in order to survive...

I think Spiderman, God of War and others success stories from big budget, come from going the other way with what has been done, and other games, like Absolver, Super Hot, Rocket League, and the etc indie instant classics, all work because they find a way to take known quantities, turn them on their head, and in turn, something exciting or interesting to sell and expand on in either concept or execution, and also being very fun to play. With these titles I feel the developers intent is set out to do something very different from games in similar genres, if not break the mold of convention and exist in a category of their own. I don't know if this is always necessary, but maybe a re-evaluation on the games landscape is necessary for big budget, which thankfully I get vibes is happening. Smaller budget obviously has less risk and more freedom in ways that maybe bigger budget teams might learn from and instead of tackling one singular franchise to bet the farm on, divide up development to tackle newer, fresher game ideas. I see other commenters enjoying their time with this game though, so I definitely am speaking only for myself with this very stream of consciousness comment.

Very pretty game. Especially the mud & how the lighting & water play together looks nice. The game seems very by the numbers, but i bet i could get lost in this and play it all the way through.

It looks like one of the most videogamey games out there though. The raider vision showing you every essential piece of the game. The tall grass making you invisible. Piranha's swimming a guard route. The molotov coctails positioned at a group of enemies to get your molotov coctail achievement. Lara is unable to run when it would be inappropriate for the next cutscene. It's a shame that they spent all this work making the game look gorgeous when the best way to play the game is by checking everything with the vision ability to make sure you don't miss stuff.

This might make people roll their eyes , but the XP descriptors take me out of the immersion. You don't get a 'stealth kill' or 'headshot' pop up to inform the player. Instead, you get a pat on the back from Eidos Montreal with the 'Head Shot!' & 'Stealth Kill!' . Goodjob buddy! You killed that dude good! I wonder if they debated whether to use 1 exclamation point or 3. Probably hypocritical of me, but i don't mind when there are puns in trophy descriptions. But just seeing that ! in the actual game keeps conjuring images of a dev looking over your shoulder at a booth and telling you that you did well.

That cutscene with Marco seemed to have some audio issues. Whenever the camera focuses on Lara, it picks up the music from the town, while there's no background noise whenever the camera is pointed at Marco. So you get this awkward tone in the cutscene where every 5 seconds it shifts from music to silence.

Finally, this quicklook made me think about how Lara differs from Nathan Drake.

Nathan is supposed to be an average joe that is just really interested in treasure hunting because of his ancestry. Him having a notebook with ancient symbols drawn in it makes sense. That's a thing you and i could do with limited knowledge & the power of the internet & books. This way, when you stumble on an ancient tomb with weird symbols, you can check your notes to see if you encountered these symbols in your research. That works quite well.

With Lara, you have to accept that she's a tomb raiding genius and just knows stuff. She stumbles on an ancient cavern with a symbol and immediatly tells her buddy that she's at the Spider Trial on her way to the Eagle Trial that has a puzzle that has to do with the wind. As a player, you just have to accept that Lara knows these things. When a tomb gets unmasked, she's immediatly able to tell you which steps you should take to complete it. She doesn't even have to check a notebook, it's all up there in her brains. That makes it harder to truly connect to her as a character. You don't get to learn along with her. As Brad said, all this innate knowledge she has, makes her sound like a conspiracy theorist at times.

It looks identical to the last game, she even did the annoying voice line thing last time too.

I'm glad Brad was as amused by the weapon swapping animation as I was. Did that shit for ten minutes, at least.

I have always been intrigued by the legend of the fishtaco

About ten minutes in, Brad says that death was the first he's had in the game, but at the very beginning of this video, he's killed by piranha a few times.

Looks like a boring game to me.

@knoxt: I think this Tomb Raider trilogy might be the wrong series to really ask those kinda questions about. This whole thing was a business deal from the start. It's Square going "we own this IP, it's worth a lot of money, let's make some games". And they didn't just want to make one game, they wanted to make more games. And from Crystal Dynamics perspective getting a three game deal is most likely a big win. It might not be a passion project, but it's money in the bank and the studio being safe and secure for a good 8-10 years. They didn't need this to be some revolutionary title, it just needed to be Tomb Raider and it'll sell well.

The videogame industry is way too big for everyone to make landmark titles at this point. In fact I'd be as bold as saying that most successful studios today are mostly focused on just keeping business flowing.

@pixelomen: Hear hear. Out of all the TR reboot games this one actually feels like an actual Tomb Raider game to me.

I cannot state enough how much of a difference the hard mode for exploration and puzzles makes. In the video I see Brad just go through all the boring motions of climbing all the yellow/white ledges. Sure, on hard difficulty I still have to climb the same ledges to get to the same place but at least it's not being spoon fed to me. I actually have to pay attention to where I jump now.

Also just being able to do puzzles without Lara screaming in my ear "Hmm, looks like I CAN PRESS THIS BUTTON" is amazing.

I also made the choice to not use eagle vision/detective mode (whatever it's called) outside of combat because that also makes the game so lazy. If I want to get the 100% trophy and can't find collectibles by myself it's nice to have the option, but I highly recommend not using it. Depending on what you're looking to get out of the game of course.

@onemanarmyy: throughout the game she's literally taking pictures of the main story tombs she walks into. That's how she knows about the trials. Also you can turn off all the Lara Tomb VO, that's just there to help the player. In fact the absolute best way to play this is on hard because it turns off all the hints and Uncharted paint on climbable ledges and it nerfs instincts mechanic.

This game looks so good, and I'm down for for more tomb raiding. Count me in.

Hmm. The cart opening up to grab the counterweight, the constant "you need to lock the leftside counterweight into position", the jumping on the counterweight and hanging there wondering how to get it to stay...

What makes you think that?

These games just scream generic to me, and I can't stand the new Lara or the stories in these games. I hope the series gets rebooted once again and we get to have competent and wisecracking Lara back.

Piranhas don't really attack people all that often though.

The constant question of "whats different about this one?" is weird because I don't feel like this issue was generally discussed when new Uncharted games came out. What was different in those? The story basically, the gameplay changed very little from one Uncharted to another. Yet a lot of sites seem to be really focusing on that Shadow of the Tomb Raider is "too much of the same" when plenty popular franchises similarly evolve very little.

I mean people are entitled to their own opinions. As a diehard fan of the 2013 reboot and slightly lesser fan of Rise, I also agree that something feels weirdly off about this one. I was very excited for Rise while I don't really feel all that much excitement for this installment, and maybe it is because it seems like more of the same, but I wonder why in this specific case "more of the same" seems to matter so much more.

@humanity: I'm guessing it's because even though UC4's story was incredibly generic and cliche it has incredibly high production values and is well acted. To a lot of people that matters more than how the game actually plays. Personally I'll take any of the Tomb Raider games over any Uncharted game but that's because I like the gameplay more. Most video game stories dont do much for me.

@humanity: As someone who thinks that the Uncharted games are significantly overrated, and as someone who thinks that the 2015 TR game was way too similar in mechanics to the 2013 game...yeah.

I dunno. Maybe part of the difference is that you aren't leveling up in Uncharted. So while the weapons and combat are similar between the first three games (I haven't played the more recent ones), you aren't running into the ridiculous idea of the character having basically forgotten all of their skills between the games. I played Rise earlier this year and while I enjoyed it, I couldn't help it. I found it utterly ridiculous that the enemy AI was the same (terrible) and Lara was relearning a bunch of skills from the first game. This isn't unique to Tomb Raider by any means, it just feels rather archaic in a game from 2015.

Somebody in these comments wrote that he was playing without the detective vision, which is I think the right way the go, although I would understand that it would be hard to tell the difference between scenery items and interactables. The vision just ruins this whole game for me. It also, just like it did for the batman games, ruin the ability to appreciate the amazing graphics.

Her weapon swapping has improved tremendously, it seems.

As someone who didn't love the combat when the reboot came out, I liked that Rise Of The Tomb Raider let me stealth my way through encounters so often. Hearing that Brad hasn't had to deal with too much combat thus far and seeing that stealth is still a viable option when it comes up is good to see.

Also, them attempting to make Jonah an actual character continues to be weird considering he was just one more random character that happened to not die by the end of the first game.

I played it for 4 hours straight the other day and was legitimately disappointed that I had to stop due to adult duties. And I've enjoyed the previous 2.

Think it's just as good, if not bettet than 2013. Rise went a little too combat heavy for my tastep so this game has been a welcome deviation from that in terms of pacing, atmosphere, and just general exploration. Plus as much as the jungle environments can get repetitive they do offer a lot of variety and just look really well composed, I much prefer that over the snowy mountainous regions of Rise.

Does Laura bring enough to the table on her own?

I feel like I'm playing a different game than most people who are seeking to just say this game is fine. This is so far in this year the best game I've played (dead cells is second) and every time I get a new skill or unlock a new tomb or you learn more about Lara (and subsequently empathise with her too) the game gets better.

I have plans to get red dead 2, assassin creed Odyssey, Whitman 2 and I still don't know if they will be able to compete with this game.

Also Spider-Man has nothing on Lara, sure he can fall 300 stories and not die but Lara actually moves like a real person and the traversal is excellent but even the combat is fun every time i get into combat.

It also is the best graphics I've seen with rise a close second. 4k maxed out is just jaw dropping and makes me want a rtx card now. I hope more people play this and don't listen to the reviewers giving it a 7 out of 10 or saying it's bad because they clearly are incorrect. Not a dig in anyone in giant vomg just in general lots of negativity and then there are the comments saying they're offended at Lara... doing her job because she's white. Sad to see such an amazing game in stupid controversy.

@steveurkel:I agree, really having a great time with this so far. I started Spider-man last week and I'm a huge fan of that character, but I feel like this is a more fun game. Its hard for me to get worked up about the colonial aspects too because I've never really taken the story in these games all that seriously. Its just there to explain why you are going on these adventures. Everyone has to draw their own line on that kind of thing, and I understand that some are more bothered than others by it.

Not sure if I'd go so far as to say its my GOTY so far, but its gonna be up there. Just going around exploring the environments and using stealth to take out enemies is so satisfying. Puzzle design is the best its been in the reboot series, and the graphics are stellar as you pointed out. Hopefully it sells well enough so they keep making more of these!

Need to lock the left side counterweight in position.

My man Brad doing God's work with the Star Wars references; even got some Episode 1 in there.

@meierthered: Exactly my reaction.

@brad You need to lock the left side counterweight into position.

"Need to lock the left si..."

Close tab.

I kind of liked the more focused linear path of the first game. I have yet to finish Rise so I need to do that before thinking about getting this.

Who'd win in a fight?

Sam Fisher, Solid Snake, or Lara Croft?

In a way, we all need to lock the left counterweight into position.

@boiter: Do you consider that a good thing or a bad thing?

It seems like Brad has zero enthusiasm for this game which is weird because he found so much to like about Rise of the Tomb Raider, so much so he championed it to a respectable spot in the middle of the GB top ten games of the year. I don't agree that it's more of the same but even still that shouldn't be a big issue for a game he enjoyed so much. The underwater sections are completely redone and remind me of the underrated part of Black Flag where you explored shipwrecks and hid from sharks. The town looked much more lively than the settlements in the last game and the side quests seemed more involved. The graphics looked a good bit more detailed (to me) and it's cool to see Jonah actually play a part throughout the story and have his own perspective. The combat taking a backseat shouldn't be an issue considering almost everyone on the staff has complained about there being too much in both Tomb Raider and Uncharted, plus the stealth seems to have many more options. When comparing Rise and Shadow he seems to act like they weren't building off a great base already. He showered the last game with praise and then goes to "I'm not hating it" after a couple of hours of playing the new one while admitting his complaints are nitpicks (eye lines not matching in cutscenes, mud not sticking to her clothes all the time, too many crafting resources). On the bombcast this week he said it has nice attention to detail but in the next sentence completely contradicted himself. I generally find our tastes align pretty well so this just perplexes me but maybe it's as simple as I was ready for a new Tomb Raider after 3 years and he wasn't.

P.S.: I hate to bring up the Brad Quick Look situation since it's a dead horse but dude complained about how often they were telling him to lock the left counter-weight as he's trying to lock the right one. Also near the end when they're looking for Jonah who outright tells her that he's downstairs and Brad immediately went upstairs I face-palmed.

P.P.S. @mister_v and @ares42 We can agree to disagree on the faces looking bad here (Sony games share face-tech expertise so that's why Spidey, GoW, et al are top tier) but the actress who has played Lara in the last three games just has naturally good skin. I don't wanna sound like a creeper but as a trans woman who drinks a ton of water to keep her skin clear, I can appreciate someone with that feature. I googled her without make-up and I don't see a huge difference.

@vanfarley: Laras appearance isn't based on Luddingtons, at least it wasn't initially. Maybe they changed it for this game and that's why it looks so different.

@ares42 they've based it off her for the whole reboot trilogy and that's why she actually has natural body proportions. I know back in the Core studio years they went through different models to represent her at trade shows but this was before facial mapping. Not sure if they had an actress mo-capping her face in the early Crystal D games but I remember EGM running a story about Lara getting more realistically proportioned boobs in Legend which might be the weirdest thing I ever read in that magazine besides Seanbaby's column lol.

@vanfarley: This is a comparison from the first game:

Can't say I see many similarities. I guess the cheekbones are fairly similar, but even the face shape is different.

@ares42: You're right I forgot how different she looked in that first one. I had played Rise more recently and they got a lot closer to the actress on that one (pictured). She still does the voice for all three games but I really just meant she still looks close to how she did in the second game. In this interview from 2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPj_5xlQVk4) she says they used a new mo-cap technique that upped the facial capture from about 90 points of reference to around 7000. In the first game they took artistic license to fill out the rest of Lara's features since they couldn't make her look just like the actress. People can prefer the 2013 face if they like but they haven't changed her as drastically this time because they're working off the same face.