izigame.me

I need to say a lot about this game, but much of what I want to say has been said. I'll try anyway.

What an absolute graphical treat, this game looks and runs pretty amazing. Of course, near the end, it wouldn't stop glitching on me every chance it got (I think the developers ran out of time), but for the most part it all played beautifully. Much of the animation I saw was fantastic (again, except glitches, like opening sarcophagi), Lara felt great to move around and fantastic facial animations (no, not the lipsync). The combat was easily the clunkiest part, but I can excuse that as it wasn't the worst thing ever. Any time you bounced from one tree limb, grapple to a higher one, to the next tree limb felt so natural. That's probably why I'm so disappointed with the way the climbing usually is in this game.
In terms of gameplay, everything controls fairly smoothly except when it glitches on my 10th consecutive climbing segment jump, or when I'm underwater and can drift like I'm in fucking Initial D. The open combat is sorely neglected. There's essentially no satisfaction from openly murdering these poor PMCs Lara comes across--not even in the shotgun, which is meant to be the very epitome of feel-good shooting in games. Not in this one, sadly. Stealth kills are very satisfying, and it's also a satisfying loop to get into, short of having more mechanics to really round it out (a la Last of Us, imo).
Climbing... I wish I could say I loved it, because I did enjoy all the additions like grappling and rappelling, it made navigating the terrain very active. Except the game falls into all the pit traps any other of its ilk do, which is, "You are only allowed to climb here, and here. All the other space in this open world game is unavailable, sorry!" What's the point of giving me these fun tools if I can't even climb a regular, flat wall like I usually do when you *want* me to? Not only that, but I kept confusing completely non-traversal terrain with my strict, predetermined path; which they easily could have been, had the game any sense of variety. In the linear segments, it was at its worst, and underwhelming in tombs. Something that could have had a lot of variety for active, engaging gameplay, instead just felt like a frustrating railroad that killed time.
Speaking of restricted, that makes the "open world" feel that much more dull. Not to mention the soulless stock animations and lipsync struggling to keep up with the audio format its meant to read--I'm, of course, talking about any side quest.
How did something like Metro: Exodus handle sidequests? Well, you come to know people through the sake of the story and, for better or worse, you become interested in them, and thus, what they needed. A little girl you just saved had her teddy stolen by a Demon. You're not rewarded for getting it back, except maybe the loot you find there, but surely she'd like it back!
How does SoTR handle it? Like every other game with obligatory side quests: strangers you really don't care about with plots that aren't interesting or enjoyable, and offer very meager (still obligatory) rewards. No, your reward is not knowing the little girl is happy, because you never had the chance to connect with her in the first place, it's this cool new armor set, that feels just like all the others, look! You just... don't care. If you skip cutscenes, you're cut out of important information you needed to fulfill the quest as well, so good try. I was desperate to find reasons to not skip, but that was one. Perhaps that's my gripe with games in general now, but still a complaint. Stop doing these, I'm begging you. Or at least put time into them, like better games have.
I'm absolutely fine with this being an open exploration game, where you uncover tombs only in your active search around, but everything *must* be a collectible, you *must* 100% complete this route. I can't explain, but I don't think this game treats its exploration like true exploration. It's almost obligatory, as you must have talked to X NPC to get here, because he needs Y. With some places, your routes are blocked due to this, relating back to my gripe with sidequests. No, this stuff isn't mandatory, but that's because you're clinging onto anything of substance you can in an "open world" game called *Tomb Raider.* Hell, every single tomb is a side-activity. So to fill that 100%, you're forced to hunt back for collectibles. Empty time. It's amazing how much an "open" game can really feel like it's choking you.
However, in one linear segment, you could actually scale almost all of the terrain and buildings! Halfway through the game, they give you a nice stealth segment in a cool narrative spot, too. Using walls to your advantage, getting up high so you can string an enemy up, then jump and tuck yourself against a wall to lose his allies. Was great playing this, hearing my prey speak in tense whispers about how Croft is killing all their friends. Sadly this is once again punctuated with an unsatisfying shoot-out at the end of it in which Lara barely misses 500 bullets in a climbing section, and it mirrors how the game itself ends. Every other linear segment, I found, was a chase-disaster railroad or dreadfully dry otherwise. *Especially* the end.
Tombs were easily the best part of this game, (especially given the fact that this time, they were more difficult puzzles compared to the last games). I'll rebut what I usually hear about these new games: No, we don't need *more* tombs: we need *longer* tombs. Many of them introduce a gimmick, in a small way, near the beginning of the dungeon, which is then later implemented into the main puzzle area. Fantastic, only... that's it. That's all you get of that mechanic, and with most of these, your versatile climbing is nowhere in handy. Hope you like one, moderately hard puzzle.
Spoilers now.
What a narrative. Who is Lara Croft? Is she the defender of civilizations, subsequently the world, as she fights corrupt PMCs and kills ancient evils? The wholehearted girl who cries at the loss of a character she met 2 hours ago? The narrative tells you this unflinchingly as the game begins with Lara unremorsefully causing the Armageddon and getting hundreds to potentially thousands of people killed. Not sure of the scope, but that's as we see it. This is touched upon later by her, but like is best said by her companion Jonah: she seems to think it's all about her regardless. Well, it kind of is, if you intentionally started the apocalypse. Regardless, it's a feeling touched upon only once by our heroine.
The villain is actually the good guy for 80% of the plot. Intentions pure, actions merciful at first, only to be driven mad as the story tells you he IS the bad guy. Was rooting for him, until the cult thing. Nothing really makes me like Lara as a character, because I still don't know who she is. The story tells me she's good, directly at one point, but I can't believe it. Not after murdering countless men, causing a catastrophe for her benefit, and nabbing ancient artifacts of civilizations she claims to protect. At points, I thought the comments on "researching" and pillaging was satire, since it's so thick at the beginning. I'm fine with the murder, and the pillaging, but not when the character speaks against them *while* doing them. The story loves to contradict itself.
The plot is inconsequential, forgettable. Everything is rushed out at you like a typical Hollywood movie. It was said, so you must believe it. Compared to the memory I have of the Uncharted's, this just felt like a schlock movie I rented for a weekend. Nothing was gained nor lost, save 23 hours.

Originally, this was longer, but I cut myself short for Steam's sake. My consensus is: just not worth it. Disappointing. You can do better, you have the budget. Make us something we won't forget instead of this general-appeal trend-chasing slop you continue to serve us. You tried, I could tell--just commit to it!