I'm not really impressed with Tomb Raider so far..

So after completing The Last of Us, I started on Tomb Raider by recommendation from people on these boards. I must say.. I'm not really seeing all the hype to be honest. There seems to be something lacking, like a final touch of polish. The camera seems to be very jerky and movement on screen is not very fluid, I've never suffered from motion sickness but this game definitely looks pretty bad in that regard.

Admittedly, I'm only four hours in but I've already become somewhat bored with it. The character models, particularly Lara's face are horrendous. The other characters are terribly cliche and the voice acting is sub par. It's not all bad though, the gameplay itself is solid and the environments look nice, but it doesn't seem to have that special something. I do like the puzzles, they're a lot better than anything in Uncharted, but the gunplay is pretty bad to be honest. I was looking forward to the bow, but after TLOU, the bow in TR just seems poorly executed. The wolves sometimes stop in mid air whilst they charge, again removing the fluidity of the game. There are other glitches like this, which again indicate the need for more polishing.

I definitely feel this game could have done with a few more months of refining. I will continue playing, but at this point it seems like a solid 7/10 game to me. I guess that after playing the masterpiece that was TLOU, it's a little difficult to get impressed with games that are simply good. I mean no disrespect to the developers, but the voice acting and characterisation that Naughty Dog achieved really makes this game look dated in my opinion. 

I certainly agree for the most part. It was a great title however and one I have played through multiple times already. My gripes with the game are the underdeveloped combat sections usually consisting of 2 or 3 pieces of cover perfectly lined up from left to right and enemies pouring in from a single direction. Add in the limited enemy A.I which either stands in one designated spot the designer intended or they run straight at you with no in between. Also the lack of options within combat hold it back. You have the ability to traverse the environment but this is completely wasted within combat as you have no options other than duck behind cover and shoot.

Stealth takedowns feel wasted as they are ONLY available when the section is designed for it. You lose the option to perform a takedown the moment combat erupts. It's a poorly executed cover shooter with limited combat options. It also lacks a new game plus which renders all your upgrades and XP farming useless unless you feel like grinding only to see no benefit at the end of the day. The characters are extremely generic with little to no personality. I believe Lara to be a boring character, she gets almost no time to develope her personality because the game lacks much in the way of levity. It's too serious all the time and this completely rules out any sign of life for the character.

The setpiece action segments feel underwhelming, ithey never pack much of a punch. I certainly prefer the more methodical design, build up and execution of these in the Uncharted series. But I can say that I enjoyed the puzzles. However they should have implemented more of these into the main story progression instead of just having them as extras for some added and ultimately pointless XP farming.

At the end of the day it's a great game and one I'll surely play again. But I also feel like it fails to match up to other games like Uncharted or TLOU or even Arkham City. The way I look at it is this, if you boil Tomb Raider down to a linear construct removing all the fluff and compare it to Uncharted it fails to match up in nearly every conveivable way. It's a game of quantity over quality.

One of my fav games in 2013.

Wow I disagree with everything you said.  Lack of polish?  I don't see that at all.

Personally Tomb Raider is my GoTY so far. Yes, even about The Last of Us.

I didn't see a lack of polish, but yes, the support characters are awful, I don't think anyone could successfully argue otherwise.  As for graphics not being up to par on character models, I thought they looked really good, especially Lara.  Comparing it to The Last of Us is kind of odd because other than both being AAA titles they have very little in common.  Comparing it to Uncharted is better, and I think the new Lara is a somewhat better character than Drake (don't get me wrong, I think Drake's a good character, but can be kind of annoying at times).  Though, I do think it's funny that TR and TLoU both have a scene when the main character falls on a piece of rebar sticking out of the ground, but at least their reactions to it are different and I think both really big moments in the games.

At the very least, TR is only around 9-10 hours so you should be able to get through it, just don't bother with the online, that is one area where TLoU is definitely better.

Well like you mentioned it's your opinion..however why compare? take it for what it is. I have been gaming regularly the last couple of months..finished bioshock infinite first, then far cry 3 and TLOU..All great games. You want to know what iam playing now? darksiders 2 and iam loving it!! iam not comparing it to TLOU because that would not be fair, so don't compare..again my opinion.

I see no reason to be impressed by it, the game plays like Uncharted, the story gives up pretty early on, and there was nothing interesting about the multiplayer.

So after completing The Last of Us, I started on Tomb Raider by recommendation from people on these boards. I must say.. I'm not really seeing all the hype to be honest. There seems to be something lacking, like a final touch of polish. The camera seems to be very jerky and movement on screen is not very fluid, I've never suffered from motion sickness but this game definitely looks pretty bad in that regard.

Admittedly, I'm only four hours in but I've already become somewhat bored with it. The character models, particularly Lara's face are horrendous. The other characters are terribly cliche and the voice acting is sub par. It's not all bad though, the gameplay itself is solid and the environments look nice, but it doesn't seem to have that special something. I do like the puzzles, they're a lot better than anything in Uncharted, but the gunplay is pretty bad to be honest. I was looking forward to the bow, but after TLOU, the bow in TR just seems poorly executed. The wolves sometimes stop in mid air whilst they charge, again removing the fluidity of the game. There are other glitches like this, which again indicate the need for more polishing.

I definitely feel this game could have done with a few more months of refining. I will continue playing, but at this point it seems like a solid 7/10 game to me. I guess that after playing the masterpiece that was TLOU, it's a little difficult to get impressed with games that are simply good. I mean no disrespect to the developers, but the voice acting and characterisation that Naughty Dog achieved really makes this game look dated in my opinion. 

Asim90

You should've waited a few months OR played a couple of games from another genre before moving on to TR. The Last of Us has raised the bar for characterization. Many of Tomb Raider's supporting characters and thier subplot actions will now seem trite compared to the characters in TLOU. It's not really Tomb Raider's fault that it doesn't compare favorably with TLOU. Crystal Dynamics put out a fairly good reboot considering the history of that franchise and all the "eyes," that were on its development.

To be honest, I've always felt that Uncharted's characters and cutscenes were the best, but now, after TLOU, they might not hold up very well either as the TLOU has set the new standard. Heck, I was a huge Dead Space fan and finally received DS3 thru Gamefly after having played TLOU and I didn't get past the 33% mark before the story lost my attention and motivation to finish. I'm sure if I had played DS3 at launch I would have finished it and enjoyed it but after experiencing Joel and Ellie's journey, I could care less about the convoluted mess that was DS3's story.

So after completing The Last of Us, I started on Tomb Raider by recommendation from people on these boards. I must say.. I'm not really seeing all the hype to be honest. There seems to be something lacking, like a final touch of polish. The camera seems to be very jerky and movement on screen is not very fluid, I've never suffered from motion sickness but this game definitely looks pretty bad in that regard.

Admittedly, I'm only four hours in but I've already become somewhat bored with it. The character models, particularly Lara's face are horrendous. The other characters are terribly cliche and the voice acting is sub par. It's not all bad though, the gameplay itself is solid and the environments look nice, but it doesn't seem to have that special something. I do like the puzzles, they're a lot better than anything in Uncharted, but the gunplay is pretty bad to be honest. I was looking forward to the bow, but after TLOU, the bow in TR just seems poorly executed. The wolves sometimes stop in mid air whilst they charge, again removing the fluidity of the game. There are other glitches like this, which again indicate the need for more polishing.

I definitely feel this game could have done with a few more months of refining. I will continue playing, but at this point it seems like a solid 7/10 game to me. I guess that after playing the masterpiece that was TLOU, it's a little difficult to get impressed with games that are simply good. I mean no disrespect to the developers, but the voice acting and characterisation that Naughty Dog achieved really makes this game look dated in my opinion. 

Asim90

Wow I disagree with everything you said.  Lack of polish?  I don't see that at all.

Personally Tomb Raider is my GoTY so far. Yes, even about The Last of Us.

nyc05

i liked it; better than average, well polished little romp.

i never touched the multiplayer and i didnt think it was an "amazing" game

but its a great game, maybe its not ur thing.

never thought the game looked jerky or unpolished

maybe u should of got it on the 360?

game's story fell flat, but its been over 10 years since i played a game that didnt. voice acting was still good.

[QUOTE="nyc05"]

Wow I disagree with everything you said.  Lack of polish?  I don't see that at all.

Personally Tomb Raider is my GoTY so far. Yes, even about The Last of Us.

Coolyfett

Trying playing Tomb Raider on the PC. It makes TLOU look sub par. Lara has good depth and skin textures. LOL. But yes, Tomb Raider is a so-so game. It's good to give it a playthrough but not worth the $$$ in development that they used on the game. But then again TLOU was also so-so to me. 

I thought the game was polished. It was supposed to come out Fall of 2012 but they delayed until Spring 2013 to polish it. I thought the bow worked much better in TR than TLoU.

Both of these games would make my Top 10 for this gen.

Tomb Raider is a great game.

Tomb Raider is a great game.

StrongBlackVine

It certaintly is a great game.

I'm only in the beginning and I have to say I'm not impressed one bit. Very subpar game.

Heard it picks up though so looking forward to it.

I agree with you, i never really got drawn into tomb raider, and i became bored of it about 5hours in, and for some reason my controller wouldn't allow me to mopve lara up and left it was a dead spot and she would just stand still and it ruined my game, i would put it down to my rubbish controller but it works perfectly for ever other game, it killed it for me, i found the climbing not very fluid, and i found the aiming not very good and the bow was useless, compared to the last of us. maybe it was just the controller thing what put me off will see.

So after completing The Last of Us, I started on Tomb Raider by recommendation from people on these boards. I must say.. I'm not really seeing all the hype to be honest. There seems to be something lacking, like a final touch of polish. The camera seems to be very jerky and movement on screen is not very fluid, I've never suffered from motion sickness but this game definitely looks pretty bad in that regard.

Admittedly, I'm only four hours in but I've already become somewhat bored with it. The character models, particularly Lara's face are horrendous. The other characters are terribly cliche and the voice acting is sub par. It's not all bad though, the gameplay itself is solid and the environments look nice, but it doesn't seem to have that special something. I do like the puzzles, they're a lot better than anything in Uncharted, but the gunplay is pretty bad to be honest. I was looking forward to the bow, but after TLOU, the bow in TR just seems poorly executed. The wolves sometimes stop in mid air whilst they charge, again removing the fluidity of the game. There are other glitches like this, which again indicate the need for more polishing.

I definitely feel this game could have done with a few more months of refining. I will continue playing, but at this point it seems like a solid 7/10 game to me. I guess that after playing the masterpiece that was TLOU, it's a little difficult to get impressed with games that are simply good. I mean no disrespect to the developers, but the voice acting and characterisation that Naughty Dog achieved really makes this game look dated in my opinion. 

Asim90

• Lacking polish, are you kidding?
• Jerk camera, the Tomb Raider series has always had camera problems but in this game they fixed it.
• The movement is perfectly fluid.
• Horrid character models, what are you talking about?
• The voice acting is perfectly fine.
• I have no idea what glitches you are talking about, the game was %100 bug free for me.

I think there might be a problem for your copy of the game, in my opnion, the game is a masterpeice (before anyone says anything, I haven't played The Last of Us yet).

I hate when people judge a game (or even write reviews) with just hours into the game.  Hate it.  

Played the multiplayer for 15 minutes, but haven't touched the singleplayer yet.

Yah I used to think a game was bad after a few hours and rant about it, like Bioshock Infinite, but then when I put more time in the game I noticed it was a lot better than I previously thought.

I think some people misunderstood my comments, I wasn't directly comparing it to TLOU. I see how it may have come across like that, as I'm playing it literally straight after completing TLOU. Clearly, they are totally different games so there would be no parity when comparing them overall. In terms of character models and voice acting though, those are pretty universal things so drawing comparisons in that regard is totally reasonable. Even if I was to go further back and compare it to Uncharted, a much more similar title, the character models in TR still look awful.

I'm several more hours in and I haven't really seen much improvement. The gunplay mechanics, especially the bow are severely lacking. I do like how the player can upgrade abilities though, that's something that a lot games need to incorporate to add another layer to progression and gameplay. I think if I probably played this game a year ago, I'd hold it in much higher esteem, but I stand by a 7/10, which is definitely not bad.

I think some people misunderstood my comments, I wasn't directly comparing it to TLOU. I see how it may have come across like that, as I'm playing it literally straight after completing TLOU. Clearly, they are totally different games so there would be no parity when comparing them overall. In terms of character models and voice acting though, those are pretty universal things so drawing comparisons in that regard is totally reasonable. Even if I was to go further back and compare it to Uncharted, a much more similar title, the character models in TR still look awful.

I'm several more hours in and I haven't really seen much improvement. The gunplay mechanics, especially the bow are severely lacking. I do like how the player can upgrade abilities though, that's something that a lot games need to incorporate to add another layer to progression and gameplay. I think if I probably played this game a year ago, I'd hold it in much higher esteem, but I stand by a 7/10, which is definitely not bad.

Asim90

Some Co-op would be nice though. And more puzzles please !