auxy wrote:Started this game the other night. I'm only about an hour in, but jesus wept I hate this game so far. I'm kinda busy at work, so I'll update this post later. (⊙︿⊙✿)
Well, I forgot to update this when I got home, but it's slow as Christmas today, so I'll write a little more.
I went into Tomb Raider really excited to play it. As a woman and a feminist (proper, old-school feminism, not this new, awful, misandrist garbage you see on the 'net), the idea of a game that presented a real, believable, feminine woman -- not a sassy man with a pretty face and breasts -- struggling for survival amidst a harsh wilderness environment was very intriguing!
The game was supposed to come out late in 2012 and I had it pre-ordered, originally, because I was looking forward to it so. When it got delayed to 2013, I canceled my pre-order for a few reasons: because I wanted to buy another game, because I had to give one of my GTX 460s to my girlfriend, and because I was quickly becoming less sure of my aged single GTX460's ability to really let me enjoy the game. I also decided I didn't need a retail copy of the game laying around; just more junk to throw away.
In March, when my mysterious benefactor here on the forums gifted me a substantial GPU upgrade, I went ahead and bought the game, and then, preoccupied with work and my ongoing free-to-play addiction, it languished unplayed in my Steam account (not even installed!) until last week, when I finally got around to playing it, and now, I sorta wish I never had.
Everything I've heard about this game without exception is nothing but effluent praise! Praise for the graphics, praise for the gameplay, and most of all, praise for the depiction of Lara as a cornered rat fighting for survival.
Well, I'm not a fan. I loaded the game up and within minutes of hitting "new game" I was frustratedly tapping the Esc key, mouthing "yeah I get it." When I FINALLY get control of my character, I watch this supposedly-realistic protagonist fall some fifteen meters onto a stone surface, impaling herself (right through the kidney!) on a bony spike, which she proceeds to yank out like an action movie protagonist.
Now, at this point, I probably should have realized what the tone of the game was going to be. I didn't, though, because the game immediately goes into a lot of melodrama in Lara's behavior (movements and what she says) that's fairly appropriate for someone in such a situation. I thought, "well, maybe that drop wasn't as far as it looked, and maybe that spike didn't quite get her kidney." Okay. And then, not even minutes later -- maybe one minute -- they have you jumping and climbing.
HELLO? CRIPPLING TRUNK INJURY HERE? She should be BLEEDING OUT and SEPTIC, not climbing up onto things. (Not to mention all the dirty water and other filth she wades through throughout the rest of the game, with OPEN WOUNDS.) I wasn't aware Lara had Wolverine's healing factor! But okay, okay, it's just a video game, maybe they're not going for stark realism. Move on, through the cave...
Well, I could write a whole huge blog entry about how stupid the beginning of the game is, but my real problem with the game is that the stupidity doesn't really ever stop. The melodrama goes on and on and at no point does the game ever give any hint that the player isn't supposed to take all of this seriously, at face value; at no point does the game ever relent in the assault on suspension of disbelief. Lara goes from simpering little teenaged girl to remorseless killing machine in the matter of a couple of cutscenes, and both sides of her personality are so overblown, so over-acted, that it's impossible to take either one seriously. She's a caricature of a character. If the game at any point had been tongue-in-cheek; if the game at any point had ever stopped to explain any of the impossible, nonsensical things that happen, I might have been a little okay with it. It never does though; it takes itself all too seriously, and that ended up being the downfall for me.
There are also myriad smaller issues beyond the godawful Lifetime story and wretched, ham-fisted presentation, too. Why is Sam's VA the worst Japanese speaker in the group? (Maybe that's why the islanders wanted to possess her with an ancient storm goddess -- to get her to respect her culture and pronounce some damn words right.) Why, in all the emphasis on drama and realism, is there no bandaging mechanic? There's already a scrounging and salvage mechanic; would it have been that hard to implement medical supplies in there too? (This wasn't done because the game is so over-the-top with this at points that it would have been impossible to do this without highlighting how stupid the rest of the game is.) Why is so much of the world geometry made up of like 9 polygons, while Lara's face gets tessellated to ridiculous levels? Why am I using an AXE to pry open boxes, when there are clearly much more suited tools laying around? I could go on for hours.
Yah, I realize it seems like I'm nitpicking on what is, in many ways, a fantastic game. The graphics, especially the weather effects, DO look pretty good, and I especially appreciate the support for superior super-sampling anti-aliasing. The sound design was pretty well done too, even if I want to stab half the voice actors; the foley work on the ambience was excellent. The gameplay, too, was really very competent, and in fact, I actually have no real serious complaints about the game
as a game. I just wish they wouldn't have tried so hard to make me care about their completely ludicrous story and characters, because in so doing they made me hate their game.