Tomb Raider Critique 

Someone might have pointed this out, but the "first hidden tomb" that reviewer mentions is actually a DLC tomb meant as a bonus. Because of this it is the most elaborate tomb in the game once you buy it. Crystal Dynamics thought to put the DLC tomb in an area that appears near the beginning of the game for better or worse. It seems like the reviewer here had the DLC installed on his first playthrough and stumbled across the tomb, and thought it was part of the normal set. So that's why it stands out: its not a normal tomb, its a special DLC stage.

"Lucifer Croft, Destroyer of Worlds" holy shit man your videos are great.

"Female goddess" lmfao

My favourite moment was every time Lara kneeled down like a goblin to loot some small chest on the ground

tbh I forgot about the rusty rebar impalement, maybe the writers did too.

"Tombs in Space 3D" "2 Tombs 1 Raider" "Arts and Crofts" I love this channel

When I played this a few years ago I remember being so angry that Alex died over a screwdriver and a wrench!! Especially because when you read his journal, or whatever it was, you find out that he only went to impress Lara in the first place and you go to all the trouble of rescuing him just to leave him behind. His death just always felt weird to me. That being said, I really enjoyed the game as a whole so I can't complain too much.

Having regen health is a game about survival made no sense to me.

If the game expected to be taken seriously, then the abdomen wound Laura took would be treated like the wound in the last of us that joel took from exactly the same scenario: falling into a piece of rebar, piercing lower abdomen. In the last of us, Joel survived this wound after being a delirious, anemic state for days while Ellie took care of the wound with a haphazard stitch job, bandaging, and antibiotics. Still a miracle, but atleast it's acknowledged that that's a VERY deadly wound. Laura just shrugs it off after a day. Joel also has lasting affects, in later sections it's shown that the wound still hurts and for the rest of that part of the game Joel's actions appear weaker and his skin stays pale, probably from blood loss.

I played this game with my girlfriend and during all the game we threw jokes at how Lara must have at least a good thousand broken ribs with all of the falling and stuff so yeah I can agree that the damages received seem irrelevant. Ah good times.

Surprised you didn't mention the missed opportunity the game could have had with survival mechanism that was obviously set up but not taken advantage of. In the beginning when she lit up that fire, I was all excited because I taught I'd had to go scavenge for resources. But it was never brought up again. The same goes for the bow, I thought I had to go and learn with what little knowledge I had to build a bow and throughout the game find more parts and refine it or use better materials. But it was just collect X and open up a menu to make it better. I played the game on the hardest difficulty and it still felt easy. AI could have been better with enemies trying to flank you, or the level design built in such a way that you couldn't stay in one spot too often. And again, like many other games, there is no punishment for failure.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet (probably) but just in case... That first hidden tomb wasn't actually in the original release. It was DLC (or maybe some pre-order bonus - I forget). It was only widely available with the "Definitive Version". Which should go a ways to explain the intricacy when compared to the most of the "standard" tombs in the game.

>2 Tombs 1 Raider >Arts and Crofts Classy.

I think you had a lot of good ideas about how to make the game mechanics and other elements tighter. The rebar incident in the beginning could have been the excuse to nerf Lara at the beginning, addressing several of your concerns.

"third person shooters with cover mechanics are as much fun as you make them [...] its your own fault if you think the combat was boring" That's a really weird attitude to have, for someone who likes to think about game mechanics. If I have to put self-imposed rules on my own play in order to make the combat not boring, guess what? The combat must be boring. If the game designers give the player an optimal way of playing, that's the "correct" solution to that situation as far as game design is concerned. In the case of Reboot Raider, the combat system was really only competent for cover shooting. Any other options available to the player just didn't work well in most combat scenarios. It was hilarious to me that Lara Croft's 110lb of British steel was capable of stun-locking large, muscular men with a shoulder bump. She really doesn't make any sense in that game. It's a generational low point for games writing.

I love it so much when game characters get cosmetic damage as the story goes on ex.Tomb Raider, Batman Arkham games

I was hugely disappointed in Crystal Dynamics when I got to play this game. I adored their previous re-imagining of Tomb Raider with Legend, Anniversary and Underworld (LAU). Those games, while certainly not perfect, had the most crucial things fixed from Core Design's TR games, the biggest thing being how you control Lara and that they got away from the square block level design. LAU games had the perfect tone in them; a posh adventuring archeologist in massive ancient ruins solving puzzles and discovering mythological stuff and age old secrets. The tombs were the setting, not an add-on and the puzzles were the bread and butter, not an afterthought. Combat was there but it almost never took over from the acrobatics and puzzle solving. Lara as a character was also quite perfect: a badass aristocrat who knew her position in society, being high born and all that, making jokes here and there and keeping it light even in the face of some epic undertaking. I hated that Crystal Dynamics turned Lara into a killing machine, basically into a murdering psychopath. "Ooh, let's make it dark and gritty, yo!". No, god damn it! No! This game isn't Lara Croft Tomb Raider, it's Lara Croft and the Headshot Island. The devs certainly read, played and watched everything about Uncharted when making this and tried to some degree replicate those games. But they shouldn't have done it. We already have Uncharted series and it is in its own sub-genre a better series than this latest Tomb Raider reboot. And in the end, it's not even about Tomb Raider featuring too much gunplay, it's about the tone of it, how wrong it feels. If you look at Indiana Jones movies or Uncharted, in those movies both Indy and Nate kill a lot of people. But what makes it different from Tomb Raider reboot is the tone. It manages to keep the high adventure, light-hearted feel to it in most places. Indy blows up some Nazi trucks or a tank and you still get the awesome John Williams score in the background. Nate mows down dozens of enemies and then shoots shit with Sully afterwards, again with a great, adventurous score. But when Lara does it, it all seems like a downer. There's no action-adventure feel to it. It's just one crazy person acting completely out of her character (if you can even call her Lara Croft anymore) killing other crazy people. And the setting? Really lame through and through. The mythology wasn't strong. I couldn't give a crap about storm queens and human sacrifices or some giant samurai warriors. I suppose all the good ones were already done in the better Tomb Raider games (this of course is 100% subjective what comes to how interesting a mythology is to a person). The level design and the level navigating features felt more like something you slam onto a game that originally had none of those. A survivor sense? Pff... Weakness of level art and design if you have to have a special mode to show what is important in a level. I get "the clutter" point but come on, in a game that is supposedly about solving puzzles and traversing both horizontal and vertical spaces and you need the Batvision to even understand what you should do? But then again, it's the same with every modern game that relies too much in UI elements compared to level design. They can put a "hardcore mode" that removes all screen helps but if the levels aren't designed with that playstyle in mind in the first place, then you are in trouble, case and point, the latest Thief which makes me wonder exactly who is responsible of these awful decisions: The devs or Square Enix?

A small thing to note: the first, best tomb that is talked about in this video was originally preorder DLC and not included in the last-gen base game. It is included as standard in the definitive edition. Last gen players are stuck with the 7 one-and-done tombs.

It wasn’t the rebar spike that broke the realism for me, but rather the numerous falls that she takes, almost always landing on her back or her head or neck. The rebar spike is one of the more survivable injuries sustained by Lara. Although one would assume the spike to cause irreparable harm, there are many cases where similar injuries hardly even set back those who recieved them. The same cannot be said about the fall prior to the stabbing, where Lara falls about 50 feet onto the spike. A fall like that without cushioning and at the very least Lara wouldn’t be walking away for a while.

I've finally gotten around to playing this game, and I immediately watched your video, as I put it off until after I played it, myself. I gotta say, I like you. We've got the same kind of eye for these kinds of things. Great critique, and keep up the good work!

I was just watching one of your videos for the first time and decided to check when the most recent one was uploaded. This works.

What the fuck is it with bows anyway? Why is it that ever since the hunger games happened, everyone needs to have a bow all of a sudden... Lara Croft doesn't need a bow, especially not as a signature weapon. Maybe as an improvised weapon before she finds guns, but she should have quickly favored firearms, particularly handguns, to establish one of her actual defining characteristics. Additionally; the acrobatics. This is completely underdeveloped here. She stumbles from setpiece to setpiece, but she doesn't have that typical acrobat vibe. In the old games, she used to do unnecessary but impressive stunts occasionally, just to show us that she enjoys climbing and jumping a lot. And it wasn't just practical no-nonsense climbing. She looked awesome and she knew it. Now if she had started out without these abilities and then gained or discovered them over time, would've been cool. But that isn't the case, she's very clearly a character who belongs into the hunger games, but not into the world of Lara Croft. Her origin story really should've started far beyond that boat anyway. Show her practicing acrobatics first. Maybe beginning as early as high school. Develop that important trait of her before putting her into the first adventure, in which she should really not need a bow. She doesn't necessarily need dual desert eagles, either - an unarmed adventure would've been a sufficient first game. Just some cool but non-overwhelming exploration of some ancient site, maybe in a more controlled situation, with helping mentors around, with only a hint about the supernatural business she'll eventually get into. Then make the sequel about discovering some opposing forces who wish to solve the same mystery, introduce more remote and animal infested sites, and therefore add guns - and give us a good explanation as to how she ended up going with dual pistols of all things. Maybe introduce her character trait of being a show-off, although perhaps not quite rightfully so, at first. She could even have that as - gasp - a character flaw! That she gets herself into situations that could've far easier been solved otherwise, and actually lampshade this. But eventually make it about her becoming more and more confident and maybe stubborn, in spite of her sometimes getting into trouble, because she ends up stronger for it each time, earning her right to show off in the end. She could still have some mentor characters who shake their heads at her refusing to bring backup, or use more effective weapons than dual pistols; which ought to only be cool and fun, but not necessarily the objectively best choice! You could have her firearms mentor constantly prove to her that their preferred weapon choices, like an assault weapon or a pistol held in both hands for increased stability and accuracy, would end up being objectively better - only for her to pull off a cool but needless stunt and tell them off, saying she prefers to do it her way. That'd show her as flawed but also impressively confident. Maybe show her conflict of interest between exploration and preservation. Have her interact with another mentor or friend who berates her about damages caused to structures, wildlifes et cetera. And show her conflict of ethics about not only the archeological integrity of what she's doing (she'd justify it with having a duty to discover the supernatural plot over preserving individual artifacts), but also about the way she deals with human life. Perhaps make her quick to kill opponents, but make her a loner because of her fear to drag companions into such situations. You could establish her about worrying about losing people, after maybe getting someone killed accidentally - which would be a good way to explain why she keeps doing all of this on her own, taking less-than-optimal routes in hindsight, but avoiding going through populated areas, employing guides, or calling for authorities, for fear of them being unable to cope with the environmental or supernatural dangers she is accustomed to. So much potential here for an actual background story to explain how this silly hero character of the 90s could have come about in a world with just enough difference to our own. And about the supernatural stuff: Make it a looming threat at first, and make it manifest more and more over time, but never to the point of it becoming contradictory to the story. As soon as the news are out, they ought to be out, so keep it to a scale that can possibly be hidden. Perhaps with alternative explanations that someone who wasn't there might be inclined to believe. Heck, have her fight dinosaurs again for all I care, but make it so nobody believes her. This could be a reason for her to try and collect as many artifacts. Perhaps she's got a really bad reputation among scientists and wishes to establish herself as a groundbreaking archeologist, but have her egocentrism and vanity be in her own way; perhaps make it so she ends up being at fault for never being able to prove her discoveries, because of her insistence of doing everything alone and her lack of documentation, preservation and proper procedure. Yet at the same time, make it so the player KNOWS she is right, KNOWS she keeps saving the world or whatever. But in a way that noone will give her credit for. You'd have a good character dynamic and struggle here, especially if you manage to establish a cast of secondary characters and NOT kill them off (again, with the exception perhaps of that one moment that made her want to go alone into her adventures and deny the help of her perhaps actually more experienced mentors - in their individual fields).

The one game that got the "non-canon" damage done well was the first Assassins Creed. But they stopped that.

0:28 holy shit that menu screen nostalgia.

I've honestly never played a single game that you review, but man do I love these videos

Great video and great channel as well! I'm really impressed how much effort you put into every review. Just awesome! Keep up the good work!

I just 100%d this game, it's a fun easy action adventure collectathon with nice visuals. Feels like playing a movie, uncharted with better combat would be a good comparison. Just ignore the story and the characters as they were pretty lame, I stopped giving a shit pretty quickly but stayed for the good gameplay and exploration, though the challenges were pretty annoying because you had no way of knowing where they are or what you needed in the first place, just google these if you want to 100% it

17:15 "I think that third person shooters with cover mechanics are as much fun as you make them" This is a cop-out and something holding third person shooters (and games in general) back. The gameplay is what's there, not something the player LARPs, giving himself handicaps like only using a certain weapon. If the combat in Tomb Raider (reboot) is easiest when treated as "whack a mole" then that's what it is and the designers failed to make engaging, challenging combat.

I have yet to encounter one video that comments on how Lara in pre-rendered cutscenes (07:03, 16:55) does not look like Lara in game cutscenes (01:08, 14:53). The jaw, the lips, the eye shape, the head width, the cheeks, it's all different, and NO ONE mentions that.

Suprised you didn't mention how platforming is non-existant in this game when it's impossible for the player to fail. Even by bringing up the original series you say how the controls are clunky but never say how you actually can control Lara as opposed to the new reboot where Lara just snaps onto platforms and canned animations of the character jumping for you. I think you should've played at least one of the Core made games before reviewing this since it was an integral element of the franchise. Also there's no tombs in the game, at most you get a single Legend puzzle room and that's it. At the end of the day they aren't even in the same franchise: Tomb Raider is an action platformer. Tomb Raider (2013) is a third person shooter with scripted set pieces.

Great video as always and I have to see that I thought many of the things you said while I was playing

I played this game on hard with only the bow which definitely increases the challenge but is doable. It made those late sections against those monster guards a lot of fun.

Most of your criticism towards the story, i agree with, but i was more forgiving. What really did for me was that last line. "I'm not going home". Oh really? Here you were, going on a dig as part of your academic program, only you nearly died thousands of times! You woke up in sacrificial chamber, impaled yourself, got chased by maniacs, killed a guy who tried to rape you, destroyed an entire cult of brainwashed freaks, annihilated a whole army of samurai, lost Roth, the closest thing you had to a father, among many other friends. Finally, you get to go home, ans spend years in therapy to recover from that ridiculously traumatizing ordeal. But nope, you go "I'm not going home" as in what, that was so fucking fun, let's do it again? Stupid ending.

I always thought that intro part when she got stabbed is unecessary or even weird (i mean, why there's a even a rebar inside a cave?), they can just knocked her head a little hard (it explain her dizziness too) Btw that timing based quick time is so annoying.

The shanty town with the castles on the mountains is actually so beautiful

0:11 "Arts and Crofts - 2018". Joe predicted Shadow of the Tomb Raider right down to the year.

Great review. Really some amazing moments in this game.

While playing I was thinking that water must be filled with deadly bacteria, Lara would die in hours from an infection, then I remembered it was a video game. Sometimes my head will go for too long

Thanks for your thoughts on the game. I do have more news to share what happened. The game went through a troubled development, through different iterations & different narrative influences ranging from Gary Paulsen's Hatchet to The Descent from 2005, and that is just what stuck to an extent. What was once considered reminds one of the horror game Amy, least plot wise among others. Needless to say the game engine upgrade and the development time from around 2009 to release in 2013 will drive spending up and buffing out inconsistencies gets pushed to the side. The slipped grip quick time events are from the 1st reboot trilogy by Crystal Dynamics (Legend, Anniversary and Underworld).

Your suggestion of leveling system sounds go great

Definitely the story that needs fixing imo. The sequels sort of carry on this lacking.

You forgot to mention how the samurai are played up to be big and bad in the cutscenes and later get absolutely bullied when you're allowed to fight them.

Dam I am on my 2nd run threw of your channel and it’s still as solid as I remember

The story isn't any better in the second one but everything else is improved.

it's interesting listening to your reviews. Sounds like we're a similar age & have been playing games for about the same time. Big difference is, the older I get, the worse I seem to get at them. whereas you are dreaming for more challenging modes to really put your skills to the test, I'm fantasising about auto-aim & quest markers in more games. Also, I've become so used to the ridiculous stories that games have always had, that I don't even notice things like ludonarritive dissonance. Music is part of games that I absolutely obsessed over & very few critics ever bother to mention it. Interesting vids, nice to hear a differing opinion, keep up the good work.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the lack of usesage of the animal hunting system. There's even talent points for it, but you end but never having to use it.

I didn't get into the previous games (think I played 2 of them?), but overall I really liked the reboot. That said I had two big complaints... One was touched on early in this video. Lara takes a crap ton of damage in this game (even ignoring the player controlled parts) to the point where it felt like the devs had a torture porn fetish or something and it was both unbelievable and uncomfortable. The other is how quickly Lara seems to get used to becoming a mass murderer. This ludonarrative dissonance could be aimed at most games out there, but for some reason it bothered me more than most in this game. Could it be because this is an origin story and Lara is supposed to be just your average college student at the start? Is it because the incredible CG trailer (the one that starts the game) had me thinking that the game's story would be more serious and well thought out? Or could it be because they actually address this when she is forced to kill her first human, but then completely ignore the fact 10 seconds later? Probably a little of each. While I think a story that focuses on this more psychological aspect of a character could be awesome (cough, Spec. Ops. The Line, cough) there are easy ways Tomb Raider could have at least done a token service to this idea. Lara could have a few lines where she says things like, “It's them or me” or “They won't hesitate to kill you, so you can't hesitate either” while you're stalking enemies. This would show she is at least conflicted enough that she is trying to justify her brutal actions to both herself and the player. Better yet, if you managed to stealth through an area without killing anyone she could have a line about having a little less blood on her hands or how she's glad she didn't have to kill them. How about a way to knock out enemies instead of murderizing them? I think it would have added depth to the character without actually requiring a ton of extra work.

If you just make a character suffer all the way through, the player will become numb to it. So what if she gets hurt? She got hurt 100 times and will get hurt 100 times over. I think if she either fell of the ship, got captured or fell on something, then it was fine. But no. Let's do all 3 right after another. Let's not give her a break. It just feels like they thought that if they keep hurting her, it will make her a bad ass character. They were trading suffering for actual character development. It can be combined but not to the exclusion of everything else.

I see the gritty and mature shift in the series to which you refer, but I can't see how said shift gave you an expectation of realism. Later in your video you comment that this feels more like a super hero ascension story, and I think that's probably a good metaphor for the direction the devs wanted to take with the story. *Spoiler*: This is a world where terracotta figures stomp you with hammers and an ancient sun goddess that controls the weather was reborn into someone who just so happened to be in Lara's crew. I would argue that the protagonist of the game mirrors this contrast between the mature narrative and the ridiculous goings-on, as Lara constantly finds herself questioning what she sees, writing off certain possibilities because they can't possibly be true. By the end of the story, she has come to accept the supernatural, and also herself seems supernatural. Thanks for the videos. I appreciate your perspective on games I've both played and haven't :)

I have the same feeling with old games. I have fond memories of many old games, but when I play them after so many years, I find the controls to be so difficult. Just playing GTA Vice City, the moment controls are so clumsy it's nearly impossible to just move my character around.

"Lucifer Croft, destroyer of worlds" 😂

subbed!! a really good analyst, you've opened my eyes on your uncharted 4 video on how its gameplay is mostly scripted but still a great game.

tbh, there were moments of subtle story telling, like one of the optional "Treasures" you find which is a wallet of the Main villain and a photo of him and his Family inside it, they could of made him sympathetic in some way in that his "scheme" is basically reincarnate Himiko in Lara's friend Sam so the storm subsides and the cult can go home, but that would of just painted Lara in the wrong, even though the cult were burning Females alive trying to find Himiko's descendant.. so I guess there's that black mark on their innocence lol.

i love all the tomb raider games that exist, i played the original when i was 5 and i fell in love, there is just something about it that i hope never gets lost

Boy I would love a Mirror's Edge critique, honestly either one

On your criticism of the damage Croft receives: It's supposed to have some semblance of realism, but not be realistic. It is still pretty much an action-fantasy. Much like Die Hard. The injuries are way out of proportion, but of a nature that we are familiar with within our real word context. It's there to give the player/viewer a sense that the protagonist is persevering through a lot of hardship. Again, think Die Hard. Everyone else other than McClane seems to have a normal threshold for injury that they can receive. McClane on the other hand, can absorb more than what's reasonable. And yes, I admit that the divide is more exaggerated in Tomb Raider, but it's still within the spirit of the genre of Die Hard. TLDR: I agree with you that they overdid it, but I see where they're coming from, and why they made those choices. Sometimes you just have to hard sell.

It's a good game but it's NOT a tomb raider game and that makes me really sad. They just took the character of Lara Croft and put in her a modern AAA formula which makes me very sad.

I played this game with bow only the whole way through. Made it a lot more fun and challenging. Overall great game.

While it's perfectly understandable that you wouldn't want to play through games you already didn't like as a child. i think your selling the control schemes of the original games short. obviously the tank-like onehanded control scheme was as un-intuitive as you remembered (and even more-so now as forward/back/strafe have become even more standardized.) Once you got past that though, lara was incredibly versatile and precise. she had all the normal movements, then a walk modifier, then by combining jumps and ledge-grabs with the modifier keys she could jump, dive, flip, roll, slide, cartwheel, even do a handstand when pulling herself up from ledges. Using the different combinations you could move pretty fluidly and gracefully to face the direction you wanted at any given moment even with the outdated basic wasd controls. (not sure if it's fair to call them outdated seen as while Quake did come out the same year, Tombraider 1 was certainly in development long before it released) as a result of this (and that the combat was weak) the game was able to focus much more entirely on intricate platforming with extremely precise jumps (that wouldn't be reasonable to expect of the player with the reboots' level of control precision). on well designed complex 3d levels that folded back into each other as you opened up new paths. On the subject of the the reboot, something I was surprised you didn't address was that its over 2 hours into the game when you finally leave what I'd consider the opening section and you're given a truly open area to explore. which I found extremely aggravating, seen as I felt the game was trying to sell itself as more of a 3rd person farcry/uncharted mix. and wouldn't let me play it until I got through the slog of dreadful frontloaded reviewer bait. After that I thought it was an ok game. (about average for a modern AAA singleplayer)

One good compromise for the regenerative health issue is a threat system used by Brothers in Arms games and Uncharted games. As in when screen shows red, it means you are under increasing threat, not taking direct fire. COD’s invention of regenerative health is unforgiveably awful.

Really liked your videos! Will you ever make an Undertale critique? I'd love one

I need to try this but I definitely need to try The Last of Us, currently I'm the only person to have never played it.. I heard they both have good enhancements on the Pro Edit: It's actually possible for someone to survive that bit with Lara falling and getting impaled by that small object, there's been people who've survived treks through caves with bat guano that's multiple feet deep while having an exposed wound submerged. It probably doesn't happen often but it does happen and it's easy to believe Lara could've been one of them.

It's funny that you mention that you aren't an artist because this game is what made me accept that I am one. I've had a natural proclivity for art since I could hold a crayon, but that didn't begin to develop into a real passion until I was in high school. However, I was accosted by my family for wanting to pursue a career in something so risky, competitive, and relatively obscure. I gave up on it for several years, and it wasn't until a friend of mine recommended me this game that that passion came back. After the credits rolled, I spent a significant amount of time looking through the gallery of concept art, and a fire has been ignited in my gut ever since. The game definitely has its faults and isn't something I'd hold up as some kind of paragon of art direction, style, technical beauty, or game design, but it will still always have a very special place in my heart for essentially giving me my life back.

I find the bow so much fun so I never use anything but it and the pistol

I know I'm really late to this video but I get the point about characters being overpowered. One of my favorite games has been kingdom come: deliverance, where you have to train a select skill like archery or sword fighting to be good in combat. You can't just replay the game and be able to kill enemies at the start. Something like that would have been nice in the tomb raider reboots. I'd love to see a video from you about KCD and see if others liked it as much as me, it wasn't perfect but quite good in many ways.

Funny how you mentioned how this game's plot feels like some b-movie. I kept referring to it as "LOST meets Big Trouble in Little China"

Tomb Raider 2013 was a lot of fun

Yet another great video mate. I would like to hear your critique for witcher 2 or witcher 3, that would be awesome.

there amount of damage she takes in these new games is stupid like you mentioned at the beginning, but the stupidest thing that i hate in these games is that after her first kill she became a freaking terminator killing a whole army all alone by herself. The whole game would have been more fun with less enemies and a non lethal take down option. She kills so easily and without remorse that it makes hard for me to root for her, which is a shame because she is not a bad character, but i feel like she is just handled incorrectly.

awesome vid

I find it interesting that it's this game in particular you would say (paraphrased) "of course cover shooters are boring if you sit in one cover the whole time" when this is one game where, when you sit in cover for even a short amount of time, enemies will throw molotovs and grenades, forcing you to move around, while avoiding the CoD: WaW pitfall - the grenades and molotovs are easy to dodge, ensuring that they actually make you move around rather than just being annoying. Maybe you never experienced this because you played the whole game aggressively but this one mechanic honestly elevates the cover shooting gameplay above most other cover shooters. Anyway, apart from that i thought this was a great video. Although it has many flaws, I do love this game. I'm playing Rise on and off right now and i'm honestly disappointed with it. It feels like they expanded in all of the wrong directions, at least that's my first impression of it.

You're bothered about wobbly camera work in video games. I immediately like you a lot more.

Excite! I've been waiting for this for a while, really enjoying your critiques :D

Cool video, and arts and crofts gave me a sensible chuckle.

I know, I know, late to the party, but still: The bow is an artifact from developing pre-merger Tomb Raider. Before Eidos was bought up by Square Enix, Crystal Dynamics was working on Tomb Raider Ascession project, which was more of a survival horror than actual TR game and the project was a combination of The Thing, Shadow of the Collosus and Robinsonade type of story. Bow played a huge role in it, with detailed mechanics for it. Cue merger and cancellation of Ancession, while in the same time salvaging as much things as possible from it for the new project and rebooting. Hence why certain elements of TR'13 simply don't glue together with the rest of the game - because they literally come from different project.

Can't wait for the premiere of Arts and Crofts this year

I actually totally ignored the story and made up my own as i was playing... Made it more enjoyable.

the wrench and screwdriver made me go like WTF too when I replayed the game earlier this year, I was like "really?? did they just kill off a character for 2 of the most common tools possible???"

About player competence vs character (in)competence at start of a game and the character growing in a game, what's your opinion of Kingdom Come: Deliverance?

You can make a makeshift wrench and screw diver with the random rubble laying around

i'm late to this party but when game has characters basically teleporting or magically always going around the faster way than the player it's not even a bad design it's a straight up failure it also implies to things happening out of nowhere just "because" insert "we needed conflict filler" here

Haven't watched yet, but want to say: I did not enjoy this game very much at all. Interested to hear what you thought though!

I really wish some1 somewhere would address how absurd it is to have a human traipsing around in mountain blizzards, wearing only a tattered tank top. It's really demeaning to a viewer's intelligence when we see action movies and action games, over and over, putting their protagonists in arctic environments, dressed like a trip to Hawaii. I found the game fun enough but, man oh MAN, this game really likes to stress the term "realism" in "gritty realism". I'm pretty sure the developers killed Lara in cutscenes more than I did in gameplay. Excellent review!

I suddenly have the inclination to replay Tomb Raider now.

Funny thing, I actually played Rise first and didn't even realize it was a sequel until recently. Just today I'm actually playing 2013 for the first time before I get into Shadow. I've gotten better at it, but I don't really play shooters much and my preferred method of attack is stealth and hit and run tactics. So I've had to learn that unless forced to, staying in place is generally the better method. Especially against guys with machine rifles. Which is kinda opposite to my play style. I stealth, and if I get spotted I run around. Either to fight or to try and hide. I'm having fun with it though! I only started today and I'm already past the shantytown gate. I actually decided to stop for today because it froze in the middle of a fight tho.

The last three tomb raiders at the beginning got me laughing.

Almost everything you said, I felt (mirrored) when I was playing. Especially what you said about that first tomb... it's done, lol XD. Oh so sad. You can't deny that this was a very well crafted game, but gaming in general always will have flaws. I am sick of the simple puzzles we get in them and, at this point, I'm very sick of the disconnect between the player, reality, and what the character on screen does.

how does joseph barely mind the horrific deaths in the games he reviews XD its like >character gets horribly mutilated or eaten alive< "i guess people might not want to see the character die and that creates a little tension maybe :/"

the main thing I would have changed about the game is adding more quick time events in the cutscences to maintain the sense of control

I dunno if anyone brought this up, but as far as I know, the "first hidden tomb" you mention was actually pre-order DLC which was eventually included in the Definitive Edition. I don't know why they decided to shove it into the first area, but for us plebs who got the original game without a pre-order, the first hidden tomb was a much simpler puzzle and their difficulty nominally escalated as the game progressed.

I played the hardest difficulty only with bow and arrow plus melee. No big problem. Sometimes I needed a view retries, but only so many.

I already played throught this game before watching the video but I never noticed the guy that died for a wrench and a screwdriver. I laughed till I cried when that part came up 21:00 lmao

I didn't notice Alex died for a wrench and screwdriver O _ O lmao

I'm sad to see that *Tombs in Space in 3D* and *2 Tombs 1 Raider* never got released, but it's 2018 and I'm looking forward to *Arts and Crofts*

At 13:50, you can easily tell these wood houses, if you will have been around since WW2. And they maybe have rotted and became weak overtime. So breaking them wouldn't be too hard either. As far as the enemies go, Lara is a above average height woman that trained with an ex army personnel Roth all through her childhood, has been rock climbing and been pretty active and well built woman. She can fight with men who are malnourished for decades and who are delusional. There is something weak about a person who is so deluded and hopeful that you can use such hopefulness that borderlines insanity against them. Although, if they could have made Roth into an ex general friend of Lara's father who trains Lara under him after the death of her father, and also give Lara a back story on how she went into the army under Roth's supervision for 2-4, years, you could have given her incredible sense of awareness and strength some logic or context. The only thing we know is that Roth trained her, what training did she get? We don't know.

I came back just for the health monologue near the beginning

I thoroughly enjoyed both of them but they were my first Tomb Raider games so i can't really say if they were better than the originals

19:34. I really wish that this video came out after the BOTW and Odyssey videos

I must have accidentally hit a button early on because for the first puzzle with the suspended cage, I was only able to walk and not run, missing the jump. Then the QTE only showed a symbol and not the mapped key. Then I jumped a pixel too early or late for the plane in the tree and fell to my death. Alt+F4'd and uninstalled.