a very fun game with a forgettable story
let me get the bad out of the way, i had experience with tomb raider prior to this game, i just decided to start with this one because tank controls give me headache, back when this game launched a storm of internet weirdos flooded it with mysoginistic comments saying this is some sort of sjw game to portrail men and incompetent, it was a shitstorm, thankfully now that i played i can safely say that no, then men in this game aren't portrayed as evil monsters, every character is just really really dumb. events often unfold because lara or the rest of the cast really can't sit still without doing something silly to bring the next shooting section, events often happen because lara sees something happening and while characters tell her not to, her excuse is ''i just can't ok ?'' ok ok thats kind of lazy guys come on, she can't because you guys need her to go to the next exposition point, not because she is making rational decisions, and the same can be said for everyone else, all the other cast is severely unlikeable except for the cool mentor that you will see his canon event coming from a mile away, and the big guy that has a native design, i like these guys a lot, the rest is by god forgettable and at times insultingly annoying.
the cast also constantly makes dumb decisions, at some point lara got worried about glasses guy and the strong lady made sure to tell lara that ''he can take care of himself'' only for lara to find out that he in fact.. cannot take care of himself, in his words ''lara i'm sorry for dragging you out into this mess, i though i could be the star of my own god damn action movie'' now was that to make lara seem smarter or make the strong lady feel dumb because its obvious glasses bro has brain damage. for real the entire time this cast feels like a horror thriller cast in a action movie, but one of those you know director did as a money laundry scheme. back then this caused people to accuse the writers of forcing a strong woman into empowering the guys, come on thats mysoginy, this ain't forced representation, this is just characters being poorly written, i wanted to like everyone and root for their well being but the game constantly bombards you with their dumb decision and downright mean behavior towards lara. one scene that really struck this onto me, with the fact that i was just dealing with dumb character script was the scene
SPOILER :
the glasses guy death.
strong lady doesn't even mourn losses, she goes straight to nagging, for example right after the character death, she throws out a jab ''seems like everyone near you has a poor survival rate'' to which lara replies ''better keep your distance then'', keep in mind that she says that immediatelly after lara announced he died, there was no time for shock, she just went for the jab, to which the big native just replied ''LETS JUST EAT OK ??''.
awful cast aside, how's the gameplay ? Great !
there are only 4 weapons but all of them are incredibly varied in their use, the gameplay crew knew what they were doing and they did good, the fights feel fast and enjoyable, the climbing is fun and easy to get into, the levels are very open and sometimes have multiple ways to go through.
lara herself starts as just another survivor struggling with everything, its almost comical how much of a punching bag she is in this game, constantly getting thrown, cut, squashed, shot, fallen down, pierced and even impaled at times, through the entire time she barely gets any rest and it slowly loses its shock and becomes kind of funny thinking what the game will force lara into, by the end of the game she has so many scars one guy looks at her and gets scared.
overall this is a very fun game with a poor cast of characters and a forgettable story, but with very fun moments of sheer bloody disaster.
many people point out that cutscene lara and game lara have a very strong dissonance due to how much people she kills in game and how frail she acts in cutscene, i wish this game was just lara and maybe one single crew member, no one else as she does all this struggling by herself, it would solve the problem of the bad characters dumbing down the game.
let me get the bad out of the way, i had experience with tomb raider prior to this game, i just decided to start with this one because tank controls give me headache, back when this game launched a storm of internet weirdos flooded it with mysoginistic comments saying this is some sort of sjw game to portrail men and incompetent, it was a shitstorm, thankfully now that i played i can safely say that no, then men in this game aren't portrayed as evil monsters, every character is just really really dumb. events often unfold because lara or the rest of the cast really can't sit still without doing something silly to bring the next shooting section, events often happen because lara sees something happening and while characters tell her not to, her excuse is ''i just can't ok ?'' ok ok thats kind of lazy guys come on, she can't because you guys need her to go to the next exposition point, not because she is making rational decisions, and the same can be said for everyone else, all the other cast is severely unlikeable except for the cool mentor that you will see his canon event coming from a mile away, and the big guy that has a native design, i like these guys a lot, the rest is by god forgettable and at times insultingly annoying.
the cast also constantly makes dumb decisions, at some point lara got worried about glasses guy and the strong lady made sure to tell lara that ''he can take care of himself'' only for lara to find out that he in fact.. cannot take care of himself, in his words ''lara i'm sorry for dragging you out into this mess, i though i could be the star of my own god damn action movie'' now was that to make lara seem smarter or make the strong lady feel dumb because its obvious glasses bro has brain damage. for real the entire time this cast feels like a horror thriller cast in a action movie, but one of those you know director did as a money laundry scheme. back then this caused people to accuse the writers of forcing a strong woman into empowering the guys, come on thats mysoginy, this ain't forced representation, this is just characters being poorly written, i wanted to like everyone and root for their well being but the game constantly bombards you with their dumb decision and downright mean behavior towards lara. one scene that really struck this onto me, with the fact that i was just dealing with dumb character script was the scene
SPOILER :
the glasses guy death.
strong lady doesn't even mourn losses, she goes straight to nagging, for example right after the character death, she throws out a jab ''seems like everyone near you has a poor survival rate'' to which lara replies ''better keep your distance then'', keep in mind that she says that immediatelly after lara announced he died, there was no time for shock, she just went for the jab, to which the big native just replied ''LETS JUST EAT OK ??''.
awful cast aside, how's the gameplay ? Great !
there are only 4 weapons but all of them are incredibly varied in their use, the gameplay crew knew what they were doing and they did good, the fights feel fast and enjoyable, the climbing is fun and easy to get into, the levels are very open and sometimes have multiple ways to go through.
lara herself starts as just another survivor struggling with everything, its almost comical how much of a punching bag she is in this game, constantly getting thrown, cut, squashed, shot, fallen down, pierced and even impaled at times, through the entire time she barely gets any rest and it slowly loses its shock and becomes kind of funny thinking what the game will force lara into, by the end of the game she has so many scars one guy looks at her and gets scared.
overall this is a very fun game with a poor cast of characters and a forgettable story, but with very fun moments of sheer bloody disaster.
many people point out that cutscene lara and game lara have a very strong dissonance due to how much people she kills in game and how frail she acts in cutscene, i wish this game was just lara and maybe one single crew member, no one else as she does all this struggling by herself, it would solve the problem of the bad characters dumbing down the game.