Lara Croft and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

bsjezz

all i know is that i was ill-convinced by the body of communication and my first thought was editorial pressure. do you want to pull another quote out of context and i can repeat myself again? i'm happy to do this all day.

BlankZoe

It is just a pretty shitty assumption to make.

It has come up a lot lately, and actual journalists like Jeff Gerstmann have said that while it definitely does happen, it isn't nearly as often as the internet thinks and it is a super shitty conclusion to jump to.

bsjezz

honestly i just find the nature of the beast very interesting at the moment - with aggregators ensuring that the number is, unequivocally, the most important facet of a modern videogame review, there must be immense pressure from publishers to drive that upwards. usually eurogamer's pretty good, which is why it's always my first source, but there have been a couple here and there where the number's a direct mismatch with the reviewer's tone. it gets even more awkward when they start shovelling positive adjectives and little half-hearted 'it gets better's in the last few paragraphs. this tomb raider review is one of them. it's a shame.

BlankZoe

Well, to be fair, the reviewer is not the only person I have heard say that the game starts of relatively weak and then gets better as it goes on.

bsjezz

dude, it's not about that. if your general response to a game is positive, and you're tasked as a professional communicator to articulate that, you start with it. you don't need to review it as a chronology. "it is annoying at the start. these things are wrong. this is dumb. things start getting better. the end is pretty good. i guess, in the end, i liked it. eight out of ten." that's bad writing. of course it's possible that the reviewer is indeed just an inept writer. or he just never quite emotionally engaged with the game enough to write a particularly effective review of it, positive or negative. who knows?

Nuzak

Chincymcchilla wrote: »

Fearghaill wrote: »

it's different when the violence isn't cartoonishly over the top

some of the stuff I've seen from Tomb Raider (that gif from earlier in the thread for example) makes me uncomfortable more than any other game I can think of. Part of that is they're lingering on the effects of the violence more than most games do. It's not what's being done to Lara, it's the cries of pain, the limping and similar animations that make it look more like real injuries rather than something the hero shrugs off with little more than a scratch or a "wounded" texture. It's the camera lingering on her panicked desperate thrashing as she dies gruesomely.

The Raid: Redemption did this as well. I've seen plenty of hyperviolent martial arts movies, but this one spent a little more time showing the effect of the beatings/stabbings/door-splinter-impalings and it was enough to push me out of my comfort zone. I appreciated this with The Raid, and I might with Tomb Raider, depending on how they handle it. It's something that could be done to make a point, and be better for it, or it's something that could be done purely for exploitative shock value and I haven't seen enough to convince me that it's one or the other yet.

Serious question, have you played the Dead Space games? They have a similar level of showing the character struggling or screaming in pain before death.

you mean the game where limbs pop off like there's nothing to 'em

or where that alien takes the place of isaac's head and rides his body around

really apart from the eye bit at the end of DS2, isaac and enemies just kind of split apart at the seams, maybe a bit of "urrgghh" and then dead. yahtzee even emphasizes that why it's not very good at horror, there's no weight to the violence, no slowly splitting snapping bones and tendons and no necros begging for death

Nuzak

Langly wrote: »

Vargas Prime wrote: »

There's nothing arbitrary about it.

If there wasn't a difference in the way certain people reacted to the actual depiction of violence, then the original Metroid or Super Mario games would be considered just as violent as the games being discussed here.

It may not phase you, but the purposefully-graphic scenes of Lara dying or being severely injured in some way are designed to provoke a reaction. The plain fact is that it's going to turn some people off.

I don't think there's any objective "good" or "bad" to it, but it's definitely an intentionally shocking presentation.

I'm not saying it's arbitrary that some violent images will turn off some people while others won't. Blake and Nuzak are both making arbitrary and anecdotal decisions that somehow the past two years have seen an uptick in violent video games. That's not true at all. They're just picking games at random and saying "look, games didn't used to be like this"

Yes, they did. Ever since people have been able to render things in a 3d environment, there has been no end to violent video games.

i'm not saying that's how it is, just how it seems. like i got kinda shocked by presentations at E3 like i haven't been before, and i really do think it's the focus on pain, which disturbed me. it might be a theme, it might not. i was just fishing for anyone who felt the same

KingofMadCows

A lot of people don't really care about the gameplay-story dissonance, especially when the gameplay is good. Even people who do care about it can still really enjoy the gameplay and have lots of fun since they can easily compartmentalize or ignore those problems. It's just the perils of having a score that has to take every aspect of the game into consideration.

I disliked a lot about the writing and world building in Fallout 3 but it wasn't enough to make me hate the game as a whole. I still played over a hundred hours of the game. If someone asked me to rate Fallout 3 on a scale of 1 to 10, I would probably give a different score depending on whether I'm playing it or thinking about it. If I'm playing it, all the fun I'm having would make it really easy to ignore the problems and I'd give the game a 9, or an 8 if I experience lots of bugs. If I'm thinking about the game and all the bad writing and nonsensical setting, I'd probably give it a 5. Looking at the review of Tomb Raider, I'll probably have a similar experience.

bsjezz

the problem is you're playing fallout 3 and not fallout: new vegas, which is highly regardable for both its writing and its gameplay

WeedLordVegeta

bsjezz wrote: »

you don't need to review it as a chronology. "it is annoying at the start. these things are wrong. this is dumb. things start getting better. the end is pretty good. i guess, in the end, i liked it. eight out of ten."

some consumers are going to be able to appreciate a breakdown like this because it will help them figure out if they want to put their money into a product that is going to be initially frustrating

bsjezz

Hullis wrote: »

bsjezz wrote: »

you don't need to review it as a chronology. "it is annoying at the start. these things are wrong. this is dumb. things start getting better. the end is pretty good. i guess, in the end, i liked it. eight out of ten."

some consumers are going to be able to appreciate a breakdown like this because it will help them figure out if they want to put their money into a product that is going to be initially frustrating

ah, yes, i forgot that the qulity of literacy education has been plummeting.

edit: foiled

WeedLordVegeta

qulity indeed

bsjezz

that's a joke, by the way, i was teasing you personally, hullis. as far as i'm aware international literacy levels have been on a steady increase.

WeedLordVegeta

you ackin like I give a fuck about reviews

I own a copy of Dog's Life, son

I bought that shit at LAUNCH

UnbreakableVow

The Eurogamer review is fine, and if you want to see how be arrives at an 8, all you have to do is read it

bsjezz

i did read the review. turns out that's what lead me to comment on how i received the review

101

I don't know, it sounds like a 4 star review to me.

Fundamentally solid , but with a ropy start and mis-steps here and there that keep it from being a great game.

Veldrin

Holy crap this thread blew up overnight.

Have we seen how open-world this game is meant to actually be? I love me some jungle strolling.

101

It's not open world in say a GTA or Red Dead sense.

The game is linear but then you can quick travel (I assume you can't walk back) to - at least some of - the places you've already visited and explore them.

So 'discrete open world'?

Veldrin

Aww

UnbreakableVow

101 wrote: »

It's not open world in say a GTA or Red Dead sense.

The game is linear but then you can quick travel (I assume you can't walk back) to - at least some of - the places you've already visited and explore them.

So 'discrete open world'?

The GT review says you can walk back instead of fast traveling

101

oh that's pretty cool

-Tal

yeah seems like dark souls where all the areas are connected without loading screens, and you can fast travel between campfires

Balefuego

Well you can't say they don't know they have a perception problem, because the launch trailer seems specifically designed to counter it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDwNeyqEJl0

UnbreakableVow

The way I'm picturing the open world in my head is something like Arkham City but pushing you through the missions instead of letting you "go to" them

And then opening up when it's over

Veldrin

Ah yeah, that would be pretty good.

Antimatter

http://www.giantbomb.com/reviews/tomb-raider-review/1900-561/

Brad Shoemaker wrote:

Lara makes her way to the island with a band of researchers and television types in tow, and after the shipwreck scatters them all around the island, the game does a fair job, with voiceovers and flashbacks, of having you cross paths with each crew member and filling in the ways each one relates to Lara and how they may have helped or hindered her journey. The game is less successful at believably depicting Lara's own transition from eager young scientist to cold-blooded survivalist killing machine. The hasty remorse she offers when first hunting a deer for food or making her first human kill, in defense against the crazed cultists who rule the island, is hard to take seriously when you're then encouraged to slaughter every living thing in sight, human and animal alike, with a stock-standard video game arsenal of assault rifle, shotgun, grenade launcher, and flame-tipped arrows.

In its efforts to paint Lara as a vulnerable but resilient heroine, the game suffers an identity crisis of sorts. It swings wildly between quiet character moments, where you feel every bit of the physical pain and emotional anguish her grueling situation entails, and the sort of ludicrous, over-the-top action this medium just can't get enough of. The contrast is only so irksome because the game goes to such great lengths to legitimize Lara's struggle in the first place, but regardless, it sometimes feels like a constant process of two steps forward, one step back. Here's one egregious example. In an early cutscene, Lara visibly shivers by a campfire at night in a forest somewhere around sea level. Two hours later, you're high up in the mountains in near-blizzard conditions, making absurd death-defying leaps between radio towers wearing nothing but a tank top (and by this time you've clearly gotten over that earlier compunction about taking a human life, since you're now taking scores of them as a matter of course). To the story's credit, once Lara becomes visibly fed up with everything the bad guys are putting her through, and starts flinging back harsh words as readily as bullets, it became a lot easier to buy into her character arc, and the game ultimately does leave Lara a changed person who could believably kick off a whole new franchise. But in the first half, that strained dichotomy between beset young girl and invincible killer made me wish the developers had picked one style of characterization or the other and really focused on it.

Balefuego

Sounds like the "good but flawed" game most of the early buzz has made it out to be.

I am looking forward to playing it.

LockedOnTarget

I'm a bit bummed this suffers from Niko's Disease but it still sounds like a pretty rad game.

Mego Thor

Does Lara bitch and whine about "stoopid Amerikah" while dressed like a hobo?

-Tal

yes, Mego Thor, Lara bitches and whines about stoopid Amerikah while dressed like a hobo.

LockedOnTarget

Lara Croft beeeeeeg Amerikan titteees edition.

Krieghund

Well, I was gonna play a bit of TR 1, but apparently it can't find the memory card I have stuck in there for some reason. So I took the game out and looked, yep a save game file for TR1,2 and 4. Along with RE directors cut, MGS, GTA vice city, Gran Turismo 3&4, and a few more I can't think of at the moment. Most recent save was 07, lol, and the TR was from 01! Gah, I'm old.

PaperLuigi44

Embargo was lifted on this in Australia, I shall dig into it after dinner.

Veldrin

Broken street dates don't affect the Steam release at all, do they?

UnbreakableVow

I would eat a whole jar of vegemite to play this today

UnbreakableVow

Just kidding, no I wouldn't

THESPOOKY

UnbreakableVow wrote: »

I would eat a whole jar of vegemite to play this today

PaperLuigi44

Nobody should have to eat that tar if they have a choice.

Blake T

I once at an entire spoonful of Vegemite to convince mysst that that is how you eat it.

He did not enjoy it.