The combat is so blatantly and unarguably superior to Rise of the Tomb Raider I've pretty much accepted that my desired 100% run of RoTR is a doomed effort. It doesn't help that I went back to tomb in RoTR about two thirds of the way through the game, only to find that it's the exact same pendulum weight puzzle, metaphorical child's play compared to what we get in Shadow. Yikes.
At least with 2013 TR, I got through 100% of searchable content (not hunting, and there were no quests back then). It's a good problem to have, I suppose.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
I just started playing Shadow.
It's a cool game so far but man.. there is some seriously flawed design in this game.
They went through all this trouble to have customizable difficulty levels. And yet you can't turn off the on screen hints. Just big ol text every tiem I walk near a screen HEY YOU CAN CLIMB THIS TREE IF YOU PRESS X! Like what the fuck is the point of the grapple swinging and exploring when big text just tells you what to do constantly? Along those same lines they tried to have this super unobtrusive interface... and then just past these paragraphs of text on top of the world.
It's honestly awful. I don't know how this hasn't been patched yet.
Also the weapon upgrades... what happened there? I got to the first town of the game and was able to instantly buy the pistol I'll use all game, buy the AR I'll use all game, buy the silencer for the pistol and then UPGRADE THE PISTOL FULLY. Like 100% that pistol is done all game. And then I also was able to upgrade the AR to max (besides the one thing I need a skill for but that is the only thing standing in the way of that).
I feel like there's legit no reason to even try hunting out materials any more. On my first visit to the first town. It's just... so bizarre.
....yeah, that's strange. I stopped that getting that after the prologue and the first hour of the "main game". That sounds like a bug they need to patch, but I don't get any paragraphs of text anymore, and I'm still "technically" before the halfway point (being very thorough).
For weapon upgrades, I ignore them unless I really decide I needed them. There's a very large weapon selection to buy from, and upgrades don't transfer between weapons necessarily, so I didn't want to "waste" money (this mostly meant that I have an absurd amount of money hoarded up). It's definitely better than TR 2013 where certain weapons were useless until you found an upgrade, so I hope you like the bow because we're basically forcing you to stick with it (especially with basically only one option for stealth attacks).
I started playing Rise of the Tomb Raider a few weeks ago (I'm slow). At first I wasn't really enjoying the combat but I couldn't figure out why. And it turns out it's because the normal difficulty turns off the auto-aim on PS4. Which makes sense to why I felt like the combat was so sluggish. It's better now, but every game I've played up until now on the PS4 had auto-aim so it was so jarring to fall into this.
I started playing Rise of the Tomb Raider a few weeks ago (I'm slow). At first I wasn't really enjoying the combat but I couldn't figure out why. And it turns out it's because the normal difficulty turns off the auto-aim on PS4. Which makes sense to why I felt like the combat was so sluggish. It's better now, but every game I've played up until now on the PS4 had auto-aim so it was so jarring to fall into this.
If you're still at the beginning, you haven't really experienced combat until you've unlocked the bulk of the improvised weapon/grenade crafting mechanic. In which case you're in for a treat--more rewarding (in both XP and sheer joy) than most of the weapons in the game. :biggrin:
I started playing Rise of the Tomb Raider a few weeks ago (I'm slow). At first I wasn't really enjoying the combat but I couldn't figure out why. And it turns out it's because the normal difficulty turns off the auto-aim on PS4. Which makes sense to why I felt like the combat was so sluggish. It's better now, but every game I've played up until now on the PS4 had auto-aim so it was so jarring to fall into this.
If you're still at the beginning, you haven't really experienced combat until you've unlocked the bulk of the improvised weapon/grenade crafting mechanic. In which case you're in for a treat--more rewarding (in both XP and sheer joy) than most of the weapons in the game. :biggrin:
Yeah I finished it last night. Molotovs/grenades were the best part of the game IMO.
Though I felt like I played that game before. Wasn't the story for the first Tomb Raider game essentially the same? Lara goes on quest to find something that offers magical powers. Kills random thugs that are also trying to get the relic. Undead skeletons show up because of course they are. Final fight against main antagonist. Magic and spells happen. The end.
Is Shadow the same thing?
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
I started playing Rise of the Tomb Raider a few weeks ago (I'm slow). At first I wasn't really enjoying the combat but I couldn't figure out why. And it turns out it's because the normal difficulty turns off the auto-aim on PS4. Which makes sense to why I felt like the combat was so sluggish. It's better now, but every game I've played up until now on the PS4 had auto-aim so it was so jarring to fall into this.
If you're still at the beginning, you haven't really experienced combat until you've unlocked the bulk of the improvised weapon/grenade crafting mechanic. In which case you're in for a treat--more rewarding (in both XP and sheer joy) than most of the weapons in the game. :biggrin:
Yeah I finished it last night. Molotovs/grenades were the best part of the game IMO.
Though I felt like I played that game before. Wasn't the story for the first Tomb Raider game essentially the same? Lara goes on quest to find something that offers magical powers. Kills random thugs that are also trying to get the relic. Undead skeletons show up because of course they are. Final fight against main antagonist. Magic and spells happen. The end.
Is Shadow the same thing?
I had forgotten what the plot was in the first two games but I am currently playing Shadow and that is indeed the plot so far. The undead like creature things are more like zombies but.. yea..
I started playing Rise of the Tomb Raider a few weeks ago (I'm slow). At first I wasn't really enjoying the combat but I couldn't figure out why. And it turns out it's because the normal difficulty turns off the auto-aim on PS4. Which makes sense to why I felt like the combat was so sluggish. It's better now, but every game I've played up until now on the PS4 had auto-aim so it was so jarring to fall into this.
If you're still at the beginning, you haven't really experienced combat until you've unlocked the bulk of the improvised weapon/grenade crafting mechanic. In which case you're in for a treat--more rewarding (in both XP and sheer joy) than most of the weapons in the game. :biggrin:
Yeah I finished it last night. Molotovs/grenades were the best part of the game IMO.
Though I felt like I played that game before. Wasn't the story for the first Tomb Raider game essentially the same? Lara goes on quest to find something that offers magical powers. Kills random thugs that are also trying to get the relic. Undead skeletons show up because of course they are. Final fight against main antagonist. Magic and spells happen. The end.
Is Shadow the same thing?
Yes, except Lara makes things worse. That's a big component of it.
Thinking about this series has me drawing comparisons to the Arkham games. The first game (Tomb Raider) was a fairly linear, tightly-paced experience, and my favorite of the three. The second was a bigger game, with more to do, more collectables, more items, introduced side-missions, etc. The third game was developed by an outside team based in Montreal, and while ambitious and containing some of the series' standout moments, is ultimately hindered by an overall lack of polish and brings very little that's new to the table.
At the end of the day, I'll say that I enjoyed this game. It's gorgeous, rappelling is a great addition to the moveset, and the tombs and puzzles continue to improve. It has, in my opinion, one of the most effective horror-sequences in gaming this year, and I thought the final area was pretty damn cool - this series knows how to pull off spectacle when it wants to. The story was a whole lot of "meh", which is too bad, cause I thought the performances were absolutely wonderful. Rodriguez, in particular, felt a bit wasted.
Unfortunately, for me, things seemed a little...buggy. I, too, kept getting an endless supply of pop-up tips, even hours into the game. To date, there remains an exclamation point over the 'Inventory' section at camp that never went away, and still remains even after 100% completion. A couple of patches have dropped, and the end of the game felt smooth enough; I assume the two are connected. Combat was a bummer - not in it's frequency, but in how difficult it was for me to play in the sandbox; multiple encounters broke down immediately, and had me either shacking up behind a ledge and blowing enemies away, or hiding in a wall and stealth-killing the parade of dummies that kept creeping up to check on their dead friend(s). I would often explore an area after an encounter, see a bunch of items lying around and think, "man, that would have been cool to use." I will admit it's possible some "get gud" could be applied here.
My single biggest complaint are the hub-areas, where the narrative would come crashing to a halt as I embarked on an hours-long collectathon, which is necessary if you want to build up enough experience to invest in a majority of the available skills. Paititi in particular was just way, way too big and way, way too uninteresting.
I want at least one more of these from Crystal Dynamics; the Arkham Knight of the series, if you will. I love what they've done with the Croft mythos, and am still interested to see where Lara goes from here (not coincidentally, the White Queen quest is probably my favorite part of the game). All the mechanical tools are there - I want one more banger before they move on from whatever they consider this to be.
I've been watching my boyfriend play through the new trilogy and the third games environments look absolutely gorgeous at times and all of the puzzle tombs looked great, not to mention there's like going to be 7 added in patches? The game reviewed well to, so it just seems a shame that nobody apparently bought a copy.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
It was sent to die. I'd like to think I known about vidyas, I didn't hear about Shadow until after it came out.
...CodBlops3 either, come to think of it. Maybe I'm just old now.
Oh brilliant
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited December 2018
You know I'm surprised I barely heard anyone talking about this game that said coming out the same time as Spiderman and within a month of CoD and Red Dead did it no favors.
Either way I bought it and about to jump in.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Hmm the way you guys are talking it seems that Shadow has the same design trajectory that the Arkham series has.
My opinions of AK was that while I liked the game for the most part the movie to open world caused a lot of pacing issues and actually weakened the combat feel.
I haven't started the third game yet but I've been watching my bf play it. It has huge open quest hubs with lots of sidequests. He beat the game without ever finding the vendor that sold the rope ascender or the lockpick.
So, I bought Shadow during the steam sale (the previous two were great, so that was an easy buy).
I got to the very first campfire, and noticed that there were a lot of optional outfits, which I naturally tried out.
But now I can't get back to the default, which I preferred. It's either me or the game being an idiot.
Anyone know how to get back to the default outfit?
I think it's in a separate section? Like there's outfits, then there's custom top and bottom parts. You want the default parts from the last two.
Do I have to be in camp to do this, or is it in a regular menu?
(I'm not at home, so I can't fire up the game and check.)
You have to be at camp to change your outfit at any time (that isn't mandated by the plot)--as far as I know.
The default SOTR outfit (sort-of-classic tanktop Lara) is two separate parts (top and bottom) and show up as blank outlines, if I recall correctly. I usually switch back to it anyway, just because most of the custom outfits look...kind of dumb (that's one thing ROTR did better: optional outfits).
Thank, klemming and Synthesis. Figured it out thanks to you guys. The top and bottom are not visible unless you mouse-over (for some crazy reason), which is why I couldn't find them earlier.
Another of Shadow's weird design decisions. You get an outfit crafting mechanic, but then you're restricted to 2 costumes for the bulk of the game. Ok then...? Not that the outfits look particularly cool anyway. Did get a bunch of bonus stuff for having save files from the previous games, which I appreciated.
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
It's pretty forgivable. "If you dress like, people won't want to talk to you (or will hunt you do as a rebel), so why do you go to the town hub."
That being said, I would've forgiven Rise of the Tomb Raider for adding sections where you had to wear thicker winter clothing (which...they sort of did).
And yeah, none of the outfits look as cool as Lara's "default" attire anyway.
The polygon costumes of her original Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider 2 models are pretty awesome, and look absolutely hilarious in dramatic cutscenes. I would have used them the whole game if I could.
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
There was that one floating around twitter of her OG model coming out of the water and shanking that guy during the money shot and her expressionless face made her look like a Terminator, it was great
There was that one floating around twitter of her OG model coming out of the water and shanking that guy during the money shot and her expressionless face made her look like a Terminator, it was great
Yes, that point in the game is one of the most amazing times to use that model because of what's going on in the story. My boyfriend had already beaten the game and when he saw me approaching that point in that costume he was like "Oh my god, oh my god. This is going to be amazing. I can't wait to see this."
Also any cutscene where Lara needs to reach out and point to something and OG Lara just plops her fist block down on the map or whatever. Just amazing costume. I love it so much.
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At least with 2013 TR, I got through 100% of searchable content (not hunting, and there were no quests back then). It's a good problem to have, I suppose.
It's a cool game so far but man.. there is some seriously flawed design in this game.
They went through all this trouble to have customizable difficulty levels. And yet you can't turn off the on screen hints. Just big ol text every tiem I walk near a screen HEY YOU CAN CLIMB THIS TREE IF YOU PRESS X! Like what the fuck is the point of the grapple swinging and exploring when big text just tells you what to do constantly? Along those same lines they tried to have this super unobtrusive interface... and then just past these paragraphs of text on top of the world.
It's honestly awful. I don't know how this hasn't been patched yet.
Also the weapon upgrades... what happened there? I got to the first town of the game and was able to instantly buy the pistol I'll use all game, buy the AR I'll use all game, buy the silencer for the pistol and then UPGRADE THE PISTOL FULLY. Like 100% that pistol is done all game. And then I also was able to upgrade the AR to max (besides the one thing I need a skill for but that is the only thing standing in the way of that).
I feel like there's legit no reason to even try hunting out materials any more. On my first visit to the first town. It's just... so bizarre.
For weapon upgrades, I ignore them unless I really decide I needed them. There's a very large weapon selection to buy from, and upgrades don't transfer between weapons necessarily, so I didn't want to "waste" money (this mostly meant that I have an absurd amount of money hoarded up). It's definitely better than TR 2013 where certain weapons were useless until you found an upgrade, so I hope you like the bow because we're basically forcing you to stick with it (especially with basically only one option for stealth attacks).
If you're still at the beginning, you haven't really experienced combat until you've unlocked the bulk of the improvised weapon/grenade crafting mechanic. In which case you're in for a treat--more rewarding (in both XP and sheer joy) than most of the weapons in the game. :biggrin:
Yeah I finished it last night. Molotovs/grenades were the best part of the game IMO.
Though I felt like I played that game before. Wasn't the story for the first Tomb Raider game essentially the same? Lara goes on quest to find something that offers magical powers. Kills random thugs that are also trying to get the relic. Undead skeletons show up because of course they are. Final fight against main antagonist. Magic and spells happen. The end.
Is Shadow the same thing?
I had forgotten what the plot was in the first two games but I am currently playing Shadow and that is indeed the plot so far. The undead like creature things are more like zombies but.. yea..
Yes, except Lara makes things worse. That's a big component of it.
Bravely Default / 3DS Friend Code = 3394-3571-1609
Thinking about this series has me drawing comparisons to the Arkham games. The first game (Tomb Raider) was a fairly linear, tightly-paced experience, and my favorite of the three. The second was a bigger game, with more to do, more collectables, more items, introduced side-missions, etc. The third game was developed by an outside team based in Montreal, and while ambitious and containing some of the series' standout moments, is ultimately hindered by an overall lack of polish and brings very little that's new to the table.
At the end of the day, I'll say that I enjoyed this game. It's gorgeous, rappelling is a great addition to the moveset, and the tombs and puzzles continue to improve. It has, in my opinion, one of the most effective horror-sequences in gaming this year, and I thought the final area was pretty damn cool - this series knows how to pull off spectacle when it wants to. The story was a whole lot of "meh", which is too bad, cause I thought the performances were absolutely wonderful. Rodriguez, in particular, felt a bit wasted.
Unfortunately, for me, things seemed a little...buggy. I, too, kept getting an endless supply of pop-up tips, even hours into the game. To date, there remains an exclamation point over the 'Inventory' section at camp that never went away, and still remains even after 100% completion. A couple of patches have dropped, and the end of the game felt smooth enough; I assume the two are connected. Combat was a bummer - not in it's frequency, but in how difficult it was for me to play in the sandbox; multiple encounters broke down immediately, and had me either shacking up behind a ledge and blowing enemies away, or hiding in a wall and stealth-killing the parade of dummies that kept creeping up to check on their dead friend(s). I would often explore an area after an encounter, see a bunch of items lying around and think, "man, that would have been cool to use." I will admit it's possible some "get gud" could be applied here.
My single biggest complaint are the hub-areas, where the narrative would come crashing to a halt as I embarked on an hours-long collectathon, which is necessary if you want to build up enough experience to invest in a majority of the available skills. Paititi in particular was just way, way too big and way, way too uninteresting.
I want at least one more of these from Crystal Dynamics; the Arkham Knight of the series, if you will. I love what they've done with the Croft mythos, and am still interested to see where Lara goes from here (not coincidentally, the White Queen quest is probably my favorite part of the game). All the mechanical tools are there - I want one more banger before they move on from whatever they consider this to be.
I agree that the hub area in SOTR does bring the narrative to a crashing halt. That was also true when you first find the village in ROTR.
...CodBlops3 either, come to think of it. Maybe I'm just old now.
Either way I bought it and about to jump in.
My opinions of AK was that while I liked the game for the most part the movie to open world caused a lot of pacing issues and actually weakened the combat feel.
Wonder if I'll come away feeling the same.
I got to the very first campfire, and noticed that there were a lot of optional outfits, which I naturally tried out.
But now I can't get back to the default, which I preferred. It's either me or the game being an idiot.
Anyone know how to get back to the default outfit?
I think it's in a separate section? Like there's outfits, then there's custom top and bottom parts. You want the default parts from the last two.
Do I have to be in camp to do this, or is it in a regular menu?
(I'm not at home, so I can't fire up the game and check.)
You have to be at camp to change your outfit at any time (that isn't mandated by the plot)--as far as I know.
The default SOTR outfit (sort-of-classic tanktop Lara) is two separate parts (top and bottom) and show up as blank outlines, if I recall correctly. I usually switch back to it anyway, just because most of the custom outfits look...kind of dumb (that's one thing ROTR did better: optional outfits).
(You also can't change out of the appropriate gear in the Hidden City areas, which you probably already figured out.)
That being said, I would've forgiven Rise of the Tomb Raider for adding sections where you had to wear thicker winter clothing (which...they sort of did).
And yeah, none of the outfits look as cool as Lara's "default" attire anyway.
Yes, that point in the game is one of the most amazing times to use that model because of what's going on in the story. My boyfriend had already beaten the game and when he saw me approaching that point in that costume he was like "Oh my god, oh my god. This is going to be amazing. I can't wait to see this."
Also any cutscene where Lara needs to reach out and point to something and OG Lara just plops her fist block down on the map or whatever. Just amazing costume. I love it so much.
I guess "O.G." Lara, to me, would actually mean tanktop and shorts. We haven't gotten that since Underworld (not including nostalgia costumes).