PixlBit

I haven't played the new Tomb Raider yet, but it sounds great. I'm glad that they are taking Lara's character in a new direction. It seems like she has been the same for forever!

I like the new approach too. It's interesting to see Lara "grow" so to speak. I'm not saying it couldn't have been done better but I like what I've seen so far!

I still want to play the new Tomb Raider. My two issues with this one though is that the platforming seems like a huge step down and they're removing the supernatural stuff like giant monsters and dinosaurs. It feels like it's trying too hard to pander to the AAA market, but it still looks fun.

As for what we said before, I'm not saying she shouldn't have been changed, just that it's awkward when she freaks over killing someone, then is taking out a small army. This doesn't necessarily ruin a story, but it does make one worse and is clumsy storytelling.

Less human enemies may have helped. I kind of hate it in any game when "dudes" keep spawning out of the ether. RE 6 had that problem. Aka, it focused on waves of enemies instead of fewer enemies with a more menacing pressence. (Or fewer enemies with smarter ai)

I am curious about tomb raider.  I have not put more than an hour or two into the older games so I would be going into it with no expectations whatsoever.

I actually thought Anniversery was great. I also enjoyed Guardian Of The Light for what it was. Beyond that the rest of the series was kinda "meh" for me.

I'd get the new Tombraider asap if I could but next month I have to put aside more money for celebrating a friend's birthday. Aka, I may not have $59.99 to drop on myself.

I never did like Tomb Raider on the PS1. Nothing about it impressed me. Super Mario 64 was a far superior platformer with better controls. Resident Evil was far more interesting as a "mature" game. And I didn't even see her appeal as a video game sex symbol, when Namco and Square had far better offerings in that rather dubious department. Maybe it was a British thing?

That said, I'm interested in the new Tomb Raider. It's on the back burner behind games like Ni no Kuni or Bioshock Infinite, but it's the first time I've even been interested in Tomb Raider since the PS1 days, when I was primarily curious about all the hype behind the series. Maybe this will turn out to be another case of overhype, maybe not.

Lara wasn't on my radar during the ps1 era either,Andrew. I was more into games like Resident Evil and Parasite Eve. However, on the PS2 she made me stand up and take notice with Anniversary. That really is a stunning game that's much more than a simple "graphical upgrade" of the first TombRaider game. If you ever see it,snag it!

"We all need...the human touch" as Rick Springfield said one time way back. And it's true. Gaming needed to change into a more cinematic,realistic sort of medium. Old Lara was ok with me. I could even play stinkers like Angel Of Darkness and get some joy from them. I like the character. She did not need to have enormous boobs for me to like her. I liked her style and wit. This newest Lara is by far the best. This is what she should have always been like. And as far as super hero types? Look at Duke Nukem. Didn't do too hot. People are over it. They expect far more than in the 80's.

"Old PS1 Lara" just looks "weird" to me. lol. You're right, she really didn't need "huge tits" to sell the franchise. Regardless, it's been marvelous to see her with that aforementioned human touch. I'm definitely picking this up when I have ample funds.

I was interested in Lara's apparent transformation from 'helpless victim to badass' but I am sad to hear it is apparently quite the stretch. Of course, we see the same weak excuses of transformations in movies all the time. One such movie was the Descent which I read in an article shows it had a clear influence on the new Tomb Raider. I guess movies get the pass for being shorter?

I don't fault the developers so much. Making Lara more vulnerable is one thing but at its' heart the TombRaider franchise is about epic action adventure. It would be difficult to slowly and gradually build up Lara's nerve realistically unless her story was made into a 7-14 episode mini series. However,she's in a game that allots her roughly 12-18 hours of gameplay to check all those boxes.

Aka, with the constraints they had, I still think Crystal Dynamics did a great job!

I'm going to make myself sound stupid because I don't know much about Lara Croft.  But you know that never has stopped me before!

I like Lara Croft when she's being a smart and strong woman.  When she's being a sex symbol, eh, not so much.

Only thing I can say about the new Tomb Raider game is that in every screenshot I've seen, Lara is really muddy and dirty.  Take a bath, Lara!

Tomb Raider games are a little bit too serious for my tastes anyway.  If she had a sidekick that was a pink dinosaur who threw cupcakes at bad guys, I'd be all into that.

But other than that, Lara Croft is still kind of a cool character, and you can probably guess why I think that.  --Cary

Cary, you have to remember the situation Lara is in. She's stranded on a hostile island,mate. If any of us were shipwrecked away from civilization we'd look pretty rough and dirty too methinks. I don't know for sure, but maybe Lara finds a waterfall to "clean off" later in the game.

Personally I have a fetish for women who are not afraid too get a little roughed up. Guess that plays into my "tom-boy fetish". The females who act like they will "simply die" because they get a grass stain on their dress more or less annoy the crap out of me.

All that out of the way, I LOVE your pink dinosaur idea! I wouldn't mind having one as a side kick!

It's funny you mention that, because as a huge movie fan, I'm getting tired of having to go through that "character in over their head" origin story ALL THE DAMN TIME. Granted, I gave Amazing Spider-Man my money and liked it, so I'm also the problem, but I would actually welcome a story with someone who's just a total badass starting out at this point, and just give them larger than life enemies to complete their arc with.

Of course, we're not talking about movies are we? Nope, talking a generation of games that has quite literally passe me by that has characters like Kratos and the beefcakes from God of War. If that's what you become used to, you begin to get tired of it and want maybe not the opposite, but something different.

It's all about balance in the force...

I agree the "In over their heads" theme isn't in itself original,Joe. lol. However, it's a good premise for characters that always seem to be "the best of the best". At least with Lara, it makes me more sympathetic to her plight when she's just starting out at tomb raiding & she isn't a cocky over confident female version of Indiana Jones. It's okay if that's where she eventually ends up but noone starts life being a perfect super hero. Even folks like Spider-man or Bat-man worked up to that point & made plenty of mistakes along the way.

I haven't played the new Tomb Raider. I want to, eventually, but probably after a price drop. I really like Guardian of Light though. Played it with my wife. I'm disappointed they haven't made any more like that.

I wouldn't mind another Guardian Of The Light game. It added a layer of complexity and team-work to the usual isometric dungeon hack formula. The puzzles in it were also a good balance of "challenging but not frustrating".

Excited to rent this someday.  I never really got into Tomb Raider.  I think I played a little of 3 but the butler that kept following me around in the training room was more irritaing than funny, so I put it down.

Marketing tells people want it wants them to believe

 As an outsider looking in, I'm not sure you realize just how severly they undermine this humanity you think was added, to the point it doesn't matter and has no influence on game mechanics or plot. 

You say you're tired of action heroes, yet multiple people who have played the game are telling you that's exactly what you get in this game.  The game is full of 90s and 2000s action girl tropes trying to come off as serious business. Every thing you think this game doesn't do, it does.

 You can't rationalize any of this away, especially as you have not touched the game yet.  You'll have to be content with what it is, a game about Jane Rambo who cries in cutscenes but is a cold blooded super killer in play.  Just as cheesy and action movie as Tomb Raider of old, but with even bigger leaps of logic.

No Chris, many gamers are divided on how they feel about the game. Look man, I already described in my blog how her jump from being shaken over killing her first human being to becoming a bad ass was unrealistic. I'm not denying that. However, at least an attempt was made to make her "more human" and in my opinion it was not entirely unsuccessful. (And there have been other games that show vulnerability in cutscenes yet go back to the characters being bullet sponge super assassins so I at least have some experience with that. Heck, even the Metal Gear franchise does that yet it gets paraded as one of the top franchises of all time.)

 Personally, I don't get your piss & vinegar towards this game. Tombraider has always been about Lara being tough & resourceful. It would have been awkward if she spent the whole game shaken up, defenseless, and psychologically unstable. No one thinks this new TR "reinvented the wheel" but some of us are taken in with Lara's new portrayal and think she's just a little bit more relatable now. Yes, she's still a super killer when it comes to game-play but this is a franchise where "shooting things" was always a prime requisite in the first place. (Along with exploring,platforming, and puzzle solving)

   I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree,Chris. I'll be sure to tell you my opinion when I finally buy & beat the game but knowing my tastes I'm sure I'll enjoy it. (Just as I enjoyed RE6 despite its' faults.)

If you want to play "classic Tomb-Raider" no one is stopping you. And if you think I'm "less of a gamer" for finding the new direction more pleasing I'm sorry you feel that way. What can I say? Sometimes I like a mainstream game more than an indie game but other times I prefer an indie game over a mainstream game. (Or I prefer a new game in a long running franchise over its' predecessors) I reserve my right to be diversified! I'm not 100% indie, 100% retro, or 100% mainstream. I'm an eclectic mix up of all of them! Put simply, I game to have fun,man! I'm not trying to be an elite V.I.P or anything.

 I don't get your desire to defend something you admittedly haven't played.  I'm just telling you what's in the game. Has nothing to do with opinion. If you think anything I said isn't in the game, then counter those points with evidence.

And really, if the developers themselves hadn't made a big deal about how so much more fleshed out NuLara is, or how they portrayed realistic emotions and reactions, it wouldn't be so laughable how much they botch the follow through and make the game look like a Micheal Bay movie.  I'm calling them out, just like I called out Oblivion and XCOM for not living up to claims they're developers made. 

 On the bright side, you will probably enjoy the platforming aspect, environments, atmosphere, graphics. They're still the strongest part of the game, as the amped up gunplay doesn't get the job done as well as other shooters.

 And I don't know where you're getting the mainstream/indie divide from.  I never said anything about indie games.  Tomb Raider was already mainstream. Have we come to the point where anything besides mindless shooting, gore and hand holding is indie or 'hardcore?'

 Your review will probably be as good as usual, and since I dont absolutely hate the core gameplay, I suspect our opinions may not be too divergent on that front and you'll note the the advantages and drawbacks of each design choice.

Someone can have an opinion on anything,Chris. I wouldn't call my opinion "educated" but it's how I feel. However, are you saying that a gamer cannot have a "hypothesis"? For example, I researched RE 6 before buying it and decided to buy it because I liked what I saw. After playing it my conclusion was it was a good action game but a lackluster horror game. That's more or less what I predicted going in.

I believe it is possible to get "the vibe" of a game before even touching it. However, this will be one of those games I will probably have more criticisms for "after" it's beaten. I hesitate to call any game "perfect".

I didn't mean to come off as "salty', I'm just someone who was mostly disinterested in TR up until this point. (Which got me interested again) However, I did like Anniversary and Guardian Of The Light. Matter of fact, after I played those games I felt rather content I had experienced TR at its' peak.

Years ago a friend got me to play a little bit of TombRaider 2 but it didn't really do much for me. I dunno, I just couldn't "dig it" as much as other strong contenders such as Parasite Eve, Resident Evil 2, and Xenogears.

I know there was one other TR for the 360 & PS3. Was it any good? Would you suggest it over this one perhaps? Just curious!

I have a ton of Tomb Raider stuff. I have books,comics,both films,and action figures. So perhaps I am a bit biased. I often felt I was being pandered to with the marketing. I did not respond to Lara because of her look. It had more to do with how the games drew me into that world. Felt like I was going to the exotic locales they used. Tall order for a PS1 game!

"Lara's old look" kind of alienated me too. The movies with Angelina Jolie probably didn't help my stance either. Nothing against Angelina personally, I just think someone else would have made for a better Lara. (Then again, it's difficult to add more depth  to a heroine who at the time did not have as much depth)

The games TR: Anniversary and Guardian Of The Light are what made me take notice. (I also owned the WitchBlade/Tomb-Raider cross over comic)

it was a good change though thete are some character inconsistencies between her cutscene actions and in game actions. 

I have to admit she didn't adjust well over time and a reboot was of some help. 

I honestly was not too infatuated with "classic Lara" when the original TR games came out. Anniversary and GOL changed that somewhat. I also bought a Tomb-Raider/Witch-Blade cross over comic but it was more due to my obsession for Sara Pezinni!

In general it's kind of hard to handle an action hero or action heroine without some inconsistencies. They're suppose to be larger than life so even if writers want to humanize them they also have to be good at "ass kicking" and "survival" on account that's what they were created to do in the first place.