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Tombraider Rebooted

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Blyss:
So, I almost never buy a game on release day, and I certainly never preorder, unless I have a LOT of faith in a title.  I preordered the new Tombraider.  My wife commented on the fact that I never do that, and then proceeded with, "It better be of the charts."  Her words, not mine.  I simply nodded, and agreed, seeing as how I'd just dropped $60 for the game, and another $60 for the controller that allowed for a $10 discount, and a downloadable character on xbox live.

I didn't actually play it until this weekend, because my wife wanted to watch while I played.  She used to do this regularly while I played the old TR games, and I played damn near all of them.

I will do my best not to spoil anything should anyone want to play this game clean.

1 - Less raiding than I expected, and a lot more combat than I remembered.  There's not much to expand on - I'm literally aware of one tomb that I have successfully 'raided' (because the game notified me that I had successfully 'raided the tomb') and that was and optional thing.  Yeah, as in, not forwarding the story.  That bothers me, though not so much that I don't like the game as a whole.

2 - Puzzles that don't seem to make sense, on the scale that I remember. - Does anyone remember the first TR where you had to bring bricks of lead to Midas' hand so they would turn to gold?  I do.  I also remember a Sword of Damocles trap, and various other things that had some basis in various myths and theologies.  (click to show/hide)Himiko is apparently real, but the fact is even her wiki page says that she's obscure.  So obscure that I've never heard of her, and I happen to be fairly (not immensely) knowledgeable about such things.
3 - My wife doesn't care for it, but I still like playing - she's not enjoying watching and helping me like she used to because frankly there's not much help you can give when I'm mowing down enemies by the hundreds.  The puzzles are there, but not nearly as many and nothing as complex as they used to be.  That's all.  Nothing else to say about it.

Summary - I don't hate the game, but I'm not in love with it either.  I don't feel like I wasted my $60 ($110 total) so that's a positive.  I knew it wasn't going to be the same TR, but maybe I didn't realize just HOW different it would be.  I'll report more when I've finished it.  Right now I'm about 12 hours in, and the ending doesn't seem too close yet.  I'm still having fun, but it's kind of strange to not be doing so much tomb raiding in a game that is still called Tombraider.

Lupercal:
Interesting. This reboot was well needed, I think. I remember distinctly playing Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation on my Dreamcast Christmas 2000. That was the last great Tomb Raider game, in my opinion. I loved Tomb Raider II, missed a few titles (Chronicles notably) and rather disliked Legend - after some decent Prince of Persia games, Tomb Raider kind of fell off the map on the new consoles.

Sounds like without the puzzles this is worth a miss - is the story at all engrossing? I used to think the narratives in the TR games were pretty good. Mythical and edgy!

Blyss:
The story does seem good so far.  I do want to know what happens next, so I guess that's a sign of a good narrative.  I don't want to be misleading, there IS tombraiding, but it almost seems to have been an afterthought.  I think they could do better, and if they do well enough to warrant a sequel, I think we'll be looking at Mass Effect 2 syndrome, in that the 2nd game will be a lot better than the first (my opinion, so take it for what it's worth). 

Please don't think that I'm viewing this game negatively, just that I'm still trying to form an opinion, and it's not overwhelmingly one way or the other yet, and I was expecting it to be all good.

satsugaikaze:
I was really just under the impression that they were trying to prequelize her character and so for that character development to come into the fore they made the combat (the less cerebral aspect of Tomb Raider games) most prominent.

From what I saw of TotalBiscuit playing through it, it sounds like there are a fair few tombs around, just that they're all optional and the first couple of hours are quick-time events and on-rails narrative, which is an interesting design choice.

Method of Madness:
I liked it, even if it was kind of an Uncharted clone (making it a clone of a clone of itself, sort of). It was pretty short, made me glad I borrowed instead of bought.

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