Food Nipple
10-28-2008, 01:07 PM
Demo is only on 360 at the moment, sorry PS3 and PC.
Visually, everything looks very nice. Legend made a big deal about the "wet effects" when Lara got out of the water, this time around it's "dirty effects." Lara can get visibly dirty from climbing around on crap, ironically the water effects of the previous game seem to be absent. The title screen looks like real life footage, rather than in game, which is an interesting choice.
The demo takes place in the same sort of Incan/South American ruins that people immediately associate with the series and consists of standard TR fare: hanging from ledges, jumping from platform to platform, and shooting indigenous wildlife. There are a couple of new additions: You've got a wall jump that lets you scale vertical shafts a la Ninja Gaiden, and climbable walls now have visible footholds and handholds much like Assassin's Creed. In fact, there's a couple of other animations that are inspired by Assassin's Creed, like the way Lara pushes through vegetation much like Altair pushes his way through a crowd. However, TR just isn't animated as well as the games it draws inspiration from.
Overall, the platforming feels more organic: the route forward is much less obvious, and there's times that it's possible to go the wrong way. You'll spend time trying to figure out how to get from A to B, but this isn't always a good thing. The camera has a knack for obscuring the next stepping stone out of your sight, and some routes are unintentionally difficult to find as a result. While not a terribly big deal, it makes me wish that they had also borrowed Prince of Persia's camera when they took his move set.
The other big feature is hidden away in the menu, and I probably wouldn't have found it had I not been looking for it. It's called Player Tailoring, and it allows to tweak the following difficulty sliders:
Enemy Health
Ammunition Capacity
Damage to Lara
Time for Saving Grabs
I like what they're going for here, and as someone that doesn't play TR for the combat, I'm glad I can ratchet down the enemy health and cruise through those parts. It would be even better if there was some puzzle/platforming sliders that I could crank up, but I'll take what I can get.
You've also got a PDA which contains a bunch of useless crap that you'll probably never use. One of these is the multi-tiered hint system Crystal D has been bragging about, but the hints I have right now are:
Press 'A' to hear what to focus on:
HINT: "There must be more ruins further inland"
and
Press 'Y' to hear what to do:
TASK: "I need to keep moving inland to find more ruins."
Well, thank goodness for that second hint, because I was unsure what to do after the first one. Now maybe the caliber of the hints will get better, but at the moment this seems just as bad as Legend's hint system, only with multiple tiers of uselessness.
The biggest problem I have is a lack of consistency. Sometimes you'll miss a jump for no apparent reason, occasionally you'll run into places where you'd expect to be able to wall jump but can't, and it can be a pain in the ass to get Lara to drop down on the proper side of a beam.
Overall, the game seems pretty solid. It's not doing anything particularly new, but my motives for picking this up are based on the strength of the last one, and the demo doesn't do a whole lot to showcase those aspects. On the other hand, while it may have some rough edges, there are no signs of the worst offenders from Legend: There is not a single QTE in sight.
Visually, everything looks very nice. Legend made a big deal about the "wet effects" when Lara got out of the water, this time around it's "dirty effects." Lara can get visibly dirty from climbing around on crap, ironically the water effects of the previous game seem to be absent. The title screen looks like real life footage, rather than in game, which is an interesting choice.
The demo takes place in the same sort of Incan/South American ruins that people immediately associate with the series and consists of standard TR fare: hanging from ledges, jumping from platform to platform, and shooting indigenous wildlife. There are a couple of new additions: You've got a wall jump that lets you scale vertical shafts a la Ninja Gaiden, and climbable walls now have visible footholds and handholds much like Assassin's Creed. In fact, there's a couple of other animations that are inspired by Assassin's Creed, like the way Lara pushes through vegetation much like Altair pushes his way through a crowd. However, TR just isn't animated as well as the games it draws inspiration from.
Overall, the platforming feels more organic: the route forward is much less obvious, and there's times that it's possible to go the wrong way. You'll spend time trying to figure out how to get from A to B, but this isn't always a good thing. The camera has a knack for obscuring the next stepping stone out of your sight, and some routes are unintentionally difficult to find as a result. While not a terribly big deal, it makes me wish that they had also borrowed Prince of Persia's camera when they took his move set.
The other big feature is hidden away in the menu, and I probably wouldn't have found it had I not been looking for it. It's called Player Tailoring, and it allows to tweak the following difficulty sliders:
Enemy Health
Ammunition Capacity
Damage to Lara
Time for Saving Grabs
I like what they're going for here, and as someone that doesn't play TR for the combat, I'm glad I can ratchet down the enemy health and cruise through those parts. It would be even better if there was some puzzle/platforming sliders that I could crank up, but I'll take what I can get.
You've also got a PDA which contains a bunch of useless crap that you'll probably never use. One of these is the multi-tiered hint system Crystal D has been bragging about, but the hints I have right now are:
Press 'A' to hear what to focus on:
HINT: "There must be more ruins further inland"
and
Press 'Y' to hear what to do:
TASK: "I need to keep moving inland to find more ruins."
Well, thank goodness for that second hint, because I was unsure what to do after the first one. Now maybe the caliber of the hints will get better, but at the moment this seems just as bad as Legend's hint system, only with multiple tiers of uselessness.
The biggest problem I have is a lack of consistency. Sometimes you'll miss a jump for no apparent reason, occasionally you'll run into places where you'd expect to be able to wall jump but can't, and it can be a pain in the ass to get Lara to drop down on the proper side of a beam.
Overall, the game seems pretty solid. It's not doing anything particularly new, but my motives for picking this up are based on the strength of the last one, and the demo doesn't do a whole lot to showcase those aspects. On the other hand, while it may have some rough edges, there are no signs of the worst offenders from Legend: There is not a single QTE in sight.