I had originally planned to review Irisu Syndrome this week, seeing as I've been playing a LOT of it. However, I've also been slogging through my backlog of things that never got completed, and there's no good way to review it without spoiling a lot of the more subtle mindscrews involved, so here's my review on:
Let me start with the history, for those of you who have lived under rocks at any point in your lives: Once upon a time, in the year 1995, two companies named Core and Eidos released a game called Tomb Raider. It was an instant hit, with a refreshing balance of gunplay, platforming, and unique puzzle solving that made it a joy to play. It was also one of the few games out on the market to feature a strong female protagonist, an adventurer who could hold her own in a fight instead of needing some burly action hero to jump to her rescue and blow all the bad guys away. Lara Croft, as she is known, was a witty, athletic, genuinely cool heroine, who could perform stunts with the best of them. Her first feature game saw her shooting down lions and abominations of nature without breaking a sweat, riding an elevator cable to the top of a building, facing off against the goons of a corrupt corporate executive, exploring vast underground caverns, and so much more. She was many a teenaged boy's first love, and the envy of girls everywhere. I will begrudgingly concede one fact I've been fighting for quite a while: Part of her popularity had to do with the fact that she had boobs, and this made her OMG SO HAWT.
Anyway, Tomb Raider was franchised. Sequel after sequel was made, documenting more and more of the heroic Ms. Croft's adventures. Unfortunately, the more that sequels were released, the more the series... well, began to suck. Fans got upset as the games got more stupidly difficult; newcomers to the series had to start with earlier games, as the learning curve for the newer ones got extremely steep. The games got buggier and buggier, plotlines got more confusing, all culminating in a Playstation 2 game by the name of Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. To date, it was the buggiest, most difficult, most confusing part of the series released thus far. By this time, even the most hardcore fans had become jaded, as the plot for Angel of Darkness was not only confusing, it was possible to lose the game without even doing anything wrong. The new conversation system had tons of places where you could get a game-over if you chose the wrong response, and for first-time players, there was no way to know what to say. The game was intended to start a larger story arc which would tie all of the previous games together, but by this point, the fans were tired of their heroine getting walked on, Core got the boot, and Tomb Raider landed itself in development hell for a few years. The series was over...
...Until, of course, somebody else picked it up. A little company called Crystal Dynamics said they would not only try to Fix What Once Went Wrong, but to regain the love of the fans. And so they did. They released two games, an entirely new adventure by the name of Tomb Raider: Legend, and a remake of the first game, Tomb Raider: Anniversary. The games didn't suck; Crystal Dynamics had made good on their word. And so the fandom rejoiced, and all was well.
Now the review begins.
Tomb Raider: Anniversary (hereby referred to as TR:A, or simply Anniversary) is a nostalgic step into the past, updated with shiny new graphics, new environments to explore, updated bosses, all-new cinematics, and a whole lot else. It works on Tomb Raider: Legend's engine, which put more emphasis on the fact that Lara was a badass athlete and adventurer, giving her a grappling hook and some sweet new moves, throwing out the old grid-based level building system used in Tomb Raiders past, giving the enemy AI a serious makeover, tossing out the old control scheme, and introducing new gunplay mechanics. This all sounds good, and... well, it is. I was amazed at how much some of the areas had changed to fit the Legend engine, yet they still remained recognizable, and I couldn't help but be blown away by the nostalgia factor of some of the levels.
...Honestly, though, I do have problems with the engine.
First off is wall-mounted grappling rings. Lara has a new move that allows her to grapple onto a spot high up on the wall, and run along it from point A to point B. You can jump forward, or kick off in a leap that sends you flying in the direction that the wall is facing. Only, the latter is nigh-impossible to accomplish, which is unfortunate, because there were a couple places that it was also necessary. Oftentimes I'd find myself running back to point A so I could jump, grapple, dash to the end of the wall, and jump, only to fly forward instead of kick off and end up back on the ground again, instead of whatever ledge I was trying to land. This was particularly egregious in one part of the end game, where the heat of lava was making an already hard-to-spy slope impossible to see, and the (timed!) platforming sequence had two rings on neigboring sides of the room, making me think I HAD to do this. After plummeting into the lava for the 18th time that half-hour, I cursed Crystal Dynamics, shut off the game, and refused to return to it for at least 24 hours. At which point, I realized that if I landed just right, I had time to jump off of what I thought was a corner glitched into thinking it was a slope, and the sequence became much more tolerable.
Lara then proceeded to ignore the grippable ledge at the end of the second ring's swing, and, predictably, fell to her doom.
That's another thing that bugs me about the Legend engine: The new auto-grab function. Don't get me wrong, it's very useful, but sometimes it completely fails to work- Often, at critical points in time. It's almost as if Lara will sometimes say, "Hm, no, I don't think I'll grab onto that ladder, it seems much too untrustworthy. Oh, look, what a long way down!" This may or may not be related to what angle you jump at a ledge/ladder/other wall-mounted object from... which is still no excuse, because there are many instances where if you jump at something wrong (too early or too late) you can correct it by mashing Triangle, which will cause Lara to regain her balance, or grab the ledge with her other hand as well, etc. The game also has the unfortunate distinction of suffering from a milder version of "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING" Syndrome, which causes anybody who is playing who does not have a walkthrough in their hands to scream "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING?!" at the screen. Of note is a room encountered in the final level, which has three new fixtures that highly resemble one long one. The three smaller fixtures are actually grabbable ledges which will throw you off of them if you don't move fast enough, but they look like a retracted platform that can be kicked out once you find the switch. Naturally, I spent the better part of 20 minutes scrambling around three rooms (because a previous platforming segment had cut off my access to the rest of the level) searching for a nonexistent switch. One trip to GameFAQs later, I was staring at my computer screen in disbelief.
Like most other games, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING segments aren't actually hard, just confusing. They may consist of a ledge you can't see behind you, or an obscure solution to a seemingly straightforward puzzle, but once you understand what's going on, it's fairly easy to move on with the game. You can say I'm wearing rose-tinted shades on this one, but I don't think I got stuck on a (oh screw it, we'll shorten it to) WAISTBD segment in the original, ever, and here on a play through the remake I was visiting GameFAQs after every other session. There was at least one boss that confused the royal crap out of me, and for those who remember the twin centaurs from the original, well, they're back. Only this time, you have to piss them off until one charges you, then you roll out of the way at the last second with the Dodge-Instakill to stun it, grapple its shield off, and then when they charge a green beam to try and turn you to stone you have to run over and pick up the dropped shield with Triangle to send the beam back to them. Note that in no other point in the game do you have to pick up or hold anything else, and in fact everything else Lara picks up is stashed into the inventory for later use. The fight is frustratingly long without turning one to stone, and impossible without knowing you can tear their shields off to use against them.
Another thing I'm not so sure about with regards to TRA is the new Quick-Time Event System present in boss battles and certain parts of levels. For those of you who don't know, Quick-Time Events, or QTEs as they're frequently referred to, break down like this:
-A short cinema occurs
-You have to press a certain button at a certain time in response to what's happening on screen.
-If you press the button too early or too soon, or press the wrong button entirely, something bad happens.
-In the case of TR:A and Tomb Raider: Legend, the bad thing is almost always Lara Dies. WHOOPSIE!
QTEs are, unfortunately, irritating at best to deal with, though not entirely intolerable because what button you have to push usually flashes onscreen. However, when placed before/after a boss battle, it feels like nothing but filler, and a cheap way to make the game 'harder'. The last boss has a QTE where one of the buttons you have to press only has a half-second window of opportunity before Lara Dies. Half a second! What the hell, Crystal Dy! The display came and went so fast I just almost missed what button it was I was supposed to push! Considering every other part of every other QTE gave me a lot longer than half a second, how was I supposed to know that I had a split-second to mash it?! I was screwed from the get-go, and Lara Died. Way to go, guys, good programming!
Not all QTEs were atrocious, thankfully. Most of them are quite easy to breeze through, and I only stumbled a couple times, like when I expected a different button than the one that popped on screen. Still, having to repeat a section two or three times in a row because Lara Died is kind of irritating, and considering the crazy things the rest of the game has her doing, I fail to see the point. Why not just let us play these sections?
Admittedly, as many problems as I have with Crystal Dynamics' new Tomb Raider engine, TR:A is not a terrible game. It's isn't even a bad game. TR:A is a diamond in the rough: The story is well-presented, with a fresh take on its characters and settings, Lara is fun to control (especially the acrobatic rolls oh my GOD I had so much fun using those to show off), the transition between levels is smooth and makes a lot of sense, and the new combat system can be pretty sweet to work with. Using the Dodge-Instakill can wipe out enemies in a hurry if you just want to focus on puzzles, which is nice, and even if you like going up against a pack of raptors with nothing but Lara's pistols and your wits, it's still a great way to taunt your enemies and avoid damage at the same time. It's a decent game that was, unfortunately, tarnished by a couple unforgiving flaws in its programming, and if you're willing to put up with a little frustration here and there, it's worth the play, for both veterans of the old School of Croft and complete newbies to the series.
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| Hey, look! Box art! |
Anyway, Tomb Raider was franchised. Sequel after sequel was made, documenting more and more of the heroic Ms. Croft's adventures. Unfortunately, the more that sequels were released, the more the series... well, began to suck. Fans got upset as the games got more stupidly difficult; newcomers to the series had to start with earlier games, as the learning curve for the newer ones got extremely steep. The games got buggier and buggier, plotlines got more confusing, all culminating in a Playstation 2 game by the name of Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. To date, it was the buggiest, most difficult, most confusing part of the series released thus far. By this time, even the most hardcore fans had become jaded, as the plot for Angel of Darkness was not only confusing, it was possible to lose the game without even doing anything wrong. The new conversation system had tons of places where you could get a game-over if you chose the wrong response, and for first-time players, there was no way to know what to say. The game was intended to start a larger story arc which would tie all of the previous games together, but by this point, the fans were tired of their heroine getting walked on, Core got the boot, and Tomb Raider landed itself in development hell for a few years. The series was over...
...Until, of course, somebody else picked it up. A little company called Crystal Dynamics said they would not only try to Fix What Once Went Wrong, but to regain the love of the fans. And so they did. They released two games, an entirely new adventure by the name of Tomb Raider: Legend, and a remake of the first game, Tomb Raider: Anniversary. The games didn't suck; Crystal Dynamics had made good on their word. And so the fandom rejoiced, and all was well.
Now the review begins.
Tomb Raider: Anniversary (hereby referred to as TR:A, or simply Anniversary) is a nostalgic step into the past, updated with shiny new graphics, new environments to explore, updated bosses, all-new cinematics, and a whole lot else. It works on Tomb Raider: Legend's engine, which put more emphasis on the fact that Lara was a badass athlete and adventurer, giving her a grappling hook and some sweet new moves, throwing out the old grid-based level building system used in Tomb Raiders past, giving the enemy AI a serious makeover, tossing out the old control scheme, and introducing new gunplay mechanics. This all sounds good, and... well, it is. I was amazed at how much some of the areas had changed to fit the Legend engine, yet they still remained recognizable, and I couldn't help but be blown away by the nostalgia factor of some of the levels.
...Honestly, though, I do have problems with the engine.
First off is wall-mounted grappling rings. Lara has a new move that allows her to grapple onto a spot high up on the wall, and run along it from point A to point B. You can jump forward, or kick off in a leap that sends you flying in the direction that the wall is facing. Only, the latter is nigh-impossible to accomplish, which is unfortunate, because there were a couple places that it was also necessary. Oftentimes I'd find myself running back to point A so I could jump, grapple, dash to the end of the wall, and jump, only to fly forward instead of kick off and end up back on the ground again, instead of whatever ledge I was trying to land. This was particularly egregious in one part of the end game, where the heat of lava was making an already hard-to-spy slope impossible to see, and the (timed!) platforming sequence had two rings on neigboring sides of the room, making me think I HAD to do this. After plummeting into the lava for the 18th time that half-hour, I cursed Crystal Dynamics, shut off the game, and refused to return to it for at least 24 hours. At which point, I realized that if I landed just right, I had time to jump off of what I thought was a corner glitched into thinking it was a slope, and the sequence became much more tolerable.
Lara then proceeded to ignore the grippable ledge at the end of the second ring's swing, and, predictably, fell to her doom.
That's another thing that bugs me about the Legend engine: The new auto-grab function. Don't get me wrong, it's very useful, but sometimes it completely fails to work- Often, at critical points in time. It's almost as if Lara will sometimes say, "Hm, no, I don't think I'll grab onto that ladder, it seems much too untrustworthy. Oh, look, what a long way down!" This may or may not be related to what angle you jump at a ledge/ladder/other wall-mounted object from... which is still no excuse, because there are many instances where if you jump at something wrong (too early or too late) you can correct it by mashing Triangle, which will cause Lara to regain her balance, or grab the ledge with her other hand as well, etc. The game also has the unfortunate distinction of suffering from a milder version of "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING" Syndrome, which causes anybody who is playing who does not have a walkthrough in their hands to scream "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING?!" at the screen. Of note is a room encountered in the final level, which has three new fixtures that highly resemble one long one. The three smaller fixtures are actually grabbable ledges which will throw you off of them if you don't move fast enough, but they look like a retracted platform that can be kicked out once you find the switch. Naturally, I spent the better part of 20 minutes scrambling around three rooms (because a previous platforming segment had cut off my access to the rest of the level) searching for a nonexistent switch. One trip to GameFAQs later, I was staring at my computer screen in disbelief.
Like most other games, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING segments aren't actually hard, just confusing. They may consist of a ledge you can't see behind you, or an obscure solution to a seemingly straightforward puzzle, but once you understand what's going on, it's fairly easy to move on with the game. You can say I'm wearing rose-tinted shades on this one, but I don't think I got stuck on a (oh screw it, we'll shorten it to) WAISTBD segment in the original, ever, and here on a play through the remake I was visiting GameFAQs after every other session. There was at least one boss that confused the royal crap out of me, and for those who remember the twin centaurs from the original, well, they're back. Only this time, you have to piss them off until one charges you, then you roll out of the way at the last second with the Dodge-Instakill to stun it, grapple its shield off, and then when they charge a green beam to try and turn you to stone you have to run over and pick up the dropped shield with Triangle to send the beam back to them. Note that in no other point in the game do you have to pick up or hold anything else, and in fact everything else Lara picks up is stashed into the inventory for later use. The fight is frustratingly long without turning one to stone, and impossible without knowing you can tear their shields off to use against them.
Another thing I'm not so sure about with regards to TRA is the new Quick-Time Event System present in boss battles and certain parts of levels. For those of you who don't know, Quick-Time Events, or QTEs as they're frequently referred to, break down like this:
-A short cinema occurs
-You have to press a certain button at a certain time in response to what's happening on screen.
-If you press the button too early or too soon, or press the wrong button entirely, something bad happens.
-In the case of TR:A and Tomb Raider: Legend, the bad thing is almost always Lara Dies. WHOOPSIE!
QTEs are, unfortunately, irritating at best to deal with, though not entirely intolerable because what button you have to push usually flashes onscreen. However, when placed before/after a boss battle, it feels like nothing but filler, and a cheap way to make the game 'harder'. The last boss has a QTE where one of the buttons you have to press only has a half-second window of opportunity before Lara Dies. Half a second! What the hell, Crystal Dy! The display came and went so fast I just almost missed what button it was I was supposed to push! Considering every other part of every other QTE gave me a lot longer than half a second, how was I supposed to know that I had a split-second to mash it?! I was screwed from the get-go, and Lara Died. Way to go, guys, good programming!
Not all QTEs were atrocious, thankfully. Most of them are quite easy to breeze through, and I only stumbled a couple times, like when I expected a different button than the one that popped on screen. Still, having to repeat a section two or three times in a row because Lara Died is kind of irritating, and considering the crazy things the rest of the game has her doing, I fail to see the point. Why not just let us play these sections?
Admittedly, as many problems as I have with Crystal Dynamics' new Tomb Raider engine, TR:A is not a terrible game. It's isn't even a bad game. TR:A is a diamond in the rough: The story is well-presented, with a fresh take on its characters and settings, Lara is fun to control (especially the acrobatic rolls oh my GOD I had so much fun using those to show off), the transition between levels is smooth and makes a lot of sense, and the new combat system can be pretty sweet to work with. Using the Dodge-Instakill can wipe out enemies in a hurry if you just want to focus on puzzles, which is nice, and even if you like going up against a pack of raptors with nothing but Lara's pistols and your wits, it's still a great way to taunt your enemies and avoid damage at the same time. It's a decent game that was, unfortunately, tarnished by a couple unforgiving flaws in its programming, and if you're willing to put up with a little frustration here and there, it's worth the play, for both veterans of the old School of Croft and complete newbies to the series.
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