• 13Jun 11

  Tomb Raider E3 demo Impressions

  This is my first article in this gamespot blog and I'm pretty new to blog in general, but I guess I have to start somewhere

  A few notes before I start: I'm Italian therefore english is not my mother tongue so I do apologize for every possible mistake that I will make, please don't be too harsh. As everyone on this site I love videogames and I like to play them and to keep myself informed with news and articles related to the medium, to do so I rely both on personal experience and to sites like Gamespot (USA, UK and AU)and magazines like EDGE and Gamerepublic. I like those because they express very different point of view within the same magazine.

  That said let's start with the subject of my article that which is the new Tomb Raider 2011 E3 demo. The demo is set in cavern and feature this new younger Lara Croft. The game is a reboot of the series and it has been said that it will feature more emphasis on survival skill than the previus games, a deeper story, new gameplay mechanics, and better graphic. But what we've really seen so far? We have a very well made trailer with a very beautiful 21 years old Lara who survives a shipwreck and ends up on a wild island... the trailer already hint something about the atmosphere and mood of the game. As I stated the new Lara is indeed beautiful and looks realistic, I'm not used to her voice in english (I heard she changed it quite often) but I don't really like it. I mean it's perfect for the younger character but somehow it seems to me almost too youngish, but maybe it's just me. The second thing (and most important) that we've seen is the aforementioned Cavern Gameplay. What can we say about that... wellthe game looks good but from what I've seen so far there's a lot of room for improvement... the graphic it's good, Lara is beautiful and the pain concept is realistic. The bad is that she moan to much and then she performs stunts without a single word of complaint (and she is still wounded), it would have been better if she accused the pain less but for more time and with more emphasis during particoularly demanding stunts like jumps and climb. The "instinct vision" is not bad but it's not original too, we saw it already in assassin's creed, splinter cell and other games, why they didn't come up with some new ideas of game design? After all this is a complete reboot, as long as Lara is the main character they could havedone anything they want, and yet they seem to be afraid to experiment, too push the limit, to be original and creative... I hope they exploit this possibililty not only for gameplay, but for the story too... Make it complex, mature, controverse... They have this opportunity, I hope they won't waste it. Another thing is about the Quick Time Events, I don't hate them, they were good in game like Shenmue but they were used wisely, you felt like you were really playing those part beacause the button you pressed makes sense, and also they were only very small part of the game; nowadays they are overused and boring, I don't think it's good to sit and watch a cool cutscene where I get the opportunity to press a button sometimes, I don't care if the action in that cutscene is awesome, I'm not playing it (any reference to Heavy Rain it's purely intentional). I want the developers to come out with ideas to let ME play those part and PLAY those awesome stunts... Last but not least, the game looks too easy, I'm tired of games that last less than 5 hours and that tell you everything you have to do and take your hands through the game from start to finish... I want some challenge!!! Some very hard but fair challenge, they should really take games like The Witcher 2 and Demon's Souls (and its upcoming sequel Dark Souls) as an example! Those games are hard as hell and yet fair, they won't kill you in a way that looks like cheating, they kill you only if you do something really wrong (e.g. if you don't evade or parry a powerful attack you die or loose an extremely high amount of damage) they encourage you to use your brain AND your skill. I hope Tomb Raider would be like those games, but for now it looks like they are going to hold your hand and guide you like a little child for all the game... I really really hope they would exploit this reboot opportunity in the best way possible...

  • Posted Jun 13, 2011 11:51 am GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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