I give you exhibit A. Tomb Raider: Underworld.
What does this cover tell me about this game? There are no brains... The entire thing is cashing in on the chesty protagonist's body...there are guns in it... that's pretty much it. Sadly, that sums it up perfectly.
This game was recently given away for free via the Playstation plus membership. Ooh boy...was that overpriced. This game is a train wreck.
Historically speaking, I have never been able to tolerate the Tomb Raider series, due to it's archaic control schemes, terrible camera angles and dull combat. To make matters worse, I've always found the stories and dialogue to be written as though by a terribly stupid person, who was trying to sound brilliant. By the way, the British accent hasn't helped with that.
So, what exactly is wrong with this game. First off, you'll notice that the old school method of control has been kicked out. This is a good step. Back in the day, you would press the up button to move forward, no matter which way you were facing. It was stiff and terrible. Many games used to do this, but thankfully that went away. I figured that now that I could actually move the character around easier everything would be fixed. Unfortunately the game saw fit to make the camera brutally destroy everything I tried to do, by trying to zoom in on...or inside Lara's curvaceous buttocks. Believe me, this isn't as awesome as it sounds. There were instances where I could only see her feet at the top of the screen because the camera lost me. There were moments (every 15 seconds or so) where I would get stuck partially in a wall and I'd have to tap all of the buttons until I rolled out of the 'death trap'.
Shooting is another fundamental game play disaster. You can't actually aim your weapons...at least not accurately. It auto aims only. So basically, just keep tapping the "auto aim" button and shoot at stuff. Don't even bother looking at it. It's lazy. It's not like Uncharted: Drakes Fortune wasn't out when this game came out. Heck, Uncharted 2 was halfway completed when this game came out. That's just sad.
Graphically, the game isn't too bad. It looks pretty neat, and takes you to lots of interesting places. I have fallen through many great looking floors, via glitches.
The story is negligible, with an evil version of Lara showing up to...shoot and kill an important character and burn down her house. That's a pretty big thing right? Not really. The plot advances and Lara reacts to all of this like she just dropped an Eggo on the floor. Then again, it's very hard to believe in the seriousness in the story with Lara is talking to her 'cool black friend' named Zip, and her right arm is sticking through her torso and out from her left underarm for the entire cut scene. Apparently no one tested this game at all...
A great way to sum up how much of a let-down this game is, is to describe the "kraken" in the game. So during the very first mission, Lara stumbles upon a badass giant kraken, just laying in water minding his own business. So, instead of having a fun battle or anything ambitious at all (seriously Kratos would jump in that water and wreck that kraken.). We get to climb around the room (what we've been doing the whole time anyway) and release a chandelier to fall on its head and kill it. Did I mention that the kraken is just hanging out the whole time, minding it's business? Hooray Lara! Kill that endangered creature! Fuck biology!
There is a lot to talk about when describing what is wrong with this game, but nothing sums out it's failure like the new Tomb Raider reboot coming out soon. Apparently someone realized that Tomb Raider could be better than it is. The time of big boobs selling video games is (hopefully) over. Tomb Raider in it's current form can not survive. It's time to bring something unique. It's time to adapt to modern gaming. It's time to realize that a woman can't swim as fast as a shark...
This game blows. I'm gonna go play Uncharted 3.
No comments:
Post a Comment