by OL » Mon Jun 11, 2018 5:36 pm
Whatever happened to, y'know... raiding tombs? And being an archaeologist and all that? Seems like it's all just background noise so she can kill people now.
I think this is my biggest problem with the series ever since the reboot; it's all about desperate survival and gritty combat. Sure, Lara was always a violent sort, but when I think of the old games, my mind doesn't really focus on the shooting; I think of the grand, level-wide puzzles and the whole spectacle of discovery they always had. Even in the later games, when they started introducing fewer tombs and more city and industrial environments, that stuff was still the focus.
I watch this trailer, and seriously... some of those stealth kills make me think I'm looking at a new Manhunt game or something. That's pretty fucked up. Lara seems more concerned with murdering the fuck out of everybody and getting XP for it.
And no, I still haven't played all the way through the previous two games, but I've watched plenty of stuff on them. I always wanted to be into it. I know there were puzzles and whatnot in them, but again... they really aren't the focus.
If anything, I really wish the Tomb Raider series would have taken a more Portal-esque route in modern times. That style where you enter a huge room, see a ledge high about, and have to figure out how to get there. That kind of stuff.
But no, it's all just murder murder, kill kill, get XP and kill some more.
That's fun in other games, of course, but it's never what I would have looked to the TR series for. Eh.
Plus, have to say, every time I see anything of the newer games and hear Lara grunting and breathing hard and screaming in a panic like she does, I'm reminded of just how much I still sort of hate this newer interpretation of her. Classic Lara was cool as ice; she was a female James Bond who could still quip with a gun to her head and the world falling down around her. Now we have this weird amalgamation of a character who audibly panics like a little girl during cutscenes, then straight up murders people in horrible ways during gameplay like some sort of hardened assassin who loves her job. Not only is she less appealing in context of story, but there's a complete discord between her cutscene persona and her gameplay one. It's friggin weird.
Anyway, whine whine, complain complain. I'll stop there.