43M's Gaming Journal: Now Playing: God of War Ragnarok!!!

[43M]

Just finished Rise of the Tomb Raider, and got about 30 hours out of it.

I am going to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider and do a double review with Rise and Shadow.

[skywindO2]

I loved Tomb Raider and Rise, something about Shadow just didn't work for me. 

[scar988]

On 12/14/2021 at 8:44 AM, skywindO2 said:

I loved Tomb Raider and Rise, something about Shadow just didn't work for me. 

Same.

[Hunter2_1]

Is it weird finding video game characters hot...? 

[RJ_11]

7 hours ago, Hunter2_1 said:

Is it weird finding video game characters hot...? 

Nah, they're just motion captured people. If you find modern Lara hot, it just means you find Camilla Luddington hot - which is understandable.

[RJ_11]

Surprised that people here didn't seem too keen on Shadow - in the TR community it's a lot of peoples' favorite of the recent trilogy. I liked it but didn't love it - in the reboot trilogy it's second for me behind Rise, then TR2013 third - I was really not much of a fan of TR2013.

I thought Shadow was a stunning game visually, but felt like the gameplay had gotten a bit stale by that point in the series. Needed some new dynamics to change things up. And I won't spoil the story for 43M but I just felt... unfulfilled by it. Although the way it starts being a similar sort of scenario to Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation from waaaayyyyyy back in 1999 was cool.

Sorry, could talk about Tomb Raider all day. I'll shut up now.

Edited December 16, 2021 by RJ_11

[43M]

So far I enjoy Shadow, but Im only like 10% into it.    The first one is still my favorite...but its kinda like the Arkham games where they all play the same, but little things seperate them.

[43M]

One thing Ill say about Shadow is that it feels more rushed than the others, and not quite as polished.   Still fun, but certain aspects dont feel like as much care went into them as previous games.

[43M]

Little update....

Got somewhat burnt out playing Shadow of Tomb Raider.    Its a pretty good game, but I was trying to do as much as possible, and at this point I just want to finish it and move on.      Im not sure when Ill get back into it....taking a small break from gaming, but Ill finish and post reviews for both Rise and Shadow when I am done.

[43M]

Review

 

Review

 

 

This is kind of a double feature review, but I am not going to spend a lot time on it.   The gameplay elements are largely the same throughout the entire trilogy, so there isnt much to go over into in terms of gameplay that I didnt already say in the review for the first game.   The gameplay is extremely fun and action oriented, and for the most part it was largely polished.      Shadow of the Tomb Raider, for some reason, didnt seem quite as polished as the first two IN CERTAIN AREAS.     There is a feature you use when you are trying to figure out where to go or what to do next, and sometimes it didnt work well, so there were 3 or 4 times I actually had to look up where to go or what to do next because I really couldnt figure it out.    Nothing game killing or anything close to that...just rather annoying.

The stories for both games are solid, but rather generic.  Shadow, again, seemed kind of incomplete.   It seemed like there were several parts of the story that were either omitted or I just missed, but I think it was just poor planning and rushed development.   The story made enough sense, I guess, but alot of the motivations and reasons for certain things didnt seem fleshed out enough.

I was kind of annoyed by the lack of actual meaningful tombs in these games.     Most of the tombs in the entire trilogy were mainly just sidequests and things you did to develop your characters, but for the most part, none really seemed central to any of the stories.    It felt like the games shouldve been more accurately titled "Female Rambo that Occasionally explores Tombs".       Again, I liked the games, but the Tomb RAIDING aspect felt secondary to everything else.

Shifting briefly back to gameplay, I felt like alot of skills you acquire by doing tombs and completing questions didnt feel extremely important.    Out of the entire skill tree, there were only a few that I regularly used or found extremely useful.    And again, another area where Shadow dropped the ball was when changing weapons.   Before, when you switched, you could see the name of the weapon or the ammo type you were switching to.   In Shadow, you just had to go by what the symbol was, and I didnt always remember.   Seems like small potatoes, but those types of small issues can build up and get really annoying....and they kinda did in Shadow.

Bottom line:   It may sound like I didnt enjoy the sequels, but I did....a lot actually.       Rises was almost equally as great as the first game, but didnt really break any new ground.      Shadow was good, but it definitely felt like alot of things were rushed, which led to more frustration than there should have been.

Gameplay:  9
Story:  Rises 7 /  Shadow 5
Graphics: 9.5
Value/Replayability:   5
Personal Enjoyment:  Rises 9/Shadow 6

 

Final Score(s)  

Rise of the Tomb Raider:   8.5
Shadow of the Tomb Raider:  7.8

[43M]

 

REVIEW

So, almost everyone has certain games that they have sunk a stupid amount of time into.    I have numerous, but as far as single player, offline games go….I don’t think there is another game I have sunk more time in over the years than Kingdoms of Amalur.    Its not even that its necessarily my favorite game ever and probably doesn’t even crack my top 10, but despite its faults, I do love the game.

First off, lets go back 10 years or so when it first came out..   I honestly never heard a thing about it, so obviously the marketing for this game was non-existent.    I never really played demos much, but for some reason I just so happen to be perusing the PS3 store demo section, and this popped up.    I was bored so I downloaded it and decided to check it out.     I remember thinking the action felt very much like old school, PS2 God of War games, and I liked the fast paced action and the character building system seemed pretty legit.    So, a month or so after playing the demo it came out, and I decided to plop the money down to get it, and I played the hell out of it and absolutely loved it the first time I played through. 

The biggest problem for this game was the fact that it came out shortly after another particular fantasy RPG called Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, which was being talked about nonstop for a year before it came out, and when it did, its all anyone talked about for the following year.    So, a brand new IP that was barely marketed was going up against a juggernaut that is still insanely popular to this day, while 38 Studios, the company that made KoA, went belly up just a year or so after KoA was released because the game did not even make its money back.    And its tragic, because it was actually a terrific game, and with better marketing and maybe not releasing so soon after a game like Skyrim, the game could have been much more successful.   Im not saying it would sniff Skyrim’s success, but it didn’t need to.   It was a brand new IP and even if it just had some moderate success, 38 Studios likely would’ve stuck around, and they clearly had much more planned for the series, including an online RPG that took place within the same world.

Fast forward 10 years later, and the IP is under new ownership with THQ Nordic, and they “remastered” the game and put out a new expansion “Fatesworn”, which continues the story.     So how does this new “remaster” stack up?   Lets get into it.

First off, lets get the main story stuff out of the way since there was no real changes outside of adding Fatesworn, which was just a continuation.      The story is pretty decent, albeit very generic, although I do appreciate the obvious effort they put into creating a lore and backstory to the world.    It truly does feel like it’s a world that’s been through a lot if you actually take the time to study up on the world through various texts in the game.   I didn’t, but fortunately there are videos that summarize the world and its lore instead of reading through every last book and talking to every last NPC to know everything.    The world was stacked full of backstory that was actually pretty interesting, and again, was supposed to continue into the online RPG and future titles we never got.    

While you can easily get connected to the world as a whole, one of the absolute weakest areas of Kingdoms of Amalur is the characters, from the playable character to all of the characters you meet along the way….you just don’t develop any type of connection with any of them.   IMO, even Skyrim has this issue.   Pretty much any game where you create the character and they have no voice actor for them seems to suffer from this.    You cant develop the same connection with them as you can with say, Geralt of Rivia (Witcher), Aloy (Horizon)  or Cloud Strife (FF7).     But beyond the main characters, this doesn’t really make you feel connected to any of the characters you meet either.    Despite certain characters who refer to you as “friend”, you never develop any type of bond with any of them.    You might fight alongside them a couple times, but none of them really have anything that fleshes out who they are or why you should remotely care about them.   This is one of my biggest gripes about the game.

Graphics I wont spend much time on.   The graphics weren’t special in 2012, and even with slightly improved textures, they are still kinda dated for 2012.    However, I will say that the designs of some of the environments are really well done and nice to look at.   I don’t care much about graphics is the game is good.   My biggest issue with the remaster as far as graphics go….is that they didn’t improve character models at all.    At the very least, I hoped they would add some new faces.     When you first create your character, you have the option for like 4 faces, and 2 of those for are exactly the same, except one has a wider nose (at least for the humans), and you cant adjust individual facial features.    The worst part about that is, it isnt just limited to just YOUR character.    I constantly cross NPCs that have the EXACT SAME FACE as my character.    The same faces are repeated constantly throughout the game, and every male and every female have pretty much the exact same body designs throughout the entire game.   Its not enough to turn me away, but it got distracting, and I had hoped they would SOMEWHAT address this in the remaster, but they didn’t do anything.

Gameplay is my favorite part and the most addicting aspect.    I do love hack and slash gameplay from time to time.   I also like more strategic and methodical gameplay, but again, this game was very reminiscent of God of War from the PS2 and PS3 era.    While I really enjoy the gameplay in general, there are many issues that weren’t really addressed In the “remaster”.      First off, the  game, even back in 2012 on hard difficulty, was extremely easy, especially as you leveled up and got better armor and stacked certain abilities.    They did add a “very hard” difficulty setting, which did make the game a decent bit harder early on, especially against certain enemies, but by the time you get towards the end, you feel largely invincible.    The biggest issues is the fact that all the enemies are extremely predictable, and when you start hitting them, most of them cant do anything until they are dead.   Outside of some larger enemies (and most of them are easy too), when you hit and enemy, you can just keep slashing them until they die.     Groups of enemies will prevent you from focusing one just one enemy, but still, the game would’ve been much more challenging and balanced if more enemies had different strategies or they at least defended themselves.     All the “very hard” setting did was make enemies damage sponges, and it got old having it take so long to beat weaker enemies.     Their hits did have more of an effect on you, but overall, it didn’t feel any harder…just more tedious.

Im going to linger on the issue of how easy the game was for another paragraph.    There were just too many things that made the game frustratingly easy.   I already touched on the gameplay, but to add to that…it annoyed me how it ALMOST made creating and attaining better gear almost pointless.    Later in the game, when you start getting more powerful weapons and armor, it just continues to make the gameplay easier and easier.    I actually had to nerf myself a little in an attempt to make things more challenging, but it didn’t work out extremely well.   In fairness, you never really had to use weaker weapons because otherwise it would take you forever to kill enemies.   The main issue there was enemies rarely defended themselves so only groups of enemies were tough, but not usually that tough.    However, armor just got extremely OP’d.    There are certain armor and accessory combos that essentially made you invincible, even against supposed tougher enemies.    

Beyond that, the skill tree, especially certain skills, just felt pointless.    Outside of detect hidden, none of them were SUPER vital to success.    Skills like lockpicking, stealth and Dispelling were pretty much pointless since you didn’t really need a single skill point to do those things well.     You could pick the hardest locks without having to invest a single point in it as long as you had enough lockpicks, and even then it was easy to pick the hardest locks with just a couple tries.    This was a common theme with most of the skills.   Even some of the slightly useful ones like blacksmithing, alchemy, sagecrafting etc….werent extremely necessary since you could buy everything you needed around Amalur without those skills.   Yes, you could create extremely strong weapons and armor with blacksmithing, but the game was so easy, you didn’t really need to.

As far as the new expansion “Fatesworn”, it was actually done incredibly well and made the me from 10 years ago giddy, but it retained the same exact issues as the base game.     The story was pretty decent and the new areas they created were nicely done and offered more variety compared to the rest of the game, but I thought the expansion might add some tougher enemies, but no.   The expansion was just as easy, if not easier.

And one last thing I want to mention is how useless your CPU “friends” are.    Numerous times you are accompanied by allies or others that are supposed to be helping you, but they suck so bad.     Their hits do next to no damage.     I didn’t really care much because, as I said, the game was already too easy, but their presence always felt completely worthless.

Bottom line:    I know this is a long review, and I know most people don’t care about a 10+ year old game that wasn’t even really that popular, but this is/was an extremely notable game FOR ME.   And since this is LIKELY the last time I ever play through it, I wanted to give it a fond farewell review.

The truth is, this isnt a special game, but I feel like it could have been.     With a few tweaks to certain areas, this game would have been much much better and more challenging, which is desperately needed.   I feel like this would be the perfect STARTING RPG for younger players just getting into these games.     I wasn’t really a beginner when  I first played this, but I wasn’t a super diehard RPG guy outside of the Final Fantasy series.   This game offers a nice blend of action and RPG elements, and there is enough to do to keep you entertained for days,  weeks and months…and in my case, years.  

Its sad to say goodbye to this game for the last time, but unless THQ Nordic ends up making another game in this franchise, there is really no need for me to come back.   I have done everything there is do with this game, and then some.

 

Gameplay:  8.5
Story: 6 (combined with world lore, probably 8, but thats if you read alot of stuff and talk to many NPCs about the worlds history.   Otherwise, its a fairly generic, albeit decent, world and story)
Graphics: 6.5 (for the time)
Value/Replayability:  8
Personal Enjoyment: 9.5 (over the years)

 

Final Score:  8

 

Edited July 4, 2022 by 43M

[43M]

Sorry about the formatting at the end....the bolded feature doesnt seem to be working on the site.

[JBURGE]

I see Hades in ytour considering list.... I just played it over the last month of so. Great game

[43M]

  Rapid Review

 

Picked this up for a couple bucks about a year ago.   Im not the biggest fan of FPS's anymore, although I do enjoy it from time to time.   This one in particular I saw on an Angry Joe review years back and it looked pretty fun.    It was a very short game, but I did enjoy it for the most part.    Graphics are actually pretty nice and the story was fairly interesting.   Gameplay had some interesting mechanics, and it made me actually want to play another FPS, although Im not sure what.     Either way, a pretty solid, albeit short game.    For $2, I dont really care how short it is if I can find it fun for a few hours.   May even play it again someday.

Final Score:  7.6

[Norm]

1 hour ago, 43M said:

  Rapid Review

 

Picked this up for a couple bucks about a year ago.   Im not the biggest fan of FPS's anymore, although I do enjoy it from time to time.   This one in particular I saw on an Angry Joe review years back and it looked pretty fun.    It was a very short game, but I did enjoy it for the most part.    Graphics are actually pretty nice and the story was fairly interesting.   Gameplay had some interesting mechanics, and it made me actually want to play another FPS, although Im not sure what.     Either way, a pretty solid, albeit short game.    For $2, I dont really care how short it is if I can find it fun for a few hours.   May even play it again someday.

Final Score:  7.6

It's been a while since I played this, although I enjoyed it, I was glad it wasn't too long. It didn't drag. FPS games don't need to be 20 hours (for me). I understand wanting to get every hour out of a game though, especially at full price. But between what I own (and coughpiratecough/emulation), games that just drag and aren't really fun after a while except for the 20% that is the main game is getting old.

Also if you ever see Call of Juarez the Cartel, the one after this, just pass. It's the absolutely most bland FPS you can imagine since PS2 shovelware.