As I finished up writing this review, I had to change the posting date of it. It read February 25th, 2015. I’ve had this review waiting to be written for a month-and-a-half. It’s hard to motivate yourself to write a review for a game that does so little to motivate you to play it. Basically, this game is the game that nearly ended et geekera. I had to overcome the challenge and finish the review but I couldn’t will myself to do it.
There are great games. There are terrible games. The worst thing that a game could be is perfectly average. Nothing particularly good. Nothing particularly bad. The only thing that it’s great at is making you go “That was a game.”
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is the “sequel” to Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, a game that is very well-regarded by gamers and critics. LCTOO is just a game. Nothing more, nothing less.
I want you to flashback to March 2013. I know it seems like forever ago. I didn’t have any grey hair then so it’s longer for me.
In an investor call at the end of the month, Square Enix effectively called the Tomb Raider reboot that had been out for all of three weeks a failure. They said that they had expected the game to ship between five and six million copies and only it moved 3.4 million. Square Enix made it sound like the Tomb Raider franchise was dead on re-arrival.
Over the following 24 months, Tomb Raider and the current-gen (PS4 and XB1) Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition sold another 5.1 million copies to bring the total units sold to a franchise record of 8.5 million copies sold. They’re touting the success of the Tomb Raider reboot in the run up to this fall’s release of The Rise of the Tomb Raider (a timed exclusive on Xbox One and Xbox 360).
So what happened for Square Enix to change their tune?
Just when you thought that the controversy over bought and paid for third-party console exclusives had regained new life with the announcement that Capcom’s Street Fighter V would have console exclusivity on the PS4, the story got bigger. Not only is the sequel to 2013’s hit Tomb Raider going to have timed exclusivity on the Xbox One but publishing duties will be handled by Microsoft Studios rather IP holders Square Enix.
It wasn’t but a few months after release that Square Enix said that they were disappointed with the sales of Tomb Raider. That didn’t stop them from trying to cash in with a next-gen re-release and the announcement of a sequel at E3.
The latter wasn’t a case of Square Enix realizing the error of their analysis or their finance team being able to make budgets and projected revenues work out. It seems to be a case of Microsoft stepping in to make the money work as Rise of The Tomb Raider was announced to be an Xbox One exclusive.
I’m a little behind the rest of the world but I finally finished the reboot of Tomb Raider this weekend. The delay in completing it wasn’t because it was a bad game. If I was to give it a rating, I would probably give it an 8.0 or an 8.5. There was just something about the game that meant I put it down after a few hours last year.
Playing it through over the last couple of weeks made me conscious of what I disliked about Tomb Raider. It wasn’t the gameplay or the plot but the portrayal of Lara Croft throughout the game that I found odd and off-putting.
The graphic quality of games has come a long way over the last eighteen years. Perhaps the best illustration of the changes in graphic and art design since 1996 is the progression of Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider games. Lara has come a long way from a 540 polygon character best known for her chest size to the high-def character in the Tomb Raider reboot.
To examine the change in the character’s look, we have a handy infographic for your perusal.
While Sony and Microsoft’s new consoles have been out for a couple of months and are in a quiet period before the next big wave of next-gen games come in March, the upcoming Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition could reignite the battle between fans of the two biggest players in the home console market.
Recent reports indicate that TR:DE will run close to 60 frames per second for the majority of the game on PlayStation 4, the Xbox One version of the game will be floating between 30 and 45 FPS.
Lara Croft is back and rebooted in the new Tomb Raider. While the title may not be original, it’s still better than that last reboot we saw called Devil May Cry: Devil May Cry. Also, it seems that Tomb Raider overall was better than DMC: DMC. Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix were so confident in their game that the review embargo for the game ended eight days before its release. It turns out that they gambled correctly on this one. Read the rest of this entry
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