Rise of the Tomb Raider

[Smoove_B]

Would be so much simpler if you could just play a game like you wanted.

Did you play FarCry 4?

[GreenGoo]

Would be so much simpler if you could just play a game like you wanted.

Did you play FarCry 4?

Yeah, this is not an open world combat game. While I'm comfortable making all the cynical observations I want, I don't let it affect my enjoyment of the game.

[Daehawk]

Yes played an finished all Far Cry games...still working on Primal.

I wish TR had a fully open world. I just realized now that I did that open forest area it will toss me into bad guy filled areas until the end. I wish it could stay open world.

[Daehawk]

I get the feeling I know who Jacob is now after the river part. The stuff Im reading could be what Im thinking of.

[GreenGoo]

The end of that post was a twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan.

Move a little, get a notice that a challenge tomb is nearby, and that I'll have to explore to find it. Pull up map, clearly marked is the entrance to the challenge tomb.

Explore by looking at map achievement: Completed.

[Daehawk]

Oh Geebus! I missed a witch lantern or two in the Vale part of the DLC and now I can't go back to before I rode the house thing up the mountain. Even though I saved before I got on it in case. ARGH.

And dont tell me grandpa used all those rope arrows, lifts, and jumps to get up there all the while screwed up on the toxins??!! I call BS on grandpa.

[GreenGoo]

Do all found items have a "special" examination spot? I've found a toy that I've failed to find the spot on. Am I missing something or am I wasting my time?

Found my first "can't figure out how to get there". It's the last of the 5 communication relays around the soviet station. I'm still working on it though. Did the Cistern option tomb. That was pretty fun and pretty straightforward. Just enough of a puzzle to make it feel like I figured something out.

[Daehawk]

Not all that Ive seen. if it has one it says something about examining it or something below the text.

Is it the comm on top the big hill above the wolf den? I stumbled on it by accident.

[dangerballs]

Oh Geebus! I missed a witch lantern or two in the Vale part of the DLC and now I can't go back to before I rode the house thing up the mountain. Even though I saved before I got on it in case. ARGH.

And dont tell me grandpa used all those rope arrows, lifts, and jumps to get up there all the while screwed up on the toxins??!! I call BS on grandpa.

After you complete the DLC main quest, you can go back and finish up all of the collecting.

[Daehawk]

Good to know. I HATE leaving stuff behind but this game is filled with stuff I cant do. Im at the outcasts village and still cant burn brush from paths. Just got the combat knife to cut with. By the time I get stuff I can never remember where the stuff I passed before to use it on is.

3 quick thoughts.

1. Those damn fools were gonna kill me in cold blood after all Ive done for them. Nutcases.

2. Ok who builds a giant ass door and puts the wooden slat locks on the outside?

3. Yet AGAIN I must say...that valley....full of giant tall towers and temples and churches and shit and no one sees it from the air or simply flys in? No? I gotta spend 4 days crawling in tunnels to get there?? BS Lara you moron..buy a damn helicopter you rich brat.

[Smoove_B]

Continuing with the hate play? I'm trying to remember the last game I hated but forced myself to finish. It's been a long time. Anyway, I think you and I are near the same point in the game. The tone changed pretty quickly last night and Lara became Rambo (similar to what she did in the first game). I don't have a problem with it, but it did feel a bit forced. I guess I could have tried stealthy stuff, but that never seems to work out. Maybe I'm just inpatient and need to be Batman for that stuff to work.

[Daehawk]

Continuing with the hate play?

I seem to play everything that way these days. I love the game and have fun yet I hate parts of games. I just simply hate stupidity in general so it all irks me.

I love the poison flowers arrows/bow. Always fun to see one guy go nuts and attack his buds.

[Grifman]

3. Yet AGAIN I must say...that valley....full of giant tall towers and temples and churches and shit and no one sees it from the air or simply flys in?

Trinity flew in. As for spotting it from the air, you'd have to know where to look. Russia's a big country, unless you have a reason to look somewhere, you'd be unlikely to stumble upon it. That said, yes, why did Lara have to climb a mountain to get there?

[Daehawk]

Dont get me wrong Ive had a lot of fun with this game but its not what I was expecting I dont think. It started out well with me in the desert in a tomb. I was looking forward to a globe hopping Indiana Jones type game I think. Like in an Arabian desert tomb and then maybe a Greek isle tomb or island. Maybe an underwater part or even cooler a crypt in Rome or Pompeii. But after that desert tomb it dumped me on a snow covered mountain and left me. And I think Im nearing the end by fighting Trinity with 'the people'.

About that underwater part. Maybe its best its not in here because though Lara can run for days and jump around broken pathways hanging on cliffs and such she cant hold her damn breath for more than 6 seconds without drowning. If thats all she can hold it she deserves the drownings Ive supplied her with.

[Daehawk]

I now have enough of those cache coins saved up to buy anything I want from the little cabin store but I dont know what to buy. The only thing Ive bought is the silencer.....theres a under barrel grenade launcher, rope motor, commando outfit, laser sight, and some other assorted goodies.

Im thinking maybe I should buy the refinement tool so I can upgrade my weps even more than I can now.

[GreenGoo]

I'm playing this very infrequently, but have not abandoned it completely. Yet.

[Daehawk]

Should I buy the military rifle from the shack store? I have a near fully upgraded assault rifle.

[Smoove_B]

I think it depends on your play style. I didn't and finished the game without incident using what I found or upgraded through exploring. I think I spent my coins on the silencer, the rope climber, the gun sight and grenade launcher upgrades. I can say at some point the bow and poison arrows became my default choice, simply because one shot would take out 2-3 guys at once. Way better than spray and pray bullets, particularly against armored foes.

[Daehawk]

I almost only use the bow and pistol. I use the assault rifle on bears and the shotgun on small furry fast critters.

[Daehawk]

Well that ended pretty much as I thought it would. the after credits scene was cool but made little sense.

Spoiler:

So the Source was a real thing. A blue teardrop shaped glowing crystal about the size of someones head. I dont see how Lara could not use it herself then either leave it there for safe keeping or hide it away. I couldn't pass up being immortal and have no side effects. Jacob died because she broke it. Shame liked his character a lot. They never explained what The Source was exactly though which i was hoping for. A movie based on this with more info would be cool. Im curious..the Deathless folk...did they not get hungry? there sure was no food in the caverns of the old city. For a good while I thought Jacob was the guy hunting the original prophet then changed and took over his role. Guess not. Still though Id rather be immortal. Especially in her line of work Just wish I had more info on the object and its history and origin and such.

[Daehawk]

Just did the dlc where you save the manor against the evil uncle. I found everything..all documents and all relics...except 1...1 damn relic. i looked the manor over 5 times and never found it.

EDIT: Had to read a online guide and still almost missed it. I looked and looked and was leaving when I saw it. I checked online again and others had the same problem and someone had posted right where it was on down because of it.

[AWS260]

I am very late to the Tomb Raiding party! The release of the new one (Shadows) reminded me that I never got around to Rise, despite really liking the 2013 reboot. So I plowed through it over the past week.

I liked Rise plenty, but I'm mainly posting to heap praise on the Blood Ties DLC. It's ~90 minutes of Lara wandering Croft Manor, trying to find her father's will so that her a-hole uncle can't take control of the property. There's no combat, no raiding, no parkour (well, you can jump off a bookcase if you want, but the ladder's right there). The gameplay is entirely walking around, listening to audio logs and examining objects.

All of which sounds boring, but the writing, voice acting, and story are exceptionally well done. During Rise, Lara doesn't exactly come across well. She's self-centered and obsessive, helping others only because it will advance her personal goal of proving that her father was right. Only at the very end does she make a choice for the greater good.

Blood Ties indirectly shows how she came to be such a messed-up adult, by delving into her childhood and showing in detail how the Croft family came to be, and how it came apart. We already know that her dad was an archaeologist obsessed with immortality myths, and that her mom was lost in an accident. The DLC fills in the details, showing what life was really like growing up in Croft Manor.

If you enjoy the story and characters of the new Tomb Raiders, then I'd highly recommend Blood Ties.

[Grifman]

Yeah, I just got around to playing this the other week for the first time and it was pretty interesting for a snipe hunt.