Recent reviews by Willywoo

I have a mixed feeling about this game. On one hand, it's extremely beautiful and the combat and climb-mechanics are very well done. On the other hand, it's plagued by performance issues and a shallow, cliché story.

Let me eleborate on those points. Just like Tomb Raider 2013, the game is visually stunning. The Byzantine ruins, the tombs and the ice looks fantastic. When you discover a new place, you really are in awe and get that mysterious treasure feeling (for want of a better word). Also, the mechanics are intuitive and the controls are context sensitive, i.e. in different situations, the controls have a different result. For example, right click is aim, but also dive. "C" is dodge when attacked, but also letting go of a wall if you are climbing. You can get very much done with just a few controls.

However, what displeased me is that the story is essentially the same as the previous part: Lara searches for an artefact; the bad guys search for it as well. But Lara and the baddies discover first hand that the artefact is guarded by undead warriors from centuries ago. Mayhem ensues. Then when everything explodes, you have to fight the boss of the bad guys and kill him, end of story. The dialogues are also very cliché. "I can't leave you here Lara! No, I must go on, alone!" The emotional engegement is low; I really don't care if some of the cardboard characters die. I don't get the feels, as they say :p. A game like this must be very expensive. Too bad there wasn't any money left for a good story. It could have been so good, and a good story hasn't to be expensive at all.

Then the performance issues. Granted, I don't play this on the latest and greatest, but I feel I should play modern games reasonably well. I play with an 3870K APU at 3,3 Ghz and a Radeon 7870 Black Edition. Even on lowest quality I experience stuttering. Still, I heard AMD would patch the driver for this game. The previous game was smooth as butter however.

All in all a nice experience, really really beautiful game. Too bad of the story and performance. Would I pay 44 euro for it again? No. I would just wait until the summer sale and grab a cheap copy.