Tomb Raider GOTY

PROS ------- -Well optimized, will run great on high settings -Great gameplay & level design with focused linear maps -Good voice acting -Great feminine Lara model. -Serviceable story that at least tries to be coherent. -Great visuals that hold up by todays standards. -Minimal but decent mods available on Nexus Mods. CONS -------- -Over reliance on QTE(Quick Time Events). Takes away player autonomy. -Too many "disaster" cutscenes. Used to pad the game runtime. Takes away player autonomy. -Very few tombs. They are basic rooms with very little puzzling. -Mature subject matter. A bit more gory then previous TR titles. BOTTOM LINE ------------------ This is a good game & a steal if you get it on sale. Probably the best 5 bucks you will ever spend. It was realeased in 2013 but still holds up today. It's a lot of fun & entertaining for the average 12 hour gametime.

This made Tomb Raider finally playable for me. In earlier games, when you hit forward on your keyboard, Lara moved into the direction, that she was facing and the camera and you as the player had to deal with that somehow. I never really could. Now when you hit forward, Lara moves into the direction the camera and you as the player are looking, regardless of the direction Lara happens to be facing right now. That changed everything for me. For the better. There are a few QTEs in the game, but luckily not many. Most of the time you will be fighting, climbing and occasionally exlore a tomb or two. All of that will feel very good. I've played through that game at least ten times by now.

Game deserves 4.5 Stars. Plus Feral-Interactive is doing a great job on Linux-ports. Most of their games run natively under Linux. And you know, when done right (and they do), native ports perform better, than Wine/Proton wrappers. So where is that Linux option on GoG, that Feral has worked so hard on? In general, GoG, albeit beeing my favorite joice due to DRM-freedom, lacks Linux options ... a lot. Granted, it's not too bad with Tomb Raider GOTY, since that is a DX9 game and the port relies on openGL. And yeah ... not as good. So it runs better here with Proton, DXVK and game mode. But please, try to offer a Linux version, if the game does supprot it. (You can see many of the games here that are also available on Steam,, taht on there, they DO have the other ports). Other than that, great game. Hope the rest of the bunch also makes it to GoG. We need ALL the Feral games here ;)

The old Tomb Raider games were about looking for passages, solving puzzles, collecting items and new weapons. All this while admiring Lara's back regions. All those elements are gone now. No looking for passages, they are highlighted. There are ARROWS to the HIDDEN temples. No puzzles to solve, just sometimes you have to turn a crank or set something on fire. I don't know if there are first-aid kits, Lara hardly takes any damage. I used only the bow (except for a few doors, etc. - shotgun). You collect experience points for upgrades. I used them twice in the beginning, it was necessary, but then I finished with many thousands of experience points. no need to use them. The bosses: once or twice happens something similar to... Do you know the game Croc? 30 years ago, for children? There were similar bosses in Croc, only much more difficult. The massed attacks of enemies are unnoticeable (I read about them later). I played "normal", maybe I should start again with "hard", but it was so boring.. The only difficulty are 3 moments when there is a great combat system: 5 min of video, and "press the key". I press, 3 times. Wrong. Too fast. Lara dies. I repeat, wrong, you should have pressed only once. Lara dies. I move on, another video and "now press (another key)". I press. Lara dies, you should have pressed several times this time. And so on. Brilliant. Of course, the game is correctly done: only white people are bad Supposedly, the game is deep, how an innocent girl turns into a warrior, her moral dilemmas. It didn't work out. Innocent Lara leads to the death the guy who say he wants to help her. Her boss wants to talk to the still unknown people. Lara votes to murder them, not to talk. Then comes one moment when Lara kills another guy and gets an attack of tenderness. Then she murders the entire population of the island, even bunnies and birds (which is not necessary). I give two stars, because after all, it's Tomb Raider and at times it resembles the old series.

I'm surprised the older game is better than Rise. (I haven't buy Shadow yet because i hate the new character design). The storyline is much better and the camera view is quite well designed. Lara is more like a human than the killing machines in later games. The only annoying thing is the long QTE, which is much shorter in Rise. The game occasionally freeze when played long time but not a big issue because of the checkpoints.