Tomb Raider - Discussion Thread
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psdatta2005
Adept
Just played the intro part. Enjoying it. Super smooth at 1080p with aa off
quixand
Skilled
Well I was asking if the Multiplayer is any good else I would get it for PC. But thanks for posting the link, a good heads-up.
Yes going by the bench figures posted over at NeoGAF.
Take a look - Tomb Raider PC Performance Thread - NeoGAF
Forget running it with TressFX. That & Tessellation pretty much destroys your performance. The game looks stunning even without these effects. Nixxes has done a marvelous PC port. I was able to max out every setting, minus TressFX, Tessellation & SMAA and it was still smooth.
It's called 'clipping'. This doesn't justify the amount of performance hit the game takes when TressFX is enabled.
Oh my god! :hail:
What a brilliant title! This is the Tomb Raider and Lara Croft we have been craving since ages and looks like Crystal Dynamics has finally delivered what was long overdue. Besides, ever since they took over the development from Core Design, their titles have been doing good starting from Legend, Anniversary (which marked a decade of TR!), Underworld, the spin-off Guardian of Light (kicked ass in co-op mode!) and now this fresh reboot. Kudos to the devs.
Fired up the title around 8 PM and sat till 1 AM breaking for dinner in between. I really wish I could have taken an off today from work but a day has been reserved for next week when Ascension arrives. Well chuck that, this title has some amazing production values. Feels and plays like a movie! Believable and a realistic storyline unlike the previous ones wherein Lara goes treasure hunting for parts of some random artifact strewn around the globe. She is sailing with a bunch of crew on a research vessel Endurance in search of an ancient Japanese country Yamatai when bad weather and a heavy storm lashes the ship and eventually wrecks it, stranding Croft and the other survivors. And she has to fight against the assailants, the inhabitants of the land and the hostile animals. The orchestral soundtrack is scored by Jason Graves (the same dude behind Dead Space series!) and at times gets a bit tense and scary esp. during cave trolling and the chase sequences!
Visuals and the character models look spectacular. Extensive motion capture is done to capture the movements of Croft. Before I started off with the campaign, I quickly ran a bench to find out what was the hype regarding AMD’s TressFX and turns out, Ms. Croft’s hair does look a lot more realistic with each strand moving with the motion of the wind instead of the ponytail but this comes with a huge performance hit! Check out the settings below (default High preset) and the bench results:
And these were the bench results:
And with just TressFX enabled, these were the results:
Currently playing the game using the High preset from the menu. Tesselation and TressFX is disabled by default.
The gameplay is just amazing and addictive! It is obvious that people would draw comparisons with the Uncharted franchise (and Spielberg’s Indiana Jones!) knowing that Nathan Drake had once killed the Tomb Raider franchise but not any more! Croft is resuscitated in style and she lives up to her name. And she no longer wears her traditional outfit - no brown shorts, no crop top, no utility belt with holsters, no twin handguns. She has become a lot more mature, sympathetic and world weary. When she’s targeted by the enemy AI, she pleads innocence and helplessness in the beginning, asking them to stop shooting.
At the game’s start, Croft has no access to tools, weapons or food. She struggles to find a way out of her captivity and eventually, we get an access to a traditional longbow used for hunting animals and taking down the AI, an ice tool sorts (eventually we get a proper ice tool) for breaking crates, doors and usage as a lever among others. All the tools/weapons can be upgraded with the salvaged parts found strewn around the island. Skill points are acquired using experience points (XP) which are used for upgrading Croft’s skills. All these upgrades are done at base camps (a la bonfires of Dark Souls) which are unlocked as the game progresses. Croft can also fast travel from one base camp to another exploring any of the previously visited areas so yes, this game is indeed open world but progression of objectives is linear. Unless any weapon is drawn, HUD is absent from the display and this is a good thing instead of cluttering the screen with the map, ammo count, health etc. Health is regenerative and if Croft takes too many hits from gunshots or arrows, she dies. Death sequences are cool and sometimes intimidating - during a chase sequence she may get crushed by a huge rock (there are several QTEs during chase sequences), she may get shot by a couple of arrows to the knee and neck, she may fall down a cliff breaking her bones etc.
There are plenty of artifacts and relics (similar to the Uncharted series) to be found during the course of the adventure. They unlock XP. Each location may have a map associated with it waiting to be found by Lara. If found, they reveal the locations of the items (such as GPS caches, documents, travelogues etc.) on that location. Each location also may have a challenge or two linked. Completion rewards XP. There may be Tombs hidden in the locations which involves solving puzzles and a bit of platforming. Raiding a tomb grants XP.
Managed to reach Base Approach yesterday night and paused it there. Raided two tombs. Progress is roughly 20%. I am going to take this slow. I mean very slow. Got plenty of time till Ascension shows up!
What a brilliant title! This is the Tomb Raider and Lara Croft we have been craving since ages and looks like Crystal Dynamics has finally delivered what was long overdue. Besides, ever since they took over the development from Core Design, their titles have been doing good starting from Legend, Anniversary (which marked a decade of TR!), Underworld, the spin-off Guardian of Light (kicked ass in co-op mode!) and now this fresh reboot. Kudos to the devs.
Fired up the title around 8 PM and sat till 1 AM breaking for dinner in between. I really wish I could have taken an off today from work but a day has been reserved for next week when Ascension arrives. Well chuck that, this title has some amazing production values. Feels and plays like a movie! Believable and a realistic storyline unlike the previous ones wherein Lara goes treasure hunting for parts of some random artifact strewn around the globe. She is sailing with a bunch of crew on a research vessel Endurance in search of an ancient Japanese country Yamatai when bad weather and a heavy storm lashes the ship and eventually wrecks it, stranding Croft and the other survivors. And she has to fight against the assailants, the inhabitants of the land and the hostile animals. The orchestral soundtrack is scored by Jason Graves (the same dude behind Dead Space series!) and at times gets a bit tense and scary esp. during cave trolling and the chase sequences!
Visuals and the character models look spectacular. Extensive motion capture is done to capture the movements of Croft. Before I started off with the campaign, I quickly ran a bench to find out what was the hype regarding AMD’s TressFX and turns out, Ms. Croft’s hair does look a lot more realistic with each strand moving with the motion of the wind instead of the ponytail but this comes with a huge performance hit! Check out the settings below (default High preset) and the bench results:
And these were the bench results:
And with just TressFX enabled, these were the results:
Currently playing the game using the High preset from the menu. Tesselation and TressFX is disabled by default.
The gameplay is just amazing and addictive! It is obvious that people would draw comparisons with the Uncharted franchise (and Spielberg’s Indiana Jones!) knowing that Nathan Drake had once killed the Tomb Raider franchise but not any more! Croft is resuscitated in style and she lives up to her name. And she no longer wears her traditional outfit - no brown shorts, no crop top, no utility belt with holsters, no twin handguns. She has become a lot more mature, sympathetic and world weary. When she’s targeted by the enemy AI, she pleads innocence and helplessness in the beginning, asking them to stop shooting.
At the game’s start, Croft has no access to tools, weapons or food. She struggles to find a way out of her captivity and eventually, we get an access to a traditional longbow used for hunting animals and taking down the AI, an ice tool sorts (eventually we get a proper ice tool) for breaking crates, doors and usage as a lever among others. All the tools/weapons can be upgraded with the salvaged parts found strewn around the island. Skill points are acquired using experience points (XP) which are used for upgrading Croft’s skills. All these upgrades are done at base camps (a la bonfires of Dark Souls) which are unlocked as the game progresses. Croft can also fast travel from one base camp to another exploring any of the previously visited areas so yes, this game is indeed open world but progression of objectives is linear. Unless any weapon is drawn, HUD is absent from the display and this is a good thing instead of cluttering the screen with the map, ammo count, health etc. Health is regenerative and if Croft takes too many hits from gunshots or arrows, she dies. Death sequences are cool and sometimes intimidating - during a chase sequence she may get crushed by a huge rock (there are several QTEs during chase sequences), she may get shot by a couple of arrows to the knee and neck, she may fall down a cliff breaking her bones etc.
There are plenty of artifacts and relics (similar to the Uncharted series) to be found during the course of the adventure. They unlock XP. Each location may have a map associated with it waiting to be found by Lara. If found, they reveal the locations of the items (such as GPS caches, documents, travelogues etc.) on that location. Each location also may have a challenge or two linked. Completion rewards XP. There may be Tombs hidden in the locations which involves solving puzzles and a bit of platforming. Raiding a tomb grants XP.
Managed to reach Base Approach yesterday night and paused it there. Raided two tombs. Progress is roughly 20%. I am going to take this slow. I mean very slow. Got plenty of time till Ascension shows up!
And knowing your previous record, this title could have been a breeze to Platinum it.
In fact I am betting just one good playthrough since you can revisit the previous locations to find any missing item. It took me two playthroughs for both the Uncharted titles (never bothered with U3 since there some other titles at that time).