Review: Tomb Raider

It's been awhile since I was so incredibly surprised and pleased by just how good a game is.  I had heard good things about Tomb Raider before trying it, but I wasn't expecting it to get just about every game mechanic it had so very right.  The game has sneaking, shooting (if you fail sneaking), melee combat (if you fail shooting), item collection, exploration, upgrade-able skills, movie-level cutscenes and action sequences, and more.  It even managed to have quicktime events that I almost enjoyed!

If you've played any Uncharted games, the story will be very familiar, a group of archaeologists are looking for some location of legend, find it, get more than they bargain for, fight another group of people and the supernatural goings-on to try to survive and get back home.  To be fair, I'm pretty sure Tomb Raider had this story format first (and Indiana Jones before that), but there are definitely some game and story elements in the game I recognize from Uncharted.  It should also be noted, this is my first Tomb Raider game I've ever played.

The game is fairly linear in nature, but each area has a lot of rewards for exploring.  The few times the game makes you backtrack to previous areas there have either been major changes to the environment that makes it feel new or you have new abilities/gear that lets you access new areas and new secrets.  In each area with collectibles, there are one or two treasure maps that reveal the location of the other collectibles in the area.  You can also unlock an ability that lets you mark hidden collectibles on your map when you see them in Survival Instinct (like Batman's Detective Vision and Assassin's Creed's Eagle Vision).  You can also unlock a skill that reveals the location of all the treasure maps.  This means that if you really must collect everything (like me), you have ways to ensure you don't miss a thing.  You'll have more than enough experience and scrap (to upgrade weapons) by the end of the game to have everything fully upgraded, so you aren't forced to play through the game multiple times to collect everything.  The combat always made me feel powerful, but still required me to pay attention and be strategic about how I took out the enemies.  It's also the first game where I felt like using the bow was the most fun (I only used the shotgun in one fight and used the bow the rest of the game).  All in all, if you enjoy a game with collectibles, upgrades, and a movie feel to it (so your spouse/friends can still be entertained watching you play) then I can't recommend this game enough.

Review: The Cave

Created by Ron Gilbert, of Monkey Island fame, The Cave is an interesting game filled with dark humor and puzzles.  The game starts with the player selecting three characters from a set of seven, each with their own backstory and unique ability.  Once you have selected your three characters, you explore The Cave to try to resolve the character's moral choice.  The Cave is made up of a series of puzzle areas: four major ones you will go through no matter which characters you choose, a couple minor puzzles, and three puzzle areas based on which characters you have selected.  At the end of all this, you'll find yourself back at the beginning where you get to see how the character's story ends.  You actually get to decide if it's a good or bad ending, which I was not aware of until I had already beaten the game with all the characters once with the bad ending.

The whole game is beautifully narrated and almost every line is some joke or ominous foreshadowing (a lot like the story in the Deathspank series).  The puzzles themselves are interesting the first time you solve them.  Some require all three characters to work as a team, some require a character's special ability, some are just made easier with the special abilities.  The downside of the game is that if you want to see everything, you have to beat the game at least six times with the majority of the game not changing and (I still don't understand how this happens nowadays) with unskippable cinematic bits.  So the first time through The Cave is 100% fun and awesome.  The second time through is roughly 42.9% awesome since you have already done the four major shared puzzles before.  The third time through is 14.3% awesome since you are now only seeing one new area.  For the remaining three playthroughs, the only difference is the ending you get based on the choice you make at the very very end.  I've already mentioned how much I hate backtracking, so you can imagine that this doesn't go over so well with me.  On the plus side, it did allow me to watch Netflix on my laptop while playing the game because I didn't have to pay attention that much, so at least I was getting two things on my mental checklist done at once...if you're not a completionist and the game is on sale for like $10 or so, I would highly recommend this.  If you really like dark comedy and puzzles and don't mind a little backtracking, I would also recommend this.  If you enjoy doing speed runs and trying to cut down the length of a playthrough to as short a time as possible, this would be a lot of fun, too.  If none of those apply, I'd probably avoid it.

Review: Mark of the Ninja

Before playing it, I had heard good things about Mark of the Ninja, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it exceeded even my initially high expectations.  The game starts out with you as a ninja waking up in the middle of an attack on your home base.  After saving your leader, he orders you to take revenge on the man responsible, so you take on the Mark of the Ninja using special ink that gives you special abilities, but will also drive you insane.

Gameplay itself involves sneaking around heavily fortified areas, using darkness and distractions as your tools to either bypass guards undetected or take them out.  Other guards will investigate and raise alarms when they see dead bodies, so you can either hide them or use them as bait to lure the other guards into a trap.  The representation of lit areas, enemy flashlights and fields of view, and sound rings make the sneaking aspect of the game crystal clear when you're safe and when you're not, which is exactly what is required for a good sneaking game.  The game also gives you plenty of ways to get through/past guards in most cases giving plenty of replayability to try different play styles.  You also unlock different outfits that enhance certain traits, but cause disadvantages (e.g. one suit is completely silent when running and lets you equip two distraction items, but you can't equip a sword, so you can't kill anyone) so even if you're not good at a certain play style, you can try with the different costumes.  It really does make it a very different game when you go through normally vs. going through not being able to kill anyone.

Once you complete the game, you unlock New Game+, which I was questioning the purpose of the entire time since you can select any previously beaten level to play at any time.  It turns out New Game+ really ups the difficulty.  You no longer see sound rings, your field of view is more realistic (you can't see everything that's behind the way you're facing), and there are more guards.  This gives even further playback to the game if you really want a challenge.  This game is now tied with Dishonored for my favorite stealth game ever.

Review: Darksiders 2

Following the events off the original Darksiders (or at least some of the events?  I'm still a little confused by this), Darksiders 2 has players take on the role of another horseman of the apocalypse, Death.  Death is on a mission to redeem his brother, War, by trying to resurrect Mankind.  Unfortunately, to fulfill this mission he has to follow a seemingly endless amount of people saying, "You should go here, but first help me!"  Also, my post about a lack of collectible maps and the downsides of random loot drops were caused by this game.

It seems very strange that the first game did a good job with reminding you where collectibles were so you know where to go once you have the right items and this one failed so miserably at it.  Also, the random loot drops made any special items you unlock through skill and hard work (like working through 25 waves of enemies in The Crucible or fighting a super hard optional boss) were really worthless, thus making it feel like a crappy accomplishment.  This was only slightly mitigated by having Possessed weapons (that would randomly drop...) that you can "feed" other weapons to make them stronger.  So you can craft an uber weapon to fit your play style.  Of course, once you do that, you have little reason to care about any further weapon drops because they can't top your weapon.

Yet despite all the incredible gameplay failings this game had, I still want a Darksiders 3 to come out (which will prove difficult since THQ is no more...) because the art, character design, and universe they have built is still phenomenal.  I want to play a third game as Strife (although I hope it doesn't become a console FPS since they've made him use guns as his weapons) and a fourth as whatever they've named the fourth Horseman (the only female of the group).  I just hope that if someone gets the IP and they make another one, that it has more enjoyable gameplay.

Review: Darksiders

"Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword." - Revelation 6:4

Taking the setting of the seven seals and the four horsemen of the apocalypse found in Revelation, this game pits you as the horseman, War.  In this universe, when the seventh seal is broken, the four horsemen are summoned to determine the ultimate fates between the Kingdoms of Heaven, Hell, and Man.  Or at least that was the plan.  War's story starts out being summoned amidst a raging battle between the forces of the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Hell on Earth with the Kingdom of Man (who were created to be a balance between the other two kingdoms) getting decimated in between.  After the leader of the Kingdom of Heaven gets killed and War nearly gets killed, the Council in charge of the balance and the horsemen blame War for the Kingdom of Hell taking over the earth.  They proceed to strip him of his powers and send him back to seek vengeance on whoever mistakenly summoned him.


To be honest, that set up for the game felt kind of weak to me and more of a "We need to give a reason for War to want to kill everyone....so how about this?" feeling.  I never understood why War being summoned when he wasn't supposed to be and just doing his job would get him in trouble or be his fault...but that's okay.  I was fine with just accepting that I needed to run around slaying demons (and occasionally angels).


Gameplay itself is a mix between God of War and Zelda.  It's a third person action RPG with combos, a tiny bit of fighting strategy, and chests with green, red, or blue souls that each serve a different purpose.  It also has dungeons with maps and compasses showing the locations of all items in the dungeon with a boss defeated using the item you get in the dungeon.  So gameplay-wise there is nothing really new here.  They pretty much just grabbed from multiple sources and put it all together.  The great part is that they did that very well.  All the systems fit together and they followed some very tried and true game design methods.  Unfortunately, they had the same problem as God of War where you only need to use a few combos over and over and over again to win.  It was very very very rare that I had to change my fighting style to cope with anything.  So the only strategy was to run away when I was overwhelmed and then dive in with the same combos again and repeat.


The game definitely has its own visual style, though.  It's beautiful and feels like a very well developed world in its own right.  The characters are mostly enjoyable as well (except the one you're meant to hate...), especially the giant....giant? with the Scottish accent and giant hammer.  He is freaking awesome.  War himself is a mix between extreme rage and extreme sense of duty, both of which tend to require him to kill almost everyone he sees and never back down from a challenge, but I still like him better than Kratos who is just all rage all the time.


The developers also took a huge risk with a new IP and gave it a cliffhanger ending, but it worked for me and got me very excited for more games in this universe.  It also clearly worked financially since Darksiders 2 is coming out August 14th.


Ultimately, I was glad to have bought and played this game and do recommend it, but I'm glad I didn't pay full price for it.  I'd say it's worth $40, a steal for the $20 you can find it for now.