Nobody?? Tsk tsk!! It came out on Friday and was available to download straight away. I had it sometime after 1am on Sunday morning and played it all day once I got up, got hold of a copy of CloneCD (as the torrent was listed as a CloneCD image) installed that, realised that it wasnt actually a clone CD image, spent 20 mins trying to work out which software it actually needed. Looked for a copy of Alcohol120%, found one, realised I already had it, burned it, searched for a fixed EXE, installed the game, copied the crack over and finally played it. That sounds bad but actually the installing and playing of the game was piss easy!! No sucky starforce here.
So, onto the game.
Dont bother with that 'Next gen content' bullshit. It makes the game look like shit IMO. I cant really see my card not supporting at least the vast majority of features that this content is supposed to activate bit it made everything go soft and fuzzy and generally look crap. Better to stick with that turned off and just up the res to get a nice crisp and smooth looking game that looks like most other TR games only sharper and crisper. Lara looks especially good and the nice effects used on her too such as getting wet. Yes, take a dip in a pool or jump through a waterfall and you can see her looking wet, she gradually dries off over time which is a nice feature although purely cosmetic.
The action is nice and easy to control and fits the WASD and mouse controls very nicely with E to interact, Q to use the new grapple and all the other usual suspects doing their things.
I've played about 35% of the game so far and Im not expecting it to be terribly long which is a shame as Im really enjoying it. Locations look as you'd expect and the acrobatics are a pleasure to play and to look at and I've found it less frustrating than other TR games by a long shot because of the absense of grid based jumping. The more free roaming nature of the game means that it has to be a touch more forgiving during the jumping scenes and because of this they feel more realistic though arent necessarily easier. You do feel more like it was genuinely your own error if you die though which I feel, makes the game a lot less frustrating. No more 2 step backwards, run and jump in perfect timing anymore.
The character animations are really nicely done but they have done away with the famous gruesome death scenes. Sometimes you get treated to a comical ragdoll death, some of which have had me laughing out loud but a lot of the time you dissapear through a trapdoor or spike trap and before you know it you've got a loading screen and a pushed back to the last checkpoint. Checkpoints are fairly frequent so far though so you wont see yourself playing through huge areas of the levels over and over.
Wait until you see some of the character animations during the swinging and jumping scenes and you will be nicely surprised. Jump at an angle onto a swing bar and see Lara adjust her legs to get the swing straight again. All Lara's animations are smooth and fluid and my only gripe is the targetting system which feels a bit stiff at times and feels like you have to get too close to your enemies before a definite lock is achieved.
Sound is just fine with footfalls sounding like they should even if you briefly run over some metal, it makes the right sound. Things echo correctly and water sounds good as it thunders or trickles or drips by you.
The puzzles are old school TR with sliding crates and boulders around the place and the new free roaming nature of the game adds a little more to each puzzle causing you to stop and think about things a bit more. The new addition to the puzzles though is the addition of physics. Yep, we now have gravity and friction to throw into the mix so expect see-saws and ball rolling.
Finally, the grapple. Now Lara can latch onto objects and pull them over, pull herself around if on something movable and also jump and swing from objects. Which of these actions is required in any given situation is up to you to decide but trial and error will usually get you there. If you cant work it out then turning on her binoculars and entering the evaluation mode will help. Looking through these in a puzzle room will identify which items in the room can be moved, broken or activated to help you progress.
I'll post more about the game once I've played a little more and I'll put up some screen shots too as soon as I get round to it. I did some yesterday but they seemed a little too dark on one of the other monitors I checked them on.
Anyway, well worth a purchase if you have the money or a download if you dont. I went for a different version to the most popular on torrentspy but it was the same size. The tracker wouldnt work on the most popular one as I wasnt registered with some random site. Anyway, the crack is on gamecopyworld and the download is a beefy DVD image so expect 4.3gig or so. Took me a while but it was worth it as it plays great.
What ya waitin for?
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)