makeashrine

100% completion! I have scoured the map for collectibles and had a lovely week inside of ruins and have been jumpscared a few times (but not too badly) and got frustrated during combat sequences a few times (if they discover a body the npc's AI just fucking BEELINES for you even if you're hidden) and had a fair few ???? moments during climbing exploration because it wasn't immediately obvious... sometimes jumps do not look jumpable at first glance, the grappling mechanic fails for no discernible reason except Lara is angled oddly, or she won't navigate complex terrain all that well...

The DLC unfortunately returns to the format that I remember Rise using for its tombs, in that they're all designed around timed puzzles so you can run them quickly to get a higher score and then trophies. I sincerely do not care for timed puzzles that require me to double back half a dozen times because I missed activating something by a fraction of a second. I want to explore it's about the aesthetic and vibes. I want to take my time solving a puzzle myself, but not in a repetitive way. I was perhaps two thirds of the way through the first DLC tomb and so frustrated and having so little fun that I had reached the point of "I don't care I just want it to be over" and used a walkthrough to get out. I am hesitant to do any more of them frankly, but trophies.

I was thinking about maybe doing a Deadly Obsession run in NG+, which is the hardest difficulty of the game with no checkpoints and reduced campfires, which can be done reasonably quickly in NG+ if you get all the gear you need and max out your resources before you start the file. The final boss arena changed my mind on this entirely because I can foresee losing hours of my life to running this sequence.

( why I will not be doing that )

Uhhh what else. I liked Lara's feral moment: good is not soft. She has a terrible day after Square dutifully kills their one other female character that fights, and your doe eyed protagonist should have moments of striking fear into those who have chosen to test her. I liked the ending: Lara got to see her parents one last time, I liked the Crimson Fire twist, there was some really good music playing during the tomb at the Mission of San Juan, I got to explore a Spanish galleon, temples galore. I liked an npc commenting on the thrill of discovery he could hear in Lara's voice, of seeing things unseen for thousands of years, and hoping she'd never lose that wonder. I did not like Lara's death cutscenes, which I never ever have, but if you're fast enough you can checkpoint reload before you have to see it and spare yourself watching spike impalement. Honestly the most heinous of these was during an escape sequence in Paititi, if the guard catches you they joyously hack you to pieces in the street whilst Lara screams, and that is way, way too 2013 Tomb Raider for me, which is why I never played it. It's just torture porn. It bothers me that there are cutscenes people had to make for every single location which is just Lara screaming and dying in brutal ways, it's not necessary. Men of the genre don't have this happen to them, your defining woman does not need it either. It also bumps the rating: there's a lot of stabbing going on in the closing hours but you don't see any of it on screen and there's no blood either?? The most gruesome thing was in the opening couple hours with a recently mauled, blood soaked half body asset being thrown at you from a jaguar's maw but most of the time unless it's Lara out of combat deaths, nothing.

Anyway, I give it a solid "it was fine", music was consistently great, it looked beautiful, narrative was not ground breaking but it wasn't a bad story to tell by any stretch. Once I decide what to do re: DLC tombs, it's probably time for Endwalker, where I'll be wishing for Mayan and Incan ruins, and what Dawntrail could have been...

The day after my last journal entry, so the 8th, I was thinking about starting Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I decided this wouldn't be a very good idea as groceries were in two days and getting deep into something new then would be poor timing if I had to go back to the usual fare. Sensible enough. Ten days later, on the 17th, a whole week after groceries, I was finally well enough to give it a go. smh.

It's... simplistic narratively is probably the word I'm looking for. You're thrown in assuming you remember Rise (which I didn't), but no big deal if you don't. You are Lara Croft. You are chasing bad guys and looking for knowledge probably in tombs. That's all you need to know. It's not doing anything groundbreaking story wise but it's very much a product of coming out after Uncharted 4 and boy can you tell. A lot of Rise's criticisms was it being too survival and combat focused (already dressed down from the first of the survivor trilogy, which I never played) so Shadow focuses much more on exploration. This delivered, as in the first six hours I had had a grand total of one combat encounter with human enemies in the prologue and two encounters with jaguars. That ratio was wild, but the pacing is pretty decent between, explore an area with a puzzle, now you can explore this town, now you can fight these enemies between you and the next objective, here is a breathtaking panning shot of an ancient ruin (thank you), here are tombs and crypts to go off and look at now if you want, and so on. It also acknowledges what all women want, which are knives and axes. Truly I've seen Lara excited three times in this game and one of them was for a ceremonial knife and the second was for her climbing axes.

It does keep giving me headaches if I play too long in one sitting. I think there are simply too many jungle polygons. I love when there's gendered pronouns of all male enemies looking for her who is systematically taking them down from stealth I love getting to be a woman in a male dominated action game space thank you. I might have to look into temporarily remapping some buttons (not through the game, through console) as your effective eagle vision, survival instincts, is triggered by R3 and boy I wish I could toggle it I'm being forced to press R3 all the time and after three days my thumb is making its objections known. R1 might be the best option for it, it's used for zoom and crafting special ammo only, we'll see...

Also it's funny to me that I am totally chill with the following things: jaguars, jumpscares from ancient civilisations that appear out of the jungle to massacre the evil organisation and are absolutely going to turn on me at some point (par for the course in this kind of game it's going to get Fucking Weird), more jaguars, but I drew the line at piranhas. Genuine skin crawling fear. I absolutely hated the section I had to swim past a bunch. I just know they're going to do more later. :|a also Lara almost gets crushed in tight caverns way too many times in the opening hour and wow I did not like that either. Space, please!!!

It's going, though. I've done most of the combat trophies by checkpoint restarting (recommended), I have one or two left. We'll see how much I get through over the weekend.