Sometimes I feel so behind on life. They can't make a new Smash Bros., the last one is still in the plastic wrap, help.
= #124 (3/3) 2000 | Rogue Entertainment | PS3 / Xbox 360 / PC | Action-Adventure 17 Points: @Oleander 15 Points: @ddog Multiplier: 1.2x Total: 38.4 ddog: Me in high school playing this game while listening to nine inch nails: Animalia: Long after @Oleander’s sole vote for Madness Returns, the original game in the Wonderland-themed psychological horror series picks up a second vote! An unofficial sequel to “Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There”, the game sees Alice admitted to an asylum after watching her parents quite literally die in a fire, and consequently forced to return to a corrupted, twisted version of Wonderland inside her own mind. To think that with the Tim Burton movie still to come, this wasn’t even the worst the girl would suffer, poor thing.
= #122 (1/2) 2001 | Sony / Team Ico | PS2 | Action-Adventure 14 Points: @roblognick 13 Points: @WhenTheSunGoesDown 3 Points: @He Multiplier: 1.3x Total: 39 roblognick: I feel things for games as a whole, but rarely do I feel for game characters as much as this game made me feel for Yorda. Like Breath of the Wild communicates its scale with letting you basically go wherever you want, this game did the same thing by not letting you go everywhere you wanted and felt just as impressive to me. Maybe more so. WhenTheSunGoesDown: I’m struggling to write something worthy of this game. It’s just a masterpiece that grabs me every time I play it. I hope more eloquent people vote for this game and I can’t wait to read their commentary. He: A visual masterpiece. A mood piece, if you will. ICO is such an outstanding game. It’s very simple but it holds such a wistful vibe throughout, and you really want to save this girl. Ugh, it really feels like a gorgeous fairy tale.
I love buying stupid novelizations and laughing at the bad content (the fact that Driver: San Francisco has a novelization, for example, is very funny to me) but the ICO novel is actually quite lovely, and a good companion piece.
= #122 (2/2) 2013 | Crystal Dynamics | Various | Action-Adventure 14 Points: @Lost Boy 12 Points: @playboy69 4 Points: @LiK Multiplier: 1.3x Total: 39 Lost Boy: Tomb Raider is one of the most iconic franchises of all time, and rightfully so - the way they managed to reimagine it here, bringing in those cinematic action elements of Uncharted whilst keeping Lara and the idea of exploration at its core… I’ll forever commend that, and it’s probably changed TR forever. Combat was never TR’s strength, and it borrows from Uncharted here resulting in it actually being fun, but not a necessity. The notes they took from LOST are the strengths here, though - how the island becomes a character in itself, something you’re desperate to run around and explore… and exploring the island with Lara never feels like a chore. Climbing the telephone pole in the storm to call for help is, for me, one of video games’ greatest moments. playboy69: An amazing reboot. This was one of the most exciting games I’ve played. A shame that the sequel wasn’t so great, though. LiK: I've been a huge fan of Tomb Raider since the PS1 days though I got into those games after 2000. Anyways this game came out of nowhere in the sense it exceeded all my expectations of what I wanted a modern Tomb Raider game to be. Many say it copied Uncharted and lost its identity but I disagree. Anyways the story wasn't anything phenomenal but I really liked the simplicity of it. The set pieces were great, the action was so streamlined and smooth. It in some ways one-upped Uncharted and clearly had some influence on Uncharted 4. So this is my favorite TR game. I've replayed it so many times and got the Platinum on both PS3 & PS4.
Ico (roblognick, WhenTheSunGoesDown, He) Tomb Raider (2013) (Lost Boy, playboy69, LiK) American McGee’s Alice (Oleander, ddog) Beyond Good & Evil (aaronhansome, WhenTheSunGoesDown) Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 (beyoncésweave, vikeyeol) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Itty Bitty Piggy, Hyrulian) Dragon Age: Inquisition (NecessaryVoodoo, Stradiwhovius, Animalia) Final Fantasy XIV (aaronhansome, digitalkaiser, junglefish) Grim Fandango (kalonite, Oleander, NecessaryVoodoo) Super Smash Bros. (MollieSwift21, iheartpoptarts, GeiPanda) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (ThisIsRogue, Aidan) Half-Life (ddog, vikeyeol) The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (otenkiame, Sleet) Animal Crossing: Wild World (bakerboy92, Posh Spears, ddog) Dragon Quest VIII (roblognick, soratami, junglefish) Inside (Filler, He, LE0Night) Golden Sun: The Lost Age (RJF, otenkiame) Grand Theft Auto IV (Posh Spears, ThisIsRogue) Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (DJHazey, Dangerous Maknae)
It's wild that she's had three new faces since this game came out. Look forward to seeing her next one.
^We get it you don’t like her face. Surprised to see the reboot fall now considering it’s one of the best and most exciting games of the last five years.
I remember we played the reboot with my brother and his wife, with the wife being a fan of the majority of the original games. She was so disappointed that they turned it into a blockbuster action movie and that there was less emphasis on exploration and, well, tomb raiding.
That's something I really don't understand. Surely it'd be easier, cheaper and more logical to use the same model over all three games.
I mean the reboot face is the worst of the three, but they’ve stated it was to bring them in line with the older Lara and to make her more ‘human’. They didn’t just... change her face for no reason. Also the third barely looks different to Rise.
I played the first reboot and found it... decent, but it kind of gets a little tedious in the way it’s basically a FPS for a good portion of it, and... I don’t know, I also find it weirdly... torture porny? It felt like Lara couldn’t go five minutes without being graphically brutalised.
I on the other hand wasn't expecting it to last so long because I've always gotten the impression it's been a polarizing game for long time TR fans. So consider me pleasantly surprised. A Tomb Raider game coming back in 2013 based around exploring and Tomb Raiding would not have faired well in a post Uncharted 2 / 3 world, where almost every 3rd person game was following that cinematic action / adventure formula. So in that regard I can see why Crystal Dynamic went that route, it had to be done and it became the most successful Tomb Raider game in the end.
