Recent reviews by Doskii

Fun game and all but almost imposible to play with only your friends. Their server (for which you have to completely re-download the game in SteamCMD and then run over VPN because it ignores ports) is complete garbage and never works. And when it does I sometimes just cannot get the Web Admin page to work so I can't change any settings or maps. The worst thing about it is that they had a perfectly working server that was build into the game it self in the original Killing Floor that worked way better, and that game came out ages ago. Can only recommend it if you are not planning to play alone with your friends and are ok with matchmaking with strangers.

It has a bit of a different style than the Tomb Raider games that came before this one but definitely a great game.

The main difference between this one and the ones before is that this game is much more story focused and less focused on puzzles and parkour. Even the few tombs that are in the game are dead simple and takes less than 5 minutes. But if you see the game on its own and don’t compare it to the rest of the franchise it is a really good single player game with a solid story, good controls and gameplay, great graphics, great audio including voice acting that shows emotions really well and animations with a focus on detail.

The multiplayer on the other hand is not much to look at, especially considering there are barely any players even playing it at this point which also means you cannot get all the achievements unless you happen to have a full server worth of friends willing to help you out. Multiplayer is a little fun for a short while but is definitely not the main factor (or any factor) to consider buying this game for.

A quick tip is to not bother with any of the DLC, they include tombs that are beaten within 5 minutes and skins that don’t show the cloth degradation throughout the single player which is a bit disappointing.

[2023 update]

I’ve now played through the original game (and skimmed through Anniversary on YouTube to refresh my memory) and can now respect what this remake did a lot better. They added a whole lot of things, context, moving parts, actual fun parkour/climbing, etc. to the game so that it would work more in line with other games from its time. A straight 1-to-1 remake could not have worked so instead it’s a bit of a re-imagined version that remains true to its origin. The original vibe is still there, the eerie silence makes sense now, they removed some of the pointless back-and-forth stuff, they added a lot to the mansion and the random tony hawk’s pro skater boss is gone. It’s a really good remake.

Also, in my review I was a bit harsh towards the story but that was probably just because it was so drawn out that by the time I got to the end, I had forgotten what most of it was about.



[Original review from 2018]

I never played the original (at least not yet ;) ) and I never played this remake before either so there is no nostalgic feelings towards this one and I cannot properly compare this one to the original, but I’ve heard it is a really good remake. I have however played a lot of Legend so I’ll be comparing it a bit to that.

This game holds up decently, even without the “Next Gen Content” that Legend had. The game was fun to play but at the same time a bit to slow or quite from time to time which did give it an interesting atmosphere. There are basically no comments, voice lines or dialog anywhere to be found outside of the cut scenes which I missed coming from Legend so I usually just ended up having a podcast on in the background while playing which worked out really well.

There is a story but it is for the most part just an excuse to go to a bunch of locations. There isn’t much story progression during most of the game. You basically get a bit of the plot in the beginning and then you search for some things until the last level when the plot comes back. Sort of.

Even though there are barely any comments or dialog from Lara, it is still easy to figure out where to go. Although it might take a second to figure out how. You can get some thoughts by using Lara’s journal but the thoughts you get from there are usually pretty useless or only cover the most obvious thing you already know. If you get stuck, just keep exploring and you’ll find a way. The solution is usually pretty simple.

There are a few complaints that comes to mind though. The camera is one. While it is better than Legend (I think) it still kind of goes wherever sometimes. The second thing is the lock-on aiming. It is really hard to get it to lock onto the right thing when there are multiple enemies/buttons on screen. This is especially noticeable during the final level where you are standing on a tiny platform with flying creatures above you and buttons on sides of the walls. The lock-on almost refuses to aim at anything besides the buttons in the background making it really hard to kill anything, I died a lot thanks to this. Trying to manually aim isn’t doable for combat either as you cannot move at the same time. The third issue is the flying creatures that sometimes just chain stun you. Once you have been hit you sometimes just cannot recover fast enough before the next hit, especially when there are two of them after you. Another smaller issue is the jump length being inconsistent, sometimes you can jump ridiculously far and other times you cannot reach something a meter in front of you. The last thing that jumps to mind is a very small one and has to do with there being way too much motion blur or ghosting in the background when looking around. It is kind of weird and disorienting but once you get used to it you won’t even notice it anymore.

This is a pretty “chill” game to play through with very long levels and puzzles (compared to Legend and Underworld) and took me roughly 12 hours to complete (plus an hour or so in the mansion) without much treasure hunting (except for in the mansion). I definitely recommend playing through this if you are into the pre-2013 Tomb Raider games.

Near unplayable, even though it has now officially released. Horrible performance, not at all optimized regardless of hardware. It takes like 15 min to load into a server, lags to hell, and incredibly beginners-unfriendly. It takes ages to get resources and once you do you’ll already be starving (or shot) because you spawn with almost no food, water or health and there are barely any trees/stones/food to be found when you spawn unless you are lucky. You can try and talk to people but everybody is just Russian and even if they speak English you won’t be able to hear them anyways due to voice being incredibly quite. Also, they will just shoot you on site, regardless if you have any gear or not. Unless you have already played this game for ages and have very good stuff, allies and a good base it is just not enjoyable at all.

I like the concept of the game but it just doesn’t work in practice. This is also a good example of why you shouldn’t build games in Unity.

I played it when it originally came out and bought it recently again on steam. It looks really good and holds up even today. The audio is amazing and utilizes surround sound (5.1) really well. The gameplay and plot are good and continues from the last few games (mostly legend). The controls are decent but get ruined by the poor camera, more on that later.

The game took me roughly 8 hours to complete on a normal/slow pace without any treasure hunting and was fun to play though again. The puzzles are slightly harder than the last game I’ve played (Legend) but are still simple enough to glide through with relative ease. The combat feels better than the previous games but there isn’t much of it.

The style and theme in this game differ a bit from the last one I’ve played (Legend). This game is very atmospheric and gloomy. It’s almost always dark and raining with nothing but distant thunder sounds to listen to and the only enemies you’ll encounter are a few spiders, bats and an occasional tiger. The secondary weapon (e.g. assault rifle) seem almost pointless as they run out fast and have little to shoot at. Lara basically never talks or gives comments except in cut scenes (so no talking to Zip or Alister which I really miss from Legend) which together with the slow and mostly nonexistent soundtracks makes this game a bit slow, quiet and even a slightly boring from time to time. Due to Lara barely saying anything you won’t get many clues on what you are supposed to work towards except some occasional stares towards a general direction. While I do like the theme and style I do also find it a bit to quite sometimes. It doesn’t make the game bad though.

The camera just goes wherever it wants and even flickers when it can’t decide on where to look. It is also annoying that the camera moves a lot when you start pressing ‘a’ or ‘d’ which makes me constantly having to counter it with the mouse when wanting to look at something while walking a different direction. Same goes for up and down where to camera keeps wanting to reset itself while I’m trying to look at something above me. The controls seem to also be dependent on the camera to the point where you get stuck because the camera keeps switching to the other side causing you to change direction which causes the camera to change which then causing Lara to change direction again etc. etc. This happens especially around tight areas and corners. The camera made me a little bit nauseas from time to time.

A small spoiler ahead:
I also find it kind of weird how they kill off Alister without doing anything with it. They just kill him and move on within seconds without ever speaking of it again. His death feels very unjustified and pointless.

I definitely recommend getting this game if you are into the pre-2013 Tomb Raider games.

I used to play this game a lot when I was younger on the PS2 so when I saw it on a humble bundle (2 years prior to actually playing it :P) I just had to buy it. I was surprised by how decent the game actually still looks sometimes (with the “Next Generation Content” turned on).

After getting used to the slightly clunky controls, the game is actually still a lot of fun to play through. The voices are pretty good, the plot is simple but good, the soundtracks are pretty good, it took me ca 7 hours to play through everything at a normal pace and the overall experience (minus the crashes) was enjoyable. This game does make me sad that the newer tomb raider games (2013+), while still good, has turned away from this formula/style. I hope they will one day return. (I have not played rise of the tomb raider yet though)

The only complaint when it comes the gameplay are the two bike races, which are just far too long and boring. Which is funny because I remember actually liking those bits when I first played through the game a long time ago.

The biggest issue with this game is that it crashes all over the place thanks to the “Next Generation Content” which is a graphics setting that makes everything look a whole lot better, so that is very unfortunate. While having that setting on it will crash on specific places during the game (especially during the first winter mission) which means that you cannot just reload the game every so often, you just cannot get past certain points. You can either turn the setting off after it crashes, play though to the next checkpoint and then turn it on again like I ended up doing, or you can just play the game without it.

After that there are some issues with the controllers where the camera doesn’t always care that you want to use your mouse to look around (it just goes wherever sometimes) and in the menus the mouse is just really buggy. It’s also annoying that you cannot aim and shoot at the same time so you’ll just have to survive with using the console style auto-lock.

*I started the game*.
Mhm, menu looks good. Music is a bit "flash game" like but hypes up the game ok.

*Searches and finds match*..... suddently..... dead silent, only a few poorly mixed gun sounds and terrible explosion sounds and no background sounds or music to be heard off until the very end of the match. Hope the gameplay is ok.

*Plays for a few minutes*. Nope, this is definitely ♥♥♥♥. Aiming is terrible, accuracy is terrible for all guns, can't sprint, walks super slow if you carry anything other than a plastic spoon, a rubberband and some gravel, bad looking graphics with terrible drawing distance and all the characters look terrible. It's like they tried to make a more detailed Minecraft model but landed on a model that has to many blocks and too little at the same time. It just looks horrible. A good measurement would be to not make more blocks than games like Ace of Spades.

This game tries to copy so many other, already bad games, and manages to make it even worse. This game is just another “oh, let’s make a Minecraft game but with gunzzzz!!1!1!!!” and then won't actually put in any effort to make it work. The only game that I’ve seen that manages to pull this off kind of ok is Ace of Spades and even that game has flaws.

Don’t buy it. There is a good reason why they are giving this game away for free on some sites.

This game is pretty good :) . Good music, simple gameplay, easy and fast to setup, start and get into, works on low end hardware and is pretty addictive. The only downsides are the rather low amount of maps and the low amount of players that are actually playing. Most of the time you'll just be alone playing against a few bots. Which brings me to the next point. The difficulty of the bots is a bit too easy. Even the "hard" bots. I wish they would include an additional difficulty or two. Besides that, it's definitely worth a buy.

I just couldn’t be bothered to finish the game so my review might not be very useful.

The best way I can describe this game is that it’s like Saints Row 3 but less. It feel a bit like the third and the comedy is similar but it just feels kind of meh. I just don’t feel like I want to keep playing it.

Maybe playing the third before the second ruined the second, but at least it’s better than the fourth which went too far and ruined itself, in my opinion.
Would I recommend this game to a friend? Meh… probably not.

This game starts of kind of slow and boring but it’s pretty good overall. I recommend playing this with a friend on co-op as it makes the game much more fun.

Also, it’s the best game in the series (my opinion). Saints row 4 goes too far and ruins it and Saints row 2 just didn’t feel as good. I haven’t played the first one but I assume that the third is better.