LTTP or ‘late to the party’ pieces are opportunities for me to catch up and write about games I missed out on the first time around. They may contain spoilers.
Wow. I started Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light four years ago. I started playing Crystal Dynamic’s isometric co-operative platformer with my brother in 2010 but a co-op dispute forced us to put it aside and we didn’t go back to finish the final three levels.
I’ve been spending more time exploring in games as of late; more than these games usually demand from a player. I spent most of that time exploring and soaking in the work of Crystal Dynamics and Irrational Games. Walking around, piecing together clues and deciphering puzzles are just as engaging as the action pieces of those games.
I have yet to complete BioShock: Infinite but I’ve spent enough time in Columbia to know that it is a fascinating world through and through. Unlike Tomb Raider where my fascination was over natural habitats and relics from the past, my intrigue with Columbia comes from cultural and political artifacts. Not since Deus Ex: Human Revolution have I engaged in such exploration.
There are games like Skyrim or Fallout which are filled with relics but I don’t spend nearly the same amount of time in those games. Or if I do, I don’t enjoy it as much. The key difference between Bethesda’s offerings and those from Irrational and Crystal Dynamic is simple. The time between something interesting is minute compared to other games. I don’t spend time wandering aimlessly hoping to run into something meaningful.
Interesting worlds make for fun explorations. Whether it’s somewhere exotic or some interesting time period, games of this nature allow me to absorb these experiences on my own terms. Here’s to hoping 2013 has more of these games in store.
The polish of Uncharted combined with a Metroid styled open world game? I was sold after reading the first details and decided to go on a media blackout shortly after Tomb Raider’s gameplay debut at E3 2011.
Unfortunately it was difficult to ignore memes and idiotic statements from the game’s producers with Twitter and NeoGAF in my daily repertoire. I was aware of the noise but I did my best to ignore the details behind it all. I didn’t know even want to know if the game was measuring up to its initial promises. I wanted the game to speak for itself.
Crystal Dynamics track record with Tomb Raider is quite remarkable. They’ve rebooted the franchise once already with Tomb Raider: Legend, retold the original game with Anniversary and even spun it off into a dungeon crawler with Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. So how does a studio define a new reboot in a world where the words “Uncharted-clone” resonates more with the gaming audiences than “Dude Raider”?
They didn’t.