I dno, played it a few days ago and liked it overall:
Pro:
- Graphics and some of the Level-Design resembles visual porn. It doesn't quite remind of the Low-Poly areas some of the previous games had and the rather large, open areas that you get to later in the game were rather well done, the "set pieces" you find throughout that try to tell the story of the island or what (likely) happened at some place were also a nice touch.
In regards to what I'm talking about with "visual porn":
- The "open world" game play was still fun, one of my main concerns was that it'll turn into a completely scripted linear shooter like say Bioshock: Infinite without much exploring or jumping around on stuff and even more QTEs than are already in it, for the most part it luckily didn't.
- Storytelling wasn't totally bad and entirely uninteresting, it was less abstruse than some of the previous parts, but it still had "paranormal Elements" in it. Kind of reminded me of Lost a lot. Don't know if that's entirely good or bad, but I think I liked the development overall. Some of the stuff near the end was rather shit though.
- Using the bow was really gratifying, hunting small critters like birds and lagomorphs and the "boom headshot"-moments especially later in the game where hit after hit sits was just fun. The weapon handling in general wasn't as bad and even though they included a cover mechanic, luckily it's only "sticky cover" and doesn't stand out as badly as it does in other games where you press a button to get into and out of cover. It's more like "Oh, someone is shooting at me, better hide behind this thing here" as you would do yourself behind walls or crouched behind objects in older shooters.
- The upgrade-system was rather nice and varied, the Unlock-paths reminded me a lot of Batman:AA/AC. Especially the visual representation of the weapons both in the inventory/UI and in the game itself (and what changes after the Upgrade) was nice. And the upgrades added rather good new functionality to most of the weapons e.g. silencer, zoom, more ammo in the magazine etc.
- The Journal-system employed in the game was better than I've seen in a lot of other games (for instance Bioshock with its audio tapes). The items and journal entries aren't really placed much around combat areas and upon picking one up, the UI opens and pauses the game. It also has full voice acting.
The artifacts you find had a similar mechanic, although you can even inspect and zoom in on the model.
- At the end I really wanted to play more of it, and I guess that's a thing that counts a lot.
Contra:
- Quicktime-Events were egregious, especially at the Start of the game, later after you get to the large explore able areas not as much, but some sequences that rely solely on button-presses to advance are rather retarded and could have been cut entirely.
- The characters were one of the biggest weak points in the game, aside from Lara and maybe her mentor Roth it's just a bunch of stereotypical asshats that look like they originate from the cast of Captain Planet. Especially in this concentration it looks rather staged and unrealistic: An American nerd with glasses, a Scotsman from Glasgow with the usual accent, a hulking superstitious Hawaiian with lots of tattoos, a Japanese princess, a tough black woman and evil Russians that are out to kill everyone. Throughout the game they were unlikeable, uninteresting, unhelpful and I didn't care what happened to any one of them (well, I wanted them all to die). Before some of the characters get their "death scenes", they haven't really been built up, so it comes over as needlessly melodramatic and I couldn't give less of a fuck. Also Roth the fucker kept stealing my XP.
- Some parts of the game were too much built on "action" like the Solarii Fortress (with your typical action movie explosions in the background while you try to "get to the choppa!" or the Chasm Stronghold near the end with endless waves of samurai were the worst parts of the game. There wasn't any exploration and there weren't any collectibles or anything in these areas. There's enough better FPS/TPS out there, I don't know why they're trying to imitate them, instead of concentrating on the strong points of the series.
- Overall there's still not enough of the "Tomb Raider/Prince of Persia"-formula in the game, what I found best about them were the riddles and climbing-sections. To get into a big room and know where you need to get to rather quickly, but having to put together the sequence of jumps and levers successfully to get there. At the end you were happy that you *finally* got through that hard section of the game. Even the Assassin's Creed-series had implemented these kind of puzzle rooms and coincidentally also called them "Tombs". The optional tombs in Tomb Raider though were only rather boring one-room-puzzles. After a while in the open areas there's a bit of "Tomb Raider"-feeling but not exactly enough. The game definitely needed less action and "interactive experience" type stuff and more puzzles and jumping sections.
- The game crashed about 5 times throughout my play through.