@sombre: I agree with this. Same goes for Prince of Persia 3d to be fair, but that's pretty much the same Tomb Raider-jump.
I remember constantly backhopping and taking small steps to the left & right before being able to attempt a jump in Tomb Raider. And from memory, if you didn't hit the top speed before the edge, a buttonpress wouldn't immediatly lead to Lara jumping. And if you wanted to use the jump to climb a ledge, you would often go to the default HUGE upwards jump with 2 hands stretched out unless you were in the specific area to make the game detect that you need a smaller jump for this situation instead.
Luckily Tomb Raider Anniversary is a thing, and i found that game MUCH more playable and for the first time i felt like OG Tomb Raider deserved some kudo's.
Cmon now, GB provides enjoyable entertainment shows nowadays, and they're enjoyable folk, but nothing that they say in these video's should move the meter in a meaningful way towards or away from a purchasing decision, whether there's a 2% discount code involved or not.
'I would lose my mind if this game was released when i was young'
'The game doesn't feel good during 2D segments, but i don't care because i'm having a good time running around in 3d. '
'If you like Sonic, you will enjoy this'
'It's a bad game but for a Sonic game it's amazing!
'I will come back to this'
'It's a fun 3/5'
'Goddamn i'm gonna play this now!'
Meanwhile the gameplay: Empty dreary grassfields, 2D mini-levels that you can find in decent Sonic games from 10 years ago.
If you're really wondering if you should play this game, you could just watch a bit more footage of the game or give a quick wristflick through metacritic to realize that the people at large also generally see this as a 'meh, it's okay' game.
What an amazingly impressive audiovisual live spectacle. I didn't think it was funny, but mesmerizing for sure. I did like the 2nd part more than the first part because once we got to the denim dating, we at least had a subject to focus on to get us away from the narrative continuity and it's friday forking.
So yeah, a bit more story in this and it's ripe for daytime Emmy nomination.
Monkey Island is a delightful series and totally holds up (apart from the tank-movement of Escape from Monkey Island). Definitly play them if you dig the style here. Also that guybrush voice acting.. Genuinely love hearing the guy's voice because it's so distinct and nothing is half-assed. These games always sound on-point and the characters are believable because of it.
Guybrush always has a huge love & respect (also fear) for Elaine. It's pretty sweet how he just wants to make her happy and keep her safe while she constantly has to talk down to him for being silly or dumb about something.
As for the artstyle, It's not that people wanted a more 'realistic' artstyle and balk at the idea of cartoony characters or won't accept anything but a pixel-style. After all, these games have had multiple artstyles, from pixel to hand-drawn cartoony all the way to 3d. It's just that this style where everyone has black eye-voids means that there's a limit to the facial expressions you can put on your characters. Not a huge bummer (I mean, i still enjoy the early 3d / tank controls of Escape from Monkey Island, despite it clearly not looking good in 2022), but i do think there are cartoony styles that could've made this game even more of a looker. I do think what's here is graphically good enough and brings a good dark cartoony atmosphere to enjoy throughout and it's a fairly timeless design too.
I do question how much streamlining has gone into this though. Back in the day adventure games constantly had to showcase that they were not too difficult and full of moonlogic, but that can lead to a situation where these games have now become too obvious and easy in their puzzles as an over-reaction. Broken Age suffered from that i thought. Hopefully the game opens up past these introductory phases and lets you drag and combine a bunch of items together to come to surprising solutions instead of constantly leading you straight from item to the place where you need to use said item. Luckily the inventory seems pretty large.
Like naturally i get that this is footage from a handheld, so having console like 3d on the go is still pretty magical, but i don't think this looks good at all in 2022.
I see dreadlocks that are snake-like and clip through helmets. These faces still have that weird 'i can look inside the mouth-flap and see the row of teeth behind it' that a lot of current games from big studio's have solved in the last years.
But also the presentation.. why are we cutting towards a nearly blank stat-page for a player after every other throw instead of making that actually look good, or doing it on the pitch without having to take you out of the action. Why is this coach getting all pissed off at the ref for a very mundane play? Are they just firing animations at you at random instead of it actually making sense for the coach to be upset about something?
The actual football looks tried-and-true and is enjoyable. But i can't say that graphically this looks good at all. But then again, as mentioned, EA just decides to not make a new game for an audience that isn't bringing in the money, so maybe they've improved all these aspects greatly on console.
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