Yeah the river sucks as well!

BTW I just reached Shanty Town and Lara actually comments when the dead body drops next to her " Oh Dear Go!" Also when she slides down into the courtyard, the animation actually shows her getting up.

Oh I only died once in parachute - river part. It was a piece of cake. :p Sorry to hear you are having trouble.

Looooving the game so far!

The graphics in this game are so unbelievably good even on consoles, the environments are great and it's so polished +.+ Loving the level design as well, the hubs are big and they're so cool to explore omg + one of the optional tombs I've been on looked just so awesome although the puzzle was kind of simple but still yeahhh

Exactly. The interesting thing about the game is that all my fears were confirmed, but I still really like it. :D And one of my fears was that they tried to make it all about Lara and her journey, something that I didn't like at all, since I never actually liked Lara. Interestingly, this game does manage to make me care for her, especially when she's happy and successful (e.g. at the radio tower), not so much when she's the worlds clumsiest and whiniest super-solider. But I still think the overall focus was maybe a bit misplaced.

That always happens. You know all that talk about "stay true to yourself"? It certainly applies to game criticism. :D

It's the section after the one after Shanty Town. Not sure what the name is, but its the part inside the palace. I just finished it, and it seems to be more reasonable in the areas that follow. But there's a long stretch of battle, battle, battle, battle.

BTW: The standard ASCII representation of the symbol is !=, not =/=. There's of course also a true Unicode symbol, but sadly, I can't type it on an iPad. :D

I just about managed to do that first time despite taking a few heavy hits, it was the sliding down the river part just before it that got me. Died about five or six times, can't see where you're going with the water spraying up everywhere! :hea:

Yep, pretty much like this!

I disagree with the article. Yes, the characters are more fleshed out in the collectible diary entries that have no story reason to be spread all over the island and that most players won't find (at least on their first play through). They are also rather boring. I think that a) the characters aren't a lot better with this background material and b) that the emotional connection, the most important part, should not be made optional. That would be like a Tomb Raider game where the tombs are optional…

Comparing them to other games is kind of pointless. TR has to stand on its own merits.

Finally, I don't see Lara's dependence on others. The story very much tries to paint her as dependent, but factually speaking, she isn't. Consider the heavily scripted part where Roth gives sniper assistance to cross a bridge with maybe ten guards on it. Lara plain doesn't need his help. At this point, she's a fully qualified soldier and easily the most dangerous thing on the island, and what's more, she has dispatched greater assemblies of enemies all throughout Shanty Town, including two major shootouts with more than ten enemies each. Now the cutscene tries to tell me that Lara can't do that on her own. Sorry, but I'm just not buying it.

I don't like how she runs like she's drying her nail polish.

Oh crap! I am so bad at combat with keyboard and mouse. I need a controller if I'm going to complete this game :vlol:

Maybe I missed something but I think that there're two plot holes (haven't read the whole 3000+ pages of this thread so don't be mad if this was already cleaned up elsewhere):

1) Roth tells Lara to climb up to the radio tower. When she's there she calls Alex via radio. Why? She hasn't met him by this time and can't know that he survived.

2) In the section with the burning temple Lara tells Sam to not enter the helicopter. How does Lara know about the helicopter? And why does she jump into it when Roth tells her to do so, anyway?

Lara hears about the helicopter through the radio...Plus, didn't Reyes mention they were all okay?