This Post Is Mainly About Tomb Raider
Last weekend, in a bid to fill out my completion percentage, I decided to breath some life into stale releases with fresh downloadable content (DLC). For a couple of reasons I typically avoid DLC. By the time developers ship it I’ve long finished the game concerned and have moved onto something else. I also feel it’s rarely worth the extra cash, and accumulating everything I’ve spent on that one game generally leaves me thinking: “Wow, that was so not worth the £60 I’ve dumped on it”.
With the past few weeks, however, the completion force within me has been strong, and so I decided to revisit some of the older titles I had finished prior to the DLC. Because I had already whored Lara Croft for 1000 points in Underworld, I decided to chase after the additional 250 points. With it being a Tomb Raider game, I figured the extra Achievements probably wouldn’t be too hard to score.
Underworld has two expansions — Lara’s Shadow and Beneath The Ashes. Both are priced at 800 Microsoft Points, with a Gamerscore value of 125 Points each. Beneath The Ashes was the first to be distributed to Xbox Live, and so it was the first DLC I purchased. It was also the cause of controversy when a begrudged Crystal Dynamic’s employee divulged it was originally part of the retail game, only to be cut at a later point and re-branded as DLC. So, Crystal Dynamics are now charging extra for a level that was originally meant to be in the retail game. Cheeky, and just plain unethical.
That aside, I got through Beneath The Ashes within an hour or so of purchasing it. It is simply an additional level to Underworld, but not even a grand one at that. It’s what you’d expect from your typical Tomb Raider level, with lots of treasures scattered throughout, oversized and aggressive spiders, puzzles, and cleverly placed objects in a bid to inspire the athletic in you. And unforgiving camera angles. Basically, Beneath The Ashes is just as good as anything else from Underworld, it’s just not worth the 800 Microsoft Points it’s priced at.
Needless to say, I was apprehensive about purchasing Lara’s Shadow for fear it would be much of the same. My fear was unfounded, though, as Lara’s Shadow is actually really cool. You play as Lara’s doppleganger, which you may remember meeting at a few points throughout Underworld. This basically means that whilst you look like Lara, that’s where the similarities end. The doppleganger moves about 3x faster (I made that multiplier up) and has a heavy focus on melee combat. It’s a bit strange adjusting to her movements, but once you do you can have a lot of fun with her superhuman powers. On top of that there’s your usual hidden treasures, brutal enemies, and a healthy dose of puzzles.
If you were to buy just one of these expansions, let it be Lara’s Shadow.
On another note, while I was gathering links for this post I came across a quote from the team behind the 9th Tomb Raider game. It has saddened me to see that, yet again, the developers responsible for pushing the series forward think they need to entirely “reinvigorate” the game to combat flagging interest. This usually comes in the form of bigger breasts for Lara, but they’ve also announced a MultiPlayer mode. Tomb Raider always has been a single player experience. I don’t understand why they need to incorporate a whole other aspect of the game to worry about when they should be focusing their efforts on the single player, especially when some issues are consistently cropping up across Tomb Raider games (i.e. clumsy controls and camera angles).
It actually pains me to see a franchise I love tackle flailing interest in, what I consider to be, the wrong way. However, I shall reserve my judgements until it makes its grand appearance, whenever that may be. What do you think?
Hmm. Uhh. Yeah. Skyrim. It’s massive. The quests are never-ending. My character has a mohawk. My class is Breton. Don’t
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