Haven’t played it yet… going to wait for the steam summer sale, but from what I saw watching my buddy play it… Lara gets the tar knocked out of her.  Now, I’ll admit, she’s a tough old bird, still, I don’t think many humans can survive the amount of falling and getting shot at that she does.  And from the looks of it, she just gets more and more beat up.

Still, as a big Tomb Raider fan, I’m looking forward to this reboot!  The series has long needed a good injection of adequate talent to make it back into the top games position.

That being said, from what I hear, it still highly linear.  Now, maybe I’m spoiled with open world games like Skyrim, Just Cause 2, Fallout3, and the likes, but I think if any series could do very well with large world exploration, it’s the Tomb Raider series.  Yeah, I see it has some, but that last Final Fantasy had “open world” too… still felt like a rail shooter in an arcade.  Also… multiplayer?  What the hell?  Granted… haven’t tried it out… but not all games need a multiplayer gimmick.  Seriously… seems like anything with a gun in it has to have a multiplayer version.  I wouldn’t be so opposed if it was decent and doesn’t interfere with the core gameplay… but TR isn’t a coop/multiplayer game (well, maybe coop with Lara’s twin sister Dora…) so it feels like it was just an afterthought added to bolster sales… all the while depleting resources and development time that could be better spent on making the core game longer or having mod support.

Anywho, I’ll give a full proper report when I sit down with it this summer.  Maybe my surly preconceived notions will warm up… or maybe I’ll set my computer on fire because they battered the franchise as much as they did Lara… We shall see.  >)

(in either case, I’m glad to see someone’s moving forward with the series… it’s been a good long while since we’ve seen it in the headlines)