Review Tomb Raider: Official GBAtemp Review

[nryn99]

What do you mean by missing some buttons on the mouse?

 

[TripleSMoon]

So I finally picked up Tomb Raider today (my first Tomb Raider game ever, aside from watching a friend play a bit of the original and a demo of the second one as a kid). Really hyped, and 2 hours into it, I'm not disappointed yet. I love how it plays like a semi shooter-but-not-a-shooter, which is really refreshing.

The only peeve I have right now are the quicktime events.... sometimes they can be cool, but for a lot of them, it seems like you're for-sure screwed unless you can properly guess the button (or have died in it before and know it already) since you have the barest milliseconds to react. That said, I'm rather unfamiliar with quicktime events (the only game I played before that had anything even remotely resembling them was Halo 4), so that might have something to do with it.

 

[DiabloStorm]

I read this too earlier, does anybody play/purchase Tomb Raider for the multi-player?

Tomb Raider has always been a single player experience, navigating the tombs was the games strength, i won't be purchasing any DLC for this then.

I purchased it to support the developers

 

[Cyan]

What do you mean by missing some buttons on the mouse?

Well, on the PS3 controller, on my right hand I have R1 R2 R3 triangle/cross/circle/square as button available at the same time that I rotate the camera with Rstick.
On a mouse I have right/middle/left button accessible at a given time. (I suppose it's shot/alternate shoot/switch weapon with the scroll)The action buttons are not on the mouse.

If you use the keyboard with your left hand to move, the mouse with your right hand to look around/shoot, then how do you do the actions? using a third arm on the keyboard?

I guess it's the left hand which access additional keys while moving the character around?
I'm just not used to play on keyboard, I find it easier to access actions buttons with the right hand, and character's movement on the left hand.
I also prefer Analog stick to move at the desired speed instead of digital keyboard arrow keys.

But I didn't test it on PC, so I don't know how the control is done.

 

[retKHAAAN]

After 100%-ing the singleplayer I decided to give multiplayer a go...and it was abysmal... Sadly, I won't be purchasing the game until it drops down to <$20, but it was a fantastic rental.

 

[Arm73]

Well, on the PS3 controller, on my right hand I have R1 R2 R3 triangle/cross/circle/square as button available at the same time that I rotate the camera with Rstick.
On a mouse I have right/middle/left button accessible at a given time. (I suppose it's shot/alternate shoot/switch weapon with the scroll)The action buttons are not on the mouse.

If you use the keyboard with your left hand to move, the mouse with your right hand to look around/shoot, then how do you do the actions? using a third arm on the keyboard?

I guess it's the left hand which access additional keys while moving the character around?
I'm just not used to play on keyboard, I find it easier to access actions buttons with the right hand, and character's movement on the left hand.
I also prefer Analog stick to move at the desired speed instead of digital keyboard arrow keys.

But I didn't test it on PC, so I don't know how the control is done.

Well actually to your left hand on the keyboard you have access to even more keys then a conventional controller .
In fact many games have button combos on the controller to perform certain actions that can be binded to separate individual keys on the keyboard, giving you even more control.

Further more, I use this USB gaming keyboard pad :

As you can see, after you place your fingers on the red keys ( WASD ) you can still rest your thumb on the spacebar and easily hit a wide range of keys with it and enter.
The little finger rests on the CTRL key, and can easily press ALT, Shift , TAB, Q ( my favorite quick access key after E ) and the index finger can quickly reach 1 - 4 , F, G ( for granade ) and so on.
So basically you can map just about anything on it, and on the upper right corner you have dedicated volume buttons which are a god send ( on my laptop otherwise I'd have to press Fn + F11 - F12 for it ).
So yeah , for 20 bucks it beats the hell out of any internal laptop keyboard, and can be placed and moved around on the left side of the PC in every desired way, and since I got it , it's become my favorite,more confortable way of playing PC games, even though I also really like my wired xbox360 controller.

Just saying that the lack of buttons on the mouse ( even though there are programmable gaming mouses with planty of buttons on the market ) is not an issue when you have a good keyboard and a little practice.
Plus you can't beat a mouse for aiming

 

[Hadrian]

Well, on the PS3 controller, on my right hand I have R1 R2 R3 triangle/cross/circle/square as button available at the same time that I rotate the camera with Rstick.
On a mouse I have right/middle/left button accessible at a given time. (I suppose it's shot/alternate shoot/switch weapon with the scroll)The action buttons are not on the mouse.

If you use the keyboard with your left hand to move, the mouse with your right hand to look around/shoot, then how do you do the actions? using a third arm on the keyboard?

But I didn't test it on PC, so I don't know how the control is done.

....it's just with any other game on the PC, I don't quite understand how you think it would be difficult or that you would need a 3rd arm. It's all very nice and smooth. Normally I played with a controller because I like to sit back and relax and I've gotten use to aiming with a stick but this game is much better with mouse aiming and keyboard play, it's like the game was made for the PC first.

It's just the usual WASD with added E and you place your little finger on ctrl, shift and thumb on spacebar...there's nothing to it. Or the keys are within reach of a regular hand, I mean if you have a monkeys hand then I can understand that it could be a chore.

 

[Cyan]

I just find it hard to press buttons around the WASD while you are moving your character.
If you press W and D (up-right) you can't press E at the same time (or you need to move your 4th finger to W?)
I'm probably just not used to PC gaming.

With the analog stick I can decide if I want to walk very slowly/normally/run/etc.
I guess there's a button to walk instead of running? but it's only a two speed switching.


I didn't know there were special single handed keyboards!

 

[Hadrian]

I just find it hard to press buttons around the WASD while you are moving your character.
If you press W and D (up-right) you can't press E at the same time (or you need to move your 4th finger to W?)
!

You can press E at the same time as W or D though it's nothing to just go from D or W to E and back, it doesn't take a second to do so, it's very natural and it doesn't for the slightest moment impact gameplay.

 

[nryn99]

Yup like what Arm73 and Hadrian explained. Seems like you're just not used to gaming on PC. Your left fingers should be fast enough to press different buttons, not exclusive to 1 button.

Actually, I didn't use the mouse scroll to switch weapons but the 1,2,3,4 buttons. My only problems was mashing A and D for quicktime events. I wasn't used to it.

Finally finished the game yesterday. It was great overall.
It's amusing though that even on hard, after you reach the point of no return, i only used a pistol to finish it.
And before going upriver I had 2 extra skillpoints even when I have 100% stats.

 

[Arm73]

....it's just with any other game on the PC, I don't quite understand how you think it would be difficult or that you would need a 3rd arm. It's all very nice and smooth. Normally I played with a controller because I like to sit back and relax and I've gotten use to aiming with a stick but this game is much better with mouse aiming and keyboard play, it's like the game was made for the PC first.

It's just the usual WASD with added E and you place your little finger on ctrl, shift and thumb on spacebar...there's nothing to it. Or the keys are within reach of a regular hand, I mean if you have a monkeys hand then I can understand that it could be a chore.

That's the kind of answer I was looking for !
Thanks Hadrian, you convinced me .....

 

[TripleSMoon]

....it's just with any other game on the PC, I don't quite understand how you think it would be difficult or that you would need a 3rd arm. It's all very nice and smooth. Normally I played with a controller because I like to sit back and relax and I've gotten use to aiming with a stick but this game is much better with mouse aiming and keyboard play, it's like the game was made for the PC first.

It's just the usual WASD with added E and you place your little finger on ctrl, shift and thumb on spacebar...there's nothing to it. Or the keys are within reach of a regular hand, I mean if you have a monkeys hand then I can understand that it could be a chore.

Is it really that fluid to use the WASD keys for this game? I mean, I'm not a PC gamer, but I've played Halo on PC using the mouse/keyboard setup, and it works a billion times better for shooters like that. But for games like Tomb Raider, I can't imagine that such precise platforming would be friendly to 8-way-directionals (though it probably works great when in shooter mode for your bow, pistol, etc).

 

[Arm73]

Is it really that fluid to use the WASD keys for this game? I mean, I'm not a PC gamer, but I've played Halo on PC using the mouse/keyboard setup, and it works a billion times better for shooters like that. But for games like Tomb Raider, I can't imagine that such precise platforming would be friendly to 8-way-directionals (though it probably works great when in shooter mode for your bow, pistol, etc).

It's been actually a couple of days......
I finished DS3, and I jumped in TR....
After tweaking the graphic options to get a good balance between graphic quality/smoothness ( and the game now runs surprisingly smooth on my modest laptop ) , I played for about an hour with my xbx360 controller.
I must say, the controls are really good and aiming is smooth and precise !
Also for your standard platformer you got all the convenience of analog movements and easy to access buttons.

However, once I got into my first shooting action sequence, I just wasn't aiming fast enough with the joystick, so I switched to K/M controls and what a surprise !
My aiming improved ten fold and the game still feels smooth and very playable !
It's clearly very well optimized for the PC as Hadrian said, also there are not really that many keys to bind in this game ( less then Dead Space 3 anyway ), it feels really good to play with wasd and mouse aiming.
Those little bird don't stand a chance now !

So yeah, unless you are playing on the TV ( sometimes I am, that's why I switch back and forth ) I'd really recommend K/M controls for this game !

I must say, I'm really enjoying it so far. GOTY for me !

 

[EyeZ]

Is it really that fluid to use the WASD keys for this game?

Yes it is, it plays so well with mouse/keys, i know i would suffer using a controller.