Xbox Series X Review: Tomb Raider Survivor Triology (2013-2018)

I played all three of these in a row and I'm now officially burned out on The New Adventures of Lara Croft. But they were fun! Well, at least the first and second one were.

I never cared about the original Tomb Raider (1996) game(s). I remember liking the movies, I even liked the sequel Lara Croft - Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003); you know a movie is good when it has both a hyphen and a colon. So I didn't expect a whole lot from the reboot when I picked it up on super discount almost 10 years later, but I was pleasantly surprised by Tomb Raider (2013). It's true, however, that there ain't too much actual Tomb Raidin' in it. You do a lot of arrow shootin', a lot of bullet shootin', a lot of fightin'. It was way more combat heavy than I expected, which I definitely appreciated. "Tombs," such as they are (most of them are actually just caves somewhere in the woods), mainly exist off the beaten path of your mission and consist of a fairly simple, physics-based puzzle. They serve the purpose, however, of providing you with skill points on completion to upgrade Lara's weapons, equipment, and self. Of the three "survivor" games, Tomb Raider is by far the simplest, and I think that's what I liked about it the most: it's just a fun action game.

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015) is the refined version of Tomb Raider. Everything is better. It's gorgeous, the animation in particular is excellent, the combat and exploration has opened up considerably, the spectacle is larger, the storytelling is pretty decent, and there's even more tombs! A lot more tombs. There's a lot more of everything. I think it becomes too much of a collect-a-thon, there's too many things to collect and craft and keep track of. There's a simplicity to the first game that I still prefer, but it's impossible to deny how incredible Rise truly is. Even if you, like me, don't have any particular attachment to the character or franchise and you don't mind if Lara Croft is less Tomb Raider and more Murder Badass Gal, Rise remains an excellent, all-purpose, generally excellent third-person action game.

I don't totally know what happened with Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018). I really grew to hate this one. Technically, it's up there with Rise, maybe in some ways surpassing it: the traversal has never been better, the world is gorgeous, even if the character models look a bit off. The big problem, however, is how off-balance it feels in structure; by that I mean the balance between narrative, exploration, and combat. The writing is already awful, just belabored and breathless and half-hearted, and on top of that it has one of the biggest narrative drop-offs in gaming history. Shadow goes to hell as soon as you take Lara to Paititi (roughly midway through the game or so) and it never recovers. I almost gave up on it because you get sent on a thousand uninteresting fetch quests that don't even have action in them in a game that already struggles with having enough action in it. When the action picks up the game is fun, but there's an entire skill tree that ultimately doesn't matter because not enough happens and none of the skills have anything to do with all the talking in it. I don't think there's ever been a prettier failure than Shadow.

Xbox Series X Review: F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin (2009)

In a natural progression, I've returned to review the second F.E.A.R. (this is very irritating to type) game after reviewing the third game last month. Maybe I'll review the first one as well. Stay tuned to Code Redd Net for more reviews of pretty old games.

I hear people don't like this game. It's not so bad! It's pretty good. While it's not nearly as good as the original F.E.A.R. (2005), and I can understand why people might decry the direction of 2, there's still plenty in this one to recommend.  

The story, as you might expect, is a bunch of spooky, haunted nonsense strung between gun fights. Running somewhat concurrently (at least initially) with the first game, 2 is about a Delta Force goon squad captured and augmented by the evil Armacham corporation. That's how you get your slow-motion powers. Alma has grown up and wants to have sex with you, kind of. I don't know. It's very stupid. At least the first game had the dignity to make the story sparse and often limited to items you pick up and read. It was an atmosphere, just a veneer of horror wrapped around a Hong Kong bullet ballet. It was just generally spooky, whereas 2 makes you watch and engage with the Horror Stuff much more, and it's weaker for it.

Luckily, the action in F.E.A.R. 2 is generally excellent, even if it's a fair bit different from the first game. Much of it is modernized: aim down sights, sprinting, you name it. It feels better to play, with quicker, more responsive controls and movement, although the level design is much more condensed. I can't tell if the AI is better or worse because they have so few options in how they engage with you. As a result, the combat is fairly predictable, but it is no less explosive. All the guns feel great and the Soldier Mans you shoot explode and break apart in some wonderful ways.

Unfortunately, it's over a bit quicker than you'd want at about five or six hours. And because it's a single-player FPS from the late 2000s, there's nothing else to do. You can chase some achievements if you want, but you don't unlock anything, there's no extra modes, nothing. There was a multiplayer mode but obviously that's gone now. Hope you like additional difficulty modes!

Xbox Series X Review: Robocop: Rogue City (2023)

The first RoboCop (1987) is amazing. This likely isn't news to anyone, but I still find it wild that such a brutal, truly anti-corpofascist film could ever be released by a major studio. And then they made the sequels. RoboCop 2 (1990) is ooooook, it's fine, it has that child drug dealer, and RoboCop 3 is itself a crime. I went to the 2014 reboot and remember nothing about it. They also made some RoboCop video games! They're trash too, except for RoboCop Versus The Terminator (1993) on the Sega Genesis (and definitely not the SNES version), which was stupid hard but had cheats (thank god) and buckets of blood.

Anyway, this is all to say the RoboCop franchise is a total mess. Thankyfully, RoboCop: Rogue City attempts to clean up this mess. Taking place after the events of the second movie, Rogue City is a hybrid FPS and robo-role-playing adventure game, and a large part of it is a tribute to the series. When you're not shooting dudes and walking forward slowly, you're talking to dudes and walking forward slowly. Sometimes they ask you to find cats, find their sons, and hand out parking tickets to cars parked too close to fire hydrants. These parts, especially the more open world sections where you (Mr. RoboCop) walk around the streets of Detroit and talk to folks, can become fairly boring and the conversations drone on for too long. Still, there's some good character work and writing here, with choices that have effects on both the narrative and gameplay, but thankfully this mundane activity is then offset by some incredible shootouts. Rogue City is brutal. You kill guys really good in a lot of different, upgradable ways. This is the best part of the RoboCop Simulator. The combat is incredibly satisfying, in-depth, and shockingly customizable.

RoboCop: Rogue City is a fairly long game for a modern FPS, although too much of the 10 hours or so it takes to complete the game is dedicated to long stretches of dialogue. By the end the of the game, however, I found that the commitment to so much conversation actually worked somewhat in the game's favor and the characterizations paid off. Unfortunately, the final act does wear out the game's welcome by the end with one too many reveals and turns and final final boss battles. Nevertheless, if you dig FPS action and need something new to play, Rogue City is worthwhile.

Happy 22nd birthday, Code Redd Net!

 I can't believe it's been 22 years. Long live Code Redd Net!