Tomb Raider reviews begin: get all the scores here

@45 to be honest I’m terrified that somehow it’ll blow up in my face again. That was the worst week of my life hands down so I get on edge about these things. Reading back what I sent to you I have to honestly apologise. What I said was knee-jerk and over the top. My apology extends to everyone here.

I’m trying to get over it really hard recently but I find it hard, as scrutinised as we often are in the press. You’re a regular here Edo and I shouldn’t be giving you shit like that for voicing an opinion.

Once again, my apologies. I’m trying, seriously.

I would like to be able to form an accurate impression of how I might find it to play, based upon another person’s experience of having played Tomb Raider. That’s not proving very successful. 3 reviews, and a fluff-piece down, and I’m finding myself really wanting to try a demo.

This is why i like Dave. He might make erros, but he is the only journalist on this site that isn’t afraid of saying he is sorry when he makes such mistakes. I hope you’ll stay here for a long time Dave

@53 thanks Talkar, especially as Edo is 100% right.

@Dave Your apology is accepted and I understand that it takes a lot of courage to admit your mistakes…more than people even think,it’s a sign that you consider what other people think and feel.I hope that you will get over that problem as soon as possible since in no way you should be considered to be a corrupted person simply cause you are not one.Also,I understand that my own comments can be sometimes douchey and for that I apologize and promise that I’ll try to be as reasonable as possible in the future.
RESPECT

#55 respect back at you mate and apologies one last time. I do respect everyone here as without our community we’d be nothing. We can all be douchey at times but there was no need in my flying off. Anyone could see that.

Videogames!

Let Doritos be Doritos.

But now that we’re on the subject of ethics, I’ll add 20 bucks to your Movember campaign if you can find out where the Homeworld IP has gone off to.

GOG need to pull a System Shock 2 on that, like, now.

Good to see all the high numbers. Love these review compilations.

@56 No problem dude,and exactly,let’s get back to videogames.
One thing I noticed when you joined this site is just how much (as you pointed out)you cared about the community when you asked us before you had interviews(with game developers and such)who would we like to see interviewed next.
Now,I don’t know is this going to happen any time in the future but if you would just happen to be around anyone from Ubisoft Montreal,the guys that are working on Watch_Dogs,I really would like to know is there going to be a classic single-player campaign since unlike many other people I know I am not all that crazy about this asynchronous multiplayer thingy they are promoting so much.My purchase of this game will depend solely on whether the answer is yes or no since everything else I’ve seen from it looks extremely promising.

@59 I’d love to speak with Ubi Montreal. It will happen eventually for sure although as with games of that calibre and for a new format I reckon we’ll have to wait until Ubi gives us the go ahead. Rest assured we’ll speak with them when we can

Anyone else?

@57 I’d like to know as well. Did you see the crowd funding campaign to remake Homeworld? It sort of throws the license ownership up in the air. I’m keen to know though.

@60 I don’t care if I have to wait till E3 I just would like this particular question to be asked cause either no one has asked it yet or they themselves are too mysterious about it,and just to ask you,what is your opinion about this alleged Prey 2 countdown site,fake or not?Bethesda said that they have nothing to do with it and yet their and Human Head studios logo are still there.I’mean if it was indeed some hoax wouldn’t they asked for it to be taken down…btw RESPAWN will be at E3 http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/02/25/respawn-will-be-at-e3.aspx.. fu*king finally .

@60 Yeah, I wish that had looked halfway promising, but it seemed a little spur-of-the-moment.

What I’m afraid of is the IP being sold on under the radar in some unpublisized court document, without anyone hearing about it.

Then you’re back to limbo.

And seriously dude, seriously, why has no one ever re-released those games? GOG would have it ready in a matter of months!

@62
Wasn’t Homeworld a THQ IP until they collapsed?

@61 it’s hard to say, as it could be legitimate and the denial may be misinformation. It’s hard to say given the sly marketing tricks out there. It’s getting harder to say at times.I’d like to see Prey 2 happen though. I enjoyed the original enough and I saw Prey 2 behind closed doors at gamescom. It looked ace.

My take? It’s moved to next-gen.

@60 when you do, please see if you can nudge some fresh Rainbow 6 Patriots details/media out of there.

@65 will do. I reckon that’s another one firmly in the next-gen camp

@63 Yeah, which is why it’s important to figure out where it’s gone off to.

It’s either still part of the bankruptcy proceedings, or it’s been sold off.

I got this from Jason Rubin before the great collapse:

https://twitter.com/Jason_Rubin/status/255342885610876928

It could’ve been bundled with Relic. I suppose that is possible, but then why wouldn’t anyone mention it?

@64 Thanks,I guess in less then 4 days we will find out was that site legit or not.

@67
Well then we’re fucked, to put it politely.
I don’t really trust SEGA with anything anymore :/

Shit, now I had to look it up. A Eurogamer piece on the Relic sale says:

“All a spokesperson could tell me was: “Sega acquired all shares of THQ Canada and THQ’s IPs related to the titles developed by THQ Canada. Those IPs include Company of Heroes, which is developed by THQ Canada, and its R&D engines”

So that has to mean they have Homeworld, surely?

I mean, Homeworld used to be a Sierra IP. Then an Activision IP, and then a THQ IP. When Relic were using it, they were Sierra.

So what does that all mean?! Panic!

I think this requires us to learn japanese, and take a trip to Japan and camp their offices until they answer us. ^^

I said earlier today that I wouldn’t post in this article again at least for the rest of the day, but I’m going to have to say sorry for breaking that promise because I think what I’m about to say is important enough for it.

@Dave: Your worries about people accusing corruption are understandable. Things are tense with a lot of the radical changes the industry is going through, there are a lot of very strong feelings swirling around. You have fans that grasp at anything they can find to invalidate the reviews given by reviewers (myself sometimes included) for games they loathe, and you have fans that will take positive reviews of games they look forward to as the only “legitimate” ones. With the video game industry holding such a new, vocal and heated consumer base at least as far back as the 8-bit generation if not even earlier than that, anyone that tries to cover it gets caught in the crossfire.

This is a moment where I feel that I need to mention a few things. Back as DmC was releasing, I accused this site of possibly getting “paid” for coverage (not necessarily by money, but by interviews, exclusive coverage, etc) because the level of coverage given to DmC looked, to me as a complete newcomer, uncommon for a game on this site. Would games like Hyperdimension Neptunia or Last Story 3+ articles exclusively devoted to them in a single day like DmC and Tomb Raider got? It looked very questionable to me that it happened to be that these controversial games that had huge advertising campaigns behind them and lots of fanfare from VG247 just happened to also get the most coverage, and I didn’t see the same treatment for other games. At the time, I eventually dropped the matter, but more because I didn’t think a game like DmC was worth potentially ruining anyone’s life.

Well, aside from the coverage of Aliens: Colonial Marines disproving that thought, I later saw your post about Doritosgate, and altering policies on VG247 in the wake of it. I hadn’t heard about Doritosgate, and nobody had bothered to mention your post about the subject or link me to it. If someone had linked me to your post, it would have saved lots of time and frustration for everyone in that article. When reading your article, I could tell how sincere you were about trying to make sure the site and the staff are doing the ethically right thing, and that none of you are caught in a compromised position.

That said… personally, I think there are still cases where the opinions of the staff toward certain games are compromised. Not in an unethical way, but in a normal human operation kind of way, same as you would expect for any previewing and reviewing website. Ideally, we want to be unbiased, but I don’t think that’s possible when you’re flying out to preview sessions with a game’s staff and PR department (regardless of who paid for the trip), or when you’re scoring interviews with important directors and producers and writers. No matter how unbiased you try to be, you’re meeting with people. You’re putting faces to game projects, and that makes you empathize with them and build an emotional connection. You see their excitement and their livelihoods on the line. Once you have that human dimension, I don’t think it’s possible to be objective anymore. You’re no longer looking at just the game and its own merits no matter how hard you try, you’re also looking at all the people that put work into making it.

I no longer think there’s any kind of risk of this site being “bought out” by companies, but I do think there’s a risk of opinions being unknowingly swayed. One of Brenna’s previews for Tomb Raider had her saying she went in ready to hate the game and came out adoring it, and I can’t help thinking that a lot of that shift in opinion could have come from her interactions with the staff and PR during her visit regardless of precautions she may have taken. Not much different from the misattribution of arousal experiment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misattribution_of_arousal

With all the above said and done, the last thing I want to say is that I know you’re worried about how scrutinized the press often is, how a lot of hate hits reviewers. But with the way society and culture are right now, it’s virtually impossible not to make someone angry and get hate for it. No matter what you do, no matter how innocuous or well-intentioned, there will always be someone that gets mad. I’m sure you already knew this, but I felt I could do with a little reaffirmation. Do the things you have to do, try to be the best you can be, and worry about perception of other people but not so much that it cripples you.

Anyway, blocks of text done, back to the cave for me.

soooo much ass kissing in this comment sections… LMFAO! “entertaining at the very least!”

Journalistic objectivity is an ideal.

It’s not like a journalist can detach himself from his entire emotional complex, so wittingly or unwittingly you’re always dealing with some form of bias.

The problem starts when you go from perfectly natural reactions based on your experiences – like for example liking an interviewee and letting the conversation get silly – and into reactions that are forced in some way through outside influence – Like fearing you’ll lose ad revenue.

One may still be perfectly credible, the other one isn’t.

awesome scores im excited for this game

“Got a score? Chuck it in the comments below and we’ll add it to the list when we can.”

Rev3Games gave it a 3/5.

http://youtu.be/7bASdmh4URg

@Dave
hi mate (sorry for my bad english)
i want to know you can interview with guys making BF4 in DICE?
and little questions about Mirror’s Edge 2?
thanks

@77 I’ll try, may be a while yet though. It’s defo on the list

Thanks.

March is looking real good. Between this, God of War, Bioshock infinite and Gears.

Gamer.nl (Dutch) 8.5 http://www.gamer.nl/review/413848/tomb-raider-1
Nu.nl (Dutch) 4/5 stars http://www.nu.nl/games/3354624/review-tomb-raider-beter-dankzij-nieuwe-formule.html

AllThingsXbox – http://allthingsxbox.com/2013/03/review-tomb-raider/ 9/10

Tomb Raider Review by hardcoreshooter.com has posted Check it out. Thanks! http://www.hardcoreshooter.com/video-game/tomb-raider-review/

this one gave it a 9.5 http://realgamernewz.com/tomb-raider-review/ (out of ten)