Recent reviews by Kaya

A wonderfully put together Saturday morning cartoon.

Just no.

The devs seem to be more worried about adding playable races than actually making a game play loop.
There is nothing for the player to do, there is no reason for the player to explore the map and make new characters.
There is 1 npc in the entire game that the player can interact with, and those are enemy crabs that give a set amount of exp to level up your dragon. Why level up your dragon? for no reason, there is nothing else to do in this game but kill these crabs.

You go to their discord server, and the developers are busy remaking player models and showing off more map assets, but no mention of what the game play elements planned for the future are.

Surely the graphics are fine, sure there is a lot of customization, but none of this matters if there is nothing to do!

That one game you always pick up in a raining day and just want to sit at home with a blanket.
This game manages to capture the nostalgic feeling of playing games as a child, just something about it, the lonely feel the soundtrack captures, the old school colorful graphics and the engaging game play full of mystery!
Grab this if you can, it is worth every penny I promise.

As some one who payed for this game when it was announced as an MMO I can say, this is incredibly worth your time and a lot of content for the current value.
Having changed the game to single player with co-op available was an excellent decision from the developer.
The world design and music make it feel nostalgic, almost dream like in many ways, and even if the questing and story are rather uninspired, you can easily skip all the dialogue and continue with the gameplay.
An easy 8/10 in it's current state (Early Access).
A promising re-release and I look forward what they have in store for the future of this title.

A good game does not need a super complex idea behind it, and this is proof of it.

A hidden ps3 relic, this game is an entire experience on it's own.
For sure a must play

No but yes, allow me to explain.
This is a beautiful game whose trailer makes you think it will be a similar experience to Journey, THIS IS NOT JOURNEY, thought there are a few similarities. I can only recommend this game if you find it on sale for less than 20$, this is not worth the 30 they ask for it.

The visuals are absolutely stunning but uncanny at times, it is beautifully stylized however there are plenty of things that are questionable and after awhile you will notice that they wasted time in so many pointless little things that they could have spent in making the main played animals much better.

Right at the start the game caught me off guard with a fully voiced acted narrator, this game did NOT need voice acting much less a narrator, that is one of the beauties of Journey that the story is told completely by the visuals and music and therefor left to interpretation of the player, THIS IS NOT THE CASE HERE. Countless times, specially at the beginning, you will be constantly interrupted by the narrator, and the music in game is just... weak, it's almost like elevator music, it doesn't represent the scenes at all, and this is when there is music, and where there is music it keeps fading in and out for some strange reason. I truly believe that the best scenes in this game are the ones that are not voice acted.

As for the story, it's fine. It starts of so slow though, I can see why people say the story is boring, cause in all honesty for the first 3 hours of the game, it is very much boring. It eventually picks up but exactly cause the game lets you interpret it first before narrating over your thoughts. Sorry but this narrator really didn't work for me... You can turn it off but if it's there I believe the developers meant for the game to be played with the narrator.

And lastly, be prepared for bugs, specially if you like to stick your nose in every corner of the maps. I got soft locked 3 times in my 6 hour play through, with no way out but to reload a previous safe file. This game needed more polish.

To sum it up, this is a case where less could have been more, no narrator, stronger sound track, polish on the art and game play testing departments and I believe this game could be side by side with Journey and others games of the kind.

It is a strong 6/10 from me.

This game is my childhood, I wont write a proper review cause I am completely BIAS to it!

Ok so, I streamed this game from start to finish and there are so many problems with it that it's hard to keep track.
I legitimately feel bad for not recommending this game since there are some really great moments in it that are overshadowed by bad game design and bad writing.
My adventure with Shadow of the Tomb Raider lasted 15 hours, which is awfully short for a full priced game. I did not complete all the side quests and challenges. My Play through was done in the hardest mode available.

Let us begin with the gameplay.
As expected Lara moves great and as expected, a great deal of attention was put into how she plays and that shines through the entire game. Sadly the game can't quite figure out what it wants to be, so it often feels like it's stuck in between genres and not quite getting any of them right. There are platforming aspects like the previous entries, but they are often tedious and easy to do. The shooting is incredibly easy even on the hardest difficulty and often also feels lacking, and then the are the puzzles! Boy this game shines in the tomb's design! One can clearly tell where the most love went to in this game. Sadly these tombs are short, and the rewards more often than not, not worth the time at all.
In short, the gameplay feels lacking in all departments except the puzzles, which it doesn't take full advantage of.

Moving on to Art
The graphics are absolutely stunning a good amount of the time, so much work and research was put into designing these old ruins and cities and it shows. Lara looks absolutely beautiful and her hair physics are among the best I have ever seen in games, however this goes only for Lara, all the other characters look like they have hair glued on. In fact, all other characters except for Lara and Johna are rather boring in design and not memorable at all.
As for the music, it's appreciated but honestly I turned it off about half way through the game. It's not memorable at all and covers up the beautiful atmosphere sounds. When I turned the music off, it made the game feel about 60% more like an old tomb raider game, so much work is put into the atmosphere sounds and they go completely ignored when the music is on. This is one of those games that does not need any music other than some sound queues. This is a case of less is more.

As for the story.
There is not a lot to say in here. To put it bluntly, it's boring, it drags on without any real purpose. The writing is poor and neither me nor the chat seemed to care for any of the characters except Johna, which seems to be the best written of the bunch.
Lara often seems to go out of character in the main story line, the villain is very forgettable although he could have easily been one of the best in the series, and all the side characters are very poor and bland.
The side quests are poorly written and just as boring to play through.

To Summarize!
It's not hard to see what Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Design have so much love for this series, and their design truly shines through with their tomb designs and old tomb raider style gameplay. This game is all over the place, I truly wish they would be left to make a game based on their ideals and not what's currently popular. I can't recommend this, the full price is not worth the 9 20min tombs you will find in the game, and the greedy season pass is not worth the 8 more tombs you will get to play.

I wanted to like this game, I wanted to be the one saying "ah it's not that bad", but when the game works fine one day and then the next day it refuses to work properly it's just very discouraging.

I don't have any issue with the story, characters, difficulty. I don't care if the game doesn't run at 60 fps constantly and drops anywhere between 60 to 30, as long as it remains playable. Now by no means is this game not playable, cause it is, and it's enjoyable for that matter. My problem with this game comes from the unforgivably long loading screen and the game stopping to buffer even after said loading screen every 10 seconds if you try to run past mobs or areas.

All these flaws are incredibly inconsistent as well, sometimes you get minute long loading screens, sometimes there's no FPS issues what so ever and then other times there are for no apparent reason.

Also, if you're looking to play this with a playstation 4 controller keep in mind there is not playstation controller overlay so you will have to do with the xbox one.

By all means this is NOT a bad game, sadly I cannot recommend it simply because these flaws weigh too much.