Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Did you play Rise of the Tomb Raider? This game literally took every page out of the playbook of the last game in every regard you mentioned. When it comes to Crypts, Challenge Tombs, collectibles, and even skills, this game didn't deviate from the previous formula at all.

The only difference with Shadow is that the story and setting weren't ever fully utilized to be as engaging and interesting as the story and setting in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Rise just felt tighter when it came to it's main story but rest assured it had just as many 'useless' collectibles and 'tedious' challenge tombs.

In all actuality, the collectibles in Shadow, like in the previous game, do flesh out the lore surrounding the main story of the game. You can do without them for sure but they do add something to the game, however small it is.

The difference between Shadow and Rise is combat. There were enemies all over the place in Rise. What they did is give you motivation for collectibles. Better armor and upgrades guns meant something. In this game you get collectibles to upgrade weapons (and stats) that you'll never use. That makes everything feel more pointless.
 
The difference between Shadow and Rise is combat. There were enemies all over the place in Rise. What they did is give you motivation for collectibles. Better armor and upgrades guns meant something. In this game you get collectibles to upgrade weapons (and stats) that you'll never use. That makes everything feel more pointless.

I agree with you on the combat and skills in this game. There aren't any enemies outside of the scripted areas, unlike Rise, and the skills don't really add much past the few necessary ones like increased breath holding. I also don't know why they felt the need to offer so many different weapons if we end up getting the most powerful in each category very early on.

I still think the collectibles in this game do offer more than just EXP points. Granted, there are a handful of relics that offer descriptions like "Another primitive doll..." but for the most part the collectibles do a nice bit of additional world building.
 
There are several areas that look like they were designed to have random enemies or at least a single scripted battle. You also have this incredible polish and pacing in the very beginning and end, but very little in the middle. I'm convinced this game's release was probably bumped up a few months. It isn't a complete rush job or anything like that, but I think they had more in mind for it than we got.
 
I think this game was not as polished as the previous because the developer changed from Crystal Dynamics to Eidos Montreal and didn't fully retain the vision of the other games.

The previous two games were developed entirely by Crystal Dynamics and this one was primarily developed by Eidos Montreal with some collaboration with Crystal Dynamics. So maybe Crystal Dynamics book ended the game while Eidos Montreal just tried their best at replicating Rise for the main portion of the game but deviating enough to make it different. I remember posting my worry about this game when the announcement was made well over a year ago that Crystal Dynamics wasn't going to develop this game.
 
hopefully the poor sales and average reviews don't derail the series...there's still a lot of great games to be made in the Tomb Raider franchise...I also like the new gritty take on the series that Crystal Dynamics started...it's too bad they weren't able to finish the trilogy themselves
 
how come I can't set the resolution in windowed mode?

on my 4k tv, with gtx1060, it defaults to 2880x rez, and i want to shrink it down to 1920x.

does the developer think the game will run well at this rez?
 
how come I can't set the resolution in windowed mode?

on my 4k tv, with gtx1060, it defaults to 2880x rez, and i want to shrink it down to 1920x.

does the developer think the game will run well at this rez?
Set the resolution in the launcher. If that doesn't work, disable DSR in the NVIDIA control panel.
 
resolution is greyed out in launcher, and dsr is disabled by default in nv control

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The resolution matches your desktop resolution when running windowed. Or do you intend to game in a window 1/4th of the screen?
 
The resolution matches your desktop resolution when running windowed. Or do you intend to game in a window 1/4th of the screen?
Jumping off of that, if you want to run the game in 1920x1080 on your 4K TV in a window, then just set the resolution modifier to 25%.
 
figured it out. I can resize the window manually by dragging the corner of the window

i can even play in superwide mode.
 
Sounds like this game is polarizing I dunno why. I can't max it out at 4k so playing at 1080p maxed out and even at 1080p graphics maxed out are amazing and make the experience that much more immersive and enjoyable. I am enjoying this game very much about 85% complete story missions, definitely pleasantly surprised. I get how people are complaining about not enough combat and useless upgrade system but that doesn't make this a bad game. Story, puzzles + graphics and platforming are what makes Tomb Raider a great series. I highly recommend this game! One last point worth mentioning is SLI support was definitely a bonus!
 
Sounds like this game is polarizing I dunno why. I can't max it out at 4k so playing at 1080p maxed out and even at 1080p graphics maxed out are amazing and make the experience that much more immersive and enjoyable. I am enjoying this game very much about 85% complete story missions, definitely pleasantly surprised. I get how people are complaining about not enough combat and useless upgrade system but that doesn't make this a bad game. Story, puzzles + graphics and platforming are what makes Tomb Raider a great series. I highly recommend this game! One last point worth mentioning is SLI support was definitely a bonus!

the tombs are great in this game...definitely one of the best parts...the underwater parts are also very nicely done...it's the main story that falls a bit flat but everything else is pretty good
 
the tombs are great in this game...definitely one of the best parts...the underwater parts are also very nicely done...it's the main story that falls a bit flat but everything else is pretty good

I think the people were overly harsh in their review of this game. It deserved better.
 
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It isn't a "bad" game, it just feels different parts of the team wanted different things. The total lack of combat in spite of 2/3 of collectibles and 75% of the skill tree focusing on it. Several areas were also clearly designed with shootouts in mind that never happened. Those things affect the pacing and it often feels fruitless powering up and gearing for encounters that don't happen.

Still, much like everything else right now - people are in a rush to declare everything to be the best or worst game ever. Shadow is a middle of the road game that doesn't deserve to be anywhere near either conversation. It's the "worst" of the 3 new'ish Tomb Raider games and that's about it.
 
It isn't a "bad" game, it just feels different parts of the team wanted different things. The total lack of combat in spite of 2/3 of collectibles and 75% of the skill tree focusing on it. Several areas were also clearly designed with shootouts in mind that never happened. Those things affect the pacing and it often feels fruitless powering up and gearing for encounters that don't happen.

Still, much like everything else right now - people are in a rush to declare everything to be the best or worst game ever. Shadow is a middle of the road game that doesn't deserve to be anywhere near either conversation. It's the "worst" of the 3 new'ish Tomb Raider games and that's about it.

Agree that people are quick to say its either the best or worst with little room for middle ground. I hope that it does good enough in sales to keep the series going. With Uncharted series done for now, I need my Tomb Raider games.
 
Yes - that is basically $1 per hour of main story + a few tombs of game play.

I have several more tombs & side missions to discover + relics, documents and other stuff to collect.
 
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I played another 10 hours in the last week & it was a blast since I have more skills & weapons now.

I went all the way back to the first camp & can't believe how much I stuff I left behind!

OK, I can believe it - I was hell bent on following the story & not deviating from that path.

I've unlocked most of the "outfits" now too. Some are only applied on "historic models".

Today, I played as the original Lara & it was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
9 patches in and still no RTX update in sight. I am beginning to fear this may turn into the HDR situation with Rise, where NVIDIA widely advertised them working with Nixxes for HDR support in the PC version and it never materializing.
 
It isn't a "bad" game, it just feels different parts of the team wanted different things. The total lack of combat in spite of 2/3 of collectibles and 75% of the skill tree focusing on it. Several areas were also clearly designed with shootouts in mind that never happened. Those things affect the pacing and it often feels fruitless powering up and gearing for encounters that don't happen.

Still, much like everything else right now - people are in a rush to declare everything to be the best or worst game ever. Shadow is a middle of the road game that doesn't deserve to be anywhere near either conversation. It's the "worst" of the 3 new'ish Tomb Raider games and that's about it.

Spot on. It's a solid title. I just feel like everything peaked on part two and when you lose the lead writer it goes some ways to what you said here.
 
Die hard Tomb Raider fan here. I own every TR game & plan to get thru the early ones that I never finished back in the day by the end of 2064.

I got stuck on so many puzzles back in the day in the early games - it basically ended my game. I'd build a new box & never go back to finish the game because my save games were basically gone. The best thing about gaming today is cloud saves & that I can go search for that ONE video & get past that ONE sticking point (ok, maybe 19 or 30 sticking points) and now I can finally FINISH the damn games!

RE: the shootouts - well, TR was never really about that early on - and it is not about that to me today - but I enjoy it. TR was all about exploration to me & weird ass puzzles & jumping & climbing levels that were WAY beyond Mario... IMO. However, I do love a good shootout, but I usually get that elsewhere - meaning in other games & what I expect from TR is some weird ass story / artifacts / exploration / climbing / jumping / swinging, etc.

The last 3 TR's surprised the hell outta' me. I expected to hate them & ended up loving them.

With THIS particular game - I finished the story & am back tracking to find all the stuff I missed & there is so much more to SEE when you slow down.

I am re-doing a lot of climbing levels to get one damn box that I missed, and it can get tedious - but I can clear those levels pretty easy now RE: climbing & rappelling & swinging - so i am enjoying the OTHER stuff I missed the first time thru because I was hellbent on the story goal. OTHER stuff being the NPC's and enviro...

Yeah, I'm prolly weird, but I will go back to the last 2 most recent games someday & enjoy the F outta' them & see 80% more stuff that I missed the first time.
 
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Nixxes and NVIDIA say they are still working to get ray tracing and DLSS into the game. Says "we look forward to you checking it out soon." This was on January 15. Maybe that is why we haven't seen a patch in a while? Still disappointed HDR never made it to the PC version of Rise.

 
It's worth $10 for the eye/ear candy alone. It's one of the best looking/sounding games of all time. It would make a great demo for those A/V rooms at Best Buy.
 
maybe RTX is killing performance and they still haven't found a way to fix it...
 
I recently finished this game and to me it's the worst of the series reboot. The game design was well done is some areas, but I found other areas very confusing to navigate. The markers for character locations and items never indicated if they are above or below ground which at times was annoying (exploring should be fun and not too tedious). Gameplay was pretty good, but I was getting bored about half way into it. Some of the tomb puzzles were great and kind of hard, but none of them were that exciting to solve. I skipped most of collectibles and other fluff since it was pointless.

I'll admit I'm getting tired of this game series. Any excitement I may have had for another game is gone.
 
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RTX patch made it at the last minute! I guess the GDC talk tomorrow will be relevant.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/750920/discussions/0/3362406825550848019/

I can finally finish playing this game! Important note for those of you still using SLI is that this is the first and only game with ray tracing so far that supports SLI. I'd be interested to see how it performs with SLI.
 
Yay?!?! I still have the game installed, so I'll have to give it a spin and see what kind of performance hit RTX gives. It's a game that can already bring potent hardware to its knees, so this should be interesting.
My wife doesn't really care for shooter type games (and she doesn't care about FPS like I do), so I might set her up for a playthrough on NG+ with the new settings enabled.
 
Interesting. I'll have to see how my RTX 2060 handles it with ray tracing on. I'll post benchmark results later tonight after I get home, they will be done at 1080p.

Edit: Benchmarks below. This was on my Gigabyte RTX 2060 OC, AMD 2600X, 8Gbx2@2666Mhz RAM.

Looks decent on medium and will leave at that.

High

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Medium

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Off

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Just tested my 2080Ti at 4K with RTX at Ultra.
The first scene basically pulled the same FPS as before. More or less always at 60 with the occasional 1-2 fps drops. No performance hit of note, though. The second scene immediately dropped me down to 48-49fps where it mostly stayed. That section used to stay around 60, too. The 3rd scene stayed at 60 until it zoomed in to the camp, where it went into the lower 50's. My average was 55 fps, so those folks that have Gsync monitors can probably average 60fps. At the same time...it doesn't really look all that different and DLSS makes the image blurrier. Enough where you'd likely notice even if you didn't know about that side effect. I guess it helps performance quite a bit, though.
Personally, I'd probably disable it and go back to my old settings. I don't know if I'd notice the RTX shadows (which require Ultra settings, too) and the DLSS blur is noticeable.
 
Even though I'm getting about 60FPS or more in my benchmarks at Ultra I'm experiencing huge performance hits when Lara enters a new area, especially outdoor areas. I'm hoping this will be smoothed out in a patch or driver update soon.
 
Even though I'm getting about 60FPS or more in my benchmarks at Ultra I'm experiencing huge performance hits when Lara enters a new area, especially outdoor areas. I'm hoping this will be smoothed out in a patch or driver update soon.
I get the same occasional hitching or weird stuttering when walking around the environment. This is with a 2080ti @ 3440x1440 with ray traced shadows at ultra. IMO the performance penalty is to high for the minimal visual upgrade.
 
I get the same occasional hitching or weird stuttering when walking around the environment. This is with a 2080ti @ 3440x1440 with ray traced shadows at ultra. IMO the performance penalty is to high for the minimal visual upgrade.

Agreed. I'm still hoping a patch or driver upgrade will smooth it out. Or maybe I'm just asking too much of my RTX 2060 at 1080p :/
 
I get the same occasional hitching or weird stuttering when walking around the environment. This is with a 2080ti @ 3440x1440 with ray traced shadows at ultra. IMO the performance penalty is to high for the minimal visual upgrade.

I think the RTX Shadows at Ultra look significantly better than non-RTX shadows. But yea the performance penalty is too much at 4K, I hope Nvidia improves RTX performance on the next generation of cards, because I do think the features we've seen in SotTR, Metro, BFV are definitely promising. They also need to allow us to use DLSS 2X because the performance targeted DLSS is trash.
 
I think the RTX Shadows at Ultra look significantly better than non-RTX shadows. But yea the performance penalty is too much at 4K, I hope Nvidia improves RTX performance on the next generation of cards, because I do think the features we've seen in SotTR, Metro, BFV are definitely promising. They also need to allow us to use DLSS 2X because the performance targeted DLSS is trash.

hopefully one day soon DLSS won't be necessary to run RT...DLSS causes blurring but it's needed to offset the performance penalty of RT...so you're screwed either way...now that Nvidia will be adding RT support to Pascal cards in April I'm wondering how Metro will look/perform for those with that generation of cards
 
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