I played it for a while, really quite enjoyed it, not picked it up for a few days though. However, I found myself going from moments of "wow, this is cool" when new skills / areas opened up to...well, profuse swearing at the screen during those quick-time POS cut-scenes.
So often, I mean, most of the time, pressing the required key simply does not work. I found that, after "failing" once, if I started pressing the key before it told me to, then it'd work. Quite glitchy and the FPS would jump about a lot too, possibly the two are linked.
On other cut-scenes you have to dodge stuff, yet while you seem to be running in the usual way, with the usual control, you find your mouse is actually disabled and you have to steer using the left/right keys, mouse is just for looking around. Little things like this are a nightmare.
You also get the classic one used by a lot of games... You enter a situation gun drawn, prepared and ready, and you suddenly cut to a scene where you just stumbed forward blindly and unprepared. Games that use the whole "regardless of how you just played, we're going to pretend you screwed up that bit" scripted scenes. I Hate them.
It's like the cut-scenes were done by an entirely different team. If there was a cheat to skip / auto complete them I would have applied it day one. The cut-scenes should just be either plot devices just to be viewed, or simple fun breaks after maybe a tough boss encounter for example, just my view. If there IS an interactive element, it should take into account how the player was actually playing at the time of the encounter. I.e. you just run into the trap blind, you maybe get a chance to react in the cut-scene and save yourself, you go in prepared and the cut-scene plays out you "winning" with no input required as you were prepared.
It's doubly frustrating as the rest of the game is pretty good fun, I've enjoyed the exploring and steady progress with new euipment and abilities. There have also been some genuine heart ponding moments, climbing a particular comms tower springs to mind *shudder* lol
Game performance has also been boosted a lot by recent patches and driver updates. TressFX is impressive, more for its potential that its fly-away hair here, but interesting none the less. Looks like PhysX for the massess...
Btw: has anyone with an SLI / Xfire setup noticed that TressFX appears to use just one GPU, much like PhysX does? I see and extra 10% or so load on my 2nd GPU consistantly.
Oh, ran the benchmark with everything as high as it will go at 1200p and see a minimum of 60fps, which is pretty damn good. In game things are generally a lot better.
Btw 2: does anyone here think that late-game Lara would own Prophet? I admit, I felt more awsome as Lara owning a huge group of bad-guys with an old WW2 Rifle than I ever did as Prophet. Consider too that in such "ambush" scenarios in Tomb Raider, you're often artificially routed to the spot initially too - why do they do that? Basically, you HAVE to stand and fight. I remember I died in the first of those, silly me, I tried to move to cover after I was ambushed, but was routed to the spot until I'd dispatched a certain number of the bad guys.
Anyway, I ranted and rambled a bit there didn't I?
TL DR - A fun game, but with some immense frustrations thrown in along the way.
Scoob.
