Tomb Raider PC Review

Lara's beginning as a Kick-Ass Archaeologist

Tomb Raider offers players intense hair effects with AMD's Tress FX effect, but it will tax your framerate.

The original Tomb Raider was released back in 1996 and was one of the first Indiana Jones esc games to hit the streets. Lara Croft is back in this prequel and she’s not as top heavy as she was in franchise's previous titles, so for those looking for a chick with knockers bigger than her head you’re out of luck. Tomb Raider delivers a fantastic experience all around hindered by some graphical issues.

In Tomb Raider you'll progress through the campaign you go through places called camps which have you kill hordes of enemies and wild animals. Your main enemies are the Solarii which are your human enemies in the game who have inhabited the island you are on. In the camps you will find scrap metal which can upgrade your weapons increasing their damage, range, capacity, or special ability. To upgrade your gear you will need to be at a camp fire, however some maps are very large which makes getting to campfires a long trek across the map just to modify your weapons. The campfires also allow you fast travel to previous camps you have visited in the game. Mixed in throughout the camps are puzzles or obstacles that you'll need to perform some sort of platforming to get around.

The bow and arrow was our favorite weapon to use as it killed enemies silently.

The weapons in Tomb Raider are powerful and fun to use as there are a wide array them to choose from. We liked using the bow and arrow we found it was great at long range and it allowed us to get one-hit headshot kills. The bow also let us get silent kills which made being stealthy easy instead of having to use Lara’s other weapons since those weapons are guns. Tomb Raider starts you out with the bow and arrow and you’ll pick up an assault rifle, a shotgun, and pistol along your journey. The shotgun is badass at close range and it picks apart enemies quickly and easily. Lara’s pistol is alright, but we didn't care too much for it as we didn’t see it offering a real advantage over the bow and arrow or the other weapons.

Tomb Raider’s graphics are beautiful and it is definitely a title that will push your GPU. When testing the game’s video capabilities we found that it ran fantastically on our rig, which has an overclocked Intel 2700k processor and a 660 Ti video card. We averaged 60fps in the games high-setting preset at 1920x1080 with v-sync enabled. We also tested the game on an AMD 6850 and averaged 45fps on the high setting preset. The textures in the game are all high resolution which is a plus as many games today have some low-texture spots. A few times, however we ran into a few graphical glitches where the plants shadows were rendered incorrectly as they were constantly flashing. We only experienced this on my 660 Ti, so this is mostly an Nvidia problem. The game also stopped working sometimes and it seemed to crash for no reason on me which was kind of annoying have to restart it many times during my playthrough.

There's plenty of rock climbing that will need to be done in Tomb Raider.

We ran the game on Ultimate setting with AMD’s TressFX enabled and saw that the framerate on the 660 Ti was cut in half as we averaged only 30fps on this setting at 1920x1080. TressFX is a GPU hog, so we don’t recommend using it, as it’s the main culprit of framerate drops and dips in Tomb Raider. Every time there was a close up of Lara’s hair the framerate dipped to an unplayable 15 to 20fps.

The game only took us 9 hours to complete and it allows you to go back and roam around the island after you've finished the campaign. Once you've finished the campaign you can go back to the island and search around it for collectibles and fight some Solarii too.

For those who like collectibles there are plenty of treasures to scour the camps for. The game has achievements for collecting the treasures, so those who like to dig around for goodies will like this aspect of Tomb Raider. We liked collecting them as they looked cool as it gave me an incentive to search the camps explore the island.

The Mulitplayer is where this game is flat out horrible and we didn’t enjoy it very much at all. Tomb Raider has a capture the flag mode which has players play on two different sides one side being the Solarii and the other being Lara’s crew. The two factions fight each other in each multiplayer round and the game definitely favors Lara and her mates over the evil Solarii because the Solarii lose almost every match we played. There is a capture the flag game type which gives Lara’s crew the ability to stay alive on the ground and shoot their foes while they are downed basically like the Last Stand perk in COD. Lara’s side can also heal these players while the Solarii don’t have this perk at all. The end result is that the Solarii get smashed in multiplayer games and this puts a blemish on the otherwise fantastic game.

Tomb Raider is a great game and is one of the best games we've played, so far this year. We enjoyed the awesome platforming and solid gameplay mechanics of Tomb Raider. The story was kind of mediocre, so don’t expect anything fantastic like Uncharted or Bioshock here. This game has put Tomb Raider back on the map and has made it relevant again and it’s a kickass prequel everyone should play.

-Chris Zele

Verdict: 9

(+) Weapons that are fun to use; Great platforming; Good replay value.

(-) Unbalanced Multiplayer.

DMC: Devil May Cry PC Review

New Dante Same Old Gameplay

Dante's back with his high flying acrobatic sword slashing this time with an emo twist.

Capcom’s popular hack-in-slash action game Devil May Cry series debuted back in 2001. This DMC is made by Ninja Theory instead of Capcom, but fans worried that the series will be tarnished shouldn’t be as this game is in good hands. The last Devil May Cry game came out back in 2008 and the newest edition to the franchise is a reboot and has a new story of Dante and Virgil in a Punk-Emo world. You play as Dante a Nephilim a half demon half human who is on a mission to kill all demons in the world. Dante looks completely different in this game as he has brown instead of white hair and he wears clothes that look like he’s going to a heavy metal concert. This DMC is different from the other DMC games as it is made by a new developer Ninja Theory. The series is known for its badass weapons and insane kills and that hasn’t changed here, but this game is compatible with keyboard and mouse, a good controller like Xbox 360’s is a must.

Like previous titles, the game puts gamers in a closed world for each mission and has you killing waves of enemies and along the way it mixes in some platforming. Devil May Cry also gives you a variety of weapons to kill the barrages of demons you will face. You’ll receive Souls and Red Orbs for killing demons and you’ll get more of these as your kill streaks get larger. The Souls you collect can then be used to purchase skill upgrades while the Red Orbs can be used to buy item such as health bars and revival orbs. At the end of the each mission you are given upgrade points for the amount of Souls you have collected and you can spend them on upgrading your weapons and abilities.

Like the other games, you’re armed with your trusty Rebellion sword and pistols Ebony and Ivory. As you progress through the game you’ll pick up more weapons along the way. These weapons are badass and you’ll have the option of upgrading them via Souls as you accumulate them from killing enemies and completing missions. We liked the Osiris the best a large blue demonic scythe that allowed us to kill multiple enemies with ease and we liked killing them with our Prop move which allowed us to throw our enemies into the air and spin the Osiris to chop them up like they were in a meat shredder. The Eryx is also one of our favorites and gives Dante flaming demon fists which you can use to uppercut enemies and smash them into the ground. These demonic fists also made it very easy to juggle multiple enemies at once which made control large crowds quick and easy.

There's plenty of platforming to do in DMC just like in previous games.

The game took us 11 hours to complete which is above average compared to most games coming out these days. Once you complete the campaign you’ll unlock a harder difficulty called Devil Trigger mode. Like previous iterations, DMC also lets you go back through the story with all of your upgrades intact. Devil May Cry also has secret keys that you can find to open special doors. The doors challenge you to kill a group of enemies quickly and reward you with bonus souls for doing so. The game gets a little boring through the last the last half because you just fight mobs of the same enemies over and over. Unfortunately the game also doesn’t offer much replay value after you’ve beaten it as DMC is a very linear game and you usually have only two path options to choose from. DMC also doesn’t have multiple endings to see or alternate choices to make in its’ story that make you want to replay the game.               

The Devil May Cry series is known to be tough as hell, but this iteration wasn’t very hard and we found ourselves blazing through it, while you will die a few times it’s not frustrating. The game actually had a good balance of difficulty.

The sound in Devil May Cry is fantastic and we enjoyed everything in it from its’ voice acting to the its’ Dubstep and heavy metal soundtracks. The sound effects were crisp and clean as we tore our enemies to shreds and well executed.

The Osiris was by far our favorite weapon in the game as it demolished enemies quickly and easily.

Devil May Cry is a game that it needs to be played with a controller which we didn’t like because we prefer gaming with a mouse and keyboard. For the most part the controls were alright on mouse and keyboard, but half way through the game we got to a boss battle where they were way to cumbersome. We found ourselves have to run with WASD and having to press E and F and space bar all at the same time which was frustrating to say the least. 

Visually, the graphics in Devil May Cry do a good job of setting up the Punk-Emo vibe the game is going for. The enemies look great as they are all done up in gold, black, and gray color schemes and they stand out against Dante’s black and red attire. We didn’t like its heavy amount of the motion blur the game uses and there is no way to disable it and it makes the game not look as good as result. Luckily the game runs pretty well. We were able to max it out at 1080p on our overclocked Sandy Bridge system with a Geforce 660Ti with framerates around the 180FPS mark.

Devil May Cry is a game that we loved, but be ready to invest some money into a PC controller if you don’t already have one. Because you’re often fighting the same hordes of enemies, its’ combat can get repetitive. Regardless, we still highly recommend it as it is one of the best third-person action games on the PC we’ve played in a long time.

-Chris Zele

Verdict: 8

(+) Killer weapons; Great difficulty balance, Fantastic sound.

(-) Bad keyboard and mouse controls; Annoying motion blur, Very linear.