GAME REVIEW: TOMB RAIDER

RATING: 7.5/10

IF YOU CAN LOOK PAST THE FEW ISSUES THIS GAME HAS, IT IS A FANTASTIC SINGLE-PLAYER EXPERIENCE.

Should there be a list of iconic video game characters, Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft would undoubtedly rank pretty high. And with good reason. She has been around for 17 years, through 9 previous games on multiple platforms. Can you think of a more popular female lead character in the history of gaming? Exactly.

So, given the recent tendency to reboot older franchises in both games and movies, it came as no big surprise Lara Croft was reborn, her story told from the very beginning. After all, how can one ignore one of the greatest characters in the industry’s history?

I must admit I never played any of the older titles. I didn’t own a console, and my PC at the time, a state-of-the-art-in-it’s-day Pentium 2, could barely get the games to run. And I was more interested in FPS’s anyway. Assassin’s Creed was the game that really got me interested in a sort of free-roam open adventure world. So when the new Tomb Raider was released, displaying a darker, grittier Lara (very Christopher Nolan I thought), I was immediately interested.

As the game starts, our young Lara is aboard a ship called the Endurance, looking for adventure. Things get going quickly. A violent storm dashes the ship against rocks, and Lara barely escapes to make it to the shore of a nearby island. But this island is not uninhabited. Men with guns (of course) patrol everywhere and some strange followers of a cult are up to something. Added to that, some pretty strange things are going down. Lara spends the game finding other survivors from the Endurance, finding ways to get off the island, and trying to figure out what on earth is going on around her.

After being shipwrecked on the island, Lara finds herself in a strange tomb

That’s all I will say about the pretty solid storyline. Pacing is good, and enough is added to the story at the right intervals to keep you going and interested. A brief backtrack via a camcorder will fill in some of the events before the game started.

Gameplay is standard third-person with the ability to swivel which shoulder you overlook. Lara will automatically take cover against walls and behind barriers when enemies are nearby. Most segments of the game give a fair amount of leeway with regards to how you go about your objective, and wandering off the standard road will often uncover handy boxes of supplies or one of the several optional ‘tombs’ for you to explore. If you get lost or confused at any point there is a handy ‘survival instincts’ button (LB in the Xbox) that will point out the direction of your objective, as well as valuable information around you. That button will prove to be useful, especially when you enter a tomb to plunder its hidden treasure.

The yellow ray of light shows your next objective when the 'Survival Instincts' button is pressed

On the subject, I must admit I enjoyed the puzzle-solving quality of the tombs, yet always found it odd the precious item Lara found at the end was never revealed. Each time she would reach into a lit up box and pull out…something. But we never know what.

At the start of the campaign Lara has nothing but her hands to defend herself, but as you make your way through she will uncover various weapons, ranging from the trustworthy bow and pistol to rifles and shotguns later on. Scattered all around the island you will find ammo for your artillery, as well as ‘salvage’. Salvage works as a sort of credit system in the game. Each crate you snap open awards a certain amount of salvage, which can be used to upgrade Lara’s weapons and other gear at resting camps (checkpoints). You will also be awarded skill points during the game, although I never figured out what exactly for. Every once in a while I just noticed they were there. These are used to upgrade…Lara, for lack of a better phrase. You can make her deadlier in combat, better at hunting, a faster climber…whatever.

Arrows can also be used to scale drops and pull over unstable structures

All pretty good, right? I think so. The game certainly feels good to play for the most part. Aiming is easy and comfortable, and there is nothing quite as rewarding as a neat headshot, especially with an arrow. Scaling rocks and large cliffs is also pretty fun, blighted only by the occasional strange camera angle. The ‘shanty town’ and ‘monastery’ sequences in the middle are breathtaking and had me hooked for hours. Little changes in the gameplay throughout the game add a nice touch, and solid voice acting makes it all the more believable. And thank you Square Enix for syncing the audio and mouth movements of the characters.

Like any game it isn’t perfect, and two specific areas stand out to me as weaknesses.

Pistol in hand, Lara enters the burning village to hunt her enemies

Sometimes the dynamics don’t quite make sense. Lara will jump as if she is attached to a rope, sailing through the air at a strange and unnaturally long arc to reach a cliff on the other side. And then two seconds later, a similar jump will be no more than two feet forward, followed by a long fall to death. When halfway through a long jump in more or less the right direction, Lara will suddenly correct her course mid-air – like a ball hitting the boundary of a track. It’s not a train smash, I admit, but it does detract from the game just a little.

Also, I have to say the small changes to the gameplay I mentioned earlier do become tiresome eventually. How many times can you navigate Lara down a slippery slope, shooting out barriers and missing trees? Only a few; then it becomes tedious. The changes are welcome, but overuse tires them out.

Ropes are regularly used to move across larger portions of the map

As for multiplayer, I had not tried it. I heard horror stories about the servers being a complete mess. What I do know is you can be either a survivor or a scavenger, and the two teams square off in different match types. So nothing ground-breaking (to my knowledge).

I have to add, however, that the good points of the game far outweighed the bad. Playing through the campaign was great fun, and I am excited for what the team at Square Enix will do next for our reborn heroine.

Overall, I am happy I played Tomb Raider. And you should play it too. It is a well told story with enough game time to make it worth your cash. Just look past the small bits that aren’t quite up to scratch and you will have a great time.

WHAT GOES ON TOUR

In 36 hours I will on my way for a short tour with K, Ray and The Bird to the Garden Route. It's sort of like going on holiday, except you take some music gear along and play in a few venues a couple of times. So I'm going to tell you a little about my packing methods for such a tour.

1. DRUMS
Duh. Not gonna get far without my instrument. Although I have a fairly large kit, I usually take a small one on the road. I'm not yet cool enough to have my own drum tech, and having less drums to pack up on tour can go a long way saving time and energy. Added to that, transport space is normally an issue anyway. I do pack a spare snare, just in case one decides to die on me. And I also pack a third snare head, for worse case scenerios. And then some small backups, like screws, duct tape, wingnuts, and so on.

2. CLOTHES
Call me adventurous, but I pack the bare minimum. I've never seen the point in taking a giant mound of clothes on tour. If anything goes horribly wrong, there is always somebody selling something somewhere.

3. FOOD
I eat badly on tour. Normally, we all do. It's so difficult to stand over a stove and cook a decent meal, and much more social to go out and have a pizza. I did once make a fire and cook some meat. Anyway, I take some Coke and biltong for the drive, and small things to nibble on during the day. And Coke. And also Coke. And plenty of Coke.

4. WIMPY
Rule 1 when Emil goes on tour: don't eat boring breakfast at home. Leave early and stop at a Wimpy for a cheesegriller breakfast. Mmmmmm, cheesegriller...

5. VISUAL AND LITERARY ENTERTAINMENT
I must admit, usually our tours are so busy there's little time for anything at all, other than play, eat and sleep (not nessecarily in that order). But when we do get some downtime that isn't spent dozing off, I like to read, and maybe play some PC games. DVD's are also great.

And that's it. Don't really need anything else. Except money.

I'll keep in touch during the tour. Usually something stupid\insane\hilarious happens and then I'll be first. To post about it.

Stay safe people!

Objective or subjective sport?

I have this strange thing that happens to me. When I start to like a particular sports personality, they start losing.

I was a late fan of Roger Federer (for those of you who live under a rock, he’s a very successful tennis champion). I had nothing against him at first, I just backed other players. But over time I started to see the elegance and beauty of his game, and so I decided he would be my new tennis hero. And around this time Nadal started pulling off all those wins against him.

Same with Formula One, which is my favourite TV viewing bar nothing. I like Alonso, he moves to Renault and has a slow car. I like Raikonnen; he leaves and goes to rallying. I don’t particularly like Hamilton; he races like a speed demon and performs excellently.

So I decided at the start of this year that I would watch sport purely objectively from now on. No more shouting for one man to ‘get destroyed’ in rugby or for a failed suspension on Hamilton’s car. I would just watch and enjoy. And I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner. It’s SO much more pleasant than supporting a specific team/player, because you can never ‘lose’.

It did, however, get me thinking: why is it that we are so quick to back a specific team or player? Why do we choose to be so subjective in our viewing?

Now there are some understandable reasons that need no explanation. If your country is playing against another, it makes sense that you would like your country to drop a bomb of pain and suffering on the opposing country’s useless and annoying team. And everybody loves to back the underdog. Any of you who watched the Wimbledon final between Pat Rafter and Goran Ivanisevic some years back will know what I’m talking about.

But this is not what I am referring to. I’m talking about always rotting for a specific driver, no matter what team he races for. And hating all the other teams - even though he raced for that one team last year and you loved them then, now they can sod off and die.

I’m talking about cheering when the opponent to your player makes a mistake, and jumping up screaming ‘break his legs!’ when your country’s rugby player tackles a member of the opposite team.

Mostly I am referring to soccer fans. They take the farthest. They talk about the team they support as ‘we’ and of course we all know about football hooligans. I can understand being disappointed by the team you support losing, but crying about it, drinking your sorrows away, attacking supporters of the opposite team? People, it’s a freaking sport!

Perhaps the reason for this show of wholeheartedly siding with a sports team that we dress like them and talk like we are in their team is because we actually yearn to be in a fight like that ourselves. Rob Bell once said that the reason so many people look for fights while driving or in a busy shopping mall is because they yearn to be in a fight, doing something that makes their blood rush and their adrenaline pump. I think he has a point. Most of us will never fight a war for our country, or defend our women and children from wild beasts in the forest. So this sport ‘fight’ is the closest we can get. We can immerse ourselves in this conflict.

I could be wrong of course. I often am. I would love to hear your thoughts if you have any.

Long lasting batteries

In my last post I sort of raved about the Blackberry Playbook, and I do still believe it's a fantastic device. In fact, I'm typing on it right now.

My Blackberry phone, though, while very functional, is not quite as stellar. In particular, the battery life was pretty dismal. And I'm not alone in this regard. One of best friends also has a Blackberry, and has to charge it every night. They seem to spend as much time plugged in as they do plugged out.

Lucky for me, then (and you, if you own a BB) I found an article on the net that offered some suggestions to improve battery. And it really does work.

So, if you have a BB and don't want to charge it all the time, here's what you do:

1. Set your screen brightness to 50%. Trust me, it's still enough to see clearly,

2. Turn off the option to automatically dim backlight - this uses extra CPU, hence extra battery power.

3. Uninstall those pointless apps you downloaded for free. Seeriously, are you even using them? All they do is take up memory and battery power.

4. Hold in your menu key on the main screen to see what apps are running in the background. Close any you don't need. Whatsapp is notoriously bad at killing battery life behind the scenes.

5. Tell your social media not to update every 15 minutes. As a default apps like Twitter and Facebook want to scan for updates every few minutes. Changing this to every few hours (or even only when you open the app) will drastically improve battery life. I know you're probably thinking: how will I survive without regular social updates! But I'm willing to bet you probably open up Facebook and Twitter regularly anyway, despite the updates. When you open it up, you'll see your updates.

I've set Facebook to update every 3 hours and Twitter to update only when I open the app. Coupled with the backlight mentioned in points 1 and 2, and the lack of stupid apps taking up memory, my battery life has literally doubled. That means I charge it half much.

If you don't own a BB there's no hope for you anyway so sorry, no help offered here ;-)

Holidays are upon me, so I'll be posting some music related tutorial-like material over the next few weeks.

Stay safe people!

Playbooking

I recently acquired a Blackberry Playbook.

After the Ipad arrived, a sudden host of competitors appeared out of nowhere with alternatives, usually at a lower price I might add. The Playbook is one of them. And I don't care much for people who say they all copied Apple's design. That's like saying all PC towers cannot be the same shape. The way I see it, a small rectangle is the best shape for a tablet. And besides, what's more important is what it does, right?

So how does the Playbook 'measure up'?

Well, let's start with the things I like. At 7 inches it's small, and that's handy for the businessman. It's has an excellent multitasking facility - you can comfortably run any 5 programs at once and the performance won't even be slightly affected. HD screen, excellent sound quality, lightweight...these are all good points,

What do I really like? Well, it comes loaded with a basic version of Microsoft Office, and that is heaven for anybody who writes a lot or works with excel spreadsheets on a regular basis. Sure, you can buy apps for the app stores for other tablets but this one is already on there.

Messages can all be centralized into one folder - from as many sources as you wish. Facebook, Twitter, email...all in one place. And you can choose to view them separately or all together. Sweet.

The real clincher is the Blackberry Bridge facility. Connect to your Blackberry phone and you can manipulate either device with the other, view your BBM\emails\contacts, and best of all, use your Blackberry's data plan to surf the net free of charge (if you have one of those Blackberry data plans).

Downsides? Well, the app store isn't as large as Apple's but they are incorporating Android apps in on a daily basis, so it's getting there. And...well that's the thing. I can''t think of a downside. It's sleek, fast, reliable and easy to use.

Perhaps it is fair to say that you really maximize the use if you have a Blackberry phone. But even without said phone, there's still plenty to be had on the device. And its cheaper than that damn Ipad.

Should you buy one? If you have a Blackberry phone, yes, no question. If you don't, look around, but I really do think it's a serious contender. I would have it over an Ipad even without the phone. Next year RIM are said to be launching a 3G one. That will be fantastic.

Right, my customer advice for the week is done. What else is happening?

I have a tour in a few weeks with K, Ray and The Bird - love touring with them. After that a production for a week and a half, and then my first drum workshop at Paul Bothner Music. More on that closer to the time.

Peace and love.

I'm blogging new style

Hello all.

Once again I have been missing in action for ages but no more! For I now possess a BlackBerry Playbook.

Hopefully this will make constant communication easier.

For now all I will say is school ends in one week - which means lessons end in one week. Holiday beckons!

Hello again...

Goodness gracious, it's been forever since I've last written on here!

My apologies. I have no excuses, other than I have been busy with work, and simply haven't made time to sit down and write something. But now I will.

Since April, a whole lot has been happening which I should have mentioned on here. My band, K, Ray and The Bird, released their second album at the end of May. We had a great album launch, and the album has been bubbling along quite nicely since then. Below is a link if you wanna check it out and hear some of the songs.

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/KRayandTheBird

We actually just returned froma mini tour up the Garden Route, and we're gonna make a mini documentary about what goes on off stage between band members. It's worth watching, and I'll post some links as the episodes get uploaded.

Other than that, I have been lucky enough to be involved with a few great acts, and I am also working on some new ideas that will hopefully spread the love of playing drums. Cryptic, I know, but let me first finalize my plans before sharing them.

Lastly, I have exmas in 2 weeks - my last set of exams if I pass everything. So I am trying my best to concentrate on studying as much as possible. Weird how difficult that becomes when the finish line is right in front of you.

Anyway, hope you are all well, and we'll chat again soon!

Good luck to Mark Haze in the Idols finals tonight. In my humble opinion, you deserve the win dude.