Games Inbox: Are people still excited for Tomb Raider games?

The Monday letters page discusses the often impenetrable decision making of video game publishers, as one reader is disappointed by the Switch 2’s second year.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Nostalgic raid
I see the new Tomb Raider: Catalyst game (not the remake) has been delayed until 2028, which is a bit of an upset. However, I also notice that less people than I thought seem to care and there’s generally not much discussion of the two games online, even though I thought the trailers for both were pretty good.

It’s eight years since Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and not everyone like that one, or that whole trilogy in general. It wasn’t that big a hit either, or Square Enix wouldn’t have sold it off. I think the games were generally good, but not that much like Tomb Raider, if that makes sense. So I feel the series has probably lost a lot of fans over the years, and there’s probably a lot of people that don’t feel there’s been a proper Tomb Raider for a long time now.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug but is it going to be enough for the remake to put the series back in the top-hitters again? I hope it does, but I have my doubts as to whether the original gameplay of Tomb Raider has much appeal nowadays. That’s why the reboot trilogy turned it into a generic action adventure and why it’s lost its popularity. It’s a difficult situation.
Gantz

Toilet break
To be honest, the idea of ad-based streaming games sounds like it’d be a great deal for us and a terrible one for advertisers. As far as I understand, all you have to do is go put the kettle on for the five minutes the ads are playing at the beginning and they never come back until you turn the game off. That sounds almost too good to be true to me.

Maybe they’ll try and run them while pressing the pause button, but who wants to be playing The Witcher, or some other medieval game, and suddenly you get an advert for Daz come up. Sounds awful but I guess if you’re getting a £60 game for free in return it might be worth it.
Menson

Third time lucy
I don’t think even Nintendo would be mad enough to pass up the opportunity to have a special edition Switch 2 for Zelda: Ocarina Of Time and/or the 40th anniversary general. Still, it’s going to be very odd seeing Nintendo’s big Christmas game being a 28-year-old game that most of their younger fans have no idea about.

There’s still a chance of an unannounced game lurking in the shadows but I don’t think there’s any chance of it being anything big. Maybe The Duskbloods will come out around the same time – sometime around Halloween seems a good idea – but it still seems an odd line-up to me.

It’s not been a great second year for the Switch 2, after the first one was already a bit suspect. There’s still a hope that there’ll be something good in the first half of next year, but when are they going to announce that?
Coolsbane

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Yearly fee
140 quid for FIFA, sorry, EA Sports FC 27 Ultimate Plus edition is just mind boggling. Obviously, people can spend their money on exactly what they want to, and If someone is big into FUT then it probably is worth it in the long run. But, blimey, that is a big chunk of money to shell out in one go for a video game, especially if you’re on a budget, like me.

The recent games haven’t been particularly well received, either. Used to be a big thing each year when the two footy games were due for release. Since PES morphed into eFootball, and with the most recent EA iterations receiving generally mixed reviews, I’ve kinda lost interest.

My personal faves of recent times (Xbox One/PlayStation 4 era) are PES 2016, PES 2019, and FIFA 17. I still play these games fairly regularly. They’re cheap as chips on physical nowadays. One of the many reasons to have a machine with a disc drive.
Paul C.

Don’t miss Gaming news! Add us as a Preferred Source

As a loyal GameCentral reader, we want to make sure you never miss our articles when searching for gaming stories. We have all the latest video games news, reviews, previews, and interviews, with a vibrant community of highly engaged readers.

Click the button below and tick Metro.co.uk to ensure you see stories from us first in Google Search.

Add us as a Preferred Source

Advertisement

Repeat play
I’ve started playing through the The Witcher 3 again, as I like a long open world game to play over weekends. I forgot how dark this game can be with the Bloody Baron and the Crones. As with all of these types of games, the side quests can be a bit boring but overall, I’m loving it all over again and Gwent is still the best thing ever.

The Ciri sections are absolutely awful though and I remember hating them when I first played through the game, but they seem even worse now. I know it will be different for The Witcher 4 but hopefully they can iron out the kinks and it will be another great game.
Simon

Different worlds
That list of the best-selling remakes was interesting because it yet again shows why companies make decisions that hardcore gamers think are wrong. The Last Of Us Part 1 might have seemed pointless to us but it actually sold really well, so it was easy money for Sony and something that a lot of people were prepared to pay for.

The most surprising thing to me was Dead Space. EA specifically said it was a flop and dropped the entire franchise over it and yet it sold over 4 million copies?! Were they expecting it to outsell GTA or something? What could they have possibly been expecting from a remake of a game that originally only sold 1 million copies?

So I guess the lesson is that sometimes companies make sensible business decisions and sometimes they make crazy stupid ones. Either way, what ordinary gamers want, or think is a good idea, has nothing to do with it. A lot of the time it seems what we want, and how we think things should be handled, is the opposite to what actually happens.

I guess that’s just business though. We want good games and they want maximum profits; those two goals don’t easily go together.
Focus

Say nothing
So I see Sony handled that PSN outage in their usual style: by saying absolutely nothing and leaving everyone wondering what’s going on. It’s really hard not to get the impression that Sony hates its customers and will do anything to avoid talking to them.

They act like some Victorian era toff that won’t speak to the lower orders. It really is a shame Xbox is so useless because there’s such an open goal there for someone else to come in there and offer a real alternative to PlayStation.
Kimble

Indie July
Just checked out a couple of new indie games on Steam, with Rubinite being a very promising demo of a very decent looking action adventure game with similarities to Zelda: A Link To The Past. The premise is a dark fairy tale type setting, taking control of a princess type character trying to reclaim a fallen kingdom using a top-down perspective.

It looks to me that the exploration is there, but with more preference given to high-focused action, like a Soulsborne variation of some sorts, which to me is the perfect blend of gaming art and mechanics for this day and age. Which leads me on to another interesting style of gameplay for a title called Dive Or Die: Children Of Rain.

I have always been a fan of Lovecraftian style games and they have come in a variety of forms with varying success. The setting is an apocalyptic rain-flooded world with just mountain top islands left and an eldritch deity to appease. The game requires you dive into something called an abyssalpPool for a variety of survival reasons.

It could be like a cross between Subnautica or Dave The Diver and Cult Of The Lamb. But it’s the mysterious deep which fascinates me in this game, where your management of oxygen, sanity level, and health is needed as you explore the depths, avoiding creepy sea creatures. On top of this you must rise onto the land and upgrade your surroundings for survival, but at a cost of making some dark decisions involving crew sacrifices to the dark deity.

These two games are exactly why indie gaming is the place to be for all the unusual, surreal, and terrifying scenarios, without the need to have the experience dampened by a lack of money and the need to have mass sales to survive. Just a good imagination and the skills and capabilities to develop these into a successful game, without too much pressure. Of course, you also need the important word of mouth to get your title out there into the world and have the income to create more titles later.
Alucard

Inbox also-rans
Does anyone think Microsoft might end up cancelling Forza Horizon 6 for PlayStation 5? They haven’t mentioned it once since they went back to having exclusives, and the summer State of Play was the obvious time. If they haven’t cancelled it, this is the worst marketing campaign ever.
Korbie

So what do we think is going to be the next remake of Assassin’s Creed, now that we know Black Flag has been a big hit? I really hope it’s Assassin’s Creed 2.
Toad

GC: The only rumour has been for the first game, but who knows how the success of Black Flag might influence Ubisoft’s plans.

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.

You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.

MORE: Games Inbox: Is the EA Sports FC 27 Ultimate Plus Edition worth it?

MORE: Games Inbox: Is buying second-hand video games going to end?

MORE: Games Inbox: Which is better out of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3?