The Falconeer vs Tomb Raider
The Falconeer
The Falconeer is a third-person adventure game focusing on aerial combat on the back of a warbird. Best played with a controller, the game features a massive, steampunk-themed open ocean-covered world to explore, thrilling dogfights to dive into, and quests to complete.The Falconeer features a massive open world that the player can explore to his/her heart’s content! There are many different islets featuring various points-of-interest like fortified locations, seachantress, and weaponshop that players can land on, but the most important one is probably the settlements. Here, players can take quests; buy stuff like weapons, serums to enhance your warbird, permits, etc from vendors; complete bounties, and even buy a new warbird once the pre-requisites (such as completing a time trial race within just 30 seconds) are fulfilled.
Now, in terms of combat, I’m a bit on the fence about The Falconeer. Personally, I find the controls in The Falconeer to feel rather awkward. Aiming is also very hard in this game, not because you have to aim ahead like what you’ll typically do in a tank-based game like World of Tanks but rather, aim at a fast-moving target. The crosshair will jump all over the place (if not disappear outright) during a dogfight. At one point, the crosshair disappeared entirely, turning my warbird into a sitting duck. Flying isn’t as stable as I’d like as well. Maybe this is done in the name of realism, but I’ve noticed that sometimes my warbird will dip and fly lower for no reason.
The Falconeer has some incredible, unique world-building complete with beautiful graphics and atmosphere. The only unfortunate thing about the game is probably the controls. It’s very hard to properly navigate your warbird, let alone engage in intense aerial combat when it feels like I’m trying to aim at fast-moving targets while being completely drunk. So, I’d say the game might be suitable for a more hardcore, high-skilled player base but not the average gamer.
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider (the 2013 version) has been touted by many as the best Tomb Raider of all time. The game doesn't only introduce a series of exciting changes to the usual adventure-based gameplay including a fun survival element, which will see you salvage resources to upgrade Lara's tools and weapons, a ton of much improved puzzles, incredibly intuitive combat and a wide range of mysterious tombs to explore. The game even includes a new multiplayer game mode which will allow you to work as a team to sruvive either as Lara's Shipmates or Yamatai's Scavengers.Best of all, the game has a really heartwarming and intense origin story about how Lara had to adapt to her circumstances and become the hardened survivor that you know today.
If you are a fan of Lara Croft or even if you're simply looking to get into the franchise, this is definitely the game to play.