Lara Croft: Intentionally flawed or just flawed?

[drakenabarion]

Facecount has nothing to do with the controversy behind the concept, it scaled with the times. Look at the Atari porn games, trying to decipher the giant pixels was essentially more archaic than doodling on a piece of paper, yet their concept raised more than eyebrows.
People heard of and saw Lara's huge breasts and her name spread like wildfire to well outside of its genre. That attributed to most of the title's success, even if it's a good game underneath.

Okay perhaps its just the nerdy people I knew back then, but their biggest wow factor for Tomb raider 1 and what made most of their eyebrows rise was the advanced use of quaternary math and linear algebra for the 3D...

Haha and yeah you are right about the porn thing. Has anyone ever seen Ascii Porn?

 

[TheRealCJ]

I've always seen characters like Lara Croft simply a refugee from a generation of gaming when plot had little relevence when compared to collecting macguffins.

It's like when they tried to give a complex backstory to Sonic, or Bionic Commando. When you consider that they're more-or-less a two-dimensional character, having a third dimension (metaphorically) bolted on seems jarring, considering past exploits.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Always felt combat in the TR games felt tacked on, I liked the puzzle solving. Yeah most of the puzzles are too easy but they are still fun to do.

As for Lara being amoral, I like to think we both live by the same philosophy; What I finds I keeps.

 

[squid5580]

The old testament is jam packed full of violence that is corrupting our youth. And how much fun would it be to have one guy chasing her the whole time? Or have no one chasing her? Just go in solve a few puzzles and leave. Sounds like a snoozefest to me. Having "armies" chasing her builds the tension and suspense. You know those things that make entertainment entertaining to most people.

Saying that killing lots of humans is good for all games because it raises the tension and suspense is a different argument to saying that killing people is always justified if they are in your way and anyway everybody else is doing it. I wonder what new argument you will come up with if I knock this one down. I'm beginning to suspect that you love the idea of killing people and don't want anybody to tell you that it is in any way a bad thing. :0

If people don't enjoy puzzle solving then they should fuck right off if they want to complain about how Tomb Raider is boring because it is the main element of the game. There are plenty of ways to introduce tension and suspense without being confronted by a man with a gun and the game has plenty. You might say that any way of increasing the tension is a good thing but some things are more appropriate than others.

I didn't say it was always justified. I did say it was justified in this case. She is out there raiding tombs minding her own business when an army starts attacking her. And then she is condemned for coming out on top. For being the winner.

And I do agree with you not every game needs to be violent to be good. Just that an Indiana Jones type game is going to need some type of conflict to keep the momentum. Otherwise you would just have Laura strolling leisurely along pickin up treasure at her own pace.

Edit* And I don't know about you but I am talking strictly about video games not reality.