Zero Punctuation: Rise of the Tomb Raider

[deadish]

If it's all about the lifestyle, why does the gender matter? I'm a white, blonde guy, but my vicarious power fantasy can take the form of a woman, a dark haired person, an asian person, or all the above. As long as they're doing things that I'd like to imagine myself doing, that's the vicarious part.

Ya ... but that's kind of you. I believe >90% of men do not think that way.

Could be, but I feel like if it is, that's just underexposure. Female gamers have had to resort to it for decades, given the meager selection of female characters to choose from. If they found a way to enjoy it, I'm sure most guys can too

Personally I doubt that. Vicarious entertainment doesn't work that way.

Now I'm sure there is a fraction of women that aspire towards the "action hero" lifestyle but IMHO they are a small minority.

Vicarious entertainment does exist for women - e.g. Hunger Games/Sex and the City/Twilight - but they mostly focus on the "human/social element" ... and clothes.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Not sure if I'm going to try out this iteration, sounds like they've still got most of what I disliked from the first game.
- Giant set pieces falling apart around you in such a convenient way that they leave you exactly one linear path to leave through
- Setting things up to make you feel protective of Lara, and as such they'll beat her up to try to make you feel sorry for her (as opposed to making a character you'd want to be)
- Lara's voice

I liked the first game, but I'm not sure I can deal with another game full of these

I wonder at times if a female Indiana Jones can even work (for long) ...

As pointed out in Plinkett's "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" review, Indiana Jones is vicarious entertainment - Indiana Jones as a character cannot be old; No one likes being old.

It also doesn't work when the protagonist is the opposite gender to the viewer/player.

Who exactly is Laura suppose to appeal to? Women who like adventure? How big a market is that?

I would love to see a Tomb Raider game where Lara is old and can't jump 5 metres in the air. No shooting, running, killing. Just exploration and raiding tombs, like the game is supposed to be. The limitations of an old Lara would hopefully force that reversal.

I couldn't care less about Lara's "character". When they started introducing that aspect into the game (along with the excessive gunplay) is when the series started to decline.

 

[Johnny Thunder]

I don't see how a "generic white male protagonist" allows a player to vicariously live an adventure more so then playing as Lara does, that makes no sense at all.

Probably because you just made that up. Where did I even say something remotely close to that? And here's something else: if you believe that old Lara was a 'one-dimensional sex puppet' it's obvious that that is the only thing that YOU are willing to see.

 

[deadish]

Not saying deep and interesting characters are bad.

Just Indiana Jones isn't about that. The characters are intentional shallow - every movie in the trilogy had an ambiguously evil bad guy that you can easily hate.

Now that I think of it, maybe you're right. Because Get Jinxed is lifestyle end to end, and it's awesome. I have no clue what Jinx has in mind and why she does all this, and yet. So at least lifestyle matters a lot.
But on the other hand I'm not convinced on the gender part. For the same reason: Get Jinxed is awesome. Who's the TA and why they like it?

Now, there is vicarious entertainment (frequently with a simple plot) then there is non-vicarious entertainment (of which there are many kinds).

One kind of the latter would be the Resident Evil movies. I have not watched any of those but if I had to guess (based of the movie posters) ... they are to men, what Magic Mike are to women. Ya ...

So I suppose Tomb Raider can work (I concede) ... just not in the way the more political correct people like it to ...

 

[deadish]

I would love to see a Tomb Raider game where Lara is old and can't jump 5 metres in the air. No shooting, running, killing. Just exploration and raiding tombs, like the game is supposed to be. The limitations of an old Lara would hopefully force that reversal.

I couldn't care less about Lara's "character". When they started introducing that aspect into the game (along with the excessive gunplay) is when the series started to decline.

That would bomb pretty hard. LOL

No one wants to watch an old lady stumbling about the entire game.

IMHO the original Tomb Raider was successful because it was very novel when it came out. A full 3D world (back when 3D was new) that you can explore. Graphically it was groundbreaking. It's engine was very efficient, I even got it to run on a 486 (when it's min req was a Pentium). That ... and boobs.

Its sequels ... the problem was it was more of the same. The developers didn't really step up their game and people got tired of it.

 

[Flames66]

From the clips I have seen, I have two questions.

1. Why is she breathing like she just did the 100m dash for the last train home from the London Marathon while standing in a nice comfy office talking about artifacts and such?

2. Why is she trying to sneak around undetected in a dark forest at night, with a glow stick tied to her arse?

 

[1981]

I enjoyed the reboot purely for the combat and exploration. The QTE's were a pain, and I don't usually feel strongly about them. I used to actually like them. Not a fan of the character or voice acting either.

As pointed out in Plinkett's "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" review, Indiana Jones is vicarious entertainment - Indiana Jones as a character cannot be old; No one likes being old.

Ezio was in his fifties in Revelations. Altair was so old that at the end of the sequence where he is a playable character he sits down and dies of old age. That was one of the best moments in the game. Geralt is said to be around 100 years old and he looks about fifty or sixty in the last game.

hey another ZP thread devolved into a gender equality cripple fight

Do you have anything to contribute to this discussion? Like have you played the game? If not, are you at all interested in it? Tits or ass?

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

I would love to see a Tomb Raider game where Lara is old and can't jump 5 metres in the air. No shooting, running, killing. Just exploration and raiding tombs, like the game is supposed to be. The limitations of an old Lara would hopefully force that reversal.

I couldn't care less about Lara's "character". When they started introducing that aspect into the game (along with the excessive gunplay) is when the series started to decline.

That would bomb pretty hard. LOL

No one wants to watch an old lady stumbling about the entire game.

IMHO the original Tomb Raider was successful because it was very novel when it came out. A full 3D world (back when 3D was new) that you can explore. Graphically it was groundbreaking. It's engine was very efficient, I even got it to run on a 486 (when it's min req was a Pentium). That ... and boobs.

Its sequels ... the problem was it was more of the same. The developers didn't really step up their game and people got tired of it.

Survival Horror is very popular and those involve a very vulnerable, slow-moving protagonist.

I like to think Tomb Raider was popular because it combined exploration and challenge - finding a route to a higher ledge which at first glance appears unreachable. Now Tomb Raider has Lara moving faster, jumping higher but that challenge aspect has gone.

 

[LisaB1138]

I wonder at times if a female Indiana Jones can even work (for long) ...

As pointed out in Plinkett's "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" review, Indiana Jones is vicarious entertainment - Indiana Jones as a character cannot be old; No one likes being old.

It also doesn't work when the protagonist is the opposite gender to the viewer/player.

Who exactly is Laura suppose to appeal to? Women who like adventure? How big a market is that?

As a woman, I can promise you that adventure was what drew me to Tomb Raider back in the day. Lara took me to fantastic places and did fantastic things. She endlessly interesting simply because she was an enigma. I can also promise you that Tomb Raider lost my custom with TReboot. It was so horribly written, and it sounds like they're still writing horribly. Lara became ordinary. Mediocre. Desperate.

And it does work when the character is the opposite gender, at least for people who haven't been raised to view the opposite gender as "less" than their actual gender. Women who play games have no choice but to play as men if they want to play more than two games a year, at least those of us who don't like "create your own character" type games. If you want a true story-driven game (which are getting to be fewer and fewer,) most involve a male protagonist.

I'm not complaining, of course. I enjoy playing as Batman/Kratos/Joel/Dante because the games are fun for me.

Guys, on the other hand, have a harder time playing as a female character. I'm not trying to accuse anyone of being a HORRIBLE SEXIST or anything, but I have a feeling years of subtle signals have communicated that women are "less" and therefore playing as a female protagonist is less than ideal. It probably doesn't help when most female characters are vixens, victims or helpers, not exactly the self-image fantasy for people who prefer to think of themselves as the strong, independent type.

The irony is that the original Lara WAS the strong, independent type, but that wasn't the takeaway for the character.

 

[The Purple Grape]

So its the same as the last, Rise of Gaming's Blandest Character. They focused on so much not being 'sexist' and being 'progressive' they forgot to add a personality and some flair to the character. At least Keeley Hawes cracked a joke. Just continue the trope of the female character getting 3 times more shit kicked out of them ( to substitute any character) and all in way more close up and gratuitous detail?
When did standards for character writing in games become lower than they were? Why does Rhianna Pratchett( hurts every time I type her surname) walk around with a massive chip on her shoulder?

Why does she still have a bow? Why is there still cover based shooting in a TOMB RAIDER game?

 

[LadyMint]

I was fairly tired of the new Lara's struggle in the first game, too. I mean I understand that we're supposed to be going through a journey of her early years, fresh off the boat and learning what it takes to truly get what she wants, but I expected her to be less whiny about it after the first few trials. You get to a point in the game where she is wholesale slaughtering a colony of man-crazies in a "kill or be killed" standoff and yet she's still crying silently to herself every chance she gets, or wailing in fear when she's in an unexpected situation. Frankly, that isn't the "realism" I want captured in my game. She should put some of that energy into using her wits. Lara doesn't have to be a cynical smartass, but it would be nice if she didn't make me want to abandon her for sounding weak when what she's doing is truly brave.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

All this makes me realize is that we are seriously starved for heroines if this Lara is somehow a groundbreaking revolutionary in writing when in fact she never even comes close to matching the legions of women who have come before her like Aya Brea, Lenneth Valkyrie, Elly van Houten, Terra Branford, Tifa Lockhart, Samus Aran, Kid from Chrono Cross, every female character in Blazblue and Guilty Gear, the girls of Persona, the Odin Sphere women, and tons of others. I have just named close to two dozen women that would curb stomp Lara in the character department harder than Kazuma Kiryu after he's had a few belts of whiskey. In their haste to not make Lara a caricature, they ended up just making her boring. One step to the side, with no real progress, the eternal tale of game writing.

The issue is that most of those characters you name are from games that haven't been in the spotlight since the late 90's and early 00's. In the mid-to-late-2000s, the gaming landscape took a much more Western-centric approach due to the breakout success of Halo of Call of Duty. People who are in their early twenties now grew up with Halo in their formative years the way that those in their thirties (like me, and I assume you as well) grew up on the more Japanese-centric landscape of the 80's and 90's. Through the lens of most people who grew up with AAA-gaming in the 2000's (particularly those who aren't much aware of older games, indie games, or contemporary Japanese games) the new Lara probably IS the best example of a human, flawed, and well-rounded female character in gaming.

It's not an ideal situation, but it is what it is.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

If it's all about the lifestyle, why does the gender matter? I'm a white, blonde guy, but my vicarious power fantasy can take the form of a woman, a dark haired person, an asian person, or all the above. As long as they're doing things that I'd like to imagine myself doing, that's the vicarious part.

Ya ... but that's kind of you. I believe >90% of men do not think that way.

Could be, but I feel like if it is, that's just underexposure. Female gamers have had to resort to it for decades, given the meager selection of female characters to choose from. If they found a way to enjoy it, I'm sure most guys can too

Personally I doubt that. Vicarious entertainment doesn't work that way.

Now I'm sure there is a fraction of women that aspire towards the "action hero" lifestyle but IMHO they are a small minority.

Vicarious entertainment does exist for women - e.g. Hunger Games/Sex and the City/Twilight - but they mostly focus on the "human/social element" ... and clothes.

Wow. You are a cynical and closed-minded person when it comes to art/entertainment and gender. I know I'm just one, but I'm certainly not in that estimated 90%, I seriously doubt that it's 90%, and pity that 90% if that's the case.

The opportunity to have vicarious experiences through other people (fictional or not) is not dependent on that person being super-similar to you, that just makes the vicarious part EASIER. Conversely, the more a person differs from you, the more difficult it CAN be to have vicarious experiences, but it's not impossible, and you can learn more by trying to experience something from a different perspective.

What you're saying is short-sighted and lazy.

 

[asdfen]

Lara Croft character is generic and boring and always has been since inception. It is just fine that it remains so as that was never the draw of the series.
I personally found every one of old tomb raider games worse than the reboot in terms of the gameplay. I havnt played the sequel but from all the evidence it must play identically meaning it plays great. If a game has great gameplay - it is a great game.

To people saying that it plays like a generic 3rd person shooter - you probably have played very few of those as it plays as a great 3rd person shooter. Thats saying something as competition in this genre is imense. Almost all the games made for last 15 years are fps or tps and new Tomb Riader manages to stand out in terms of quality of the gameplay.

On top of it graphically it looks very fine and techinically its very polished. Unlike 2015s assassins creeds, batmans, fallouts and so on. Saying that this is a mediocre game is an injustice.

 

[nightowlc]

Bit late on this reply, but:

Thank you Thank you Thank you THANK YOU Yahtzee for insisting people "Take some fucking responsibility!!"

I'm female and 41 and while I occasionally run into men who insist they're not responsible for a single fucking thing they do, things just "happen", "someone else got upset and I had to do whatever they said", "someone else said I should do this", "well, that's how people are supposed to act", I run into that shit from other women (of all ages) all the goddamned time. It's infuriating, and everyone else feels sorry for and clucks about the need to "understand" people who act and then insist it wasn't them who acted, it was a nebulous "someone else" who directs all their actions.

So, thank you so very much for being someone who doesn't whine about needing to be understanding, but just says "Take some fucking responsibility!!!"

 

[elpresidente]

I like the game for the amazing visual side, but other than that I don't think its worth it and I don't consider it part of the Tomb Raider world at all. If they named the main character something else it would've been an okay game. Tomb raider however, it is not. That's not the Lara Croft I grew up with.