Zero Punctuation: Tomb Raider

[Zetatrain]

Captain Walker (i.e. me) didn't decide to use white phosphorus. The developers forced us to use it.

You are not making captain walkers decisions..it's not a role playing game, or a decision based game.

I can understand it gets confusing because you are given the illusion of choice and your brain decides it's a typical choice based game like mass effect or something...but it's not.

That would be like saying; 'the Tomb Raider developers made me kill all those islanders'. It's not a valid critique

And that somehow makes it okay?

Also, I don't remember making you the official Decider of What Is and Isn't Valid Critiques.

It's not a valid critique of the story since whether or not the player has any choice in the matter is a gameplay element not a story element.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

[the spec ops PC] decides to use the white phosphorous!

Eh? No he doesn't. It's not optional. Unless you count "stop playing the game" as an option. But then TR has that option too.

"stop playing the game" was being subtly hinted at with Spec Ops, and the hint got stronger the longer you stayed in the game.

Tomb Raider, on the other hand, encouraged you to push through, be a big girl, and kill all the cultists.

I don't get what difference that makes. There was still no "decision" in either game.

"Stop playing the game" isn't really an option, in terms of the narrative.

True - for both games.

Edit:

Yahtzee could be talking about decisions made by the character rather than the player... actually probably is talking about that come to think of it... now I feel dumb... but anyway, even then it's still an odd point to make. It's not like Lara doesn't make any decisions. Does Yahtzee think characters have to make bad decisions to develop? That'd be, well, wrong.

Regardless, I think Lara has a great character arc by videogame standards (bearing in mind that most AAA games don't have any PC character arc at all).

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Yahtzee could be talking about decisions made by the character rather than the player... actually probably is talking about that come to think of it... now I feel dumb... but anyway, even then it's still an odd point to make. It's not like Lara doesn't make any decisions. Does Yahtzee think characters have to make bad decisions to develop? That'd be, well, wrong.

Regardless, I think Lara has a great character arc by videogame standards (bearing in mind that most AAA games don't have any PC character arc at all).

It's not an odd point at all. Difficult decisions build character, easy ones don't.

Difficult: Do I use this chemical weapon and kill civilians or face almost certain death?
Easy: Do I try to survive and save my friends or give up and go sulk in a cave (and probably die anyway)?

Not to mention in Tomb Raider Lara is being encouraged and propelled constantly by her friends, and doing anything else than what she does would get her killed along with her friends. For any sane person, there's no choice at all.

 

[Balkan]

Captain Walker (i.e. me) didn't decide to use white phosphorus. The developers forced us to use it.

You have to press a button to use it, you make the call. If you were so fucking disgusted with it there always was the option to stop playing.

Oh bog off. That is not a choice.

Are they making a game or are they making a statement? If they're making a statement, then they don't get to charge me fifty bucks for it.

Imagine if PETA charged money for the Pokemon murder simulator game, they'd be laughed off the internet!

http://www.agonybooth.com/video784_Spec_Ops_The_Line_Tactical_Shooter.aspx

You can still play it, the "statement" as you call it is just part of the whole game. The whole point of the game is to show how casualy we use military FPSes to imagine doing things that are pretty fucked up in the real world. The Line never blames the player for being a bad man just because he likes games likes games.

 

[Khanht Cope]

Yahtzee could be talking about decisions made by the character rather than the player... actually probably is talking about that come to think of it... now I feel dumb... but anyway, even then it's still an odd point to make. It's not like Lara doesn't make any decisions. Does Yahtzee think characters have to make bad decisions to develop? That'd be, well, wrong.

Regardless, I think Lara has a great character arc by videogame standards (bearing in mind that most AAA games don't have any PC character arc at all).

It's not an odd point at all. Difficult decisions build character, easy ones don't.

Difficult: Do I use this chemical weapon and kill civilians or face almost certain death?
Easy: Do I try to survive and save my friends or give up and go sulk in a cave (and probably die anyway)?

Not to mention in Tomb Raider Lara is being encouraged and propelled constantly by her friends, and doing anything else than what she does would get her killed along with her friends. For any sane person, there's no choice at all.

Can't say I'm convinced by that. I'm not informed on the narrative of Spec Ops; but Walker's case appears to be a dilemma, which is more of a 'test' of character. How does the chosen option of using the weapon OR dying "build" Walker's character?

The option where he lives can certainly affect and change it in the long run, I'll say that.

Additionally, easy decisions can build character. Taking responsibility builds character; even if you get there by taking longer, initially-seeming easier route by running away from it until you find yourself with nowhere left to run and are all but forced to take responsibility.

Walker's decision appears to be between cowardice (which does not build character) or death; whereas Lara's presented decision appears to be between courage (which builds character) or death.

Those old fashioned hard-line disciplinary institutions used to be popular for building character because of this.

 

[chikusho]

Walker's decision appears to be between cowardice (which does not build character) or death; whereas Lara's presented decision appears to be between courage (which builds character) or death.

Why wouldn't cowardice be able to build character?

 

[TheSchaef]

In honor of the timeless masterpiece Sonic '06, I humbly suggest you name the sections of Tomb Raider, where you are told the play is freeform but in practice it is still on-rails, as Mach Speed Sections. So now you have a damnable colloquialism for this stupid mechanic, just as we have the damnable colloquialism "Quick Time Event".

 

[Khanht Cope]

Cowardice simply does not build character, it is regressive. What that decision does present is an opportunity for the character to develope in how he goes about coping with the trauma. He can use that experience to either regress or develope.

 

[NearLifeExperience]

I don't recall Yahtzee saying he thought this game was an 'overrated piece of shite'.

You're right, that was me.

 

[romxxii]

Spoiler: snip

[the spec ops PC] decides to use the white phosphorous!

Eh? No he doesn't. It's not optional. Unless you count "stop playing the game" as an option. But then TR has that option too.

"stop playing the game" was being subtly hinted at with Spec Ops, and the hint got stronger the longer you stayed in the game.

Tomb Raider, on the other hand, encouraged you to push through, be a big girl, and kill all the cultists.

I don't get what difference that makes. There was still no "decision" in either game.

If you're talking in-game decision enacted through a specific game mechanic, then yes, you're right. However, Spec Ops' developers have explicitly stated that they never took away your own personal choice to turn off the game. That's where the cognitive dissonance comes in: as a gamer, you expect any form of choice to be given to you as a sort of if-then-else decision branch. The lack of any such branch has conditioned us to forge ahead, that you keep ignoring when the game is actively telling you to stop playing.

Tomb Raider, on the other hand, is not trying to tackle anything so deep. It's a story about hardship and triumph over adversity. There's no decision to be had other than to play Simon Says with the QTEs or line up the baddies' heads with your bow's targeting reticle.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Yahtzee could be talking about decisions made by the character rather than the player... actually probably is talking about that come to think of it... now I feel dumb... but anyway, even then it's still an odd point to make. It's not like Lara doesn't make any decisions. Does Yahtzee think characters have to make bad decisions to develop? That'd be, well, wrong.

Regardless, I think Lara has a great character arc by videogame standards (bearing in mind that most AAA games don't have any PC character arc at all).

It's not an odd point at all. Difficult decisions build character, easy ones don't.

Difficult: Do I use this chemical weapon and kill civilians or face almost certain death?
Easy: Do I try to survive and save my friends or give up and go sulk in a cave (and probably die anyway)?

Not to mention in Tomb Raider Lara is being encouraged and propelled constantly by her friends, and doing anything else than what she does would get her killed along with her friends. For any sane person, there's no choice at all.

Can't say I'm convinced by that. I'm not informed on the narrative of Spec Ops; but Walker's case appears to be a dilemma, which is more of a 'test' of character. How does the chosen option of using the weapon OR dying "build" Walker's character?

The option where he lives can certainly affect and change it in the long run, I'll say that.

Additionally, easy decisions can build character. Taking responsibility builds character; even if you get there by taking longer, initially-seeming easier route by running away from it until you find yourself with nowhere left to run and are all but forced to take responsibility.

Walker's decision appears to be between cowardice (which does not build character) or death; whereas Lara's presented decision appears to be between courage (which builds character) or death.

Which is no decision at all. But it seems we're no longer talking about decisions. Of course, I agree with you that any ordeal can build character, but being forced into a situation doesn't in and of itself say anything about the path which you actively choose to walk. And because it's a game and not a book or movie, the choice is somehow more important than the ordeal - which is why it feels like Lara is going through stuff and I'm just watching. Not once did I feel involved in her rollercoaster ride, which I might have if I had been asked to make some meaningful choices. I am not 100% familiar with Spec Ops, but it seems to me that is what sets the two games apart even if in Spec Ops it didn't quite work out in practice.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Spoiler: snip

[the spec ops PC] decides to use the white phosphorous!

Eh? No he doesn't. It's not optional. Unless you count "stop playing the game" as an option. But then TR has that option too.

"stop playing the game" was being subtly hinted at with Spec Ops, and the hint got stronger the longer you stayed in the game.

Tomb Raider, on the other hand, encouraged you to push through, be a big girl, and kill all the cultists.

I don't get what difference that makes. There was still no "decision" in either game.

If you're talking in-game decision enacted through a specific game mechanic, then yes, you're right. However, Spec Ops' developers have explicitly stated that they never took away your own personal choice to turn off the game.

Er, yeah. Thank god they explained that, right? I mean I would never have known that I could turn off a videogame if they hadn't explicitly stated that I could. They're geniuses!

 

[Khanht Cope]

This is fair enough. I'm not yet able to judge for myself how effective or ineffective the narrative in Tomb Raider is, but lets just make sure that if we are criticising it, then we are doing so with the right reasoning.

 

[1337mokro]

I have to disagree with the whole A man chooses, A soldier obeys, part about Spec Ops. I saw the thing coming from MILES away and really had no say in whether I would use the stuff or not.

Some philosophical wankers will tell me that it is supposed to mirror the characters experience of "having no choice", but even when using the mortars I have no power over how many I shoot and who I kill with it. I COULD just scare them away and circle around whilst they are in disarray and chaos, but the game gives me a game over unless I complete the sequence. I could have also stealthed the camp, three thief games and a perfect ghost on both Deus Exes and Dishonoured on the highest difficulties should tell you that if given the extremely difficult and almost impossible option of stealthing it I would have welcomes it. But there was no choice.

Now with Lara Croft in Side Quest Raider the same thing applies. There really isn't much here that the characters consciously do or when they consciously refuse to do it the narrative just forces it onto them. See the many take control away from the character sections.

Think the chase sequence in ME3, a vanguard instantly breaks the narrative there with his teleport ability. Games just seem to be in a battle of story and gameplay right now where the story wants something to happen that if given full control the player would have prevented through gameplay. It is a real disconnecting experience in most games where things happen despite your efforts see also rubberbanding in GTA and other games.

The first person to tell me that is life and somethings are just beyond our powers should really think about what he is saying. In the game I am jogging ahead of the person I want to catch but am completely unable to catch them. Unless you live in some weird alternate reality where destiny creates magical shield walls around people that is not a scenario that would actually happen in life.

I just thought up another example. It is one of the most hilarious ones, namely Max Payne in Max Payne 3 getting shot in the arm and acting wounded for an entire mission, yes in a game where you can see exit wounds in your chest a shot in the arm is what disables the character for about an hour of in-game time. It was one of the funniest sections in the game, but narrative wanted it to be tense and exciting.

"I think they hit something important in my arm, unlike all those organs in my abdomen and chest. Especially those lungs that are known to survive multiple perforations without any trouble."

 

[balladbird]

His point, sir, is this blatant misandry is something we shouldn't rightly stand for or allow to happen without bringing it up with the developers. If the roles were reversed and it was a male and all he did was kill endless waves of females, the game would have been protested left and right. Was it intended to be hateful? I doubt it. This is kinda like how Resident Evil 5 wasn't intentionally racist against African people. It just needs to be pointed out to the developers that they need to keep this stuff in mind. Maybe sprinkle in a few female baddies in here and there.

A valid argument, but it's not really fair to condemn Tomb Raider for it, because the sin's not really this game's. It's one of the most prevalent double standards in video games in general (and pop culture, for that matter.) Mooks will always be male. gender diversity in a faceless army is nigh nonexistent. Likewise, any instance of a lead character killing a female character will always be a point of high emotion, because killing a woman is inherently "worse" or more immoral than killing a man. There are alterations, but they're few and far between.

it's even a tv trope: "Men are generic, women are special"

the only reason it seems to be an issue for people in this game is because the lead is a female. While there may be misandrist overtones in the narrative itself, since misandry is the first thing mistaken for feminism by action movies (second to sadism, a' la "I spit on your grave,) the fact that Lara is fighting armies of exclusively male mooks in a video game isn't misandrist, it's just a video game standard, with the only difference being the gender of the person doing the killing.

 

[ScoopMeister]

So how would you improve the story then? There is character development- she starts off unsure about herself and her abilities, has a load of shit thrown at her, and becomes a survivor (confident, strong, determined, blah blah blah). And her being 'reactionary' is the whole point of the story, so I'm not entirely sure what your problem is on that front.

How would I improve the story? I'm glad you asked actually; I've been giving this some thought for a few days now:

Spoiler: Tomb Raider story spoilers within

Boot the support characters
There are two inherrant propblems with the "support characters"

1. They are broad stereotypes with little to no impact on the story.
2. They provide Lara with support, emotionally at least.

I care not for the support characters, I hardly know them and I have no wish to change that. The game gives me, as a player, little reason to care for them. Lara may have slightly more connection to some of them but it's barely shown. Roth is about the only worthwhile character in the lot.

Lara is supossed to be lost and alone on a dangerous island. Having her friends there to cheer her on is simply ridiculous and it's effect is never more jarring than in the scene where she breaks them out of a large suspended cage. Most people can do most things with their friend's support so this is hardly conducive to the whole "survival" theme.

My suggestion?
Kill the support characters off early, pretty much all of them. Remove Lara's lifeline early. Lara wakes on the beach, she sees her friends being taken by the islanders, she is not captured herself. She spends the first level trying to reach them and save them. She fails and watches most of her friends die horribly, except Roth and Sam. She finds Roth shortly after and he is dying, they have the whole "you can do this" speech before he passes. Lara is lost, alone and completely without support.


Give Lara a character, make her imperfect
Lara is bland, boring and one dimensional. When the game opens she appears to be pretty much as we've always known her, an expert in her field, confident in her own analysis, has an eye for details and is willing to take a risk in the Dragon's Triangle.

As a character Lara appears to be little miss perfect. No flaw is presented to us, we are given no reason to think that this girl can't handle anything. She doesn't have trouble working with people, she doesn't have crippling insecurities, she isn't overly reckless, she doesn't have an irrational fear etc. I think the devs were so worried about being called out as sexists that they didn't dare risk making her appear weak as a person. This leads into Yahtzee's comment about her being reactionary. Lara didn't need to improve before the crash, she had no intentions of improving because were given no reason why she should. Instead she's thrown into a situation where she must change, sure it's development of some kind but this is a binary choice. Do or die. A game about a girl who dies 10 minutes in is not a very fun game, is it? Lara's skills improve, that is all. There is no character development, only physical improvement.

My suggestion?
Reveal more of Lara's history. Who were her parents? How did they die? Why does she feel that she can't live up to the name of Croft? This story needs to be personal to Lara. Saying that her character develops through the act of surviving the island is ridiculous. Give her a flaw, a personal issue that needs to be overcome before she can survive the island. This way the island helps her to improve as a character. Any old Joe-Shmo could do what she does when they are given no choice, what specifically sets Lara apart from the rest?


Lara must lose
Lara wins everything all the time. If someone dies it's because they made a stupid choice, if Lara gets injured it's because she was involved in a ridiculous QTE infested cutscene. It's never established that Lara loses anything for simply being rubbish at something. In fact she seems to be superhuman most of the time, surviving falls and explosions that no one else could.

My suggestion?
Everyone dies near the beginning, as I said before. Lara tries to save them, she cannot. They die horribly and she is distraught about it. She loses Roth who is her mentor and metaphorical support line. She has lost. The only way she can continue to is to improve. But not just get better at rock climbing, she needs a flaw, something specific to her character that she needs to overcome in order to proceed.

Aditionally, Sam needs to die. Someone mentioned before that the final boss should have been Sam as a giant, overpowered Queen Himiko that Lara fights. I like this idea. I think it's important that Lara is too late. I also think she should be made well aware that destorying Himiko (and Sam in the process) is her key to leaving the island. She makes a choice: kill a friend in order to survive or die on the island. This indicates a huge change in her character and one with a slightly dark edge, even though she had little choice in the matter.

The result? Lara leaves the island alone, she is the sole survivor. She has "won" because she is alive and has escaped but it is a bitter-sweet victory because everyone else is dead. She has also failed in this regard. Failure is important because it means she's not perfect at the end of the game and gives her motivation to further improve herself so that she never fails again. The ending we actually get shows her willing to continue her adventures even though she "won" and has no real need to seek such danger again.


Less physical trauma, more emotional trauma
Throwing Lara around a collapsible environment and having her survive at the end is not character development. We need far less beatings and far more emotional impacts. Lara takes a deer out with ease and then feels sorry for doing so. She is distraught when she first kills a man and then goes on to mow down several hundred islanders with a nonchalant ease that Rambo himself would be envious of.

My suggestion?
Have Lara think back on her dead friends. Those video camera exposition scenes were actually quite good and we never saw much of them. How about we unlock a new one at each major camp? Looking at them provides more info on Lara, her character and her relationship with those she has lost. Two for one.

Lara needs to have more trouble actually doing what she's doing. Fear of heights? Unable to pull the trigger? Panicing in the darkness? More on that below...


Mend that disconnect
Lara goes from college student to John McClane in no time at all. This is a gameplay issue really but there's such a jarring change between Lara's in-game actions and her cutscene actions that makes this a whole mess of its own. Why the focus was on combat in this game rather than survival is something I may never know. It feels like survival was a key theme and then everyone forgot about it after the deer scene. You know how it goes, one minute Lara is struggling to kill a wild animal, the next she's popping off headshots with a bow at men who aren't even aware she's there yet. That's not survival, that's just plain murder.

My suggestion?
I'd like to manage my health and mental status, some aditional stats working underneath would have been nice. Other games have done it before, if your "psyche" get too low then you have trouble aiming, your hands shake, your vission blurs, your character refuses to perform certain actions. The inherrant neccessity of searching for useful objects is a key element of survival. Perhaps killing wild animals or islanders lowers Lara's "psyche" level but could provide benefits in the long run. Combat is optional now, risk losing your mind for the possibility of gaining useful items in order to progress? Or try to stealth it out and be less well equipped for the later trials? That sounds like survival to me.

Of course, that's all just my opinion.

Wow... You really have given it some thought, haven't you? Well, that all does sound pretty cool (although I'm not so sure about the giant Sam/Himiko boss fight idea). Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the game and I think a lot of the criticism it's been getting is needlessly exaggerated. But, there we go. Opinions will be opinions.

 

[ScoopMeister]

I don't recall Yahtzee saying he thought this game was an 'overrated piece of shite'.

You're right, that was me.

And yet you implied that he agreed with your analysis.

...I hope that wasn't an attempt at humour there.

 

[bigman88]

Although I always enjoy my fair share of Zero Punctuation every week, I will have to disapprove with you Yahtzee.

I enjoyed the game myself and I'm glad they did this reboot, the previous ones were quite bad actually (except for maybe Underworld or Legend), but that is debatable.

With that said, I'm glad Lara's back even though the game felt rather Uncharty at times, overall a good game.

This is only reflecting your gameplay preference here; underworld and legends were primarily shooters and threw out the exploration and puzzling bit to the back seat like this one, so i'm guessing that's why the older ones were quite bad for you.

 

[bigman88]

But even in the very beginning she decided to send the expedition to the island of doom
then she decides to save everyone and stuff

deosn't she?

That said, this installment didn't feel as Tomb Raid-y to me as I'd like and didn't feel as survivalist as it was advertised. Tombs are just some side-missions and puzzles really basic, most is about shooting hundreds of people with a bit of mystery in the background.

So kind of an inversion of what I was hoping for. The actual shooting wasn't bad tho.

This^ Haven't played it yet, but not in the mood to fork over $60 for a not bad shooter. Will probably pick up when real cheap.

 

[bigman88]

Yahtzee's point about reactionary characters being difficult to describe as having a story arc is a legit point. If you're left with the impression that they did things only because they had to, not because they chose to, then there's not that much changing about their personality, motives, point of view, etc.

On the other hand, the problem is that there's rarely any middle ground anymore when it comes to reactionary/proactive characters. By that I mean that people at large seem to have this very jaded, cynical (and yes, I know that describes Yahtzee in a nutshell) viewpoint about fictional character motives. If a character tries to do something out of a sense of morality or honor, they quickly get the "morkishly virtuous" label stamped on them and are quickly dismissed as the ridiculously stalwart paladin-types who will charge blithely into a dangerous situation that any "sensible" person would know better than to mess with because anyone with two brain cells to rub together would see they're not going to win this particular fight charging in head-on. On the other hand, the "sensible" characters often act like self-centered, emo jack asses who will only begrudgingly do something that requires sacrifice or risk on their part with no immediately apparent reward, usually just to get the crowbared-in love interests to stop whining at them and get their tits out.

That, to me, seems to be the two types of protagonists we have to chose from these days: either the brave idiot or the smart coward. To tell the truth, sometimes I'm not sure if its because that's just how all protagonists are being viewed, or how they're being written these days. I have to admit, sometimes it seems like the proactive protagonists act pretty damn stupid, like Vash the Stampede from Trigun, incessantly trying to reason with every bad guy even when they've got a gun to an innocent person's head, or Snow from Final Fantasy XIII, hurtling into every dangerous situation without the faintest idea what the fuck he's going to do. Seriously, where are the protagonists that balance sense with morals, like Humphrey Boggart's Sam Spade or Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name?[/quote

Okay, so... another game I've already played through is getting reviewed by our beloved Yahtzee. Good review. Guess I'll give my opinion as well...

Bear in mind, this is the opinion of one who has never before played a Tomb Raider-game except Angel of Darkness, but that was so long ago I remember squat about it.

Spoiler

PROS:
The beginning - The first few hours, the ones that set the tone for the entire game? Love them. You truly feel the desperation of the characters, how they scramble to survive this whole ordeal in any way possible. Lara apologizing to a deer for killing it truly hammered the point home for me.

The weakness - This ties in to the previous pro of the game, with the beginning and all. The game does an excellent job at making the character of Lara feel vulnerable and out of her element (at least the first few hours). The sequence where you have to guide her through the shanty town with a broken arm in particular serves to reinforce that she is still human.

The environments - Say what you like about the brown graphics, the island looks gorgeous. The area with shipwrecks, the town made out of rusty wreckage, the stormy mountains, it all looks great.

CONS:
QTE's - They are incredibly annoying. What else can I say.

Audiologs - Okay, maybe they're more like paperlogs rather than audiologs, but they still talk over them so whatever. Now, I don't particulary mind audiologs in games. I enjoy collecting them, and it is always nice to be rewarded for collecting miscellaneous mickmacks, and in the case of audiologs, the reward is some optional backstory. The keyword being "optional", as in something that isn't necessary in order to understand what is going on. But TR decides to put in some more vital plot points in its audiologs. Where does Lara come from? Explained in the audiologs. How does the crew feel about being shipwrecked? Explained in the audiologs. Who is Himiko, the final villian of the drama? Explained in the audiologs. Why is Whitman such a douche? What do you know, explained in the audiologs. All of this would have been much better served if the main story explained it to us, rather than these textbooks we find lying around, because they rather important details to the overall plot.

The violence - Okay, I for one do not mind violence as much as I used to, and playing violent videogames is a perfect remedy for those hate-filled urges of mine, but the violence inflicted to Lara in this game is just sickening to watch. You get to watch her get shot, beaten, stabbed, impaled, strangled, drowned, smashed, trashed, and god knows what else. I don't mind it in itself, except for the way the game presents it all. Everytime Lara gets brutally killed, the camera zooms in and changes to the optimal angle for you to see the latest of Lara's gruesome demises, and witness just in what way that long spike enters her body. Couple that with all the dirt that Lara gets smeared all over her face, and the fact that her yelps of pain sometimes sounds more like she's about to have an orgasm, and I feel dirty for playing it. This probably would have been an even bigger con, if not for...

Lara Croft - Aaand, this is where the game makes its biggest misstep. Lara Croft. The main character of it all. No, I don't hate her because she isn't the old Lara. No, I don't hate her because she is angsty 90% of the time (face it, if I were stuck in the same situation, I would feel pretty depressed myself). I hate her because she is a horrible person. And it feels weird, seeing as the first half of the game does such a great job at making you feel just how desperate she is over her whole situation, and how she blames herself for convincing the rest of the crew to go to this godsforsaken place. But once her human bodycount reaches the third digit, any semblance of likability in her is thrown out, once you realize just how much of a monster she is, killing persons without so much as a blink of the eye, all the while calling them "bastards" and "f*ckers". Sure, the cultists are not exactly the most stable bunch, but they have basically the same goal as you: getting out of this godsforsaken place. And you keep overhearing their discussions about how excited they are at the prospect of finally being allowed to go home and live a normal life, seconds before you're inevitably forced to cap them in the head because there's no way to sneak past them. Also, Lara is incredibly unpleasant towards those she doesn't like. Like Whitman. Towards the end, you have this short conversation where Lara narrates to herself how Whitman was a money-grubbing bastard. Dude, Whitman just got chopped to beef stroganoff by two insane samurais, and you are honest to god sitting there and talking trash about him literaly less than a minute after his death?! Sure, he was a dumbass, but come on! What about that helicopter guy who came to rescue you? He came all the way here to save your ass, risking life and limb going through that storm to your signal. And what do you do? You put a freaking gun to his head, and bark at him like a madman! And after the helicopter crashes you never mention him again! Of course Ross gets a funeral and all, but helicopter guy? Nope, the wreckage of his crashed vehicle is good enough for him! And of course Lara is always right about everything! Lara says Whitman is an asshole? Whitman is an asshole. Lara says Himiko is alive after hundreds of years? She is alive after hundreds of years. Lara says they have to kill a goddess to leave the island? Sure enough, you have to kill a goddess to leave the island, no matter how incredibly ludicrous the whole idea would seem to a normal human being. And then everyone praises Lara like she's the fudging Messiah or something, and everybody loves her and talks about how awesome she is!

The climax (Lara Croft continued) - And just to put a cherry on it, the one thing, this ONE, SINGLE, thing, they had to do, in order to negate all of this hatred from me towards Lara, was to have her take a short look upon herself and recognize "yes, I've done some bad things". And there's this scene in the climax where sh*t is going down all around, storms are blowing, and Mathias shouts at Lara that everything he did, he did to survive. And when he asks Lara how many people she has killed during her short time on the island (I had lost count long ago, but it must be at least over 200 by this point), I thought to myself "this is it. This is the moment. The moment that she realizes that she has done things an ordinary person wouldn't even consider, but that for her it has become routine. The moment she realizes that she can never go back to what she once was. The moment she realizes that, in her fight for survival, she has become a monster..." Does that happen at all? NOPE!!! She just barks at him that he's insane, and then slaughters her way through some more goons (all the while calling them names, natch), shoots Mathias of a cliff, and then lives happily ever after. The End. Words just fail me...

...

Hey, here's a crazy idea: why did this game need humans to shoot at anyways? Wouldn't it have been enough with, you know, wildlife? After all, you're stuck on an island in the middle of the ocean, in a place few people ever live to go through, and no hope of rescue in sight. Why the cultists? Couldn't the whole game have been about the struggles of a lone girl in a hostile environment, instead of this psychotic woman slaying a whole bunch of mad people? Surely that would negate a lot of my criticism. Just saying.

Anyway, overall this game was... meh. Aside for my intense hatred for the main character, the overall gameplay is just okay. It works, but is nothing groundbreaking. In my opinion, it is not worth shelling out 50-60 bucks for this game. If you decide to play it, wait until it goes down in price or hits a sale.

That is all.

Finally someone with an objective, thoughtful criticism of this game. I myself am quite annoyed that crystal dynamics has rebooted the series into a shooter, and from what your saying and the clips i saw, they threw in some torture/gore porn for the kiddies to lap up. People say that this is an artful and uninhibited way of showing the physical horror that Laura goes through, and how she must dig deep to overcome it. But the fact is Laura(or no one) doesn't have to get shot, beat, strangled, impaled, almost raped, etc. to become the strong confident woman back in the original tomb raider. Then the close up view of her horrible death, which is also very unnecessary to tell the story of a girl becoming a strong woman, further shows us that it's only gore/torture porn, and represents another bold move by the worlds rulers to desensitize youth as much as possible to senseless violence and mayhem.