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21 May 2016 - 24 Jun 2016
Lara Croft is a junior archeologist on an expidition to find a mythical city from Japanese folklore. On a hunch, she directs the crew to head towards and unlikely location, and gets more than she bargained for.
I really like this game. I've played it through four times now, and each time I see new things and enjoy it just as much as the first time.
What's the draw for me? There's just something about how Lara talk herself up in preparation to do something brave. She audibly has to psych herself up, or else she never gets anything done. In contrast, compare her shipmates, especially Alex, who views her as something like his hero (and crush). There's a sort of defeatist attitude in a lot of the crew members, but not Lara or her mentor. They go out and get shit done.
There are some uncomfortable moments. The attempted rape. The first time Lara uses a gun (both done right after the other, actually). And then there are the things that happen that you have to wonder: would it really happen that way? For instance, she's seems really adverse to killing. But, as the player, we're used to third-person shooters, and we could take out entire rooms full of bad guys. So, by default, she has to do the same. How does that correlate to the story that's being told here?
What I think the devs got right is that Lara Croft has long been an action hero. I'm not sure this was well served in the previous games. There's a couple bits of gunplay and acrobatics in the other games, but it's more that she was sneaking in and taking what she wanted. There's a bit of action, but I think the turning point may have been the movie with Angelina Jolie. Then she got redefined as an action star.
Or it could just be my memory playing with me again. And the movie wasn't great - it wasn't even very good - but it was an action movie, through and through. And this game gives us a glimpse into the origins of such a character.
And it also doesn't. There's a lot of audio flashbacks to her mentor teaching her how to survive, and then she applies it to the world. But that's the right path to take, because actually controlling Lara while she learned this stuff would be absurd. Learning to start a fire, to rock climb, to shoot an arrow - these are difficult tasks, best left to years of study off-camera. So Lara just knows how to do this stuff, and we're given some form of justification - which is more than a lot of other video game characters get.
I wonder if I would think this was such a good story if Lara was male. I'm not sure it matters. It seems to be a story that would work across gender roles. There's definitely a deep friendship between Lara and the friend she rescues; making Lara male would lead the writers to attempt to make that friendship something else. I can't say something more, because at that point it might even become something less. There's a deep and abiding trust and respect that we don't know the whole story of that goes into that relationship.
There's only one part that I don't really care for in this game, and that's the collectibles. They are so incredibly, stupidly, hard to find. You can do it, certainly. You can scramble and stomp all over the forests and mountains and see what you can see, activate every pedastal and poke at every tomb. But as we saw in the final episode, somehow, someway, the game still didn't see fit to give me the 100% mark. Not sure why, but it's awfully discouraging.
I think the reason why I don't like the collectibles is that it takes away from the story. Story-wise, there's no real reason why Lara would do any of these collectible bits. She's on her way to rescue her friend and get off the island. Why waste time? It's completely out of character.
The trouble is, I can't think of a single game that does it correctly. Maybe Saint's Row 3, but even that puts a silly lampshade on it, and it doesn't wholly make sense in the large scheme of things. It's just a way to pad out the runtime of your game without adding much in the way of content. Downright annoying.
Yes, absolutely, play this game. There shouldn't be any doubt.