Best Of

I wasn't sure what to make of Tomb Raider. I'd never played any of the games, but I'm familiar with some of the controversy involving Lara's... gifts. The movie was fair at best, but not awful. I know the franchise has been immensely popular and still sees releases to this day. However... so does Call of Duty. What was I to expect? Turns out there's a solid reason. Unlike Hitman - a franchise whose popularity escapes me - Tomb Raider has some significant potential, which really showed up in this game. However, there were also some GLARING problems that, while possibly due to age, served to shatter my suspension of disbelief more than once. The good does outweigh the bad, though, and at the end of the day, that's all we can ask for. One of my favorite ways to judge a game is to look at the voice acting... and TR:L absolutely _delivers._ Sure, the male counterparts deliver their lines in a fairly "I want to be the lead" fashion, but the delivery is done with believable vocal ups and downs, and done by people who were at least literate (which is saying a lot, compared to the rest of the games on my backlog). As for Lara's voice actress, well... I had to look her up. This is Keeley Hawes, and I tell you true, this woman _performed._ Not once did I feel like she was simply in the studio talking to the microphone. I felt the whole time like the character was the one doing the talking - not the writers, not the actress, not the HR guys that might have had to change a line or two - the character. Sadly, the writers didn't throw Lara's voice actress into any particularly memorable scenes, other than a rather awkward apology and a very angry ending - it speaks volumes that she was able to make rather forced scenes like these believable. Miss Hawes has done an excellent job, and the game is certainly better for it. About that writing... the real theme of this review is that the POTENTIAL is there, and the story is no exception. It COULD be really interesting. I'd read a book about it. I'd watch a movie about it. But... it doesn't seem to be as much the focus as I'd like. Villains are shoehorned in, with little introduction and even less motive; Lara's response to them is entirely unwarranted. It's very clear that the writers needed a reason for Croft to have guns and, from time to time, fire them. About firing those guns: one of the most massive let-downs on the dev's part is combat, and the approach to combat. At the beginning of the game, you're confronted with what is probably one of the most generic 'bad guys' any video game has ever had. He's a 'mercenary' and has a gun. He's standing in a picturesque little canyon as you gleefully romp about, and you're only option is to shoot him. What? Why? Just... murder this guy in cold blood? Who's he work for? Why do we care? Do archaeologists have some murderous rivalry we should know about? As we're about to find out, human life in this game is SUPER cheap. So you go to shoot him... what does he do? He GRUNTS, and then TURNS AROUND. So you shoot him again. And again. After around 15 bullets, you start to think maybe you're doing something wrong... but you're not. The game is tuned like some ancient arcade shooter - not only do the bad guys take thirty bullets apiece, their AI prevents them from covering and shooting for too long... and LARA, in her MADE-OF-CLOTH-OUTFITS, also takes thirty bullets to knock over! Now tie the nigh-invulnerability and infinite ammunition with the fact that the game auto-aims (even for bad guys OFF SCREEN), and combat is a real yawn-fest. Now, If I were a fairly small archaeologist armed with peashooters up against six or seven guys with proper assault rifles in a Bolivian canyon, I'd probably - and this is just me - _not engage directly._ Or, you know, at all. The devs missed a perfect chance to show Lara doing cool things - using distractions, stealth, the environment, whatever - and instead just made her a tank. Like I've been saying - the POTENTIAL was there, but it wasn't even CLOSE to realized. Hey, let's talk about Lara moving around the environment. One of the major expenditures of this project must have been the animation of her body. Rather cartoony proportions aside, the animation was _really_ ahead of its time. While standing on split-level terrain, Lara doesn't have one leg hanging off into air (as is common in many games) - both feet touch uneven ground. If you only just make a jump, one of her legs trails out into the chasm behind her for balance. If the jump is long, she reaches for the ledge with a single arm in desperate fashion. Cutscenes and quicktime events that involve acrobatics look (texture mapping aside) quite realistic. Now, this is a detail that is REALLY appreciated, and it just goes to show you - someone at that studio was well worth their paycheck. More games need to focus on the animation the way that TR:L did. I mentioned the proportions - really, we need to take a look at Lara's character in general, because the conversation is fairly deep. There are some absurdly stupid and over-sexualized things, sure - she shows way more skin than is necessary for anyone going into combat, someone spent way too much time rendering her boobs and ass (and not nearly enough on her ears or eyelashes)... but there are also some excellent things about her character. The animations of her holding guns, swords, using machinery, doing acrobatics - all this makes her look like a tremendous badass. She attempts to take charge of every situation in a collected British fashion, displays enthusiasm for danger and confidence in its face without making many cheesy quips, and reacts with lightning speed and clever thinking to all sorts of hidden problems. Who does this remind you of? Cuz it reminds me of James Bond. And when I compare these two things - the sexualization and the badassery - I find that, although the sexualization exists, the badassery outdoes it a million times. Writers didn't spend any time making her flirt with any of the men, or making them lust after her, or putting Lara in compromising situations, and that would have been an easy, cheap way to draw attention from their target market. Again, the potential is tremendous - the writers wanted Lara to be awesome and put a lot of work into it, but they weren't QUITE willing to jump away from the easy thrill of cleavage-in-every-outfit. Take the leap, guys! While we're focusing on Lara, let's say a small thank you for those game developers who have learned what it takes to make good camera work - none of whom worked on this game, it seems. No, the camera doesn't need to be centered on Lara's ass. It needs to be centered on what she's looking at. Yes, I know you spent a ton of work drawing her ass... trouble is, you didn't spend that much work drawing the ground, and that's mostly what my video card is rendering because that's where your camera wants to point. Yes, I know we can see down her shirt when she's on a motorcycle, but if you insist on turning the camera to face Lara's front while she's doing 60 miles on a rooftop, we're going to crash. Can we please put the camera back to a sensible location? (seriously, the camerawork while Lara is on a vehicle is nothing short of a travesty). One last enjoyable moment before wrapping it up. Lara walks into a Japanese corporate party wearing the slinkiest little black dress for the second or third level, intent on meeting a Yakuza boss. "Ugh," I say. Trope, trope, stereotype, trope. When the bullets start flying, Lara ducks behind a bar, kicks off her heels, and suddenly has both of her guns, her holsters, her grenade belt, her backpack, and everything else over top of her little black dress. She's dancing around blasting bad guys left and right. "Okay," I say to myself, "I need both hands to count the number of ways that this is unrealistic... but damn, that was cool." Potential. So much potential. 6.5/10, and I'm interested in seeing where Tomb Raider has gone in the modern day. This franchise might be incredible.