On the other hand, in 1997 the first Tomb Raider comic book came out from Top Cow publications, featuring a crossover with another character I had little to no interest in, Witchblade. Two characters I cared nothing about in a comic? What could possibly grab my attention?
To my then-teenage brain, this was the greatest comic book ever made.
So yeah, I eventually got over it once I realized that no woman's spine should bend like Lara's in that cover, and plus the story was actually pretty terrible. I'd flip through future issues she popped up in (eventually getting her own series), and I picked up a couple issues just because I wanted some kind of adventure in my comics and the major publications were all pretty caught up in some pretty terrible storytelling at that time. Eventually, though, the interest faded as other, shinier things caught my attention, and I put Lara Croft and her (according to reviews) increasingly bad game series behind me.
Then Crystal Dynamics came along and put out a completely revamped version of the original game, and two others that seemed to skip most of the bad stuff in between and came up with a whole new storyline. The crazy thing is, they were really good. Suddenly, Lara Croft had better graphics, better gameplay, and I was able to jump, flip, climb, and shoot with everybody else while having fun. Sure, there were still some small moments of titillation (every game seemed to feature her in a swimsuit at some point), but for the most part I was caught up in figuring out where to go next and then exploring every other corner of the map.
Something was still missing, though. I didn't really connect with Lara Croft. She was ridiculously wealthy, ridiculously acrobatic (able to flip over tigers while shooting them), and seemed to have the best plot armor ever in that you never really saw anything bad happen to her. She had a few bad things happen to her in Tomb Raider: Underworld, but with a good insurance plan and the fact I knew nothing about one of the deaths that occurred, it didn't mean much.
So along comes Tomb Raider, named the same as the original, but taking Lara's story and starting over. It's darker, it's gritter, and the cup size is much more manageable for someone who's an athlete. Did I like it? Well, yes and no. Mostly yes.
Let's start with the story. Lara and a group of her coworkers/friends/random crew members wind up on an island while searching for a lost civilization when a ridiculously huge storm appears out of nowhere and rips their ship apart like a professional wrestler would a loaf of bread. Lara, separated, has to find her friends and keep from getting caught/killed by a large group of people on the island who seem intent on getting everybody from the ship.
There's mystic elements (which isn't out of place in this kind of game) and adventure everywhere, and the story was pretty well-paced. Something that was missing from the other games was the sense of trying to survive. Sure, Lara might be able to fly a helicopter into a jungle clearing, but getting across several miles of untamed wilderness should come at some kind of price. Before this game, she'd rarely even have skinned knees. Now, she's shivering through rainstorms, bloodying up her fingertips as she clings to ledges, and getting bounced around like someone stuffed a Barbie doll in a tumble dryer and then threw it off a cliff. But, I had a few things that bugged me.
The first is that Lara Croft, by all rights, should be dead. I don't mean just because of the number of stupid decisions I made that involved jumping at ropes that weren't there or falling off ledges that were too high, but the sheer number of story-based cut-scenes that involve her falling, slamming into things, getting hit by tree branches, bouncing off rocks in a raging river, falling into underground lairs, and having at least one large mechanical transport crash with her in it should require her to have a full body cast. We get the sense she's in pain, but I can't really tell there's even a single broken rib. I like seeing Lara struggle against the environment instead of calmly walking through it shooting everything that wasn't herself, but at a certain point I couldn't suspend disbelief much longer and was yelling at the TV, "Oh come on, she should be dead from that!"
The second is that the story, while clever in many ways, has some big failings. You know which member of the team is going to betray you within moments of seeing the character for the first time. The first time a means of escape is foiled, it furthers the plot. The second time, you know it's coming from a mile away. The sudden shifts in the landscape from tropical forest to a blizzard on a mountain top were interesting at first, but started to feel a bit contrived when you realized that all that separated them was a single tunnel through rock. Then there's Lara's friend Sam, but I'll get to her later.
The setting was very interesting, especially when I realized I could go back and explore areas I already went through. A shantytown provided different challenges from a forest-covered mountain, which had different problems from a wreck-covered beach. The fact that any actual "tombs" were pretty much optional to seek out made stumbling upon one by accident rather exciting, since what I thought was a way to escape guys with machine guns turned out to be leading me to ancient treasure as well as a hiding place from guys with guns. The idea of having Lara hunt animals with a bow an arrow for food was an interesting idea at first, but after the first couple of animals I hunted to get the plot moving forward, I never bothered doing it again during the game. I kind of wish it had been like Far Cry 3, where you had to gather certain animal hides and plant types to increase the capabilities of your equipment.
The gameplay was intuitive. There weren't any moments when I was cursing the need for quick button presses to get things done (except for a few quick-time events that came out of nowhere), but eventually my thumb automatically sought out the button as soon as I knew I was going to need it soon. Jumps were able to be precisely timed, ropes were usually pretty easy to grab as long as you didn't try to jump parallel to them, which multiple instances of body hitting rocks below taught me, but that was my own fault and not the game's.
The characters are also engaging. A tough-as-nails woman who wants to get back to her daughter, a calm (I believe) Samoan cook who's big enough to probably punch through most doors that Lara had to find alternative ways around, a nervous guy with glasses who obviously has a thing for Lara but not enough nerve to even ask her to have coffee, and an eager scientist/explorer who plays the part of the eager believer when evidence of where the cast has washed up starts to appear.
Guess which one of those I'm guessing most people playing this game could relate with.
The villains were also interesting, since I actually felt bad for killing them sometimes. The developers did a great job in explaining just how desperate these people were to get off an island they had been stuck on for what seems to be years, and what lengths they would go through to make that happen. I wanted there to be a button I could press that would tell them "Guys! I've already killed over a hundred of you, and I have a plan to get out of here! Why not join my side and we'll all go home!"
And then there's Sam. Sam might be my pick for worst character of 2013. Sam is worse than Princess Peach when it comes to keeping herself safe, and Peach hasn't even figured out how to put locks on doors to keep large turtle dragons from kidnapping her. Sam plays the part of Lara's best friend (possibly more, considering how often they hold hands for no real reason), and major parts of the story revolve around trying to rescue Sam from whatever danger she blindly walked into. She has the self-preservation of a drunk puppy, and does absolutely nothing to try to help herself or Lara when it comes to getting to safety. At one point during the game, when a single, lone bad guy who the story has established doesn't dare kill Sam for a ceremony he wants to perform is leading her along while Lara races to catch up, she doesn't even struggle against him, instead just walking beside him while turning around and shouting for Lara to help.
I was tempted to leave her behind, or shoot her in the knee so I could catch up, since I obviously couldn't shoot the bad guy before the end of the game.
Did I enjoy this game? Most of the time, I did. Any issues I had were more with being able to suspend my disbelief at the fact that Lara seemed better able to heal herself than Wolverine from the X-Men could, and my rage at the fact that Sam had gotten into trouble again without a single thought of "what would Lara do?" If I was doing grades for video games, I'd give this one an A-. They've built an extremely solid game that I'll probably go back to again later to either try playing a different way (perhaps a bit more gun crazy than stealthy), or just to clean up artifacts I left behind. I just wish they had done more with all the ideas they presented, but I look forward to a sequel. Because of course there will be one.
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