Solar Pony Django's Initial Thoughts on: Tomb Raider (2013) (PC) (Spoilers)

Or as I like to call it Tomb Raider: And that cheeky cunt Lara that killed a bunch of people and made some terrible decisions that killer her friends! Hooray! Seriously This Lara is an absolute idiot one of the few mistakes I can forgive is bringing them to the island they're on in the first place since she didn't know there was a bunch of loonies on the island. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Welcome to my initial thoughts on Tomb Raider (2013), where they tried to bring Lara into an origins story and change her gameplay a bit. Or so I here, as I've never played a previous Tomb Raider, nor seen the movies.

But from what I've gathered Lara wasn't a whiny little bitch. Don't get me wrong I'm fine with having caring, compassionate characters, be it female or male. Enjoy it a lot actually. It does make it believable, and this is more so the writers fault that it feels nearly every other scene has Lara getting the snot beat out of her by a wolf, the environment, or some of the previously mentioned loonies. Seriously she bitches and complains about it in every scene if I’m recalling correctly and doing it now and then would be okay. But this is supposed to be an origins story, something that makes the character get a little backbone and more intelligent as it goes on. She doesn’t. At least not yet. At this point in the game I’d imagine a little bit of advancement in her character since I did just look on Wikipedia and I’m about half of the way through if what it’s saying is correct.

So many of her friends have died at this point and really? Her fault. Even people that aren’t her friends but trying to help her have died because it’s her fault. One of the pilots of the plane trying to rescue her and she had a clear shot at the person that killed him? Her fault because she didn’t shoot. Her friend Grim? Once again it’s her fault, she was told to put her weapons down and they’d spare Grim. Two things. 1) She’s dealt with the loonies long enough on the island to know they’re full of shit. 2) She had a clear shot at the person holding Grim hostage, so she could have killed him than the other two. Instead Grim kills all three sacrificing himself so that Lara may live. The helicopter pilot, once again killed because of her due to the fact that she didn’t want to leave her friends behind (which I’ll give her credit for that) but when the pilot tells you the helicopter is going to fall apart if he goes back and you aim a gun at his head forcing him to anyways?!?! And then the helicopter does fall apart!! Which most likely would’ve happened anyways due to the plot, but it possibly would’ve saved Roth! They would’ve gotten a bit more in the right direction instead of causing it so Lara almost dies; Roth has to give her CPR to bring her back and then sacrifices himself so she doesn’t die! Admittedly he could’ve saved himself too if he’d dropped Lara, dodged and then shot everyone instead of taking an axe in the back. But he may not have been thinking about that at the time.

That being said I don’t happen to think the game itself is BAD (as much as I’ve been giving it shit over the story) the gameplay itself is fun. It has you collecting small little trinkets from the island that are across time periods as Lara should do. It also has you examine a few of them because some of them are fake, and have to weed out the real ones from the fake ones. Then you have Tomb Raiding where you solved a puzzle get a pretty hefty reward most of the time and continue on. Thing is these are optional, not required in fact I think only one Tomb has been required in the game so far which is a little strange. Admittedly Lara’s more concerned with her and her friend’s lives at the moment but still seems a little odd. The shooting is good as well and exploring feels good too, the only thing I really have a problem with is the sneaking. Even when I’m holding the sneak button enemies can detect me, or when I shoot an arrow which I’m fairly certain is supposed to be a silent kill. At least as far as I understand it is. I also really like the upgrade system, pretty similar to other games but if it isn’t broke why fix it? You do have to find upgrade parts to make your guns better as well and that’s neat.

Aside from the parts where Lara is to whiny, and all the stupid decisions she makes I have been enjoying the story. It’s relatively unique in of itself and has been a fair amount of fun to play through. It is pretty danged silly but not bad, the world itself is pretty and good to explore which I like so far and there’s a fair amount to do. You will have to backtrack a little to get some collectibles here and there but overall they haven’t done that too much and you can generally blaze through it pretty quickly. One thing I have noticed is that you seem to move a fair amount faster if you jump everywhere as opposed to walking. Kind of similarly to the sidestep move in Ocarina of Time where you move just that much faster that it’s worth it. Not sure why that is but I’ve been taking advantage of it. I’ve also been taking advantage of how to climb the rock walls faster, or what feels faster. Same thing you jump up them, get your grappling hook in rinse and repeat. Feels a lot faster.

Before I finish I suppose I should talk about the controversial rape scene that has been brought up. It made me a little queasy but honestly it wasn’t that bad, it was implied sure but Lara fought back in order to stop it as I’m sure most victims do. Am I saying rape is good? Of course not, rape is, and always will be bad but that’s the reason the bad guy is doing it. To make him seem like an even worse person and make Lara seem even better in overcoming that. It’s what you do to characters, you give them a reason to feel with them and root for them. I do feel as if afterwards they may have toned it down a little bit due to in the quick time events if you fail you die. Which that brings up a point, if you’re originally willing to tell people you’re doing something then take it out because people don’t like it is that a good thing? Personally I feel it detracts from the game a little and removes a little bit of the artistic purpose if you do. But I think they handled it pretty well overall.

The scene in question for those interested:

As always thank you for reading my initial thoughts and I’ll see you all next time.

Also, would anyone want to watch me stream the rest of this game? I’ve been thinking of starting up streaming my backlog and was curious if anyone would want to watch.