CALLING ALL STATIONS: The BBS Plays Rise of the Tomb Raider

When I went home that snowy night I cooked myself a steak. Then I drunk half a bottle of whiskey, tried to make snow-shoes out of tennis rackets and fell asleep with the cat. I was so damn happy.

I can’t decide if that was horrible, or the best dialogue of the game.

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Wooo ACTION THRILLS ASPLOSIONS

Guns, guns, GUNS!

annnnnnd… scene (well, I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone reading this!)

I liked the game. It was very, very combat heavy and could have toned that down quite a bit in favor of more exploration. Metacritic sez 86. I’d go with between 8 because good lord soooo much combat. But it makes a satisfying part 2 of the origin story started in Tomb Raider, and I want to see where they go from here. Hopefully toward more open worlds, mix in a bit more of the tried and true open world Far Cry formula.

It’s no Pony Island.

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p.s. whole game, still no dual pistols, even after foreshadowing at the end of Tomb Raider 2013. This is some bullshit.

I think this topic illustrates that many of the people who debate at length on the “see, look how gaming is super sexist” topics haven’t played many (or any) of the referenced games. And they probably wouldn’t even if you drove to their house, bought them a console and the game, booted up the game and placed the controller in their hands.

There is no shortage of puerile T&A in gaming (and movies, and books, and tv…), to be sure, but I get mega frustrated with, for example, “this is how sexist video games are, it is literally impossible to see batman’s butt!” being blindly accepted as true when you can boot up the latest Batman game and be face deep in bat-ass within 3 minutes.

Figuratively speaking, of course. YMMV

Meh, that seems a bit confirming your previously stated bias.

I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to play or talk about this particular game, because it wasn’t particularly good. Sure, it had stellar graphical tech, but that can’t help poor level design, poor puzzle design, poor dialogue, poor plot, etc. The final showdown with the chopper was ridiculous, and the cliched bad guy not being dead cliche made me groan.

Sure, we got into this to talk about how the Tomb Raider series has gotten better at gender representation and gender issues in the series, and to the extent that Rise of the Tomb Raider didn’t contain the rapey scene it’s, I guess, less problematic than the 2013 reboot. But, RotTR is less of everything, less fun, less scenic, less original, less memorable.

:star::star: two stars out of five.

ps - thanks for the free game.

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I’m kinda avoiding this thread for just now because spoilers but will be back next week with some more lengthy write ups. No screens shots though, my rig would embarrass me against such previously shown riches. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Statistics disagree!

Rise of the Tomb Raider - Metacritic 86 metascore based on 102 critics

Rise of the Tomb Raider - Metacritic 86 metascore based on 38 critics

I’d say I’d give it a 7.5 myself. Sooo much combat. So much.

My bias? Makeup? Flares? Ponytail?

I guess what really grinds me gears about this is that someone will show a static screenshot of the flare on Laras belt, then tsk loudly about the failure of feminism in gaming because the flare is clearly there to highlight her “assets”. Never mind that this static screenshot doesn’t represent actual gameplay, there are a ton of places where the flare is held in hand as you’d expect, the placement on the belt happens when she needs both hands free, she drops it on the ground when entering brightly lit areas…

But that’ll be blindly accepted as truth, because, who can bother to play the game and see beyond the narrative implied by some provocative text next to screenshot. Cue sad head shake. No. That would take, y’know, a few hours of gameplay.

At least a movie is the same exact experience for every viewer, every time they watch. Games don’t work that way.

Interesting horror vs. adventure angle, but, all that combat…

There’s so much gratifying gunplay/archery, now with fancy upgrades that would make Sam Fisher proud. Once you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that this may as well be a Call of Duty game for all the balls-out combat,

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That’s a pretty well-written review.

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Well it is Tom Chick. He was Oscar’s boyfriend in The Office (US), look it up!

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Hey man. It’s May.

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*adds to list

Meant to do this but haven’t been playing games lately. Even my bbs stats are looking bad!

I have a bunch of stuff written down somewhere, will dig it up and see if I can summarise. Should probably finish the game first though… :slight_smile:

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Good news! I got a 1080 gtx and now I can run at 4k with my details set to “very high”. I CAN HOLD MY HEAD HIGH AGAIN, despite @funruly’s tech shaming.

Also, I modded the exhaust for better efficiency, lower fan speeds, etc:

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Now that is hacking!

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Yo. I do still exist but am fielding some fairly curvy life-balls lately.

Moar content to come.

smooches

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Well, after an extended hiatus and total loss of the will to play computer games for a while (and even really interact with people), I am, now, writing an extended critique of the game from the perspective of Lara’s ass cheeks.

I’m currently attempting to collect as many metaphors and puns as possible to insert into the area of discussion so that the criticism really rolls off the tongue. However, I will admit a certain amount of writer’s block in this regard as I don’t seem to be able to come up with the high-concept money shot that will really give this approach legs.

:wink:

Anyway, I’m thinking of structuring the critique around the assumption of the observer’s malevolent gaze as applied to the patriarchal behaviour inherent in the modern marketing ideology. Let’s see what happens when I actually start to play through the game again.

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In the meantime, funruly has literally died.

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He still haunts us to this day…

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