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

Depending on how the debate goes, I might be forced to capture some gifs for illustration.

I don’t have the skillset to twitch, but would be cool if someone does.

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Yowch, it’s a bit steep, innit? (can you tell I don’t buy AAA games?)

Not that I have the time right now to game anyway - if I did I’d probably have something better than a 360 to game on, I guess.

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I am so good to wait for Steam sales for those things.
While I was tempted by @codinghorror’s offer I got enough to play right now.

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Well, it is looking like @funkdaddy may not be able to claim his copy so there might be another copy up for grabs. If I don’t hear back in a day or so.

Definitely will be refreshing to have conversation based on, y’know, playing the damn games in question.

Release time is

Available: January 28
This game will unlock in approximately 2 days and 16 hours

… I am preloading it now via Steam PC client.

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And here I felt all noble by waiting over a day for someone to claim it, as I’d had bought it anyway assuming the reviews pan out well.

Ah, well, I suppose I could pay-it-forward and gift a copy to someone. And by someone I mean someone who already agrees with my view on the game, ahem @Daedalus ahem @milliefink

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We can stay focused on Rise, but… until the 28th when it is released … I think this claim is quite hyperbolic and not backed by many (any?) feminists / women who reviewed Tomb Raider (2013).

Here’s the Google search – maybe click through until you find text that you feel supports your statements?

https://www.google.com/search?q=tomb+raider+2013+feminist+review

Top two Google results are quite solidly in favor, and identify clearly in the title or on the site as “feminist”.

  1. A Feminist Reviews Tomb Raider's Lara Croft
  2. http://www.themarysue.com/tomb-raider-review/

(Stick with Tomb Raider reviews, there are some Rise reviews in that result set but spoilers man. Also a mixture of non-review stuff in there.)

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How do I put this in terms you may understand…hmmm.

Feminism is a client-side setting, not server-side. Sensititivity to feminist themes is like mouse sensitivity, it’s not binary, which is the point that @Daedalus and @TooGoodToCheck_ made in the Stratetic Butt Coverings thread. The only right setting of the person playing the game is the setting of the person playing.

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Still, it’s just weird. Your spoilered statements above can be summarized as

Oh yeah. That Tomb Raider (2013) is a pretty good game, you know, EXCEPT FOR ALL THE RAPE

I just find it… surprising… that none of the other self identified feminist reviewers or feminist game websites, or hell even an average marquee game review website, would have failed to mention at all, even in passing, that, y’know, a video game is full of rape.

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Why do you hate videogames so much?

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I thought Critique was in the X-Men, not Tomb Raider.

What’s her costume like? Does it have a strategic butt covering?

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Neither the Forbes nor the Mary Sue reviews that you just quoted “fail to mention it at all, even in passing”

The Forbes article has an entire section (that suffers from bad pagination, to be sure), called

And, The Mary Sue review article discusses this as “that scene”


So, first off, we need to agree whether the two reviews that you linked even mention the word rape, in passing.

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Do you want to hear about the time before the Empire?

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Ok fair point, they do mention it in passing – to specifically say, as women and feminists, they didn’t agree with the “this game is super rapey” claim.

I don’t either.

So where does that leave us? Trigger town USA?

Also mystique’s butt is, uh, definitely featured in the movies. I know because a friend told me.

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Someplace in the middle.

Anticipating the next game will do better.

Hence this thread. :joy::joy::joy:

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Did I ever mention that I used to play games professionally? QA stuff, no journalism.
I need something interesting to play, having grown weary of Fallout 4, and will probably pick this up at some point and maybe chime in here.

So, are you just reviewing the game, or do you need someone to try and break it?

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When you say break, are you referring to breaking the patriarchy?

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Hey, if I can break the patriarchy by trying to confuse spawn points and jigging up against every barrier in the game, then I guess I’m going to break the patriarchy.

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There has already been another game in the series. With no scenes like this. Hence the next game was better. That game was NOT Rise of the Tomb Raider. It was Tomb Raider. Ok…the naming convention makes it hard to tell. From what I read, there was a different team writing for the latest one, through with Crystal Dynamics providing the technology and some continuity.

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Are you referencing something different than Tomb Raider 2013? (which I discussed in my second post)

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