RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER - TWIGS AND NIGGLES

I kinda thought of making a full review of the game which goes into full detail but it's just useless, it'll be too long and everyone will fall asleep quicker than the audience of my drama back in 5th grade, hell, I doubt this thing will even be checked out.

Anyway.....

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a direct sequel to the reboot Tomb Raider which made the well-known dual pistol wielding badass archaeologist Lara Croft into a baby-faced archeologist Lara Croft with a bow and arrow... who suffers from asthma and always forgets to bring her inhaler anywhere. The new Lara is cuter and all, but she's rather boring. They try to make the new Lara more relatable by showing origin story from "help me, a leaf flew across my face" into "eat your heart out, Nathan Drake". Which was covered in the cleverly titled "Tomb Raider" back in 2013. So, that game was the birth and this is only the rise? I guess they're going to stretch the franchise more than Lara's sports bra.

Lara Croft, an archaeologist with asthma fetish and daddy issues has stumbled upon her dad's research and found a tangible decisive evidence to show that her late dad's work was all true and he wasn't just scribbling notes of the voices in his head and smearing his own shit on the whiteboard to form a complicatedly made-up clues, but the game never really bother explaining what this tangible evidence is. In fact, it was never really clear what lara is searching for here, it's always been explained as probably God's crystallized booger that can do magic and bring people back from the dead, we always need that point so Lara can later on fight ancient demonic soldiers.

Everyone is so hung up on the treasure that we never really get any closure from any of the characters, we only know we're Lara Croft so we love and hate what she also does, I never really get any real reason to root for Lara, she's a blow-up doll that emits the sound of an old dusty vacuum cleaner, she has no real sense of purpose, she wanna finish her dad's research, but her dad's characterization from any of the flashbacks never really make him likable. I might as well root for the main antagonist, at least he has a clearer purpose.

by the middle of the game, you've pretty much got all the equipment you need to solve 80% of your problems which is the skull of your enemies, no weapon feels any special, it's just my instinct to switch to shotgun if the enemy gets too close and stabby, other than that I find myself thinking which weapon I haven't used in a while so the enemies get their balanced diet of 5 arrows eye-drops, 10 pistol clips, 4 shotgun barrels and 22 doses of rifle enema every day. This game should give us the feeling of being stuck in the wild looking for materials and supplies to survive, looking out for wild beasts that wanna turn your face into glory-holed hamburger, but I never get any rush of risk them, when I do get jumped by a bear it's always quick-time events and scripted sequence that really make me tell the game "yay, finally a bit of threat, better wait for a button prompt"

The upgrade system in here is really needless, oh I can hoard more ammo from enemy corpses? Well I can see ammo boxes every 34 steps, crafting materials every 20 and I can craft my own ammo and heal on the fly, why can't I craft my own inhaler yet? Lara's asthma is just getting worse. An upgrade that shows you're aiming at the enemy's head? No, I think it's just an apple attached between his shoulders, you know what they say, an apple a day keeps the Croft away! I literally purchased most of the upgrades because I feel bad for the game giving me a platter full of the thing and to make it quit nagging me about weapons and skills upgrade.

The end of the game tries to play the execute or leave the final boss taunting you about how much of a manwhore your dad was, well too bad, I never got any closure about the father to like him enough either, I just pick the choice that supposedly gives me a secret ending or something, besides, he gets bombed and dies immediately if you choose to spare him anyway. In the end Lara does get the treasure, but she does the cliche realization about how mankind isn't ready for such a powerful crystallized booger and smashes it, Could we at least get a free 3-days trial first?

So, Rise of the Tomb Raider, came to see the pretty environment, wasn't disappointed, expected a scene of Lara getting tortured, well she gets tortured by nature throughout the game, I guess that's a check. Anything else? Maybe stop taunting us with all the heaving and moaning sounds, I kinda expected Lara to get raped by a panther at one point.

Video Game Storytelling

Feels really nice when the game actually lets you change how everything flows, almost like you're in control even more whether it's just a decision to choose soup or salad for dinner or whether you wanna let your best friend suffer while saving her dad's life or let her dad die so your friend will live normally but gets into tons of bad crowds... Dammit, Chloe! (Life is Strange).

I'm never a fan of complex story, when the story is too serious, I can't be arsed to keep so much stuff in mind. When the story is shallow and all jokes, I might still get a few chuckles out of it but it'll certainly put me to sleep, this is why gameplay and story of a game kinda becomes the deciding factor of whether I wanna play the game and invest my valuable life which I could spend on socializing with new people and studying new things or leave the game and bitch about stuff on the internet.

Video game developers have always been trying to achieve absolute immersion for the players or just wanna get some money, a man's gotta eat, but I digress. Some games actually let you actively choose what you wanna do, but everything always comes down a linear outcome, I know making a video game isn't easy, you need to choose between quantity or quality... or balanced. You want to make the gameplay varied but you can only make the game so long or you can make the game super long but consists of the same gameplay. You either get bored for being dragged out or have a unique experience but unsatisfied...

Gotta make sure I'm not starting to describe my love life... that is if I've ever had one

Anyway, the balanced way is the best, you stay entertained with unique stuff and it doesn't drag out for too long.

Some games like Infamous or Spider-Man Web of Shadows clearly shows which path is for heroes and which is for douchebags, but games like Heavy Rain, Mass Effect, Life is Strange and plenty of Telltale's titles really dwell around the grey area a little too long like a windowless white van around a kiddy playground. Games like Bioshock Infinite doesn't show much choices actually toys with the mentality of choices and actually makes us learn the hard way that you're not supposed to fuck with fate, no matter how much control you think you have, it's just what you think.

Since I've been playing Life is Strange, I'm currently most familiar with it, but I still remember my first ever choice in a game, to give Emerl to Shadow or not early in Sonic Battle. If I say no, Shadow will fight Sonic, but if I choose yes, Sonic would say "There's no way I'd just say yes!" and starts to fight anyway. At the time it felt awesome because it was a first for me, to change the dialogue even by a little bit. Now, it's just a bullshit choice because there's no point of putting one there, or maybe there is, I never finished the game, but I do know Emerl goes berserk at the end, maybe that's when Emerl starts to look back whether Sonic handed him over easily or protected him, but Sonic has never really been famous for story.

When I play a story-based game, I tend to not replay it because usually I'll get bored, I already know the story, I know how it'll play out, maybe if the gameplay is fun I get some extra kicks out of replaying but when the gameplay is pretty meh, I always let cutscenes and story moments play out while I search for some wank materials which really takes away the immersion. But for games with branchy storylines, I always play at least twice, the first one being what I wanna do, the second play is the opposite, I might do another for goofing off and looking for other changes but by then I my attention would've gone to the screaming cat noises outside my window.

Same goes for survival horror games like Resident Evil, RE4 is a great game, I get why some people get some kick out of replaying, but it just doesn't interest me anymore. DmC: Devil May Cry, the reboot which gets shit all over for making a new take on the franchise has quite a meh story, but to this day I still get a kick out of replaying it from time to time. I've never played Metal Gear Solid, I've played the spin off, Metal Gear Rising, the story pales in comparison to MGS for how deep and complicated it is, but again, the gameplay is the strong point. While I do acknowledge that MGS's story is indeed amazing, that still goes under the too complicated list in my book, I prefer it to be a movie rather than a game.

When I play a game, I want to be the guy on the screen, I wanna feel what the protagonist feels, that's why games like MGS is just too much for me to give a shit, because I don't find it relatable. Telltale's Walking Dead also falls into the category, Tales from the Borderlands though still gets my attention, it's not really relatable, but seriously, what part of falling into a death rally is relatable, but the funny quips and lighthearted tone of the game just works. Life is Strange, the game I've been gushing about above is one of those complicated, yet relatable kinda story, no other games have ever put me to tears and the drama just works for me.