--Lara Croft, Tomb Raider
Having recently seen and reviewed the Tomb Raider movie [1], I wanted to try out the game it is based on. Those who have played the game will see definite ways that the film borrows directly from the game, with several specific scenes, themes, and story elements transplanted into the movie. The game is much darker in tone than its counterpart movie, though. Both tell the origin story of Lara Croft becoming an explorer. According to text accompanying some concept art, Lara is 21 in this game, a recent college graduate, and this is her very first adventure. And it's a very fun one for players who like Uncharted-style gameplay.
Production Values
For some reason, the lighting was extremely dim when I played initially on the recommended settings, and I had to adjust it multiple times to brighten up the screen so I could see the environment and take adequate screenshots. But once I turned up the brightness, the graphical detail and vibrant colors were revealed. The environments, ranging from jungles to a beach to snowy mountains to subterranean tombs, are very well-realized. I encountered no pop in, blurry textures, or frame rate fluctuations, and besides a few freezes that restarted the game (I don't know if this was the game or the console) I did not find any technical issues at all.
The voice acting is well done, especially on Lara's part--her character growth never struck me as forced or implausible, and the voice acting contributes a lot to her sense of character. Supporting characters receive scant development, if any, though, but are still competently acted from a vocal perspective.
Gameplay
Quick time events, shootouts, optional tombs to raid, collectibles to hunt--there is a decent amount of variety in Tomb Raider, and you can keep exploring the island and completing side objectives after finishing the main story. The game cycles through combat and puzzle solving and platforming regularly, so one doesn't get ignored to make the others more prominent. There are distinct parallels between the gameplay of Tomb Raider and Uncharted, especially when it comes to the platforming, but Tomb Raider is superior in terms of providing a far deeper, more varied combat experience.
An XP system unlocks new skills for Lara, the skills proving very helpful by the end of the game. Some of my favorites were ones that enable brutal gun-based finishing moves--though the finishing moves with the pry axe are pretty spectacular as well. Lara accumulates a rather diverse weapon set by the game's end, so there are enough weapons and upgrades to keep players busy experimenting and enhancing. Attachments, new models, and enhancements allow for the same weapon types to be renovated rather dramatically throughout the story.
The fights can be intense, and the combat is fairly violent at times. As Lara progresses through her journey she even realistically acquires scratches and cuts that remain visible in cutscenes. Her clothing becomes dirty and gets tears and holes, and she takes quite a beating during some game segments. This grounds a sense of realism that contrasts well with the aspects of the story that are foreign to everyday life (the supernatural happenings).
Story
(Spoilers are below!)
Lara, part of an expedition to find the remnants of an ancient civilization called Yamatai, is washed ashore on an island during a vehement storm. She and her fellow crew members discover that the island is the burial place of Queen Himiko, rumored to possess "shamanistic" powers of sorcery. It is also a realm that cannot be escaped, and it seems that some conscious force is intentionally holding its inhabitants on the island.
A man named Mathias leads a pseudo-religious cult called the Solarii that worships Himiko, the queen who once presided over the island. The Solarii think that her soul is still present in Yamatai and that it prevents anyone from escaping. In an effort to appease Himiko and be released, the group wants to offer Sam, one of Lara's old friends who also was carried to the island during the storm, to Himiko as a vessel for her to possess. A long series of events culminates in Lara forcing Mathias off of a cliff and interrupting the ritual soul migration of Himiko's spirit into Sam's body, saving her friend and liberating the island from enslavement to the power of Himiko.
Intellectual Content
Tomb Raider repeatedly shows characters claim that the events on the island are impossible, irrational, or devoid or logic. Jonah tells Lara that they can't use logic to understand the island. Mathias tells Sam, upon her insisting that she is of no use to his plot to escape the island and asking why he needs her, that she is "searching for logic and reason where there is none." But this is entirely untrue, and indeed could not be true! Irrationalism, which can manifest itself as the idea that logic does not govern everything, is impossible [2]. Logic still governs everything in the island: the island is still the island, each thing and event is still what it is, nothing that happens on the island involves logical contradictions or impossibilities, and deductive reasoning is true on the island by necessity. Actually, even scientific laws, which are quite different than logical laws, are still upheld on the island; they are just tampered with by Himiko's power.
What the characters may mean is that they do not know how to explain the phenomena they see because they have no similar past precedent to compare it to, yet this does not mean that there isn't an explanation. It just means that they don't know what the explanation is. There cannot not be an explanation for something. To argue against this is to affirm it, since one must offer an explanation as to why an explanation doesn't exist.
Then there's the fact that Lara initially dismisses the idea that Himiko's spirit is keeping people on the island as impossible--but this is utter nonsense! The only things that are impossible are logical contradictions (for instance, I cannot be married and not married to the same person at the same time), which would include absences of necessary truths (i.e. truth exists, A is A, deductive reasoning is innately reliable, etc) since denying necessary truths results in contradiction. It is impossible for me to exist and not exist simultaneously, but there is nothing impossible about a queen's spirit outliving her body and migrating from host body to host body. This is why it is asinine to call certain supernatural events impossible, since they are clearly possible (meaning they could become actualized or could have happened) even if they do not exist in reality.
Both of these claims--the one that supernatural phenomena are impossible and that logic is nowhere to be found on the island--are idiotic claims that only an unsound, inexperienced thinker would make. If you want to read about how similar themes of epistemology, myth, and the supernatural were incorporated into the recent movie, I have reviewed the film and in my review I examine some of the epistemological errors characters made [1], yet the movie drastically changes the ending in a way that (SPOILER) removes the supernatural elements from the story entirely.
As one might expect, there are also puzzles to be solved, especially in the optional tombs. Some of them require more intellectual effort than others.
Conclusion
Tomb Raider is a wonderful game to invest some hours into for those who like the genre or series. It honors key elements of the franchise (the dual pistols even make an appearance near the end) while showcasing a grim world and a developing Lara. If you like Uncharted but want a similar game with more thematic darkness, complexity of gameplay mechanics, and more optional exploration, then you might love Tomb Raider! I would unhesitatingly recommend it to the exploration-based action platformer crowd (or fans of Horizon: Zero Dawn).
Content:
1. Violence: Attacks--particularly finishing moves with the pry axe--can cause a lot of blood to appear onscreen, with gunshots releasing blood upon impact. Even some of the death screens for Lara can be pretty gruesome. During miscellaneous scenes, piles of organs and bones are littered around areas Lara must walk through.
2. Profanity: Profanity is used, relatively infrequently, throughout the story.
3. Nudity: Players can find nude corpses of Solarii victims that are bound to posts.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/movie-review-tomb-raider.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-impossibility-of-irrationalism.html
No comments:
Post a Comment