I bid you all salutations once more as I welcome you to the most memorable column since Nelson's himself. What have I got in store this week? Well, a preview of sorts… hold on a second, you pre-emptive peons, I haven't done my wise cracks yet. Erm, lets see, it would be pretty tasteless to remark on Lara Croft having two things going for her, to high brow to link Solid Snake and certain fund re-directions to the labour party… Ah, forget it, on with the show. Column. Thing.
And no Ragey, this is not a positive article.
Swift General Rant
Let me start off by saying that I deplore Tomb Raider. I loathe it. The mere sight of it fills me with a sense of loathing only matched by when I read an article written by a certain Mr. Bennet (and I don't mean Gordon). The only decent thing to come out of the whole mess thus far is the actress in that god-awful movie, and not even due to her acting skills.
The Enigma of the Success- Gameplay
To begin, Tomb Raider, the one that started it all, was not a good game. It was a long, dull, pointless slog through mildly varying tombs. The controls just sucked outright, a veritable nightmare of illogical button combos. No game made for console, especially one which classes itself as action/adventure, should require hand-pretzeling button combos to perform actions. You shouldn't be rendered defenseless whilst climbing. You shouldn't have to holster your weapons before you pull a switch. And dammit, when I push left, I want to move left, not start turning magically on the spot!
The Enigma of the Success- Flogging the Dying Donkey
No, that is not a particularly imaginative metaphor for what most of you males, and some of you females do whilst drooling over pictures of "cyber-babe" Ms. Croft. It is the fact that Tomb Raider is one of the many shameful series which churns out the near exact same game time after time. However, extra anti-kudos are given out here because they managed to get consistently high scores from the sheep known as reviewers with the same old crap for five whole episodes. I salute you, Eidos, though this particular salute is known as the double bird.
The Enigma of the Success- She's not real
But wait, it gets even "better." Millions of teenage fanboys [read up on them here http://www.members.tripod.com/darkragey/fanboy.html] now lust towards the nauseatingly out of proportion Lara lass. Has the world gone mad? Well, duh. She's a graphic, not a sex-symbol, not an icon for "girl power," but a polygonal princess of popular culture. I mean, she's an advertisers dream; no trouble, no paychecks and total control. She advertises Lucazade for God's sake, yet she's still an icon. I think this is even more telling then when I saw an English flag plastered with an Umbro logo about the sad state of affairs we have sunk into.
Conclusion
Lara Croft= Bad. That's all there is to say really. Yet it's the ignorant masses who keep on letting Lara and her puppeteers string you all along.
I'd like to take my remaining space to pimp my site, Hate the Sheep:
http://cheesegod.freeservers.com
And to leave my feedback details:
evilcheesegod@hotmail.com
And finally to say that my unusually good nature in this article was caused by massive sleep deprivation. Goodnight folks.
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Nick