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Tomb Raider and the Definition of Definitive

                Here’s lookin at you, kid.

Yes, Tomb Raider has been a bit stale for a long while and yes there hasn’t been a good iteration for very long time for the franchise. Guardian of Light was probably the only notable step in the right direction, but took the gameplay in a different direction from the traditional Tomb Raider games of the past. The big problem is that corridor crawling adventure games were clunky for the longest time and there was a big gap in the genre since the 3d era began. Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, even Mario and Zelda games made big advances in the 3d era, but of these early predecessors Tomb Raider holds up the least. Mario and Zelda prided themselves on fluid controls which made playing these games, even today, very enjoyable. The primitive interpretations of how players should be able to move translated well to the format that gamers are used to nowadays. Resident Evil controls like a 1920s era tank sold at discount from the crazy soviet from down the block. Turn in place, run forward. Turn in place some more, run forward. Fast mobility wasn’t a priority, and actually worked towards the games theming. Resident Evil is meant to be a survival horror game, so having fluid mobility takes away from the fear of the game. The awkwardness when controlling Jill or Chris adds to the panic when you’re trying to get away from the Zombie or Crimson making its way to eat some face. Tomb Raider controls in a similar fashion, with some more mobility than Resident Evil, but still extremely clunky by today’s standards, but since Tomb Raider isn’t a Survival Horror game, it makes the game all the more frustrating when revisiting the game with present eyes.

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On the Inside

                Do you remember waking up early on Saturday morning, rub your eyes to rid the sleepiness, eager to flip to the cartoon channel, in my day it would have been WB, FOX-box, Cartoon-Network or Nickelodeon, so you could indulge in a slew of cartoons about heroism, vengeance, comedic imaginariums or mysteries? Following you favorite characters every week, discovering their histories, watching how they get out of or into trouble on a weekly basis and building on the history through familiarity of the world created in front of us became such an integral part of how kids from my generation related to one another and how we developed our imaginative building blocks in further creating expansions on our imagination. But what’s important is that the adventures of our heroes didn’t feel repetitive and stale. Each week needed to bring something new into it, to add something to the world around it and to create a dilemma that is wholly unique that challenges the characters’ skills in new and interesting ways. This way there is a reason to keep coming back to watching the show, instead of missing a week and missing out on nothing substantial to the development of the characters that we know.

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QTEs and the Passive Game-Genie

Back onto Quick-time Events (QTEs) for a bit longer. The argument for QTEs is that they were initially designed to make the passive parts of the game more interactive. The flaw in this is that QTEs often detract from the immersion that is supposed to happen when experiencing a game and also leads to poor design choices that are justified by the inclusion of QTEs. We already talked about the Button Fairy pooping its button commands over the screen in anticipation for your payment of button flavored skittle distribution, but in this context it’s not just a matter of teaching the player poorly on adjusting to a situation and the Button Fairy remedying this by explicitly telling you what to do, but the Button Fairy is becoming the new distraction that “Hey, You’re in a game.” Much like the 555-XXXX phone number or the Wilhelm Scream in movies, when little moments like the pop-in of objects from Grand Theft Auto, inconsistent interaction options from any Open-World game, or in this case the Button Fairy becomes a constant reminder that this world is entirely made up. Keeping the player immersed in your medium is important in suspending the player’s disbelief when experiencing the medium, letting the player forgo much conscious thought and being led on by the medium to think, feel, and experience what the medium is trying to portray. If the medium does a good job at leading the player along, then they don’t realize that hours have gone by, they’ve missed a few meals and have probably binged on a full season of MadMen without realizing it and still what more to watch (this may or may not be from personal experience).

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QTEs, Obvious or Not

After spending hours on the new Tomb Raider, dodge duck dip dive and dodging everything that the game threw at me, I came to appreciate a lot about the game. On the other hand, there were some gaming sins that I see constantly in these kind of adventure games that instantly pull me out because of the absurdity in it, this case begin quick-time events (QTEs).

Why my problem with QTEs you may ask? On the one hand, it seems lazy with a lack of vision in teaching the player a special mechanic. In Tomb Raider’s case a kill-mechanic from melee combat or “close-call about to fall” mechanic from climbing. I can understand that it’s better to have some engagement from the player in order to have them feel like they’re actually causing something to happen,keeping the sense of active agency instead of pressing a button 3 seconds ago and watching Lara playing golf with someone’s face or watching her about to lose her grip from the crumbling Cliffside but make a quick recovery while you patiently watch and just wish that she’d move it along so you can get to the next area for puzzles and combat galore. Even a game like Uncharted (oh damn another Tomb Raider/Uncharted comparison so sue me) had plenty of QTEs in the first iteration of the game but toned down tremendously from them because of gripes from the fan-base being annoyed rather than intrigued by the concept. In fact, I’ve yet to meet anyone actually comment on a game saying “You know, [so and so] was really fun, but it had too downtime. It could’ve definitely done with more QTEs,” in which case I would make the point of unfriending them before another sentence came out of their mouth and that would be the end of the conversation. But that doesn’t mean Uncharted 2 didn’t have QTEs, they were just hidden much better and didn’t litter the game to an obscene degree. Instead, they were hidden as moments of reactions in “close-call moments” and set-pieces. So yes, there are in fact too many similarities between Tomb Raider and Uncharted, but the differences in the implementation are staggering although very minute in detail.

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Nostalia vs Aging Well

Sitting around, shooting the shit with your friends and somehow or another an old game gets brought up. “Man, Final Fantasy VI was such a good game.” “I dunno, I haven’t played it.” “Why not? It’s one of the best FF games, if not the best FF game, ever. You should give it a try.” “Can’t do it. I can’t go back to old games. It just looks so old.” This happens to any game you bring up from the SNES generation, PS1/N64 Generation and the PS2/Xbox generation. For many, there’s a window that first time-players are willing to try a game and once that time passes, it’s hard for them to give it a try. This even happens to people who have played it long ago, but I think the window for replaying it lasts longer than for those that didn’t play it during its original time, but without hard numbers its only speculation and I might try to find this out in a different article.

Then why are some games easier to go back to than others? Funny enough, it seems easier to go back to games from the NES/SNES and even some PS1-era games than PS2-era games. Does this mean that the older a game gets, there’s some magical threshold that makes it easier, more desirable to try it instead of less? Well, I wouldn’t say that. Most of the games that I tend to find myself and find others going to play and replay are games that are closer in creation to SNES/NES type games, meaning 2D-Platformers and RPGs. I think the big ingredient to longevity is what was found in the many games of this generation of consoles.

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