The original Tomb Raider, its remake, and the loss of subtlety

[Louis_Cypher]

I truly found what you said baffling about how "the male and female psyche" feature differences that mean women are typically unfit to "take moral ownership over space opera, which has always been a male dominated pastime", reason being that women like "relationships" while men like "engineering"

Not unfit in all cases. Less fit, typically, with the operative and most important word being 'typically'.

Moral ownership was a different point, about how artists who know they suck, often take ownership.

I'm meant to be asleep, but will just clear up one point here, regarding the overlapping bell curve mentioned in post #45. This might not be a familiar thing to every reader. When two groups have overlapping characteristics, (such as IQ, height, etc), but do not overlap mutually, this does not preclude the existence of exceptional individuals in the lower group, who significantly intersect with the higher group's elite. Actually that is the very point of such a bell graph; the narrowest portion are rare, extending far into the next catagory, but they do exist. Thus one can fully expect examples of occasional women NASA directors, hard-science-fiction authors, civil engineers, with the broad nature of the group remaining different.

So why bring up large groups of women entering hobbies largely previous created and paid for by men?

Studies suggest that women are typically orientated cognitively toward care professions, and males toward physical jobs or STEM professions. It shows in choices of literature, with science fiction being a less popular genre with women. The way to generally make it appealing, is to insert soap opera into space opera, often at the expense of any STEM facets, making something barely resemble the genre it allegedly represents. That does not preclude exceptions, balanced works, men with enough self-awareness for balance, female authors with enough self-awareness for balance, men with slightly feminine cognitive traits, or women with slightly masculine cognitive traits. It does however make a 9-to-2 ratio in that photo all the more suspicious, assuming it represents a reasonable sample of the company's environment, which we tongue-in-cheek accepted for the comedic purposes of making a point. The first point being that this 9-to-2 selection, if representative, does not happen through natural means, and the second point being that geek 'recieved wisdom' generally finds hobbies start to decline into amorphous catastrophe, when the 'care traits' start to assert 'inclusion' or 'feelings' over the more important criteria for men, of 'truth' and 'authenticity'.

Basically the manifestation of STEM thinking is the tendency to deliniate, establish order, catagorise, form boundaries, establish truth, etc. The manifestation of care thinking is to 'not offend', 'subvert boundaries, in order to not offend', 'disorder catagories, in order to not offend', etc. The problem is that the STEM one is actually 'correct', objectively speaking, so too much feminine thinking pulls societies into 'pious lies' that corrode social trust. Care however does not mean moral rectitude, just the appearance of 'being unoffensive', often concealing cruelty. One pious lie would be that men and women share equal competencies in everything; so a massive trans person kicking a woman half to death in MMA is better than risking 'offending' someone.

We can, unscientifically, infer backwards, that "the fruit does not fall far from the tree". What the Codex knows about BioWare around the time when Manveer Heir was making openly anti-white racist tweets, or Anita Sarkessian was trying to stir up gender hatred, is mere "grist for the mill".

 

[Ash]

This is absolutely nonsensical. Star Wars is a world-famous best-selling movie franchise that everyone's grandma has seen, and is worth tens of billions of dollars. Star Wars expanded universe novels make it onto the NYT bestsellers list. It's not some underground esoteric thing known only to a mystical elite of basement-dwelling "geeks", it's a touchstone of mainstream culture.

Yes, but not everyone studies it like a nerd does. There are levels of fandom, and what you are describing is the general audience. What I am describing is the advanced audience. How many of those Goldman Sachs guys know that Darth Malak appears in a flashback in KOTOR II with his jaw intact, or that the Hypermatter Reactor in a Imperial II-class Star Destroyer consumes tons of fuel to stay in FTL, or some other shit like that? Have they read Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", or Carl Jung, just to gain insight into their hobby? Can they piece together every scene and line from memory, as many nerds can, or do they just have a general impression of what happens? One or two can do this; if so, then they are nerds. Passion drives such people to know everything, every detail.

Women are fans of these things, men are fans of these things, everyone is a fan of these things.

I would have believed that ten years ago, and backed you up with egalitarian idealism. Even my female family no longer agree with you, and hate this kind of opinion as of 2022. Experience, and seeing the consequences of this kind of thinking, as well as knowing biology, tells me that although there are exceptions, on any bell curve, in general, the preferences of men and women substantially do not overlap; they can share hobbies, but they are not identical. Also this kind of thinking has been incredibly destructive to society, forcing women into social roles they didn't honestly want, destroying fertility, and convincing people there is a patriarchal conspiracy (rather than 2 million years of sound biology). I know women who enjoy these things, but usually not for the same reasons that men do, or to the same degree men do.

Okay - the attendees of most early Star Trek conventions were female, and it was a woman who started the letter-writing campaign that secured the third season of TOS.

Yep, and if you know your Star Trek esoterica, then you must now complete the rest of this common tale of justification; the audience of "Star Trek: The Original Series" had an unusual abundance of women, because women had a wide-on for Spock. They weren't generally getting the floor wet for his correct use of SI units.

Let's cut to the chase; the denial of major biological and psychological differences between men and women has been incredibly destructive for wider society. Women were forced into careers they were not suited to, convinced of a patriachal conspiracy, rather than understanding 2 million years of sound biology. Fertility across the Western world has been sub-replacement for decades, and these lofty ideals you ascribe to, will die without a vector, to propagate them.

When poseurs enter hobbies, for whatever reason, whether liking the idea, the ego image of themselves in the scene, without any real passion, especially people programmed for 'agreeableness', usually because these people make desparate nerds feel better, they have a tendency to corrode the thing in the direction of their biological biases.

No need to persuade the Lemming something we all already know.

How many chicks are on forums frothing at the mouth over stats and possible builds in new game x?
How many chicks play and/or make fan missions and mods?
How many chicks are on RPG Codex (trannies don't count)? 2 maybe?
How many chicks are actually gamers like us, not normies that play the non-games of today.
How many classical (90s) developers were women, especially in a position of spearheading design?

Not many. If one is familiar with women, you will know they are wired differently. That's OK, and maybe there are some out there with a burning passion for "real" gaming and should be given a chance to create something great, but on the whole they definitely have tainted the waters of this hobby. Nobody has tainted it any more than those classical devs themselves though, who all systematically sold out. Probably so they could have enough money to make the women in their lives like them more.

 

[HansDampf]

What would the 2020 version of that be? That game you like is transphobic?

 

[Lucumo]

Not many. If one is familiar with women, you will know they are wired differently. That's OK, and maybe there are some out there with a burning passion for "real" gaming and should be given a chance to create something great, but on the whole they definitely have tainted the waters of this hobby. Nobody has tainted it any more than those classical devs themselves though, who all systematically sold out. Probably so they could have enough money to make the women in their lives like them more.

Aren't there basically three types of female gamers? The casual ones who play stuff like builders, management games, the Sims, browser games, all the mobile trash etc, the fake ones who play whatever to get "nerd cred" and as such into a specific crowd and actual core gamers who play whatever genre and do it passionately too.
The first group plays games which are easy to get into and suit their general taste. However, they will drop it once they find something more interesting (hobby). The second one tries to get into some group, recognition or something along the lines by pretending to like or know something. For instance, we once had such a girl attend a LAN (damn the guy who invited her) and she was completely lost/worthless. While the guys had proper PCs, flatscreens (was around the time CRTs got replaced) etc, she had a...laptop. She also obviously sucked at all games and got completely stomped. In another display of such behavior, she played poker and didn't even know how checking, calling and raising worked (but pretended to know). That is absolutely the worst type. And the last group is self-explanatory. They play different genres and enough of it to get good at the very least.
As for tainting the waters...I think it's kinda unfair to blame developers. The issue lies with the companies (especially the large ones) and the gaming press. There were always women in gaming (development) and it wasn't really an issue, as they did their part. However, it became one in the 00s when marketing people generally took over and sales and such got over-analyzed. Those kind of people looked at games like Myst, The Sims and how much they sold and they wanted the same. So to increase sales to women, they wanted their games to appeal to them more (basically as Louis_Cypher said). So, of course, what you do is hire women, after all, they have to know best to appeal to their own kind. At the same time, women got pushed more to the front by marketing. The gaming press generally magnified everything in that regard (X sold a lot because it appealed to women; female developer blabla...). The drive to sell more to women also goes mostly hand-in-hand with the drive to sell more to casual gamers. After all, that's what most women are (and technically most men these days too, if we look at mobile gaming). One of the main issues is that there was a lack of pushback from developers. The moneyheads just want as much money as possible and marketing people tend to be better with their tongues, so they sell what they think to them and as such have too much control over the actual development of a product. And, let's not forget, you don't want to be a bigot and women-hater, right? That's why larger companies are generally decline (among other issues like playing it safe because of just wanting to earn money, development costs etc etc) while smaller companies can be huge incline. Unfortunately, it doesn't help that pure marketing can still sell a shit game well. Gamers are to blame for that, but the gaming press too, as always.
It also reminds one of that video of Frank Zappa that was posted around the forum where he says something about the decline of the music business. While previously, companies did things to see what stuck to the wall (and basically developed games they wanted to play themselves and were passionate about), it's now done by marketing people with only sales in mind (hence all the formulaic nonsense, crafting everywhere, achievements) and women who are supposed to implement things that "women" want. The Japanese side isn't nearly as infected, apart from multinational companies like Sony who already sold out and moved their gaming HQ to the US. There, comparatively, more women have always been working in the gaming sector...but mostly as artists or musicians...and they did actual work. Games for men and women (otome stuff) were also always clearly separated and when it came together and appealed to both sexes (Sengoku Basara series for example), it was by coincidence and not intentional. So basically, they have always embraced and kept the differences in taste between men and women. Some companies also don't follow the marketing (fomulaic) approach for developing games. It's why Nintendo can bring out games that are simply fun to play, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[HansDampf]

The Selaco thread is another winner - a new FPS game is coming out and our thread on it is 5% gaming talk, 95% people scouring the dev's Twitter to "catch him out" for not hating homosexuals).

That's exactly the reason I stopped visiting that thread even though I'm looking forward to the game. It's so boring. And it feels like it's happening more now than 6 years ago.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I feel i'm kinda responsible for the Selaco shit lmao. I did some driveby shit posting as i usually do but instead of stopping as soon i left it just kept going in my absence.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

One reason this site is becoming increasingly unusable to me to the point where I barely post anymore is because any actual videogame discussion (which is the only thing I'm here for at this stage) will invariably be redirected ... I appreciate that your post was actually tied to the topic at hand but I still rolled my eyes out of my skull when I saw the pic of the BioWare team and the accompanying stuff ... to the point where I felt compelled to respond - not only because I think you're almost entirely wrong, but also because I could feel the discussion about to derail (which, amusingly, I suppose I've ended up contributing to more than anyone else).

Yes, I wasn't going to say out of politeness, but this is the truth; I've just calmly replied to you, maintaining emotional equanimity throughout, expressing myself in earnest.

Might I make a little off-topic observation about conduct and mentality?

"Unusuable" is a strong word, when all that has happened, is some opinions got expressed; no bullying, no moderator abuse, no impolite behavior of any kind. I've seen sites with all of these things; mod bullies, bannings that were done just because an innocent person wasn't 'liked'. They are terrible places for anyone with a different opinion. I think we actually have it pretty good here on RPGCodex. Neutral folks, partisan folks, and a million individual positions; users just need a little resilience (an essential life skill), but anything goes. If you don't want a free speech site, but want rigourous moderation of topics, there are sites like that, but in my personal opinion, you lose a lot of authenticity and become stifled in such environments, because natural discussions must go where they wilt; how does one learn but through challenge?

All this brings spiritual advice to mind, that I have received from meditation traditions over the years.

You are complaining that certain people are disturbing your mental enjoyment of your hobby, because their opinions threaten your mental calmness. We are the sole rulers of our own mind, even though the world may impact our contentment. I sympathise with any suffering, but we have no obligation to rule any mind but our own; being resilient is each individual's duty alone. This is essential for free speech; the maturity to govern ourselves. I would point out, that you have your own mind, your own reasoning, and you chose to have this discussion, nobody forced you. Nobody forces you to read or reply to this, or any other post on RPGCodex. There are times when I must exercise temperance too; not every opinion here leaves me calm.

What I'm politely saying is that topics don't always go the way we want, we don't always get what we want in life, because we are talking with free individuals; we just roll with it, accept reality, there will be more discussion in future, and nothing has been lost.

I get the feeling that this, and the accompanying stuff about Western democracy, is the topic you're actually interested in talking about, and all the stuff about Tomb Raider and Star Wars and BioWare was just sugar for the pill.

You have characterised me again.

Let me then speculate from personal experience, on what is really driving you to take exception over posts #38 and #45:

Most humans have trouble separating their sense of 'self', an illusion, from their 'true self'. The 'true self' is the awareness behind the eyes, that has no opinions, and cannot be harmed. You are 'ego-identified' with an intellectual position, so that any threatening opinion, gives you the illusion of damage to your 'self' identity. "If opinion X is proven wrong, I look foolish." No, you don't, it's just an opinion either being confirmed or disproven. When people fear damage to their self image, they react in defensive ways, because 'ego-death' feels like 'real death' (even though it actually does no harm). Trying to suggest someone's opinion is so 'out there' that it is "baffling", is merely a rhetorical tactic designed to sway the weak minded, that does not address a statement's logical merit.

True intellect is cutting through such bullshit to rational argument alone, where we can discuss the merits without artifice.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

rock albums are made by people in their early twenties.

that's due to drugs, not age.

 

[JarlFrank]

The whole discussion about women in gaming is interesting within this context because the Tomb Raider level design community has a lot of female authors, and not just young ones - a bunch of middle aged housewives cranking out Tomb Raider levels, too!
Same with the Thief community, there's a surprising amount of female level designers there too. One of the absolute best Thief fan missions of all time was made by a woman, even: a middle-aged Italian woman who sadly passed away a couple of years ago. Not what you'd think of when you imagine your average level designer.

You won't find such a high ratio of female designers in the Doom and Quake level design communities, so there has to be something about the gameplay of those two games that attract the kind of female players who are willing to put in the effort and creativity of making their own levels.

Perhaps it is the exploration focus of both games. In Tomb Raider, you explore tombs, solve puzzles, recover artifacts.
In Thief you explore cities and mansions, snoop into people's private diaries and letters, and steal shiny things.

Exploring, looting shiny artifacts, snooping on things that weren't written for your eyes... those kinds of things seem to appeal to female gamers. We all know that snooping is a big female fantasy, so Thief being popular among female gamers makes a lot of sense

This whole notion of "equality" sadly prevents proper studies from being conducted. It would be really interesting to examine which games have the highest percentage of female fans and then analyze the types of gameplay those games have to find out what female players are attracted to gameplay-wise.

 

[Semiurge]

The story changes in Anniversary are harder to forgive because, as far as I know, original writer Vicky Arnold didn't participate in the remake at all, so it's a case of some arsehole at Crystal Dynamics taking a look at the highly effective, terse, and evocative story that Arnold wrote for TR1 and thinking "hm, I reckon I can do better by systematically ruining everything about this".

After having started their own story-arc (what happened to Lara's mum?) with Legend, they were practically forced to re-write Anniversary for the sake of continuity. Lara's motivations were set in stone by Legend and since they date back to her childhood, not having Anniversary reflect them would've seemed strange. The influence of Legend is fortunately limited to a few small touches, such as the prominent location of the portrait of her parents in Croft manor, and the encounter with Natla in the great pyramid.

Yep, and if you know your Star Trek esoterica, then you must now complete the rest of this common tale of justification; the audience of "Star Trek: The Original Series" had an unusual abundance of women, because women had a wide-on for Spock. They weren't generally getting the floor wet for his correct use of SI units.

Let's cut to the chase; the denial of major biological and psychological differences between men and women has been incredibly destructive for wider society. Women were forced into careers they were not suited to, convinced of a patriachal conspiracy, rather than understanding 2 million years of sound biology. Fertility across the Western world has been sub-replacement for decades, and these lofty ideals you ascribe to, will die without a vector, to propagate them.

So why bring up large groups of women entering hobbies largely previous created and paid for by men?

Studies suggest that women are typically orientated cognitively toward care professions, and males toward physical jobs or STEM professions. It shows in choices of literature, with science fiction being a less popular genre with women. The way to generally make it appealing, is to insert soap opera into space opera, often at the expense of any STEM facets, making something barely resemble the genre it allegedly represents. That does not preclude exceptions, balanced works, men with enough self-awareness for balance, female authors with enough self-awareness for balance, men with slightly feminine cognitive traits, or women with slightly masculine cognitive traits. It does however make a 9-to-2 ratio in that photo all the more suspicious, assuming it represents a reasonable sample of the company's environment, which we tongue-in-cheek accepted for the comedic purposes of making a point. The first point being that this 9-to-2 selection, if representative, does not happen through natural means, and the second point being that geek 'recieved wisdom' generally finds hobbies start to decline into amorphous catastrophe, when the 'care traits' start to assert 'inclusion' or 'feelings' over the more important criteria for men, of 'truth' and 'authenticity'.

Take your head out of your ass for a moment and remember that there's this thing called "lizard brain". This corner of the human psyche is the reason why all humans are capable of enjoying entertainment like Star Trek: TOS. Adventure, fear and awe are the core of mass appeal, and even the base creatures you described, who shouldn't be capable of thinking about anything else but sex and nurturing, are not immune to its siren song.

As for the soap, it would take a massive autist to not enjoy the mandatory drama in a character driven show. If the Star Trek franchise was completely devoid of it and only consisted of engineer porn and psychedelic spacescapes, only the aforementioned would watch it. Remove this from the whole GoT series and you'd be left with 8 seasons of season 8.

 

[Lemming42]

You are complaining that certain people are disturbing your mental enjoyment of your hobby, because their opinions threaten your mental calmness.

I know that, at this point, complaining that the Codex is a site consisting mainly of culture war obsessives who aren't serious about gaming is like complaining that Jackson Pollock has made a mess, or that Mariah Carey is talking about Christmas, but it's sad to see the site go this way regardless.

As a man with a keen innate biological bias towards engineering and hypermatter reactors, I'm less interested in my mental state and more interested in the reality of how discussions on this site consistently derail faster than a Soviet-made freight train. It's impossible to ignore it because it's every thread every time. Again, the Selaco thread is one of the real hall-of-famers, I note nobody's even trying to defend that one.

You have characterised me again... You are 'ego-identified' with an intellectual position, so that any threatening opinion, gives you the illusion of damage to your 'self' identity. "If opinion X is proven wrong, I look foolish."

I don't want to get into a discussion about potential sex differences in humans because I find the topic about as interesting as learning about different types of drywall. I don't think I've actually shared an opinion about the subject, though, and I'm not sure what you think my view on it is. I engaged with you based on the position you offered, that men like "engineering" and women like "relationships", which struck me as a) absurdly funny, especially in the characterisation of men, b) not representative of reality as I've experienced it, and c) not relevant to the discussion, because being more prosocial and interested in interpersonality and humanity would logically make women better at writing fiction, engaging with fiction, and forming fan communities based around it - especially fiction like Star Trek, which is entirely about relationships and interpersonal connections and moral issues and how people relate to one another and face the unfamiliar. Cue Tim Cain's* quote about how he wants Fallout to be about the ethics of a fictional world, not about the specifics of big plasma guns.

*Cain likely having Feminine Cognitive Traits - I mean, just look at him

To be completely honest I don't think I am mischaracterising you, I think you wanted to post a picture of a bell curve and talk about Western fertility rates, and you knew you could do it here because the Codex is essentially a safe space where people will applaud you for having a go at a bunch of random strangers in a photograph based on an imaginary scenario in which they're Not Real Nerds (based on their sex) and they therefore work on Star Wars games and collect Star Wars memorabilia because they don't really like Star Wars, and are out to dilute the hobby with their non-STEM-thinking ways. My honest impression is that the thread could have been about sewage draining systems and that bell curve image would still have ended up getting posted somehow. This was among the most inappropriate possible threads to try it - Tomb Raider is renowned for a vast female fanbase, the best games in the franchise were written by a woman, women make fan levels, etc...

 

[Lemming42]

Re-railing attempt:

It would be really interesting to examine which games have the highest percentage of female fans and then analyze the types of gameplay those games have to find out what female players are attracted to gameplay-wise.

Games that I remember having big female fanbases:
Tomb Raider and Thief as you mentioned, Sierra/LucasArts era point and click adventure games, Final Fantasy and jRPGs in general, The Sims, BioWare RPGs (from Balding Gays all the way through to Mass Erect and Generic Age), Bethesda RPGs from Morrowind onwards, New Vegas also. Classic platformers like Mario and early 3D ones like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro seemed to be universally popular with either sex. Basically all those games that were massive flagship franchises like Sonic and Crash and TR and Mario had universal fanbases.

The only area where I've really noticed a significant deficit in female players is in FPS games and shitty third person shooters, though FPS classics like Doom and Half-Life are increasingly popular with Gen Z kids of either sex these days, my niece recognises some shit I play even before I shove it in her face going "LOOK AT THIS". EDIT: Oh, and fighting games, my impression of the FGC is almost entirely men yelling at each other and threatning to batter each other in parking lots.

After having started their own story-arc (what happened to Lara's mum?) with Legend, they were practically forced to re-write Anniversary. Lara's motivations were set in stone by Legend and since they date back to her childhood, having Anniversary not reflect them would've seemed strange. The influence of Legend is fortunately limited to a few small touches, such as the prominent location of the portrait of her parents in Croft manor, and the encounter with Natla in the great pyramid.

True, but I was always bothered by things like the melodramatic stuff after she kills Larson in Anniversary. Again, Gard insisted that most TR1 enemies be animals or mutants because he was disturbed by the amount of casual killing of humans in games, which is a position I have some small degreee of sympathy for, but I've never met anyone who didn't find the whole Lady Macbeth routine in Anniversary to be unintentionally hilarious. The close-up of the shitty badly-textured hands, incredible.

 

[JarlFrank]

In TR1 Lara starts out as a seasoned adventurer, it's not her first gig.

But in Anniversary she acts like a naive girl in many of the cutscenes, not like a professional adventurer at all. I guess that's what they call "ludonarrative dissonance"

 

[Semiurge]

Nothing says "90s" more than that.

 

[luj1]

Tomb Raider is nice. I've replayed it some time ago. Is there a modern game that is similar to it?

Prience of Persia Sands of Time was good. I believe it came out in 2006.

 

[kangaxx]

Tomb Raider is nice. I've replayed it some time ago. Is there a modern game that is similar to it?

Sadly even the new Tomb Raiders aren't similar to Tomb Raider.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I think you'd be surprised at how many people among the general population - even globally, not just in the West - can give you a reasonably accurate rundown of the first Star Wars film, and the LOTR movies.

i can assure you it's mostly a usa thing. very few people outside of there give a flying fuck to space elves and glowing wands.

 

[Ash]

Tomb Raider is nice. I've replayed it some time ago. Is there a modern game that is similar to it?

Prience of Persia Sands of Time was good. I believe it came out in 2006.

PoP: Sands of Time was like 2002 or something, and isn't much like classic Tomb Raider at all. Solid platformer but extremely linear and the combat adds almost nothing. TR combat sucks but it serves a purpose (as I mentioned before). Almost NOTHING I've ever played is anything like classic Tomb Raider. In fact, the closest I can think of is Duke Nukem: Time to Kill and its sequel Land of the Babes on the original Playstation. They have all the same mechanics (including slightly better combat/aiming!), most notably the grid-based platforming. In Time to Kill you go to Western, Medieval and Roman times so it definitely gets tomb Raidery even in atmosphere at times. I still to this day consider them underrated games. The level design is absolutely solid too but it does ditch grand scale TR has in favor of average-sized and paced levels, as well as the immersion factor when it's goofy sci-fi and Duke is cracking jokes and saving half-naked chicks. Still, if you like classic Tomb Raider I would recommend you play these. Doubly awesome if you like Duke 3D-era Duke Nukem too. Use an emulation site and have fun. If you like 90s games, you will like these. They absolutely do not get enough love and respect, because they were console exclusive and that console was packed full of amazing games that these 18-rated Tomb Raider clones understandably got overshadowed.

About the combat: It has precision aiming and running and gunning using d-pad so I hope you're good with your keyboard. When running and gunning there's a slight aim assist, and you can hold the look button to precision aim with no assist for headshots, but you have to stand still. It is clunky but it works. A nice solution to TR's problems before mouse/sticks had become truly commonplace. This does make acrobatic combat much less of a thing, but it is worth it for combat to not be full lock-on garbage.

Here, check it out:



Damn, I think it is time I replay these two games (again).

 

[JarlFrank]

There's those Indiana Jones games that cloned Tomb Raider.


Infernal Machine was very Tomb Raider-esque.

Deathtrap Dungeon is also Tomb Raider inspired but feels way clunkier, while also heavier on the combat.


And then there was Prince of Persia 3D, which was heavily inspired by Tomb Raider - funny thing, because Tomb Raider feels like a 3D version of the original Prince of Persia. Things do have the tendency to come full circle, don't they?

No link for this one because it's not available on either Steam or GoG. Gotta hunt that down on abandonware sites.

 

[Ash]

Deathtrap Dungeon is garbage. I think it was Lemming that recently played and reviewed it. Or maybe Ed123. I also played it a few years back looking for 90s glory. Not this time.

I have been meaning to play that indiana jones game though. But first and foremost....is it good? If not, it shouldn't even be mentioned (as Deathtrap Dungeon was). I also don't recall Deathtrap dungeon being anything like TR for that matter. But maybe that's just because it was so unmemorable.

 

[Lemming42]

As long as people are listing TR-like games from the 90s/2000s - I really like Elder Scrolls: Redguard even though the controls and mechanics are objectively terrible. Anyone who likes Morrowind-era TES lore should find it to be a very fun TR clone with puzzles and adventure game elements, worth battling through the clunkiness.

I also remember a game called Space Bunnies Must Die!, but it wasn't very good and also probably doesn't really feel like Tomb Raider beyond taking clear inspiration in terms of platforming and level design. There's a whole era of great games there - Drakan, Oni, Heavy Metal FAKK2, Urban Chaos, Heretic 2, etc. None really feeling quite like Tomb Raider, but all clearly benefitting from Tomb Raider's impact on the medium.

One thing all Tomb Raider fans should check out is Sabatu's TR1, made by a mapper who is hopefully going on to work on TR2 and TR3. It's a grand-scale do-over of the whole of TR1, designed for veterans who have played the original to death and want to basically experience it again with much higher difficulty. There's a few parts I didn't like, and Atlantis' difficulty ends up getting so high as to be annoying rather than fun, but overall it's a great bit of work.

Deathtrap Dungeon is garbage. I think it was Lemming that recently played and reviewed it. Or maybe Ed123. I also played it a few years back looking for 90s glory. Not this time.

I think that'll be Ed123 - I don't think I ever managed to beat Deathtrap Dungeon, the pain was too immense.

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine is okay, it's one of those weird games released in the immediate aftermath of Tomb Raider that directly copies it but is somehow feels much worse to play and is far clunkier, even though all the devs logically had to do was directly copy TR. It's not a bad game at all, though it does just feel like playing a worse version of Tomb Raider. I like Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb but it's a much further step away from TR1 than Infernal Machine is.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine is decent, but not at the level of TR.

Nothing quite captures the feeling of original TR, not even its sequels.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

This whole notion of "equality" sadly prevents proper studies from being conducted. It would be really interesting to examine which games have the highest percentage of female fans and then analyze the types of gameplay those games have to find out what female players are attracted to gameplay-wise.

There have been a handful of studies examining disparities in videogame intensity and genre preference by gender, as with the 2017 Quantic Foundry study already posted several times on the Codex:

Although the (sub)genre names and definitions used in this survey are debatable, this study does clearly demonstrate that certain genres are skewed heavily male (sports, shooters, racing, strategy, tactics), while the genres with the highest proportion of women are casual (match 3, family/farming sim, casual puzzle, walking simulators, interactive drama).

There was also a 2013 survey showing that female college students spend far less time playing games than male college students; even if those not playing videogames are excluded, the distribution for average time spent playing would be far lower for women than men:

 

[Hagashager]

The different depictions of Lara Croft over time are probably a good measurement of changing values in general. 1996 - 1998 Lara was ultra-cool and unflappable, very stoic and seemingly unbothered by all the casual violence she ends up partaking in. She doesn't talk much, and when she does, it's usually to insult someone or make some laconic remark. Very typical 90s action hero stuff. Then the Lara seen from TR4, TR5 and AoD is perpetually moody and downbeat to the point where it's accidentally comical. She actually gets emo eyeliner in AoD. Reflects that whole early 2000s cynicism and melodramatic performative misery very well.

Then we get the Legend era, which - in line with the dogshit belief that videogames ought to more closely resemble movies - awkwardly attempts to give Lara more personality (something nobody asked for; Lara Croft needs "more personality" to the same extent that Doomguy does, which is to say not at all). Sadly, "more personality" seems to mean having a range of mental health issues which cause her to lose her shit at crucial moments and start blubbing. This is ostensibly good because it's "relatable" or something, because apparently that's what we're all like these days, we just cry at shit. And we definitely want our heroes to be relatably underwhelming and pathetic, rather than uber-confident role models to aspire to.

The 2013 reboot makes it even worse by removing any vestiges of charisma the character had left. I've played all three of the games but I can't tell you a single thing about 2013 Lara's personality. She whispers a lot, her voice is shaky, and when confronted with tense situations, she either becomes overwhelmed by despair, wracked with fear, or filled with fury and rage. This, again, is meant to be "relatable" - remember how the devs of TR2013 were going on about how it's an "origin story about a normal person becoming a Tomb Raider" or some bullshit. Yeah, I suppose if I was stranded on an island with identical-looking gunmen coming after me in real life, I might start crying. The thing is I don't want to see a realistic person in a videogame, I want to play as someone better than me, cooler than me, more interesting than me. The original 1996 Lara Croft was all those things. The story of someone like me getting stranded on an island and panicking about it is not interesting. Well, actually, if I was stranded on an island with murderous mercs, it would at least give rise to some unintentional comedy as I vomit all over myself at the sight of a corpse or shit my pants or break my nose from recoil while trying to fire a gun. TR2013 doesn't even give us that!

In their quest to make Lara into a "real character", they somehow ended up with a character who talks consistently for the 10+ hour game and yet ends up having far less real character than TR1 Lara, who only has about twenty lines in the whole game.

I played 1995's Anvil of Dawn recently and I was struck by the protagonist's attitude (I played as Nalu the Amazon but I gather all the heroes have the same dialogue). Every problem she faces is regarded as a challenge to overcome, she constantly reaffirms that she knows what she's doing and will not fail, she often says sardonic things that are genuinely funny, and she's written and acted with a very clear tone of voice. The result is that, playing the game, you feel like you're really inhabiting the role of someone inspiring and impressive who can deal with anything. I played the new Plague Tale game shortly afterwards and was struck for exactly the opposite reasons - the player character and all other characters just constantly sound on the verge of tears, they keep fretting about how there's no hope and they can't win, they become horribly depressed, and every new challenge they're faced with seems to weaken their resolve ever further. It's subjective I suppose but I just cannot fucking stand this type of writing, and it's everywhere now. It's tedious and annoying. Anniversary was bad enough, but if TR1 was made today, Lara would never have made it into the fucking Peruvian caves because she would have had a major mental health episode when the guide got killed by wolves. If they made Half-Life today, there'd be cutscenes every three seconds that show Gordon curling up into a ball in the corner and weeping about how it's too hard and he'll never escape and he's scared. If they made Deus Ex today, Paul would tell JC to "process what you're feeling" and "not be afraid to talk about your emotions" after being betrayed by UNATCO or whatever, and then there'd be a 10-minute cutscene where JC whinges about how it's not fair and that the conspiracy is too strong to combat and he can't do anything about it (actually, Adam Jensen already has a moment like this in DXMD, lol).

We're living through a very boring and downcast period right now, culturally. You'll know things are getting back on the right track if Lara ever starts to resemble her original self again. I think people would actually respond very well to the return of cocky, self-assured and effortlessly cool heroes; it's just that the people making and commissioning triple-A games (and movies and TV and so on) aren't interested.

The quivering-lipped, Neo-Liberal, Californian (I say this as a Californian) "everyman hero" schtick is only the latest iteration of the more classic "everyman Boomer Hero" of previous generations.

That all said, I despise modern everyman heroes because I *don't* think even the average Millennial is as weak-knee'd as hollywood likes to assume. Especially outside of the middle-class Liberal bubble, most people lead lives with misery and death that doesn't make them collapse at the sight of a dead body.

Disability notwithstanding, I've lived a fairly standard Mid-Class American life, yet in the few instances where my life was threatened and I was forced into a do-or-die situation I didn't vomit, or start sobbing or lose hope. I swore a lot, I absolutely said funny no-no-words mom wouldn't be proud of, but I had my shit together.

Talking with my equally Millennial friends, they all have tougher skins than Lara Croft of 2013 would imply.

This isn't even going into Millennials outside of the 1st World. Just watch any vlog of someone in India to see how remarkably resilient humans actually are when not being aggressively sandbagged.

 

[kangaxx]

As long as people are listing TR-like games from the 90s/2000s - I really like Elder Scrolls: Redguard even though the controls and mechanics are objectively terrible. Anyone who likes Morrowind-era TES lore should find it to be a very fun TR clone with puzzles and adventure game elements, worth battling through the clunkiness.

I also remember a game called Space Bunnies Must Die!, but it wasn't very good and also probably doesn't really feel like Tomb Raider beyond taking clear inspiration in terms of platforming and level design. There's a whole era of great games there - Drakan, Oni, Heavy Metal FAKK2, Urban Chaos, Heretic 2, etc. None really feeling quite like Tomb Raider, but all clearly benefitting from Tomb Raider's impact on the medium.

One thing all Tomb Raider fans should check out is Sabatu's TR1, made by a mapper who is hopefully going on to work on TR2 and TR3. It's a grand-scale do-over of the whole of TR1, designed for veterans who have played the original to death and want to basically experience it again with much higher difficulty. There's a few parts I didn't like, and Atlantis' difficulty ends up getting so high as to be annoying rather than fun, but overall it's a great bit of work.

Deathtrap Dungeon is garbage. I think it was Lemming that recently played and reviewed it. Or maybe Ed123. I also played it a few years back looking for 90s glory. Not this time.

I think that'll be Ed123 - I don't think I ever managed to beat Deathtrap Dungeon, the pain was too immense.

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine is okay, it's one of those weird games released in the immediate aftermath of Tomb Raider that directly copies it but is somehow feels much worse to play and is far clunkier, even though all the devs logically had to do was directly copy TR. It's not a bad game at all, though it does just feel like playing a worse version of Tomb Raider. I like Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb but it's a much further step away from TR1 than Infernal Machine is.

I'll be giving this Sabatu thing a look, thanks for the tip.