Tomb Raider 2013

[Occasionally Fatal]

I exaggerate, but it did.

 

[Jaesun]

I exaggerate, but it did.

1 million is not usually a success.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Supposedly that's just the first day or two.

 

[tuluse]

surpassing the sales of Aliens: Colonial Marines

lol

 

[dnf]

QTE's are art didn't you know :

This Isn’t the Article I Wanted to Write About Tomb Raider

Written by Ashelia | March 21st, 2013 |

This isn’t the article I wanted to write about Tomb Raider. In fact, I had an article that was a lot more poetic; there were lines about agency, the environment becoming a character, and how Tomb Raider truly was a next gen title that was my game of the year.
Instead this is an article about Lara Croft being choked to death.
There’s a scene fairly early on in the game where our young, intrepid heroine is being stalked through the forest. Her innocence is shattered; her friends are being brutally shot around her, their screams echoing in the distance as they’re murdered. She crouches against some old ruins at one point, finding a brief reprieve from the horrors she’s witnessing unfold. Suddenly a man surprises her, grabbing her and lifting her up by her throat. His hand clamps over her throat and he begins to choke the life out of her. She starts struggling. She has seconds to live.
If you don’t hit the right series of buttons, she’s choked to death in front of you. Her body goes limp in his hands, her face goes blank, and he laughs the cruelest of laughs.

If you don’t hit the right series of keys, she dies a horrible death. He lives. They never escape the island and Lara never becomes the heroine she was destined to be.
I hit the keys wrong at first. I was so taken aback by the scene that I just stared at it, my mouth slightly open. A video game had never made me feel this way in my entire life—and I wasn’t sure what I thought about that.
You see, it shocked me so much because twelve years ago, my father choked me in that manner. He lifted me up by my neck and he wrapped his hands around my throat and he choked me until I fought back. I don’t tell a lot of people this because it’s one of those things I never talk about. It was one of the last interactions we ever had before the police got involved, before the detectives talked to me during sixth period, and before I never saw him again in my life.
So as I watched Lara die, I tried to stomach it. It was, after all, just a video game. It wasn’t real life, no matter how similar that exact moment seemed to me. I reloaded the game and tried again. This time I got further: she successfully fought back for a second, before another quick time event cropped up. I failed it.
And she died again.
For the next ten minutes, I kept repeating the scene—failing at different arcs, making the same mistakes, fighting against Lara’s attacker and letting her die each time through my own emotions and inability as a gamer.
Eventually I beat it. I mashed the keys at the exact right time and watched as it was the man who died rather than Lara Croft. But I felt nothing; I didn’t feel like I beat the scene, I didn’t feel a sense of accomplishment. Horrified, I realized I was crying silently as I finished. The tears were hitting my keyboard. (Ed: PC master race FTW)
The game had terrorized me. The game had violated me.

Against my will, at a complete surprise, it made me relive something that I had spent most of my teenage years forcing out of my head; the smell of the shed, the way the air was so cold, and the way my throat burned for hours after the attack as I sat in the street afraid to move—afraid for my life.
Earlier today someone asked on Twitter if they were the only person triggered by Tomb Raider. The answer is no, but it’s more than that.
Tomb Raider triggered me, sure. For the next hour, I sullenly picked at the game. I moved forward reluctantly. I killed enemies with the pistol slowly, with great calculation and terror. I never saw the bigger picture, I just killed and Lara killed with me. I watched as Lara learned how to kill—how to survive at all costs. I watched as she learned the evils of the world. I watched as they broke her, repeatedly, in the most atrocious of ways.
But more than that, I watched her survive. By the end of the game, she’s screaming at her attackers. She’s daring them to fight her. She’s telling them they will never break her and that she will make it off the island. Her attacks change as well; as she gains more experience, she goes from distant kills to intensely personal and violent ones. She buries her climbing axe into their heads, she throws her whole weight into their bodies, and she fights with every fiber of her being.
I used to play Tomb Raider 2at my dad’s house. He bought it for me. I remember jumping through the canals of Venice. I remember killing enemies, dodging bullets—finding artifacts.
But I don’t remember why I did it in particular. It was just a game and I went through the motions to play a game. It was meaningless. Lara Croft could have been anybody and in a sense she was. She was pretty, she was skilled, but she wasn’t real.
She never made me feel anything.
This version of Lara Croft, though, bruised and broken—surviving against all odds, living out the ultimate revenge fantasy—she made me feel a lot. She made me cry. She was the version I wish I had known growing up.
Tomb Raider triggered me, sure. But it didn’t do it needlessly. It didn’t do it tactlessly. It didn’t do it for a cheap rise. It instead captured a real emotion and a real experience millions of women will encounter in their life. Some of them won’t be as lucky as I was. Some of them won’t be as lucky as Lara Croft was, either. Some of them won’t survive. Some of them will be silenced forever.
Some of them will die and some of their attackers will live.
Tomb Raider triggered me and that’s ok. Maybe that’s even good. I think it is because it means it’s the first realistic, non-gratifying portrayal of violence against women that I’ve seen in video games. It’s the first one I’ve seen that wasn’t exploitive. It didn’t hold any punches, but it didn’t need to. It was raw. It was accurate. And it affected me in a way years of therapy never did. It healed me in a way that no one’s physical comfort, words, and condolences could ever do. It made me realize that, much like Lara Croft, I survived as well—and that I had my own path to walk. That my experiences were real and tangible and yes, they defined me, but that I’d have it no other way. I am a survivor and I am alive. And so is Lara Croft.

She’s no longer the woman who stared into the mirror on the ship before her journey. Pristine and then unscarred, she didn’t know what people were capable of; she just wanted to be an archaeologist. Standing on the rescue ship at the end, bruised and scarred, she looks at her journal and the sea surrounding her.
In that moment, she’s reborn.
Like I said, this isn’t the article I wanted to write about Tomb Raider. I wanted to tell you about how beautiful it was, how good the combat felt, and how it’s my game of the year.
But maybe it was the article I needed to write. For Lara. For me. For the other women.
For people who think games can’t be art, can’t be experiences, can’t be ugly and beautiful and raw. For people who think games can’t have good gameplay and good storylines.
For people who think games can’t have a female protagonist.
Yeah, I think it was.

I didn't even read the autor of the article to know it was written by a women.

 

[Infinitron]

Holy shit.

 

[evdk]

Seriously, all those feels. That is why I play action adventure games.

 

[felipepepe]

I want a DLC where Lara dies at the end.

 

[dnf]

Every time i read an article like this, i remember this one(old but gold): http://insomnia.ac/commentary/cocksucking_videogameland/

I AM SORRY LARA CROFT HAD BIG TITS, GOD, LET'S MAKE A CAREER OUT OF COMPLAINING ABOUT IT.

Clare Edgeley: "On the version [of Rastan Saga] I played, there were no instructions and it took about a dozen abortive attempts before I realised that you have to stab the weapon with your sword to pick it up."
Brunette slut: "Ironically, Flower owes its brilliance not to some fantasy that it's reinventing game mechanics, that it's creating absolute belief, that it's video game Zen, or that it's a "video game that's not a video game." In fact, its playability hinges squarely and mundanely on just how gamelike it is, how naked its design principles, and how ancient and obvious are the laws to which it adheres."
Blond slut: "Man, I have seen people play this game like they're inside the damn thing. I'm not talking about exploiting the machine, I'm talking about balanced, nuanced, incredible play. It's subtlety. Think about that. Street Fighter III is so deep it can be subtle."

Or compare:

Clare Edgeley: "The bad news is that it's difficult to collect the weapons! They are often placed in highly inaccessible spots and it takes several tries to work out the best way to collect them."
Brunette slut: "No sane person would ever suggest that real-world incest is a beautiful thing, to say the least. Nonetheless, Kana: Little Sister to this day remains one of the more sophisticated, complex and emotionally-affecting games I've ever played."
Blond slut: "But maybe, most of all, Street Fighter III taught us that there weren't enough gamers in the industry to support gaming."

 

[dnf]

Wow, i almost thought my posts where going to retardo. And here i thought lulzy posts where fit for BTE. Talk about dumbfuck mods

 

[Morgoth]

I don’t tell a lot of people this because it’s one of those things I never talk about.

 

[Regdar]

So, did this game set feminism back or advance it? I can never tell.

 

[Infinitron]

So, did this game set feminism back or advance it? I can never tell.

 

[tuluse]

So, did this game set feminism back or advance it? I can never tell.

If a real feminist cared, she should think a game where as the dev puts it "you will want to protect Lara" would be bad for women. On the other hand, it's from a series where the female protagonist was cartoonishly sexualized, so it's like asking if the latest CoD is declined from the previous one.

There will always be dumbfucks who project so heavily they should seek out psychiatric help who think they see some deep meaning in this kind of schlock.

 

[Commissar Draco]

So, did this game set feminism back or advance it? I can never tell.

It's always penis envy Patriarchy fault for them either way.

 

[Machocruz]

So, did this game set game desigin back or advance it? I can never tell.

Way back

 

[RK47]

Wait for another darker, reboot.
Lara's Cock.

 

[Sodafish]

When the fuck did this stupid "triggering" term become common parlance? What does it even mean anyway? "Some event made me think of some other event/experience"

Wow what a profound notion.

 

[potatojohn]

When the fuck did this stupid "triggering" term become common parlance? What does it even mean anyway? "Some event made me think of some other event/experience"

Wow what a profound notion.

https://pay.reddit.com/r/tumblrinaction

 

[SoupNazi]

what in seven fucks

 

[SoupNazi]

oh wait i thought "wing hug" meant like flaps of fat hug here

i can't decide which is better

 

[Clockwork Knight]

So, did this game set game desigin back or advance it? I can never tell.

Way back

But Lara fights the attackers.

When the fuck did this stupid "triggering" term become common parlance? What does it even mean anyway? "Some event made me think of some other event/experience"

Wow what a profound notion.

It's a huge circlejerk. One blogger invents a term, other blogger repasses that to another two blogs, who do the same...suddenly it becomes "common sense". Why won't anyone understand my problem, even though I had to create a new word to describe it? QQ

edit:

https://pay.reddit.com/r/tumblrinaction

Isn't Person of Color just a rewrite of colored person?

I'm pretty sure colored person is racist, and person of color is basically the same thing, right? Why is it different? I don't understand.

Nobody ever said the euphemism treadmill had to make sense. In a few years, Person of Color will be considered ungoodspeak, and we'll get a new term to replace it. Because it's really super important for adults to worry about using naughty words.

"Best color people" will probably become the double plus good term for everyone who isn't white.

 

[Sodafish]

https://pay.reddit.com/r/tumblrinaction

"Bee keeping AKA bee enslavement"

"Voicing your doubts about my claims is hatred"

"Thin privilege is when the military has physical fitness standards"


I've literally never looked at reddit/tumblr before. I feel violated having done so.


:tumblrsurvivor:

 

[tuluse]

Guess you're gonna need [trigger warning: tumblr] from now on.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

When the fuck did this stupid "triggering" term become common parlance? What does it even mean anyway? "Some event made me think of some other event/experience"

Wow what a profound notion.

It's made by people who thing that their bad feels are better than other people's bad feels and thus they should be specially protected.

For example, if trigger would be applied to everyone, any discussion of copyrightfags getting an excessive compensation from pirates would have to include:
Trigger warning:
Copyrightfag privillage.