Tomb Raider + No Online Pass = EPIC WIN!!!
I’ll be frank here (and no “who’s frank” jokes either) but when it came to the Tomb Raider franchise I was late to the party. I didn’t own a PS1 at the time when the first game came out and never bothered to get the Sega Saturn version when I had the chance. I mostly saw lead character in Tomb Raider, Laura Croft, less of an actual video game character and more of a pixilated sex symbol that I so hoped that videogames could get past. But then again this could be personal jealousy talking given that all I had eyes for back then was FFVII’s Tifa Lockhart (who to this day still trumps Lara Croft, both old and new) so it’s not for me to judge or throw stones.
Yet with that said I didn’t get around to the Tomb Raider series until it made the jump to the Sega Dreamcast. But also it did help that a female friend of mine convincing me to give the series a try, a female friend who never showed an interest in gaming till this franchise along with another lesser known JRPG game at the time, Valkyrie Profile. (And if she still has this game after all this time I hope she sees herself as extremely lucky.)
For me it was okay. I wasn’t a big fan of the “grid based” movement but Lara Croft moved well enough, had enough weapons to appease my “kill crazy” desires and the story wasn’t all that bad. But in the end it wasn’t enough to convert me over to the Croft faithful, the faithful that continued to buy the sequels when they didn’t seem to involve enough for me to actually consider them sequels. But I still kept up with the series just the same. I played to death the Tomb Raider demo I got with my “then new” Xbox 360 Elite system where it was pre-installed and dabbled enough with the later games of the series when it seemed the camera was more of an enemy than the actual enemies themselves.
Even when they released the downloadable only game of the franchise, a game that doesn’t even hold the Tomb Raider name itself, I was still curious to see what was next for Lara Croft. Even if they did change her figure, her story, the game mechanics, or her voice, she was still a constant in the gaming world. So in that sense I am grateful to learn that even if this Tomb Raider is a reboot of all we know about Lara Croft, it doesn’t forsake all we come to expect in what is offered with a Tomb Raider game.
Even with this game having a multiplayer mode, Tomb Raider is Online Pass free!
I have to admit that I was more concerned with the addition of a multiplayer mode with this game than I was about the “attempted rape” situations that the new Lara Croft was to be in. Tomb Raider has never needed a multiplayer mode, let alone a co-op option, so my fear was that with the including a multiplayer mode meant that we could be seeing the inclusion of the bane that seems to now plague newer game releases as of late, Online Pass, if only to justify having the mode to begin with.
It’s during moments like these when I’m glad I’m wrong.
In the end it looks like the only reason why Tomb Raider has a multiplayer mode is because of the new mentality that new game releases, of both old and new franchises, need this kind of mode to stay relevant and offer replay value. Which doesn’t say they didn’t try hard enough to make a very different Lara Croft this time around?
It’s here where I’m torn about this new Tomb Raider game and how they created this new Lara Croft like they did. It’s as if the game developers read my mind in what I really wanted Lara Croft to be (in terms with how she dispatches her enemies during the game/in multiplayer mode: ie a sociopathic killer) yet at the same time completely destroy her character development where she stresses over all that she’s done to survive. It’s one thing to see her cry/fall apart/feel bad after she’s killed a defenseless animal for food or brutally kills a person that tries to do her harm, but it’s another thing when we see her do these exact same violent actions over and over again after the fact. It would’ve been better to see her slowly progress in “pushing aside her humanity” instead of the simple “on/off switch” mentality (that I’m sure wasn’t intentional) if they were trying so hard to show Lara’s growth as a character during these harsh life or death choices.
It’s like I heard one person say best in this regard: Far Cry did it better.
In the end I’m looking forward to enjoying this game, if only because this seems like the Lara Croft I’ve been waiting for all these years. Yes the morality issues can be giving mixed signals and she still can’t hold a candle to Tifa Lockhart, but as a “virtual reality sociopath” I have to say I think I found my new pin up girl. And that she doesn’t have the hang ups that can be associated with Online Pass makes this all the more sweeter.
Ta-ta
“N”
Online Pass Game Count
Games w/out Online Pass: 6
Games w/Online Pass: 1
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