Halloween Season Gaming

[Bison]

Somehow my search for a scary horror game as resulted in my playing cmsf and cnfi.  Don't ask I have no idea how it happened.

[Gusington]

I have never seen Lost and have never played another TR game, so....I am going to go out on a limb and state that Pratt doesn't dig it much.

Bison I am playing through the Knife of Dunwall DLC for Dishonored right now and it has some very creepy and disturbing imagery and settings. Perfect for Hallowen.

You will never look at a whale in the same way again.

[JasonPratt]

An homage to Lost as a TR origin story sounds like a great idea to me on paper. (I much liked Lost, up until the needlessly goofy ending.) It's the execution I'm not fond of.

I discovered last night I was only 50% through the game. Now 70%. (I guess, based on having unlocked the 7th out of 10 of her personal journal entries.)

I think my biggest gripe is that the game might as well be called Lara Croft and the Continuing Epic Failures of Lara Croft.

The only thing she has managed to accomplish (aside from becoming a proficient ultra-killer from weapons she magicked up IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!) is escaping the cave she was initially held captive in. Literally every person she tries to save either dies or gets recaptured soon afterward, despite brutally herculean efforts on her part. The one seriously impressive achievement she managed to eke out (putting out a call for help from the top of the mountain-top radio tower) not only was rendered completely useless five minutes later, but set up at least two major failures to save people to be played out over the next two hours. The woman often cannot even run from one place to another (in the occasional frantic scampering environmental action scene) without failing to arrive where she intended and ending up somewhere completely different. At around the 70% mark the villain's main base progressively detonates (although they don't seem overly hampered by this yet), but even that wasn't an actual accomplishment because Lara triggered it completely by accident while slogging from one place to another. The game even strongly teased that her trademark two-pistol shooting was about to be unlocked (when The Guy Who Will Clearly Either Die Or Turn Evil But Who Just As Clearly Isn't Going To Be Evil finally died, in yet another epic failure to accomplish several things) -- and then she hands the second gun to another character who promptly disappears in order to be rescued again later. The whole reason she and the other characters she tries and fails to rescue are in this predicament is because of something she regards as an epic failure on her part which wasn't strictly even her failure, just an unexpected side effect of one of her few moments of genuine competence. (Although the game almost lampshades this when it presents this achievement as literally being "Everyone went that direction and always failed, so let's try the opposite direction.")

It's a good thing there are minor puzzle platform tombs scattered infrequently around the island, that the player can explore for a few minutes. Reviewers routinely said they were the best part of the game, and I agree, but even they have rather empty accomplishments in relation to the rest of the game.

I don't understand what the point of a grimdark Lara Croft game was supposed to be. Presumably the reason they rebooted the franchise was because there was a fanbase who enjoyed the previous games for what they distinctively did: showcase a confident woman achieving various colorful goals in different locations around the world (sometimes saving the world from Dangerous And/Or Evil Ancient Archaeology in the process), in a witty and often elegant way. (The No One Lives Forever duology homaged this effectively and brilliantly by taking the James Bondian notes from the TR franchise and making those the actual plot and setting. Drahkan homaged this just as effectively and brilliantly by taking the fantasy notes from the TR franchise and making those the actual plot and setting, plus a pet dragon. Though it suffered a bit from the same problem of routine and ultimate failure.)


Zero Punctuation's review doesn't quite nail the level of schizophrenia in the presentation between Lara Croft as grey matter redecorator, and Lara Croft the gentle young girl who after slaughtering hundreds of enemies alone is still sure she "can't do this without you" in a weepy breakdown as her mentor dies. (I'd say "spoiler" but obviously he has to die, he has her guns.) But otherwise his review was spot on, and far more entertaining (and vulgar) about it than my gvetching in the past two comments.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/7025-Tomb-Raider

I Spit On Your Tomb indeed.

[undercovergeek]

An homage to Lost as a TR origin story sounds like a great idea to me on paper. (I much liked Lost, up until the needlessly goofy ending.) It's the execution I'm not fond of.

I discovered last night I was only 50% through the game.

this seems to go hand in hand with the never ending, 'oh shit how do we finish this' feeling the tv programme managed to engender

i thought it was awesome right up until the entire last series

[JasonPratt]

^^ Good point, hadn't thought of that.

It occurs to me that a comparison with Spec Ops: The Line might be instructive, because that's also a game built entirely on Epic Continuing Failure Despite Ultraviolent Grisly Effort, but unlike the TR reboot there was a progressively developing underlying point to the ECGF.

[BanzaiCat]

I thought Lost was pretty awesome until Season 5, then it totally lost me. No pun intended.

[undercovergeek]

i cant remember the correct vernacular but there are small vids on youtube like 'LotR in 30 seconds', they should have used that for Lost - crashhhhhhhhhhh, beach, bodies - and then just someone to pop in from off camera and say - 'yup theyre all dead'

but what about the polar bears, black smoke, crashing things through the jungle???????

'we dont have a fkng clue!!!!!!'

.....'but everyones dead'

the end

[BanzaiCat]

Haha! Well put, 'geek.

[JasonPratt]

To be fair, everyone (with a few exceptions who live) doesn't die until the very end of the series, after which some (but not all) of them have a sideways alternate recap of their lives that the writers decided to show us concurrently with what actually happened in the last season except for that British guy the fans all loved who could travel back and forth between the two...

......


..... LOOK I'M TRYING TO BE FAIR!!!

(Also, polar bears were explained clearly enough, as escaped experiments brought to the island years ago, though the explanation got understandably lost along the way.)

[undercovergeek]

there were so many 'ooooooooooo, this is scary and mysterious' plot twists thrown in to try and shake people off the fact that the writers thought they were onto something so bizarre and unique noone would guess they were already dead

true story - end of episode 1, series 1 in the UK - tabloid newspaper runs poll, what do you think has happened?

over 85% of viewers said, theyre all dead and they dont know!!!

...................oh bollocks say writers, quick, put polar bears in, a countdown machine, a device that moves the island, a man in a tunnel watching them all, other islanders, a village, a submarine, ANYTHING just dont let them think theyre all dead - we need that 8 series' from now

[Gusington]

Well I suppose I don't ever have to watch Lost now...

[Arctic Blast]

Well I suppose I don't ever have to watch Lost now...

You've missed nothing.

[undercovergeek]

Well I suppose I don't ever have to watch Lost now...

no, no, <<cue spooky music and animals crashing through trees>> please dont think thats the actual ending, it could be one of a hundred different endings that the writers are considering <<quick someone build a submarine and write a piss poor sub plot about another community on the island>> its not as simple as that obviously, theres so many twists and turns..................






fk it, theyre all dead, ta da!!!!!! <<credits roll>>

[BanzaiCat]

I think it's entertaining enough to warrant watching it through the first four seasons, but five, not so much.

[undercovergeek]

I think it's entertaining enough to warrant watching it through the first four seasons, but five, not so much.

BC has it, watch the first 4, close your eyes, get Mrs G to sneak in and put the last 25 minutes of Castaway with Tom Hanks on - youll love it

oooooweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeooooooooooooooooooooo