Tomb Raider EP15: Run You Bastards!

By Shamus Posted Friday Jul 19, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 100 comments


Link (YouTube)

I berated Prince of Persia: Two Thrones because I hated its time-pressure platforming sections. I ended up fumbling around, trying to figure out what the game wanted from me and where I was supposed to go. This section where you run through the burning compound is a much better execution of the same idea. (I’m aware it’s been done elsewhere, including Drake’s Fortune, but I haven’t played those games.) It presents a frantic, high-speed run through a crumbling structure, and yet it’s pretty clear where you’re supposed to go. The visible threat is intense, but the actual time pressure is fairly low-key, allowing you to fumble a bit without leading to instant death.

Also: I’m disappointed with everyone who allowed Josh to die repeatedly. I need you folks to step up your game next week or we’ll have more of the same.

RUN YOU BASTARDS! I’m coming for you! Again! And this time I might not die right away and I might even live long enough to hurt some of you, so really we’d all be better off if you ran away. Actually why aren’t you running away? Isn’t this place on fire? What’s the point in this firefight again? In fact, why don’t you guys ju… Oh. I’m dead again. Well, only one thing to do now. RUN YOU BASTARDS! I’m coming for you! (etc.)

 


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100 thoughts on “Tomb Raider EP15: Run You Bastards!

  1. anaphysik says:

    Oh, lol, newdarkcloud got MASSIVELY burned at the beginning of this episode XD (for those unaware: newdarkcloud is the final (currently ;D ) member of Disclosure Alert, with myself and Aldowyn (the folks blamed last time) being the others).

    Varewulf /was/ actually on our show, though (he was our first guest (eps 5-9)), so it’s not that unreasonable of a mistake to make.

    EDIT: krellen was also on our show (eps 14-17), and /also/ beats out newdarkcloud before you guys went to historical figures XD

  2. SougoXIII says:

    Josh you’re using a grenade launcher! A GRENADE LAUNCHER! It doesn’t require precision aiming of a mouse/keyboard. How could you died so much?

    Then again this would happen if I were to use a mouse/keyboard setup myself.

    1. Vipermagi says:

      When Krellen fails to hit a guy the grenade bobs around for some ten seconds while the bad guys destroy Lara (again). Precision looks like a pretty powerful addition to this particular grenade launcher.

  3. newdarkcloud says:

    I love how I’m in the Disclosure Alert team and somehow managed to avoid being blamed for Josh’s incessant failures.

    Yay me!

  4. newdarkcloud says:

    Roth, in his writing to Lara: “I love you like the daughter I never had.”

    Reyes: “You DID have a daughter you ass, MY daughter!”

    1. It’s not like he knew, I don’t think. Reyes didn’t exactly say anything to him. I mean, she wrote a freaking note that you stumbled across as a collectable. Did she even GIVE it to him?

      I can’t stand Reyes.

      1. guy says:

        The note was to her daughter. I assumed Roth knew.

        1. Torsten says:

          I got the impression from the note that Reyes herself was not quite sure either, she just came to the conclusion.

          The game seems very fiddly about how long the crew has known each other and how old different persons are. That makes relationship of Roth and Reyes kinda weird. Her daughter is fourteen but the two are still secretive about their affair.

          1. The Rocketeer says:

            Wait, Reyes didn’t know?

            Not to cast aspersions on Reyes’ honor, and at the risk of this being taken the wrong way… just how many candidates are there for Father of her mulatto lovechild?

      2. newdarkcloud says:

        There’s a clip of Reyes and Roth talking on one of the tapes Sam recorded on the boat.

        It can be assumed from that that Roth is aware Reyes’s daughter is his own.

        Especially when you consider the note Guy is referring to.

        1. Thomas says:

          I can correct you here (although you’ll never see it =D). Roth definitely didn’t know. You find two notes to Reyes, one is from her to her daughter saying that she loves her and Roth will look after her for reasons.

          The second is to Roth explaining why she never told him, that she believed he wanted to explore the world and couldn’t be tied down to being a father and now she’s not sure she made the correct decision.

  5. anaphysik says:

    On sand: I don’t know nearly as much as I should re:this, but I can tell you that quicksand is non-Newtonian fluid (of the shear-thinning variety). Though I think that normal water-saturated sand is actually a dilatant (shear-thickening).

    Protip: walk on the latter, float in the former.

    1. Syal says:

      Related: Imhotep turned into water in The Mummy Returns.

  6. Syal says:

    That pyre actually looked kind of small to me. It makes me think maybe there was a mix-up where most everyone thought they were “burying” him in a pile of sticks, and then someone else lit the sticks on fire.

    I can kind of see a pilot wanting to stay in the air if there’s heavy crosswind and lots of hard-to-see, hard-to-avoid obstacles underneath them. But the storm would have to come out of absolutely nowhere for them to be flying in it.

    1. ehlijen says:

      I think the raging fire and the shooting madmen would be a greater concern for the chopper pilot? I really don’t understand why they didn’t write that as an excuse for why he didn’t want to land.

      But yes, the storms coming out of nowhere are supposed to be what’s so weird about them. If only Larry Kraft was canadian, she’d be able to better understand that
      THIS IS NO ORDINARY STORM!

      1. Sabredance (MatthewH) says:

        Helicoters are inherently unstable aircraft, and at low altitudes the instability is going to mix with strong crosswinds, obstructions, and the aircraft’s own downblast being reflected off the ground to make it very unpredictable how the craft will be buffetted.

        My understanding is that, generally, all aircraft prefer to fly above storms rather than through or under them.

        Regarding the pyre, does anyone else find it hilariously inappropriate that Roth’s funeral pure is now a campsite?

        “What shall we do to Honor Roth’s sacrifice?”
        “I dunno… Roast marshmellows?”

        1. MrGuy says:

          While this is true, numerous search and rescue organizations use helicopters, and this can often mean flying in storms or other adverse conditions. The US Coast Guard, for example, pulls off some amazing feats somewhat routinely during hurricane season.

          And, after a plane went down and a ship wrecked, we’re in a search-and-rescue mode.

          That said, rescue by flying through dangerous storms is probably only attempted when there is immediate risk to people (e.g. drowning), which isn’t the case here.

          1. guy says:

            They do perform rescues in storms, but when the weather is bad enough they’ll be forced to suspend rescue operations. The first rule of rescuing people is to avoid adding yourself to the list of people who need to be rescued. It doesn’t help anyone when you do that.

            Between the supernaturally severe storm and all the trees, wanting to get a couple thousand feet away from the ground is probably good policy.

  7. I just picked this up on the STEAM summer sale and certainly enjoyed the better parts, but lamented the others. I actually got bored with the parts which we re obviously supposed to be centerpieces of the game, what everything was built around.

    What, *another* decrepit structure/cavern/tomb filled to the brim with thousands of rotting corpses?

    What, *another* death-defying flight through a disintegrating building?

    What *another* obvious ambush where Lara stupidly attracts the attention of a dozen soldiers due to her carelessness?

    What, *another* point where she could basically resolve the plot but instead paused to let the Evil Villain run away, leading to Sam being captured? (Cut scene incompetence to the max with this one.)

    It’s a fun game, but it takes itself way, *way* too seriously.

    1. GM says:

      I asked earlier if i should buy the game but no respond and with how many annoying parts there are I thought 12$ would not be worth it

      1. Trix2000 says:

        It’s certainly worth playing IMO, even despite its flaws. You just might have to forget/ignore some of the logical inconsistencies and focus on the running/jumping/shooting gameplay or whichever part you enjoy most.

        The game does have its share of problems, but they’re mostly story-related if you ignore the QTEs (which aren’t the worst in the world either).

  8. Michael says:

    I’m pretty sure that axe wound would be fatal. That’s not the problem, the problem is we’ve been seeing Lara take fatal injuries from the first cutscene, and get back up from them.

    So we’re left in that disconnect between over the top pulpy action and reality, without any cues to figure out which is dominant at this moment. We’ve just come off a sequence that is high pulp… “realism” kills Roth… and the question becomes “was that really a lethal wound?”

    1. Decius says:

      That’s clearly an incapacitating wound, but I don’t think it hit anything large enough to make him bleed out, and if it severed his spine he wouldn’t be able to stand as long as he did.

      1. Michael says:

        Yeah. No, from what we can see of the depth, it should definitely sever his spine. I’m not sure, but it looks like it’s deep enough to have gone through and poked something else, but I’m not 100% certain.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I wasnt bother by the lethality of the wound(though it probably wuldve killed him),but by him being able to do anything other than just slump towards you.

      Though I think I know what they were going for:Instead of the center of the back,that axe shouldve been to the right or left,indicating a puncture of the lungs,and eventual suffocation.

    3. Viktor says:

      I think Roth should have been paralyzed, that way Lara could take his other gun and save him. As-is, for the protagonist, she spends a lot of time needing saving.

    4. Corpital says:

      Old Mat there much have used quite a lot of his time on the isle with axe throwing practice. Tried it during on a week long camping trip to pass some time and it took a while to hit anything with the blade. But then again, he’s been there for decades.

      But Roth…maybe he didn’t die and just fell unconscious? And everybody was so shocked, they just started gathering firewood und burned him alive. Wouldn’t be that far off from some other stupid actions. Poor Roth. I liked his watch. :<

  9. anaphysik says:

    25:34 – does Alex have caffeine tattooed on his neck? wtf?

    26:46 – welp, let me just pull out this PERFECTLY PRISTINE MAP from my repeatedly-beaten-to-a-pulp, slid-through-mud, bashed-by-trees, fire-damaged, soaked-in-rain, soaked-in-dirty-water, soaked-in-BLOODY-water butt…

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Its a teflon map.

      1. ehlijen says:

        That’d explain why Larry Kraft slides down near level slopes so smoothly without scraping off her butt as well.

    2. Weimer says:

      Questioning the Butt’s map-cleaning abilities will lead a faithful away from the Butt’s purifying embrace to heresy and mutation.

      Obey the Butt for we are filthy and the Butt is pure.

      1. Corpital says:

        That cult sound way BUTTer than these Solarii…where can I sign up?

        1. Weimer says:

          Thy salvation awaits amongst our sacred animals; the donkeys.

      2. anaphysik says:

        Bah, divine retributtion be damned, I can’t excuse that buttload of contrivances.

        1. Weimer says:

          Maybe she just rinsed it with some Butterscotch?

        2. Corpital says:

          You’re just butter, nobody could be arsed to blame you for it.

  10. Type_Variable says:

    So many things bug me about this part of the game. When Chris says “I hate this part” he’s describing what I didn’t ask for – constant firefights. I always come back to the question of HOW MANY members of the Solarii are there if they’re all treated like cannon fodder? Mathias must have an organization of like several hundred dudes. All dudes. What do they even eat.

    As for the story it feels like someone strung a whole lot of episodes together mostly in post. The story keeps rising to a climax too often without teasing the next chapter or goal or even imply that the story wont simply end here.

    1. They don’t really seem like particularly old dudes either, so they must have been recent. And why are they all so good at shooting? Even if you got 1 ship with a crew of 10 landing each month, you’d only need a couple of guys with machine guns to take them out, there’s no reason for all 758 guys in your cult to have proficiency in combat.

      1. krellen says:

        Maybe they’re NOT good at shooting, which is why Lara has such a remarkable ability to survive.

  11. Daemian Lucifer says:

    The downfall thing is understandable to me.To most people who made that stuff,nazis were just the guys who lost the war,and then got killed in a bunch of video games.I doubt many of them bother with learning why nazis are so hated by the rest of the world.

    At least its not as bad as those guys with hitler chicken and hitler plushy figurines.

    1. Tizzy says:

      Obligatory link to Hitler Xbox One parody. I assume that it is not meant to be taken seriously. Actually, what seems to have happened is a whole cottage industry where every controversial piece of news gets turned into one of those videos, regardless of validity or appropriateness, and with no real intent to make a point.

    2. Disc says:

      I think this is the first time I’ve heard of putting the Downfall videos into that specific context. While it’s not wrong, it’s just that for most of them, Nazi Germany or World War 2 as we know them might as well not have ever existed or never have happened. At least I doubt that too many of the people who made them really thought that deep on it. It happens with memes all the time at any rate. The longer it lives, the more it tends to lose of its original context.

      So all in all, I’d blame the chaotic nature of the internet meme culture. It’s probably guilty of at least one Larry Craft-death too.

    3. Weimer says:

      Maybe some people are tired of seeing the Big H shown as a crossbreed of Satan and AIDS instead of a deeply flawed and mentally unstable human being.

      I think the ultimate joke of the Hitler parodies is that humanity and levity inserted into this personification of ultimate evil (which makes him approachable) is so adsurd and different from how any other media handles the subjet matter, which makes it funny.

    4. Alex says:

      I think both you and the Spoiler Warning guys are wrong. Turning Hitler into a subject of ridicule is not a step up for Nazism. Depicting him as a crazy old man throwing tantrums over mundane slights hurts a neo-Nazi in a way that treating him like the wizards in Harry Potter treat Voldemort can’t. It doesn’t mean we can’t also consider him a monster, but only talking about Hitler in hushed tones to avoid giving him power is giving him more respect than he deserves.

      As for Spoiler Warning, nobody’s actually using the argumentum ad Hitlerum in their favour – it’s just an attention-getting scene with a ton of scenery chewing that works well with subtitles.

      1. Syal says:

        Nazism is as dead as it can get, nothing is a step up for it. The problem comes when someone else starts genociding people, someone calls them another Hitler and everyone starts laughing.

        1. Scampi says:

          The problem comes when someone else starts genociding people, someone calls them another Hitler and everyone starts laughing.

          …except in Germany, where, as soon as you compare any genocidal maniac to Hitler, you are silenced, because “you can’t compare anything to Hitler and you’re downplaying his crimes. You better stop talking now.”
          I guess we just had to have the “best” dictator, meaning, the most exceptional one. It’s as if noone wants to admit that this people made this insane midget its Leader. I guess some people find it really embarassing if there’s nothing special about him. Yeah, a people of millions followed him like retarded rats, so he must have been really unique to make them (us) look like such fools.

          1. ehlijen says:

            I remember growing up in a different germany then. A germany where something like this was, while seen as crass, still laughed at:

            http://www.titanic-magazin.de/postkarten/karte/darf-man-ueber-stoiber-lachen-22007-2289/?cHash=5d96d2fcacc64b28a4beae3ead6f2552&no_cache=1&sword_list%5B0%5D=darf&sword_list%5B1%5D=man&sword_list%5B2%5D=stoiber&sword_list%5B3%5D=lachen

            “Are we allowed to laugh about Stoiber?”
            (The content of the link itself is SFW, the site overall and ads on it might not be)

            (for non-germans, Stoiber was the current chancellor’s competitor for party leadership just before her first term)

            1. Scampi says:

              Actually, I guess there are 2 Germanys, in a way-1, where the Holocaust is a crime beyond understanding and noone is supposed to even talk about it, since even mentioning it is close to repeating it, while the other Germany has made Hitler pretty much the punchline of hundreds of running gags. Yes, I know this part of culture also exists, but you have to be either with the right kind of people who respect this kind of humor, or alone, and “Titanic” is still, though well known, a magazine for a minority of NPC (not politically correct, not the other NPC) people who enjoy the hilarity in many things which, by mainstream thinking, are horrible and absolutely serious business.
              My point: you can’t, in mainstream media, compare ANYTHING to events or people of the 3rd Reich (and: no, I really don’t mind if anyone does).

              1. ehlijen says:

                In the mainstream media, sure. But there’s a lot of things you can’t do there that people routinely do in casual conversation.
                (Also, do Walther Moer’s books count as mainstream?)

                And I think there’s a third group: Those that acknowledge that the holocaust happened, are ready to talk about how and why it came to be so as to make sure it doesn’t get repeated, but who still don’t enjoy that kind of humour (and yes, it is a type of fringe humour, I acknowledge that).

                I don’t think making Hitler a taboo helps. People need to understand how he got into power, or no one will stop the next hitler.

                That said, I don’t find Untergang sub videos all that funny. But I don’t really find Cartman all that funny either, and that’s the kind of humour most of those videos go for.

      2. It’s the rant and it being in a foreign tongue that do it. Long ago, children, three was a site that had many commercials in FLV format for a brand of soft drink called “Fanta Shokata.” You could put your own subtitles to commercials with many strange visuals (they were meant to be humorous, not just “foreign,” but without knowing the lingo, they lacked context). Eventually, the person in charge got tired of it and moved on to other things, and “Downfall” filled the void…

        …until now. For behold Bombay TV, which calls itself the New Fanta Shokata. Have fun subtitling!

  12. Tizzy says:

    As far as the pacng is concerned, Inhave to wonder if it wasn’t deliberate. We’ve just been through what could have been the climax of the game (I sure thought so when playing), and we’re looking ahead to a substantial chunk of slow-paced game with no quicktime events or running around, until we build up to the real climax. Could it be that they decided that the best thing to do was to break the momentum entirely, and start to build up again from zero?

    That being said, even if it was deliberate, it still makes for a dodgy structure to the whole game anyway…

    1. Michael says:

      I keep having this feeling that the game was supposed to be the first part of a trilogy (because, what isn’t these days?), and the “first part” wasn’t conveyed effectively to the writer, who wrote it up as, “here’s the script for three separate games for your trilogy, guys.” And they turned around and went, “no, you misunderstood, this is all one game, but we’ll use the script for this game all the way through.”

      Obviously, I don’t know, and that is kinda a ridiculous scenario, but it fits with the writing in the game I played.

    2. Tim Charters says:

      I’d bet that the thinking was to do the game in three “acts,” each with its own little arc. I’m not sure if the three act structure is supposed to work like that, but whatever.

      1. Michael says:

        Yeah, it’s really not.

      2. The Rocketeer says:

        You could do that, sure, if you didn’t make it the same arc all three times. /sternface

  13. Daemian Lucifer says:

    “All I know is that you cant use logic on this place.”

    And then lara uses logic to figure out how to get away from this place.

    I mean,I get what as meant with that line,but it always bugged me when people think logic somehow doesnt apply to magic,even when said magic follows some rules.

    1. An interesting rule for magic would be “logic doesn’t work on it”. So as soon as someone tries to apply logic to a certain part of the magic, that part is instantaneously changed forever.

      1. MrGuy says:

        There is another theory, which states that this has already happened.

  14. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Oh god damn you Rutskarn!Now everyone will blame me for Josh jumping off that cliff.

    1. 4th Dimension says:

      Now that you have acheved Spoiler Warning fame, what will you do with all the money and adoring female fans that will come out of it :)

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Ill throw them on the ground!I dont need their charity!Cus Im an adult!Maan!

        1. Scampi says:

          I guess there’s just no escape from the lonely island, huh?

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Nice one.I guess thats why reyes is so eager to get on a boat.

      2. anaphysik says:

        “Now that you have acheved Spoiler Warning fame, what will you do with all the money and adoring female fans that will come out of it :)”

        Damn sellouts! I was there first, being blamed for Josh’s failures before it was cool!

  15. Tizzy says:

    Anyone else surprised by the attitude of Lara’s friends? Oh, good ol’ Lara, always the same… Has NO-ONE noticed her transformation into a raging psychopath? Shouldn’t her very presence, not to mention her grenade launcher, scare the crap out of them all?

    1. Weimer says:

      Maybe Larry Craft has the Lovable Psychopath syndrome, which is also known as the Nathan Drake disease, which makes him/her a magnetic peoples person despite murdering and eating hundreds of dudes.

    2. ehlijen says:

      Maybe, but I reckon if they save you from an army of murdering madmen with even more guns and stabby things, you’d be willing to cut your friends some slack.

      Now is she won’t put that grenade launcher down after they get off the island of insane killer people…that’d be worrying.

      But yeah, there should either be some fearful respect of new Larry or concern for her mental well being, but other than Sam no one seems to have that either.

      “I see you have a grenade launcher. I shall treat you like a badass that I’ve never known you as, then.”

  16. Nano Proksee says:

    I know! I the axe paralyzed him from the waist down and he had an “accident” and he died of embarrassment.

  17. Kanodin says:

    I was bored and checking what the emoticons were for various games and found out that almost nobody gets actual faces. Skyrim gets city emblems, the witcher gets drowner brains, bioshock infinite gets the bird or the cage, and alan wake gets the best yet least related emoticon ever http://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/753/%3ADeer%3A

    Also have this article, which is actually tomb raider relevant: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/126162-Tomb-Raider-Comic-Bridges-Gap-to-Sequel

    1. X2-Eliah says:

      To add to this:

      Sleeping Dogs gets the in-game map icons (house, clothing, and so on) (Yes, “clothing”).

      Bastion has face-like thingies (:squirtyay:, :squirtmeh:, :squirtheh:). They are pretty cool.

      Idk about other games.

      1. Michael says:

        Borderlands 2 gets a red 0 for Zero, an orb for Maya, a vault key and some other random stuff…

        Secret World gets this: http://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/753/%3Acthulhu%3A?filter=The%20Secret%20World

        FTL gives you your crew member sprites.

        Terraria gives you some monsters and a tree.

  18. McNutcase says:

    Jonah’s t-shirt: just “Bucks” and “NZ Rugby”. Wikipedia says there’s no rugby club or team involving “Bucks” in its name anywhere in New Zealand. Heck if I know.

    At 17 minutes in: “Oh, I should be controlling now”… except you shouldn’t, because that’s a violation of the First Commandment of Third-Person: Thou Shalt Not Require The Player To Run Towards The Camera. How in the world are they failing that one, STILL, in 2013? What IS it about that particular fundamental IDIOCY that keeps it cropping up?

    1. Weimer says:

      Didn’t you know that it is CINEMATIC???? Cinema is the future of games, mon ami.

      1. McNutcase says:

        I want anyone who decides to put that into a game to have surgically implanted a device which only allows them to see behind them. They don’t get to see ANYTHING in front of them. After all, it’s apparently plenty good enough for us.

        Movies can get away with it because we don’t have to steer the actors. Games can’t because we DO have to steer the actors, and while THEY can theoretically see what they’re running towards, WE CANNOT.

      2. anaphysik says:

        “It’s just a cinematic!” “Sprinting!”

        (DeliciousCinnamon Dead Space reference)

    2. Sabredance (MatthewH) says:

      Here in Kentucky we have horses and wildcats. OK, there is that Indiana colony witht the Cardinals. No way it said Kentucky on it -but I did check it all the same.

    3. The Rocketeer says:

      Have you seen how Jonah is built? He’s probably the whole scrum. So the whole team is fictional.

      I mean, he’s one of like three and a half people to make it off the island alive, that’s saying something.

    4. Matt says:

      My theory on the “Bucks NZ Rugby” shirt is that Buck could be a reference to Wayne “Buck” Shelford, who played for the All Blacks between 1986-90, while Jonah could be a reference to another famous All Black, Jonah Lomu. Just a theory.

  19. Spammy says:

    So basically, everyone who ever posted on or looked at the Twenty Sided forums is terrible and to blame for Josh failing so hard every week. Especially that Spammy guy. Who is not me. My name is Spammy V, there’s a big difference.

    1. guy says:

      …He says, forgetting to add the V to the name field.

    2. modus0 says:

      o.O

      I’ll, uh, I’ll be over here in my invisible bunker of invisibility, glad that this week at least, is over…

    3. McNutcase says:

      Considering I’ve crashed games Josh has been in and shot him, I’m a little disappointed not to have been blamed ;)

  20. silver Harloe says:

    15:39 – of course you can’t climb that, Josh. No one painted a white stripe on it.

  21. JPH says:

    Varewulf’s name really should be changed to Bear Wolf. It’s way cooler, mostly because it involves bear.

    1. ehlijen says:

      I approve of this suggestions to have more bears.

    2. X2-Eliah says:

      It’s a small step from that to Bare Wolf, though, and that would be a sorry sight indeed.

  22. Pat says:

    Ah, I love the Downfall videos. My favorite is the one in which Hitler complains about the font being used for his subtitles.

  23. 22:58 When I saw those pistols the first time I played, I burst out laughing.

  24. Sleeping Dragon says:

    Bearing in mind that I haven’t played the game at this point I feel it’s safe to say that it doesn’t work for me. I haven’t seen what I was expecting, a story of Lara’s transformation from an archaeology student into a tough as nails tomb raider who’d handle competition, mobsters and eldritch horrors pretty much without batting an eyelash.

    The “I’m coming for you” scene feels like it would be a great cathartic moment if the game was, up to this point, focused on stealth and survival, having to use everything you can find to your advantage. Here Lara could snap, she could become too tired of running and hiding, desensitized to the thought of her own death, numbed to fear… as it is, from my perspective as a viewer, it feels like just another sequence of “kill a bunch of dudes”. I know the term gets thrown around a lot in this community but with this title I’m experiencing a ludonarrative dissonance so strong it makes me roll my eyes pretty much every time a cutscene attempts to convey an emotion.

  25. Tim Charters says:

    10: 30 I’m pretty sure that Imhotep doesn’t turn into sand. He just conjures a sandstorm, which forms into the shape of a human face. And in the Mummy Returns, he actually does do this with a big wave of river water.

    1. Syal says:

      He does turn into sand earlier, to get through doors and run away from cats and such.

  26. River Birch says:

    I’m actually very impressed by the way that they had Laura scream that she’s gonna kill them all. It’s that kind of angry sweet release of pent up rage that makes me raise my fist in the air and say “HELL YEAH!”

    1. River Birch says:

      Although I will say it looses its effect when you die repeatedly, as is with everytime you really die and such like that…
      Josh stop plz. Some of us are not trying to get Liver Failure.

      1. Scampi says:

        It might, though, make for some humor, if the decisiveness of the “kill-you”-phrase was reduced gradually with each consecutive death (in the fashion of “I’ll kill all of you!” => *death* => “I’ll eventually get you!” => *death* => “I’ll come for you, and if I die trying!” => *death* => “I’ll come at you again and again…” => *Death* etc). For some insane reason I’m a friend of such, even if it might, for a moment, take me out of the game. Especially scenes like this, where there’s a good chance you might repeatedly bite the dust, tend to enrage me and make me aggressive, and I appreciate at least being in a way rewarded with a nice laugh to release the frustration. If only I remembered the last game that would “reward” me for failure in a way that might make me intentionally fail:-/

        1. Syal says:

          I don’t understand why they didn’t put that right before the checkpoint instead of right after it. They had to know this could happen.

          1. anaphysik says:

            Alternatively, this would have been the perfect place to put an anti-combat sequence. Like, where they’re actually, you know, /running away from the scary lady/.

      2. The Rocketeer says:

        It also loses its effect when you’ve already killed over a hundred of them.

        woooo character development

  27. RTBones says:

    I am with Campster on this one – I didnt mind Lara screaming with rage, though I didnt care for the “I’m coming for you all,” bit. The grenade launcher, however, seemed a little over the top.

    As to the helicopter scene, ugh, just ugh on so many levels.

  28. BeamSplashX says:

    I blame Steve Bad for all these deaths.

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