Tomb Raider EP16: Spoiler Warning – The Musical

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Jul 24, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 91 comments


Link (YouTube)

I’ve been really looking forward to this part of the game. We wrestle free of the cutscenes and the writer-mandated derping. We have a bit of stealth. Some exploring. A tomb. A little puzzle. More exploring. Lots of variety and not too much shooting. (Particularly if you manage to ninja the flashlight fight.) Also, no dumb-ass quicktime events.

Also there’s singing in this episode. Just thought I should warn you about that.

 


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91 thoughts on “Tomb Raider EP16: Spoiler Warning – The Musical

  1. Paul Spooner says:

    Kept waiting for the Mook puns. “The Mook-tropolis”, “Mook, I am your father”, I would have even been happy with “Mookinator”… ahh well.

    It would be awesome if there was an option for Laura to join the Mook-tribe. Then the game changes into Civilization, and you have to lead the Mooks to victory by conquering the world with magic lightning, brokering consensus between the cultists and the rescue workers, or building a spaceship out of scavenged animal parts.

    You guys really need a co-host that with a good singing voice. I would have dug some harmony in there, maybe an acapella rhythm line. Next time, everyone can just sing all their comments!

    This isn’t Riven… but it should be. It really should be. Rest in Peace Riven. We miss you.
    Ooh, since everyone in Riven is dead now, that would make it technically a Tomb! Perfect!

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      Well, I tried editing it, but apparently it didn’t go through?
      Here’s what I ended up with.
      (Sung to the tune of “I’m getting married in the morning”)
      I kept on waiting for the Mook puns.
      “Mook, I’m your father” would have rocked
      Not much to ask for, even “Mookinator”
      “Mook-tropolis”, or other shots.

      It would be great to join the Mook-tribe.
      Laura could lead the Mookling hordes!
      Play Civilization, manage mook nations.
      build a spaceship out of animal parts.

      This isn’t Riven… but it should be.
      We miss you Riven, Rest in Peace.
      Ooh, since they’re dead now, Riven is a tomb now,
      A perfect epic sequel set-piece!

    2. Ooooh, if this was more like Riven, I would probably have bought it when it first came out.

      Damnit, now I’m craving for some myst-like puzzle games.
      (Although, I suppose I could try and get Riven working. I haven’t played it in years. Or just buy it through Gog, I guess).

      I also kind of like the idea of the island being a sandbox…
      What if it was a sandbox puzzle game style thing? There’s a mystery all over the island and you have to figure it out, while also choosing which of the tribes to ally yourself with (each tribe comes with it’s own strengths and weaknesses – some are psychic, some can control the weather, etc). I can imagine the gameplay – Stealthing your way into a massive tomb inhabited by an opposing clan, then solving the tomb’s mysteries and puzzles to find a piece to solve the final challenge – how to get off the island.

  2. allfreightoncanals says:

    This comment may be a duplicate, but I’m glad to see that Mumbles is back as a regular.

    1. Semi-regular (like you guys in general, *nudge-nudge*)

    2. anaphysik says:

      Mumbles is anything but regular.

    3. Agreed. Mumbles and Rutskarn play off each other really well, and that's my favorite thing about the Fallout3/New Vegas seasons.

  3. anaphysik says:

    This comment may be a duplicate, but I'm glad to see that Mumbles is back as a regular.

    1. Tony Kebell says:

      Semi-regular (like you guys in general, *nudge-nudge*)

    2. MrGuy says:

      Mumbles is anything but regular.

    3. Dave B. says:

      Agreed. Mumbles and Rutskarn play off each other really well, and that’s my favorite thing about the Fallout3/New Vegas seasons.

    4. anaphysik says:

      (Poor allfreightoncanals… I was just trying to make your post funny…)

      1. allfreightoncanals says:

        anaphysik, I did lol at your comment. :)

        I was just apologising in advance for repeating repeating a sentiment I assumed has come up in previous threads. The appropriate place for my comment was probably several episodes ago. I guess I get too worried about where I put my internet words…

        1. BeamSplashX says:

          We got you covered! Team BeamaphysiSplaskX is on the scene.

        2. anaphysik says:

          I’m really hoping you’ll reply to your own comment with:

          “(Poor anaphysik… I was just trying to make your post funny…)”

          ;D

  4. James says:

    All games need a funicular. all of them.

    and Goddammit newdarkcloud, messing the jump twice, what ‘cha playing at man.

    serious note, Coffee, i love Coffee

    1. newdarkcloud says:

      I couldn’t just be responsible for one death. I needed to get another fix right afterward.

      Josh deserved it.

      1. Don’t worry, obsession with murder gets to most people in the end.

      2. anaphysik says:

        I’ll admit, your rope-trolling was excellent.

        The tension of whether or not Josh would fall for it again really roped me in.

      3. This is where we need to have an intervention. Your current playthrough of Vampire: Bloodlines is obviously causing you to develop a real-life thirst for blood.

    2. Decius says:

      What is this? A funicular? I didn’t ask for this.

    3. MrGuy says:

      Sadly, this is not in fact a funicular. A funicular is specifically two cars on inclined tracks, where as one goes up the other goes down (so each car is effectively a counterweight to the other car.)

      This is a gondola.

  5. hborrgg says:

    30 seconds in:

    Wait, Roth died? When did that happen?

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      I know right? You’d think he would have been able to crouch behind cover and the axe in his back would just fall out.
      Take him back to the campfire! He’ll be fine! No no, not in the fire! (sigh)

      1. MrGuy says:

        I think I’ll go for a walk!

      2. Trix2000 says:

        I half expected Josh to kill himself on Roth’s funeral pyre remains.

  6. anaphysik says:

    “Campster: Heated… Aerolas?”

    Oh, grav, I really hope that’s not going to be Campster trying to say “areolas” *areolà¦.

  7. The_Zoobler says:

    Sooooooo I don’t know where to post this: which blog post has the most fertile comment section to broach this topic. But.

    I really want to see you guys play through Deadly Premonition, Spoiler Warning style.

    And it just got Greenlit on Steam, so it will be out for PC this Halloween.

    You guys have no excuse not to play this game. :D

    Especially if you trust Jim Sterling’s critique.

    (not sure if links are allowed in these comments, so let me just say: Google “deadly premonition destructoid” and you will find his glowing 10/10 review immediately)

    The most fascinating about how awful Deadly Premonition is, is how many things it still manages to get right. It’s a masterpiece of terrible and amazing.

    It doesn’t have a lot to say about life or bring much to innovate any genre, much less the medium. It’s clunky and weird. But at the end of the day it’s a non-stop roller coaster of character-driven, fascinating strangeness that pulls you right along. It would be hilarious to see the SW crew’s reactions and thoughts on the game.

    That all being said… it really may not be your cups of tea, any of you really, but I have to say I NEVER thought it would be mine. It wasn’t. It was my cup of coffee, and it certainly kept me awake, happy, and rushing to see what happened next.

    1. Tony Kebell says:

      YEEEEEEEEEEEES!

      I would love to see Josh and Shamoose (and, well everyones) reaction to the greatest of games.

      1. newdarkcloud says:

        But Dark Cloud 2 was a PS2 elusive, they’d never play it for Spoiler Warning.

        1. Tony Kebell says:

          I see what you did there, also, Dark Cloud 2, so compared to Dark Cloud 1 that’d be the NewDarkCloud…

          1. newdarkcloud says:

            That’s actually where I got my name.

            1. Lovecrafter says:

              I always figured it was a wish for a third Dark Cloud game.

              1. newdarkcloud says:

                You’ve no idea how happy a third Dark Cloud game would make me.

          2. SougoXIII says:

            Guys, guys, you clearly meant FF 8 right?

            1. Syal says:

              Final Fantasy 8 was the “Plan 9 From Outer Space” of the Final Fantasy series. It’s so bad that it becomes a lot of fun.

            2. newdarkcloud says:

              But, but… FF8 was TERRIBLE!

              And this is coming from someone who LIKES 13 and 13-2.

    2. Syal says:

      Watched a Let’s Play of this when everyone was comparing it to Alan Wake (and subsequently became a fan of Supergreatfriend). Would love to see a Spoiler Warning run of it. At the very least it should lend itself very well to insights.

  8. Tim Charters says:

    Actually, the lack of Japanese characters in general is kind of weird. The island is somewhere off the coast of Japan, so you’d think that most ships passing by (and thus shipwrecked on) it would be crewed by Japanese or other East Asian people. But no, pretty much all of the Solarii are white. And they all speak either English or Russian, or occasionally English with a Russian accent.

    Some Russians does make sense, as does a few various non-Asian people due to international shipping and such. But, seriously, where are the Japanese/Chinese/Malaysian shipwrecked hobo cultists?

    Maybe the developers weren’t confident in the voice actors’ ability to pull off a convincing Japanese accent? They already talked this episode about how bad the accents in the document voice-overs are. Meanwhile, Sam doesn’t have a strong accent and the Stormguard never speak English. And of course mandatory subtitles are completely out of the question.

    1. Grudgeal says:

      Maybe they were trying not to look racist.

    2. TightByte says:

      Not that it matters very much, but when they (atrociously) tried to speak Russian, what little they barely managed was heavily marred by American accent. Ironically a likely unintended effect that likely required much less actual effort than trying to produce English with a fake Russian accent.

    3. Tizzy says:

      I guess the charitable explanation is that they could use the same character model for Russians, Brits and Americans, but it’s hard to shake the impression that these nationalities were deemed “acceptable targets”. Because if you are going to go with catch-all models for a single ethnic group, in this particular context, picking an asian model would make more sense.

  9. Hieronymus says:

    I used to be a mook, but then Shamus took an arrow to my knee.

    1. Corpital says:

      He married you? But….he’s already married.

      1. Humanoid says:

        There are mods that allow polygamy.

  10. aquagosh says:

    Spoiler Warning and BNL together? Two great tastes that taste great together!

    1. I wouldn’t want to taste BNL. They must be very sweaty from playing lots of music.

  11. Tony Kebell says:

    Woohoo, Mumbles.

  12. Astor says:

    What? Who hates SS2’s music?? I’ll kill ’em. I’ll goddam killem!
    It has a very great and fitting soundtrack!

    1. Michael says:

      Yeah, I was actually wondering about this. SS2’s sountrack, along with Unreal’s was what got me into techno in the first place… :\

      1. Gruhunchously says:

        I think SS2’s music makes for great listening on it’s own, but in the context of the game it seems really out of place. Fast, energetic techno music doesn’t really fit with the flow of SS2’s periodic encounters. It also doesn’t stop when combat is over, which doesn’t help.

        The thing is, once you get past Med Sci and Engineering, the music actually does get a lot more spooky and atmospheric, and I don’t know why they waited so long to bring out the mood appropriate stuff.

        1. Astor says:

          Ah! I can see how people can complain the music doesn’t come and go in a “smart” way given what’s going in gameplay. Still, I think it’s a very fitting mix of techno for action and general cyberpunkish feel on the one hand and then more atmospheric tunes for eerie exploration.

      2. X2-Eliah says:

        Yeeah, and now imagine someone doesn’t actually like techno.

        There, now you know how folks could not like SS2’s soundtrack.

  13. Tony Kebell says:

    3:30: We built this city, we built this city on Mooo-ooks and wolves.

    6:00: Rutskarn, you have a girlfriend, sooooo… you dumped Mumbles?

    8:35: Bro-lets

  14. McNutcase says:

    I keep waiting for the “Dammit, Ezio, what are you DOING?” comments as Josh has his inputs mangled by the controls and fails the platforming again…

  15. Ilseroth says:

    So wait, Rutskarn was taking music from this game for his PnP RPing sessions and no one called him a Tune Raider?

  16. modus0 says:

    The complaints about accent remind me of the same during the Deus Ex: Hunan Robotization season.

    Particularly since the guy voicing the Oni/Japanese Soldiers/Stormguard General is Daisuke Suzuki, born in Japan.

  17. Acman says:

    What’s going on with the Bioshock reruns?

  18. scowdich says:

    But…that’s not a funicular.
    It’s a cable-car. A funicular has rails.

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      People will see what they desire (or fear) to see. Put another way, the funicular is in the eye of the beholder.

      That has got to be one pissed off Beholder!

    2. harborpirate says:

      I can’t figure out why it has razor wire on two sides, other than some 3D artist made it that way to “look cool” and the person making the final call on the model was like “derp, yeah that looks awesome”.

      So yeah, this super ultra dangerous transport system is useless for transporting both people and goods because it only has rails on two sides, and those are useless as tie-down points because they’re bristling with spikes and razor wire like this is some kind of WWII Nazi beachhead. If you’ve been skiing or snowboarding, you know that lifts like these sometimes swing around in the wind like a motherf’er; ensuring that anything transported by this moronic system is sure to be frequently dumped halfway up the mountain.

      Then again, that’s not even close to the most preposterous thing we’ve seen. I guess BECAUSE VIDEOGAMES. Sigh.

      1. anaphysik says:

        Also, I didn’t see it too well, but it seems downright preposterous (EDIT: derpity derp derp, I should’ve read your last paragraph there XD) in construction and operation. Is this thing really running all the time, using up precious fuel? Does it really need all those lifts? How did they build this contraption? What if something breaks – how are they supposed to fix the damn thing?
        What is it used for? Transporting people? (Then why are the railings nonexistent on two sides and actively painful on the other two sides?) Transporting goods/ore/whatever? (Then why is made of rickety bullshit running on, what, rope?

        Wait, nevermind, it makes sense to me now. #ROPEMAGIC

        1. Lovecrafter says:

          IIRC (we’ll see if I’m right in the next episode), it doesn’t just transport people, but entire ships as well.

      2. MrGuy says:

        Also, rather than having some kind of station at the top (like you’d need to actually, y’know, unload people safely or goods at all), there’s a nearby platform that you have to JUMP ACROSS to.

        1. I didn’t actually notice this because I’m used to these kind of things requiring jumps, but yeah. Whoever built this was the world’s richest troll.

      3. Tizzy says:

        I think the razor wire is simply player tip: don’t try to jump here. Silly, but helpful.

    3. RTBones says:

      Yeah, I had the same thought. The freight cable car is nowhere near a funicular.

      Also, yay Mumbles – even if only for a limited time.

  19. Nick says:

    Guys. You are all audible (capable of being heard).

    Some of you are more auditory people (focussed on sounds/hearing).

    OK, done being finicky now

    1. Shamus says:

      I actually jabbed at this by saying, “Yeah, I hear you.” a couple of times, but nobody got it. :(

      1. Mersadeon says:

        Well, you just weren’t audible.

        1. He should be. They’re a great place to sell your novel as an audiobook.

  20. Regarding bad Southern American accents. The satirist/comedian Lewis Grizzard holds forth at length on the difference between a badly portrayed Southern accent and an authentic one. I have to say I’d never noticed the difference much, as I’m hearing more and more what David Cross refers to as the (NSFW language, as it’s David Cross) “Redneck” voice/accent.

    There needs to be an autotune for accents.

    1. Klay F. says:

      Well yeah, if you aren’t a native of the region its going to be much harder to tell between a fake and authentic accent. My dad, a native Texan, could tell if you were from Lubbock, Dallas, or San Antonio just by the voice. But since I’m not from England, I can barely tell the difference between people from Birmingham or London.

  21. Campster needs to take some kind of online quiz that’ll let us catalog precisely where these surprising holes in his pop culture knowledge are.

    As for a song about getting an arrow in the knee, this is by far the best.

    1. anaphysik says:

      Re: content of that vid: so, I’ve never played Skyrim, but I’m getting the feeling that none of that stuff was ever actually included in the game (or as a patch, DLC (free or even otherwise), whatever). Now, sure, some of that stuff would likely need a lot of ironing out (performance, balance, bugs, etc.), but to never use any of it…

      (Also, the end is a bit like ‘hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we let our team members do things they want to do once in a while?’ and so I naturally think ‘yes, that would be cool; if only you actually *would*…’)

      1. Some of that was included when I played, for instance I know that kill cams were included for magic powers.
        But apart from that, I didn’t recognise anything (then again, I also didn’t play for very long before getting incredibly bored.)

        Also, I lament the fact that most game companies don’t think their employees (who are hired in a creative medium) our capable of being creative by themselves.

      2. Well, they did include some of it, and yes, a lot of them weren’t ever implemented. These were basically employee-made mods, and while they had all the tools to make them work for a demo clip or two, we don’t know if they unbalanced the game or broke other functions or what.

        I mean, the spear looked cool, but maybe being able to poke people at a distance like that meant even a level 1 dude could keep most mobs away or something.

  22. Shit look at 13:20 and pause when Lara reaches into the chest (make sure you got 1080 HQ selected.)

    Damn those are some nasty scars, here shoulders are pretty messed up and her chest has a nasty scar.

    SP Crew pointed out how she magically got rid of any blood from one scene to the next, but did anyone notice those scars?
    A nice touch if you ask me. I wonder if she’ll have those scars in the sequel (you know there’s gonna be one).

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      By the end of the next game she’s going to look like my meat-shield character from Fable.

  23. MrGuy says:

    I apologize for NOTHING! #joshkill

  24. Jacob Albano says:

    I’m a little late here, but I wanted to point out that when you alert the guards they can say “Release the dogs” or something like that. So the wolves aren’t actually there the whole time.

  25. broken says:

    Did anyone else expect some pterodactyls to turn up in that mist section? No? Okay…

    That would have been the best spot for them though…

  26. River Birch says:

    Rutskarn has a wonderful singing voice, and made my day with it. ^_^
    On another note, I wonder just how bad the controller is for shooting as is the keyboard is bad for platforming.

  27. BeamSplashX says:

    Mumbles, let’s start a band called The Getsounds. Our first song can be called “Lifter Pulley”.

    1. Mumbles says:

      I love you.

      1. BeamSplashX says:

        And so the bucket list shortens…

  28. Trix2000 says:

    I dunno if this was brought up before in the comments or anything, but I just noticed this…

    What the heck is up with Laura holding the bow sideways? That is not at all how bows work. :/ Looking closely, it’s like the string is going through her body or something.

    1. BeamSplashX says:

      She can do it- she’s a Croft.

    2. MrGuy says:

      It’s ‘cuz she’s so gangsta.

    3. Tizzy says:

      It’s so that the spent cartridges… um, wait, never mind…

  29. Neko says:

    I liked System Shock 2’s music as well. It was nice and adapts to what’s going on a little – the raw data files have the music as opening bits, looping bits, and fade-outs.

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