Tomb Raider Archives | 100 Word Anime

OWLS Blog Tour: One Foot In Front of the Other

Posted on August 29, 2018August 29, 2018 by Karandi

Welcome to my August OWLS post. This month we explore the theme of Journeys and it has been an exciting month with so many great posts already coming out. The schedule is below so if you missed any posts you can be sure to catch them up.

OWLS are a group of otaku bloggers who promotes acceptance of all individuals regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and disability. OWLS emphasise the importance of respect, kindness, and tolerance to every human being. Each month, OWLS will look at a specific theme. If you want to know more, please do click on the logo in the side bar.

The theme for August: Journey

“We have all heard this saying in some shape or form: “Life is a journey.” We travel down a path in hope that we reach a goal or destination, but the travel in getting there isn’t always easy. Along the way, we encounter some personal struggles. It is in those moments where we must overcome an adversity to complete our journey or take a different route or path instead. In this month’s OWLS post, we will be discussing the personal journeys of pop culture creators, icons, and characters. We will explore the journeys that these characters went through, discuss the process and experiences they had on their journeys, what they discover about themselves, or share our own personal journeys.”

One Foot in Front of the Other

The Hero’s Journey is one of the most standard plots stories can deliver us. For people who shun cliche, generic, or ordinary narratives, this one is probably the one they like the least because we’ve seen it time and time again with almost no variation. But they kind of miss the point. While it might seem that a journey should be plot driven and surprising, what makes the Hero’s Journey worth following is the character themselves. It is their journey that we’re interested in.

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We all know that wherever we meet the hero, something is going to happen to take them from their ordinary life into the start of their journey (the call to action). We know that they’ll probably resist at first (sometimes a lot and sometimes not much) but they will eventually realise they need to go (accepting the call). Stuff will happen and there will be a set-back, generally speaking someone the hero knows will die or suffer some consequence because the hero wasn’t yet strong enough or has made a mistake (defeat). However, because this is a hero’s journey, they will rise up and overcome that weakness before succeeding in some way (rebirth/atonement). And lastly they will return home their character forever changed by the events they have experienced.

It is a story we know well. It comes straight out of mythology from almost every culture and remains practically unchanged into the modern world. We may make our protagonists more edgy, self-aware, glib, or whatever, but they are all still walking this same path.

I thought really long and hard about what example to use for this particular theme and I ended up being overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices. However, I ultimately decided to focus on a journey that I got to experience in a more personal manner. So I turned to Lara Croft’s journey in Tomb Raider (2013), as you actually get to walk this journey with the protagonist.

What I think is worth remembering about all of these journey’s is that while the character in question, in this case Lara, do have an end goal when they are called to action, finding out what happened to her father, the steps in between are always shrouded a bit in mystery. The character makes a choice in an effort to get closer to their goal and then they are forced to react to the world and the problems that their choice has brought them.

For anyone who has played Tomb Raider, you will know that you spend quite a lot of time running, avoiding capture, and figuring out if you should try for a more careful approach or just go in with your bow and hope the opponent doesn’t have a gun.

See Lara ends up in a situation she never even imagined. After getting washed up on the beach after the storm sends the boat onto the rocks, she’s hurt and alone and left with very little equipment. She literally has to take it one step at a time as she figures out what is happening on this tropical island and slowly builds up her weapons and abilities, learning from experience and growing after each encounter.

There are no short cuts on this journey. No steps that can be skipped. Every experience is a valuable one in preparing Lara for what is to come. And while you might be able to predict more or less what is coming next in any sequence as this is a fairly familiar tale, it remains engaging and exciting because Lara as a character is someone you want to see succeed.

And that’s the true beauty of the hero’s journey. It doesn’t matter that we’ve seen this story before. It really doesn’t. Because when executed well it is gloriously engaging. We see our own lives reflected in it where we set a goal for ourselves but the steps that we will take to get there are dictated by circumstances and unexpected obstacles will find their way onto our path and we’ll have to react to them. We learn as we go. We learn from failure. We also get hurt and knocked down but then we need to choose. Do we get back up and try again or do we hit the exit button and leave the game entirely?

The Schedule for August (be sure to check out any posts that you have missed):

4: Shay (Anime Reviewer Girl)

7: Takuto (Takuto’s Anime Cafe)

9: Matthew Castillo (Matt-in-the-Hat)

12: Lita (Lita Anime Corner)

13: Shoka (Shokamoka’s Blog of Wonders)

15: Moonid

16: Jack (The Aniwriter)

17: Z (aniblogplay)

18: Dale (That Baka Blog)

21: Marth (Marth’s Anime Blog)

22: Scott (Mechanical Anime Reviews)

23: Mel (Mel in Anime Land)

25: Dylan (DynamicDylan)

26: Marina (Anime B&B)

28: Steph (TwoHappyCats)

29: Karandi (100 Word Anime)

30: Megan (Nerd Rambles)

31: Rai (Rai’s Anime Blog)

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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Tomb Raider 2013 Game Review

Posted on February 25, 2017October 24, 2021 by Karandi

Tomb Raider 2013 Overview:

A reboot of the original series looking at the origins of Lara Croft. You will start the game struggling with basic skills but by the end of Tomb Raider 2013 you will be an arrow shooting mass-murderer (who of course is on the side of justice).

Tomb Raider Review:

As a massive fan of the original Tomb Raider games I was kind of excited about the thought of a new one with more modern graphics and game play. The fact that it was an origin story was kind of ho-hum because it meant a lot of grinding to gain skills that you were just used to having when playing as Lara, but still the thought of Tomb Raider 2013 filled me with excitement. That said, with the price of it and the various reviews, I didn’t end up buying or playing this game until 2015.

Here’s the thing about playing games on Steam (or most modern systems) compared to the old days of CD’s and the like. Steam tells you how long you’ve played a game. Even with my 100% completionist mentality and refusal to leave the forest until I’d found that one last charm, I have clocked exactly 16 hours in this game. Story finished.

Most areas cleared of most collectables (one or two exceptions that I just gave up on because they really weren’t making collecting things worth the effort). I will admit I only unlocked half the achievements, again because they just don’t seem worth the effort it would take to do it.

16 hours. I put 49 into Plants vs Zombies before I gave it up as entirely repetitive.

This isn’t really saying there is anything wrong with the story, or the game play, or the visuals, or anything else, but when I purchase a game, particularly an adventure game, I kind of expect to be adventuring for a bit longer than 16 hours. So that’s my major issue with this experience on the table.

However, this issue stems from a slightly deeper issue. The game is too easy. I openly admit to not being good at computer games. I enjoy them, but I die, a lot, even in games that aren’t Dark Souls. I died once while playing Tomb Raider. Once. And that was because of outside interference (cat jumped on keyboard).

Okay, there may have been a second death when I missed a quick time event. If I’m smashing through this game with almost no challenge, there’s a real issue with the difficulty of the game. The original Tomb Raider games were brutal (or at least for my skill level). Death could occur at any time and it could come from the most pathetic sources imaginable (though mostly lack of depth perception and timing).

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Nonetheless, this game isn’t bad. It looks great, the controls are responsive enough, there’s a variety of settings even though you are essentially stuck on an island, and you upgrade weapons and equipment at a steady enough pace so you don’t feel like things are being withheld for the sake of it. At the same time, upgrades might be too easily accessible and I never really seemed to run out of items or have to look hard for them.

Lara is a little bit of a hard character to like. She isn’t the confident and overly cocky character we knew from the old games but is finding her way there. At various points she seems to take charge and tell the other survivors what they are going to do or volunteers to be the one to do something when you have to wonder if there is any reason it has to be Lara other than she’s the protagonist. Still, it is kind of awesome watching her find her feet in the situation she finds herself in.

As to the actual story itself, it works. It does. I just can’t recall what the overall point of it was because it was also fairly forgettable. Mostly you are on an island and stranded but the other inhabitants of the island keep kidnapping and trying to kill you or your friends. There’s a greater mystery that Lara is trying to unravel but that is really all there is to the story and it’s not that great a mystery.

I think fans of the original games will get a good nostalgia trip with just enough novelty to make this worth while, but you need to go in knowing this is not a challenging game nor is it going to be one you can settle in to play for months because the story is going to come to an end and replay value is minimal.

What are your thoughts on this game?

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Karandi James

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Movie Review

Posted on February 22, 2017October 24, 2021 by Karandi

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Overview:

Based on the games, Tomb Raider follows Lara Croft as she raids tombs? Not really. She finds a device hidden inside a clock that apparently is some big deal and some ancient cult have been trying to track down forever.

What follows are a bunch of action set pieces before she kind of joins forces with them to find out what will happen when they get the fancy triangle all assembled and then some more action set pieces.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Review:

I love action films and I particularly love action films that don’t have the only female character being a damsel in distress. I also was a massive fan of the Tomb Raider games growing up (though I was not great at playing them because half the time I couldn’t figure out the difference between walls I could climb, rocks I could pull, or holes in the ground that I was about to fall down – the graphics, while awesome for the time, left much to be desired).

So when this film came out in 2001 I really wanted it to be amazing.

What I got was a reasonably decent if generic action movie, a product of its time, and while there were enough stylistic nods to the character designs of the game, the actual plot left a little bit to be desired. I did enjoy watching Lara Croft: Tomb Raider but part of me always laments the ‘what could have been’ part of this film.

The list of concerns starts with Angelina Jolie as the titular Lara Croft. I was so excited when I saw she was going to take on this role. After seeing her performance in Girl Interrupted I was sold on the idea that Angelina could breathe life into a video game character who might be memorable but not so much for her personality (though she does deliver some good one-liners). Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened.

Instead we see Angelina working very hard at looking tough or pouty and that is more or less the extent of Lara’s emotional range in this film. I get she’s meant to be a strong female character who is capable of taking on the guys but some more nuanced expressions might be nice. The closest we got was Lara laughing during a fight sequence in a way that I guess was supposed to show us just how tough she was because she could laugh while bullets flew everywhere.

Even if we accept that Angelina actually played Lara pretty much the way Lara is presented in most of the games we have the script itself. While some lines hit their mark such as Lara’s, “I’ve always found your ignorance quite amusing” others just land flat on the floor and then sit there while the characters kind of wait for the next thing to happen. “It’s a clock. It ticks. It’s wrong.” Thanks for pointing that out.

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Then we have the action itself. Sometime in the late 1990’s, somehow people got it into their head that an action movie is made by coming up with a number of action scenarios with major set pieces and cool choreography, throw in some quick cuts and quirky camera angles, and then you can just kind of run them all together with some generic dialogue and call it a plot.

I’d point back to Terminator and Die Hard. These films got action right. They had an excellent core to their stories that was simple and yet drove every event that followed. Terminator, was simply “kill Sara Connor”. Right from the start, that’s what we were aiming for. Every action sequence had something to do with either achieving that goal or preventing it. Die Hard had terrorists in a building. “Stop the terrorists from killing the hostages.” It’s simple and yet gives meaning to every action scene in the film.

Tomb Raider starts with a massively over the top action sequence against a robotic adversary that is revealed at the end of the sequence to be just part of Lara’s training regime. It is a cool sequence, don’t get me wrong. But what do we learn? Do we know what the story is? Is Lara’s ability to hang upside down going to be useful later? Hey, I would even accept that somehow this film is going to be about the robot running amok. But, no. That isn’t the case.

Instead, we go from this action sequence to some exposition about a planetary alignment (ooh) and then Lara has weird dreams which somehow lead her to find the ticking clock in her mansion (through some property destruction that seems to only exist to show how little regard Lara has for her own wealth). Follow this with a motorbike sequence (she’s awesome, she motorbikes) and so on. Admittedly, she does ride the motorbike in her mansion later for some reason.

Blast out a massively overblown soundtrack and presto action movie of the early 2000’s here we are.

Again, this doesn’t take away from any one of the action set pieces. There are some incredibly interesting enemies (if slightly unbelievable) and the setting changes so regularly you can’t possibly complain about the variety. It just makes it difficult to care about the outcome of any particular sequence when as an audience we’ve really been given no reason to care.

Before I wrap up, I do want to touch on the ‘villain’ of the piece. While he has the right amount of slime going on with his dialogue delivery and his lines are about as good as you could expect given the rest of the dialogue, I just don’t think he ever presents enough of a threat to actually make this seem like anything more than Lara goes on a fetch quest while things get shot.

That said, I did enjoy this film. It is great like so many generic action movies for sitting back with some snacks and switching off. You’ll get a few laughs and the fight sequences are worth watching. Will you get anything more than that? Probably not.

If you watched Tomb Raider what did you think?

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James