little lara - so many words - so little content?

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here we go. Another copy of the "guardian", yet another feature on lara croft (tm). What it comes down to for me is this:

It was an enjoyable game - the animation was clever, and the backgrounds & "stages" looked very good & were very atmospheric.

The l@m3r sort of boy computer gamer probably gets off on the fact that there is a stacked girl running around in front of him.

That is all.

Yet the amount of pseud's-corner-candidate verbiage, especially from the "quality" press is astonishing! Can anyone convince me that there is actually any more to the "lara phenomena" than the above? Bear in mind that by the time I finished "Tomb Raider" (the first one) I'd pretty much exhausted my interest in the game.

xoxo

― Norman Fay, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You actually finished the game? Well, that says it all. "Once a philosopher, twice..."

― tarden, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

yeah. I got all the way to the end. IIRC there was an animation of something blowing up. The whole thing probably contributed to my developing rheumatiod arthritis. I didn't play it again, nor did I buy any of the follow-ups, but I have to admit, I did enjoy playing it.

x0x0

― Norman Fay, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Surely this is a problem more with the Guardian (= utterly eeevil), not Tomb Raider (= plenty of interesting things still to say abt it, you'll just never find em in a "grown-up" paper). This particular piece – "read" it over someone's shoulder on the bus — was saying Bois love her, Gurls don't get it, right? Which is a. Boring and b. Cock. My sister Becky = triumphant champ out of everyone I know of TRII (not III, I think), and eagerly went to see the movie with her friend Tina (= a dud, but she announced its lameness to one and all with Surprised Sadness).

― mark s, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(Her friend Tina = not at all a dud, just in case that was unclear.)

― mark s, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What I've always hated is the way that so much of the press focuses only on Lara's breasts. Hell, she's a single woman, a world-famous archaeologist and she lives in a mansion. She's achieved loads without the help of men. She *should* be quite a female role model, but instead she's famous for giant breasts. Sigh.

― Paul Strange, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think people are gaga over Lara Croft because she is the first strong female videogame character to reach the critical mass of cultural recognition that characters like Mario, and Donkey Kong (and, to a lesser extent, Link, Luigi, Sonic, and Crash) have. The pendulous bosom is merely a bonus.

Those games are FRUSTRATING, though. I got almost to the end of the first one, then completely lost interest in playing it. It was like someone threw a switch in my head.

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I lost interest in Tomb Raider too, though that might partially be because of the fact that the Playstation went somewhere else after the divorce. It just gets to be too time consuming, I'm not a video game person to begin with and it was just like, argh, finish up already, get on with it. I have no patience for things that aren't called "Super Mario Brothers", I think. That's why I like the Sims, you just name them and create them and then let them play by themselves and die off, it's great.

― Ally, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sorry to be Mr. Contrary again, but I hate Tomb Raider. Terrible bloody game, a tacky cash-in on Mario 64 (that being the game that started the 3D platformer craze). Nothing annoyed me more than the crap screen resolution and limited texture capabilities of the Playstation (also crap) which meant that in most circumstances the backgrounds seemed to blur into some Magic Eye puzzle, making jumps impossible. As for Lara, well, platform games have never been too hot on character development, let's put it that way.

― DG, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tomb Radier came out before Mario 64 - and to be fair the 3-D POV platformer idea is pretty easily extrapolated from 2-D platformers really. I rather like Tomb Raider (especially 1) as the learning curve, exploration and difficulty was pitched about perfect. Later TR games had trouble with this (too much pointless combat, too large levels). Lara Croft is no more vapid and one dimensional (ahem) a character than most comic characters. But when the character is larger than the story you will often come a cropper I fear.

― Pete, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Pffffff, no Pete, Mario 64 was SO out first. And to further elaborate on my point, courtesy of my brother:
"Nintendo patented large amounts of code used for the camera system in Mario 64, which explains why the camera system in *every* 3D platformer since [inc. Tomb Raider] has been rubbish. Besides, Sonic Adventure 2 beats them both."

― DG, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

DG is correct on this one, Pete, although I think Tomb Raider was well into its development cycle by the time Mario 64 came out.

Sonic Adventure 2 is that good, huh? I still haven't fully completed the first one! (I sense a pattern here...)

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Okay, I stand corrected. Maybe it was due to the really late released date of the Nintendo 64 over here (he said hoping to regain any sort of credibility).

― Pete, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I am Computer Game King. I should know about these things, God knows I've wasted enough money and years on them.
Sonic Adventure 2 is *that good*, apparently, it's got all the high- speed fun of the first game but without the silly and poorly designed adventure bits. It's also got a re-worked Green Hill Zone as a secret level, though Nick hasn't managed to get to it yet.
Is anyone here silly enough to own *all* the Tomb Raider games? Why did you pay so much to own what's essentially four copies of the same game?

― DG, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ah ha hah hah ha. Five copies - don't forget Tomb Raider Chronicles....

1-1

― Pete, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, it's easy to forget about them seeing as there's nothing to differentiate them from each other.

― DG, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Norman Fay is correct. The 'phenomenon' = lust. Is that a phenomenon? Maybe, but it comes around, goes around and comes around, and we never seem to learn.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

DG: another reason for fondness. In Tx, Liz Rankin based some of her bodywork on Lara. We spent a hilarious afternoon teaching Liz to do Lara-type at-rest-heavy-breathing, as seen from the back. Partial idea: that all these Tombdwelling tigers and bandits and what-have-you were leading blameless lives, until in bursts SHE — robot-avengestress — to raid em and fuck em up and kill em. Liz = Lara x ten anyway!!

― mark s, Tuesday, 3 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

two years pass...

i thought this was a thread about Lara Byrne.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Saturday, 5 July 2003 21:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Me too - I am only on briefly tonight, having just got in, and thought I'd scan, and I feared this might be something horribly unfair and insulting. I'm very glad it isn't.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 5 July 2003 22:34 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought that too, and I contributed to it 2 years ago!

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 14:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Where is Lara these days?

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 14:16 (twenty-two years ago)

she is being monitored by the Nazis she works for.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 15:05 (twenty-two years ago)

New Lara game arrived at my house from Amazon last week. I'm finding it very difficult, and seem to be spending most of my time running round the virtual Louvre getting nowhere fast.

― C J (C J), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 15:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought that someone on ile aim was talking about Justin Guarini wanting to be Lara and I thought he meant Lara Byrne, but as it turns out he meant Justin wanted to be Lara from Dr. Zhivago. At any rate, an odd conversation.

― Nicole (Nicole), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.cpo.to/lara.jpg

― Dada, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 15:53 (twenty-two years ago)

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