GAMETECH: Rise of the Tomb Raider will make gamers fall in love with Lara Croft again

THEY might not admit it now, but a lot of gamers fell for Lara Croft when she first appeared on our living room screens, backflipping her way through the 1990s. 

She was the first console sex symbol, and the world fell at her feet.

These days, however, Lara is the one doing all the falling. She falls from Siberian mountain cliffs. She falls through the floors of religious tombs. She falls from broken beams. She falls from tree branches. She’d fall up a stairs if she could.

Just ten minutes into Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara is bloodied and beaten, already worked over by the environment, which seems to break and collapse at her every touch, sending Lara plummeting to imminent injury or even death.

Yet if there’s one thing that hasn’t fallen in this series, it’s the standards. Rise of the Tomb Raider may sometimes be cheap in its thrills, placing Lara in unlikely danger every five minutes or so, but the overall effect is the illusion of resilience — this version of Lara Croft is a survivor, and the player feels every bump and fall on her journey, making us feel like survivors too.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a better game than its excellent predecessor, partly because this time around Lara isn’t starting from scratch.

In 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot, Lara was young and fragile and learning to be a fighter. In Rise, there are no more doubts in her mind.

Following in her father’s footsteps, she sets off to find the secret to eternal youth on a Siberian mountaintop and, despite opposition from Russian forces and the mysterious ‘Trinity’ organisation, she won’t back down for anyone.

The secret to eternal youth, she says, could end the world’s suffering.

Lara herself has grown, but the core gameplay remains the same.

The jumps and climbing sections are simplistic and pre-scripted, far removed from Tomb Raider of the 1990s, where every leap required careful calculation.

Much like Uncharted, the thrill now lies in cinematic immersion, the sense that you are controlling a nail-biting movie scene. In reality, the player is simply pressing ‘X’ at the right time, to stop Lara from plunging to her death, but the feeling of tension and excitement never abates, thanks to superb scene direction and constant gasps of surprise from Lara.

To balance this linearity, the developers reward exploration by giving the player weapon upgrades to find and experience points to stack towards new skillsets. In that sense, while my Lara Croft might be an expert in crossbows and pistols, yours could become a seasoned animal tracker and translator.

In addition, the shooting sections are tight and satisfying, straight-up traditional gameplay. This mixture of player control and Hollywood storytelling is what makes Rise of the Tomb Raider a blockbuster release.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a new breed of video game, one where the directing is more important than the gameplay, but where the player still feels a great sense of involvement.

By the story’s end, Lara has been on an epic journey that leaves her bruised and battered, but having overcome great odds.

She’s no longer a sex symbol — she’s a survivor.

FALLOUT FOR PORN SITE

One place that specialises in sex symbols is PornHub, which counts itself among the internet’s leading pornography websites.

Last Tuesday, the notorious website saw a highly unusual 10% dip in traffic, which it blamed on the release of Fallout 4 earlier that day.

In a fascinating post that it published in its ‘insights’ section, PornHub used Google analytics to prove that many of its 60 million daily visitors were interested in gaming, based on search and browsing habits.

The world was not shocked at this revelation.

Fallout 4 is one of the most successful game launches ever. It sold about 12m copies on its first day, making about €600m in revenue.

As a result, PornHub drew a direct correlation between the release of Fallout 4 and the sudden dip in visitors.