The final hours (but not the Final Hours) of Tomb Raider's reboot were played with both the mentality and head of steam reserved for a Big Ten college fullback with his eyes on a pro career. Once my wife found herself engrossed enough into Lara Croft and co.'s plight to quell the whims of an angry demigod and ditch the Pacific island, the game was played in long stretches and with very little in the way of exploring. Clearly, she could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and if we stumbled across the extra tomb/ puzzle or two along the way, fine, but there was palpable interest in an English girl finder her swerve as opposed to digging up GPS receivers and Edo-era helmets and wallets. I hopped along with much enthusiasm.
The downside? Playing in shifts gave way to playing toward strengths. She liked exploring, not fighting, and when cadres of samurai and island mooks started to fill the screen, the controller fell quickly in my lap to be the enforcer I evidently am. I'm actually chalking this up as a minor gripe, all things considered, when I consider the grand scheme of things. Be with me here for a second.
In the early game, it was most obvious that the biggest hurdle for someone coming to modern, 3-dimensional gaming for what might be their first time (in this case, my wife) was dealing with both a controller with more buttons than they might be accustomed to navigating their fingers around and a second stick on it that gave limited, though fundamentally important, control of perspective. By themselves, this is a pretty high barrier of entry. Had their been no combat at all, even at its easiest setting, a neophyte to modern console game methodology would have plenty to do. Sure, this toothless experience would probably get boring after a few hours without any sense of threat, but it would still serve to kind of ease someone in to the Tomb Raiders and Uncharteds of the world. Part of me, in all honesty, is happy that games like this do exist in their way, if only for that kind of population. It would have to have a bigger hook than "run around and look at stuff" to keep someone like me interested, but I casually suggested to my wife that she play something like The Unfinished Swan if she were curious about a relatively combat-free experience. I guess I would have liked it if she became more accustomed to the combat now that we've decided to play a little of Uncharted 3 to prepare for The Last of Us (both at her suggestion), but just because I was the only one in the room racking up the body count doesn't mean that all of this wasn't a positive experience.
Until that let down of an ending. But outside of all of the fun we had with the game, the opportunity to play it together, and the fascination of observing someone that does not play video games as a regular hobby, I'll let the dopey "I'm not going home" denouement slide this time.
Your homework this week is to read Chris Kohler's damning of Final Fantasy (it's two worthwhile opinion pieces). REMEMBER: Your gut might tell you to disagree with him, but Kohler's arguments are sound. Don't be an internet dick and yell at him. If disagreement is what you want over discourse, you can head on over to just about any other website for their reactions.
To other things of note: first, and for whatever reason, this blog gets the most consistent traffic from Russia. To which I say "Привет, всем!" Second, and speaking of traffic, I got my highest hit count in months from my time playing Skyrim while listening to the jukebox of my subconscious. I'm about a third of the way through Bioshock Infinite, and I'm thinking I'll just list music that pops in the ol' noggin' whenever it comes up and make a series out of it. Then again, I might be a little too far along for that. The suspense!
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