Tomb Raider CrossRoads:A New Episode with A New Heroine

  Princess Peach or Ms. Pac-Man? Until the nineties, that was the choice for women seeking positive female role models in video games. Then along came the Tomb Raider series, the enduring appeal of which is often attributed to heroine Lara Croft. After all, she is the common denominator in a series which has survived several console generations and a change of development studio. She is just as courageous and skilled in combat as your average male gaming hero, yet she also possesses intelligence, nobility, acrobatic grace, and massive knockers.

  Square Enix have just released a full gameplay trailer for Tomb Raider: Crossroads, with a release date of 5 March 2013 – 17 years after we first saw the eponymous heroine squeeze into those famous cargo shorts.
The trailer  starts with  Lara Croft escaping from a cave before heading out into the jungle in an attempt to survive. The story looks set to run along the same lines of previous Tomb Raiders – fighting creatures, trusted friends, betrayal, lots of treasure.


  Gone is the impeccably British accent of earlier Tomb Raiders. Also gone, is the brave, adventurous Lara of yesteryear. She’s undoubtedly more realistic this time round, whereas in earlier games she was British to a fault– she could leap over canyons and grab onto rocks without so much as a smudge on her face.
In this Tomb Raider reboot, she is dirty, she screams a lot, and she is hesitant about performing her now-famous moves. “I hate tombs,” she says at one point. Really?

  This seemingly bizarre character change is forgivable, however, as Square Enix have aimed at recreating the beginning of the Croft story. On their website, they say Tomb Raider delivers an “intense and gritty story into the origins of Lara Croft and her ascent from a frightened young woman to a hardened survivor”.
I’m intrigued as to how they develop Lara’s adventurous streak throughout the game. The gameplay aspects of the trailer look fantastic, and as previous Tomb Raider games have done, Square Enix look like they’ve tried to push graphics cards to their limit. The scenery looks amazing (as we have come to expect from the series), the story looks intriguing, and although Lara herself has changed, it’ll be interesting to see what they do with her.

  But let’s not get too riled up, fellow Tomb Raider fans. Let’s conserve our energies for the new game due out later this year. Judging by the footage released so far, rubbishy dinosaurs are the least of our worries. It looks as though this could be the end for brave, strong, capable Lara. She seems to have been replaced by a gasping, shivering, barely legal wreck, trapped in a scene from Fifty Shades Of Grey and pursued by growling men with grasping hands. If this is what we’ve come to, I’ll take Ms. Pac-Man.