my dad got rise of the tomb raider free on ps4 so I've been playing it and god it's both really fun and utterly deplorably written

Characters referring to random byzantine descended Siberians as The Natives, and then meeting these people & realizing they all have american eng accents despite being completely isolated for 2,000 years & also they're somehow living a european medieval lifestyle

And also I guess we're being chased by freak world controlling xtian zealots ? Baffling writing

The level of anti communist fear mongering is also like genuinely hysterical . There's soviet skeletons hanging from trees right next to metal stars on the walls that say "night shall not halt our labor" and there are at least 6 statues of Lenin

Somehow lara speaks every language known to man just by squinting at enough signs and winging it

If you shoot a deer you just kind of poke it and there's gross noises and then you get fur

the game starts with you running away from helicopters and looting a tomb in syria and then proceeds by having lara croft go into an ancient isolated grp of religious followers in siberia and they're like "please dont look for our secret relic" and shes just like "I will look"

Just miss croft hanging out in the literal actual gulag

The best level was inarguably the Baba Yaga level. U get super high on hallucinogenic pollen & baba yaga has an intricate castle where shes built a house on chicken legs hanging on a ramp system where she tricks outsiders for like fun or something. She screams and throws stuff

The puzzles are actually quite good. Like they're very very good. They dont tell you too much or too little and they really challenge you to think. Trying to access and solve the challenge tombs is awesome. The whole main storyline is mainly shit but omg those challenge tombs

Hunting is way more fun than it should be. The stupid deer come up and run into you. The mountain lions are evil. You can poison bears no problem. Hunting rabbits is so easy that i casually collect them when I walk around. Don't try to melee mountain lions. They'll kill you.

Lara croft moans a little when she dies

One of her optional outfits is just her covered in blood and adorned in bears teeth and sadly it's nowhere as cool as it sounds

Also the villains in these games are the literal worst villains I've ever seen. I have never experienced such cold, flat, archetypal overdramatic corporate villainy. It is sickeningly boring and awkward to watch to the point I skip any of their cutscenes if I can

There are audiologs from the soviet era where dudes are like Hello Comrade Zey took me to ze gulag now we are organizing ze revolution I am so cold. It iz so unforgiving. But I must do zis for ze motherland

The tombs all have gnarly names like The Voice of God and are filled with byzantine cave churches and they're so much fun but they're only optional. Why are they only optional

Lara Croft is agonizingly British

every NPC has the most godawful walking paths and it's so funny watching them. If there's anything obstructing their path they leap like they're running for their lives, and then they just stand there

Every single man who accompanies lara for any stretch of time either dies or disappears. This is awesome.