JoyStiq: Tomb Raider XBox 360 Review

The new Tomb Raider has landed and it’s made a big splash in the process. Lara Croft has been rebooted and given a new origins story but it’s always a hit or miss affair when you take a well-known and beloved character like Lara Croft and remake her. Fans are not too forgiving if you get a reboot wrong. The fact that the last Tomb Raider games have been rather lacking in luster adds more pressure to the expectation from a new game in the franchise. In this case it’s good that we’re in a period where fans will give a franchise another chance to reboot if it’s been mucking up a little – it’s a clean slate of sorts really. With Rhianna Pratchett having written the story and created the new Lara Croft’s personality things are already looking up. Developer, Crystal Dynamics also doesn’t go wrong with the game mechanics.

Gone is the plastic, large-breasted Lara Croft of yesteryear and in is an honest attempt at building a human being who evolves from someone young, appropriately attractive (and appropriately dressed), somewhat naive and very vulnerable into a hero. This is what this origins story is, a look at how Lara Croft becomes as tough as adamantium claws – what she has to live through to reach that point. Rhianna Pratchett points out that her Lara is a real woman and this rings true. Throughout the game the player learns what it takes to be a graduate, fresh out of university and to find yourself shipwrecked on an island occupied by cultists who aren’t very welcoming. Lara's journey from wide-eyed graduate to kick-ass survivor is a brutal one that would leave most people traumatised if they were to manage to survive at all. It's also a beautiful experience that speaks to the player about the resilience of the human spirit.

The visuals and game mechanics are powered by a modified Crystal Engine and they are stunning. Lara gets grimier and more bloodied as she makes her way through the breath-yanking island, surviving. The island is alive with vibrant fauna and flora and the weather conditions are wonderfully temperamental. The atmosphere is rich and heavy throughout. The island is a character in itself and exploring it is fun and scary all at once. The dangers are real but once in a while Lara makes it to the top of a ledge and the view is spectacular. Tomb Raider’s resounding theme is survival and Lara has to learn to do whatever it takes to survive and to save her comrades. She hunts and kills deer on the island and defends herself against wolves. This is somewhat reminiscent of Far Cry 3 and the bow she acquires is a low-tech version of Prophet’s bow in Crysis 3. This is actually one of the strong points of the game, the fact that it doesn’t try to recreate the action-adventure genre. It takes elements from Uncharted, Arkham Asylum and other games and blends them seamlessly to tell its unique story. The control scheme is a reiteration of what you’re familiar with and works comfortably well on the Xbox 360 controller whether you're shimmying across a ledge, sneaking up on a bad guy or find yourself in a gunfight.

The bow and its arrows is the stand-out weapon because of how versatile it is and purely how satisfying it is to make a kill with it. The grimy and rather violent takedowns prove to be a lot of fun once you get into the swing of things. Tomb Raider is not a celebration of violence just for the sake of violence but rather the player continuously embraces the independence and pride Lara feels at being able to defend her life in a very hostile environment. The bow also makes for great stealth kills and it can be upgraded as you progress through the game for better usage in all out fire fights. Other weapons are also upgradeable as you proceed through the island and salvage wreckage to add onto them. Fire fights get intense and it’s fun to try different ways of approaching enemies and other tough situations.The enemy AI is actually somewhat intelligent. Tomb Raider doesn’t do anything new in this regard but it does what it does well.

The island provides a great deal of exploring options in between shooting the bad guys. Lara Croft is an archaeology boffin and explorer after all and it’s very rewarding to look around, finding all sorts of nooks and crannies filled with cool items and information regarding the history of the island and the cultists occupying it. The island is steeped in history and just walking around it leaves the player with a sense of wonder at what stories broken statues and abandoned bunkers could tell. The very ground and air seem to be a memory of great and terrible things that happened there. Although Lara has to survive and progress through the storyline curiosity always results in some interesting non-linear play as the island begs to be explored in great detail. The island’s history is beautifully crafted and is hauntingly beautiful and ugly. This aspect of the game is what the Tomb Raider series is about and is the best aspect of Lara’s first outing as an archaeologist.

There’s a multiplayer option tagged onto the single-player experience but it doesn’t stand out as much as the main campaign, which proves to be very addictive. The multiplayer option does give you something to do when friends pop over or you’re looking for extra value for your money through some prolonged play. It's the sort of add-on that you wouldn't mind investing a few forgettable hours in purely because after the 12 or so hours it takes you to complete the main campaign you’ll want to stick around a little longer. I think Crystal Dynamics added it as an afterthought and only because people have come to expect some form of a multilayer mode with the release of AAA title.

At its heart Tomb Raider is a human story told particularly well using video gaming as a platform. The game mechanics and controls are solid but what really carries the game are the story (even when it fumbles), great voice acting and amazing setting. The folks at Crystal Dynamics have outdone themselves. I give it heartfelt thumbs up; it’s one of the best games to be released on the Xbox 360 in while.

The Big Blog Exchange

Hello furry friends,

Run by Hostelling International, The Big Blog Exchange is an exciting, unique and exclusive project that has never before been explored. Sixteen passionate bloggers will swap lives, blogs, cultures and places simultaneously in real life for ten days (7th June to 17th June).

I have entered my beloved goodbuddies inc. and beg you guys to please vote for me to go on a whirlwind adventure :).

That's all. Just a sweet little vote.

P.S. I'll buy you ice-cream.

Some Fluff and Padding

SouthWeb Blog Directory

Hi good buddies,

There's no actual reason for this post other than to list this blog in a blog directory and they need me to have the above link feature somewhere on the blog. It has something to do with reciprocal links. I don't know what that means to be sure.

But, hey, one must do some confusing things some days and this is one of those times. Here's a pretty picture for you to look at:

Lemons. I know you like lemons.

The Gig Life: The Book Launch That Got Away

I am a blogger and I am a writer of things wonderful and somewhat wibbly. I am damn good at these things and aim to be better everyday - except for Tuesdays, I have imaginary alcohol and drug addictions to develop on Tuesdays. I barely get paid to do this and yet I love it something fierce, even when I'm hating it. This is what I want to do with my life. I see myself in libraries, publishing houses (or even mansions) and interesting spaces in Media. It's rough breaking into these industries! One needs Bilbo Baggins' burglary skills.

My compadre, Varsha and I have been on our grind for a while now and have started out lining up gigs like book launches and other cool, bookish stuff to attend and cover using professional and only somewhat whimsy words. A picture of an author in a hat, smoking a pipe might accompany said words every now and then. One (or two in our case) can only plan so far ahead. Varsha is Team Books LIVE and I'm Team BizCommunity. We pool our collective ninja skills and write up a storm (a very professional one, I promise) about all the cool stuff we see, hear and sometimes lick at gigs.

Our first gig was to be the launch of Steven Boykey Sidley's second novel, Stepping Out. The shindig was to take place at Exclusive Books in Hyde Park, Sandton at 18:00 on Wednesday, 27 February 2013. I wrote it all down in a snazzy notebook and because I decided I like Mr Sidley I wrote down a bunch of questions I wanted to ask him and read reviews of both his books. Varsha and I had sent messages about cameras and her car giving her problems back and forth from Monday and we were ready to do this. She was going to write an article for Books LIVE and I was going to help with pictures (if Mr Sidley happened to be wearing a hat and was smoking a pipe) and generally work the room - get info for future gigs and maybe steal a purse or two, you know.

Wednesday arrived, on time, like it always does. I prepared myself and left well ahead of time to catch an early bus so as to avoid traffic. I went as far as wearing a nice collared shirt tucked into dressy jeans and All-Stars for comfort. I had my snazzy notepad and everything. All this only to find out an unfortunate mix-up of dates had occurred and the event took place the previous evening. I was so disheartened that I laughed. Varsha was on the phone with a very rude person from Exclusive Books who complained as if it were her fault the dates got mixed up.

Shit happens at the best of times and it makes for fertile ground for funny stories. We'll just have to hold out for the next gig to murder.

Letters to God #7: The Lord's Prayer

Pieces of Letters to God

Our Father, which art in heaven

Good day Big Guy in the sky :).

Hallowed by thy Name.

Thy kingdom come.

Well then, here we are and it's good to be here - to be so near You. I like looking up at the blue sky and know that Thou art there. Get it? You're up there making beautiful art. I read that we've managed to create multiverses in a lab the other day. This is probably old news to You, what with having created multiverses from the get go - Big Bang and all that. I imagine that You're proud though, Your creatures take after You. We live to create, or as Professor Tolkien more aptly put it, sub-create. If You've kept up with the news You know it's all doom and gloom down here - all rape and murder. That's what we do when we're not sub-creating. People are saying it's the end of days. I say it's the gentle and kind invasion of Your kingdom. It's like the bit in Final Crisis where non-existence invades existence - only it's gentle and kind. We're not being gentle and kind about it though. We're quite brutal in reaction to gentle and kind things. Do me a huge favour, would Ya? Carry Anene, Reeva and every single human being (everyone who was a potential generator of goodness beyond measure) who tragically passed away lately gently into your bosom. Send the Lady on the Grey to bear them away on her steed:

'He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you' - Neil Gaiman.

Also, please forgive the folk who took their lives, even... Or rather, especially when we can't.

Thy will be done in earth,

As it is in heaven

This is the bit about Your will and our free will that I don't understand so well. I get the end bit where evil will find that it has been serving You all along. What I don't get is what's happening in between - it gets murky there. Our will is pretty much reigning in the earth sphere right now. I'm not too sure what how the governance is top-side but down here it's Jacob Zuma.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgives us our trespasses,

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

Padre Nostro

Padre nostro che sei nei cieli,
sia santificato il tuo Nome,
venga il tuo Regno,
sia fatta la tua Volontà
come in cielo così in terra.
Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,
e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti
come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori,
e non ci indurre in tentazione,
ma liberaci dal Male.

At this point the whole world needs a hug. I'm not sure about the rest of the multiverse but give them a hug too. There's a lot of pain and suffering doing the rounds. People are in great need of daily bread, daily hugs and just good ol' fashioned daily love. Hook us up, ol' G. We need a whole new level of strongs for the forgiving some trespasses bit. Folks is nasty out there lately and John Legend's approach seems to be the most attractive: "Now I’m not afraid to do the Lord's work, You say vengeance is his but I'm'ma do it first." It's a bit of a steep learning curve as You can see. I can't speak for the rest of humanity on this one but I need my trespasses forgiven. At the rate I'm going I'm a burglar! Temptation is pretty much everywhere and hard to avoid. You've seen the second The Lord of the Rings movie, right? There's the scene where Gollum's leading Frodo and Sam through the Dead Marshes and tells them not to look at the dead faces in the water. That's pretty much the first thing Frodo does! They aren't even cute hobbit girls in revealing dresses, just creepy, dead faces and Frodo's tempted to look. Temptation is rough. Deliverance from evil is straight up necessary though, hey. We need every form of escape we can get from evil's gaping maw.

That's it for now, Big Guy. Later times.

For thine is the kingdom,

The power, and the glory,

For ever and ever

Amen.

My Magical Place: Django Unchained

When a Quentin Tarantino joint hits the big screen we all pay attention. People like me get wildly excited and forget to wear pants to the cinema. Other folks throw their hands in the air in disdain at the amount of blood that will be spilled on-screen and worry about the direction in which our society is headed. Add American slavery to the mix and you have Spike Lee refusing to see the film.

Django Unchained, set two years before the American Civil war, is pretty straightforward in its premise: Django, brilliantly portrayed by Jamie Foxx (Ray), is a slave who has been unchained. The unchaining is done by dentist-turned-bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz, the fastest gun in the South, played by the charming Christoph Waltz, whose previous role in a Tarantino gig (2009's Inglorious Basterds) as SS Col. Hans Lando was breath-yanking. Django and King team up to kill some bad white folk and to save Django's wife Broomhilda, played by the oh-so-beautiful Kerry Washington (Ray) from the evil clutches (I think that's an appropriate phrase) of Mississipi plantation owner, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). Lots of things happen in-between that - and that's where the fun is.

What makes Django Unchained such a great picture is that even though the element of slavery is there to jar your brain and incite a strong emotional reaction (and rightly so) it's a terrifically good, if quite simple, story that just happens to take place in an inhumane era of America's history. At its heart it's a Spaghetti Western and pays homage to classic movies in the genre. The movie has some beautiful shots of Django looking very much like Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) - the movie Tarantino states is the best-directed film of all time. He especially looks the part in the gunslinger shots in the theatrical poster. Django Unchained takes its title from Sergio Carbucci's spaghetti western, Django (1966) with Franco Nero as Django. Nero makes a cameo appearance in this feature. The title also alludes to the films Hercules Unchained (1959) and Angel Unchained (1970). Both these films also deal with the themes of escape from captivity and revenge. By now, we all know that Tarantino is well versed in revenge and he doesn't skip a beat with it in this feature. Django is angry and will gun down anyone who stands between him and his woman.

 

The movie's musical score's excellent and is one of its best elements. The scenes with Rick Ross' '100 Black Coffins', John Legend's 'Who Did That To You' and 'Freedom' by Anthony Hamilton are perfect.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) play their roles as Calvin Candie and Stephen to a tee. The whole cast deserves a standing ovation though. If you've not seen Django Unchained yet do yourself a favour and rectify the situation today. This is Quentin Tarantino at his very best.

The only thing really wrong with this movie is that Boba Fett isn't in it, what with being the coolest bounty hunter in a galaxy far, far away and owning a ship called Slave I. I really should write some fan fiction with him in it, a la Fifty Shades of Grey.

 

P.S. At this rate Tarantino should direct the films based on Stephen King's Dark Tower series and Jamie Foxx play the role of Roland Deschain.

Home(less)

“Almost thought we’d made it home / But we don’t know this place at all”

-          Fire Fire, Flyleaf

I’m very preoccupied with the idea of home and homelessness; these binary opposites seem to be one of the resounding themes of my life. Both states have a push/pull relationship in my life. I struggle with the idea of home because I’ve never felt at home anywhere I’ve ever been – my soul has been restless for as long as I have been breathing (which is not really that long).

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.”

-          Hebrews 11 v13 -14

I catch glimpses of what I imagine home is all the time, especially in books. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth feels the most like home to me. Every time I read any of Tolkien’s books I think, That’s it right there. I catch glimpses of home at home (where I live) some days but that doesn’t happen often. I like my people and whatnot but where I live is not it for the most part. I don’t feel that I belong here and yet I believe it’s necessary that I stopped here and learned what I needed to learn for whatever reasons. I find glimpses of home in religion, especially Christianity and I’m inclined towards believing that restless souls must have a place where they find rest. Was not thirst created to be quenched after all? The theme of home is also quite prevalent in music and my ears tend to gravitate towards that sort of musical space. Even my playlist is titled Home.

Then there’s the state of homelessness that I fear and am intrigued by because I feel I’m in it somehow. I’m fascinated by homeless individuals and when I can talk to them I do but they’re not very forthcoming about the details of their lives. What I want to know is Day 1 of being homeless, what’s that like? Do you carry whatever luggage you have and just sit down at some point, like the ‘detective’ in Paul Auster’s City of Glass? What drives a person to homelessness? Is it a gradual series of unfortunate events? Or can it be a sudden, unexpected thing? Bam! You’re homeless. I’m lead to believe that it’s mainly a gradual sort of thing because of how I sometimes feel about my life. I think it’s a very real possibility that I could be homeless one day. I worry about this shit. No one really believes me but they don’t know me like they think they do. I know me and homelessness could happen to me. Life isn’t anyone’s friend – it will take you wherever circumstances and your actions dictate. Some of us aren’t going to walk away from this without wounds that cut down to the very core of our beings – it just doesn’t work that way. Charles Siboto is a fairly intelligent young man but as a result of consequences both foreseen and unforeseen he became homeless. That shit right there could happen. The thing with homeless people is that they’re like the ultimate ninja of the world. No one really notices them. Sure we see that they’re there but we go out of our way to pretend that they don’t exist. I see them and want to know what they’re about. I need to know. So I can be prepared.

In addition to the physical ideas of home and the lack thereof there are the conceptual and metaphorical states and I often wonder how they relate to one another.  Take as an instance the fact that I live in a physical structure with my people – that’s home and yet I feel it’s not. When I’m weary of the world that’s where I want to retreat to but it’s still not home at all, it’s merely shelter. I still prefer it to anyone else’s home even though it’s still lacking in something essential. For my mom where we live is not home, for her home is Sterkspruit, where she was born in the Eastern Cape. She seems to know without a shadow of a doubt that that’s where she belongs. For me Sterkspruit is even less like home than where I live. Technically speaking I have a home but spiritually I don’t feel that I belong there. It’s very fascinating how that plays out.

I am spiritually homeless and so are many people in the world. People do strange things to find home – African Americans come to Africa to find their roots but I think they find that they wouldn’t have a great time living in most African countries more often than not. Some of them probably find something they’re looking for, I don’t know. The human race is spiritually homeless I’d wager. It’s that whole Matrix idea where you have something stuck in your mind like a splinter you can’t remove. That’s what it feels like. Some days it’s an annoying feeling and on other days, good days, it’s all fine and you don’t mind at all. One of the main reasons for things like religion and stories is to find home. ¡Mayday! says, “Find yourself a heaven and an angel you can hold / They say the world is ending but we really never know”. Unlike Tolkien’s Elves, whose existence is tied to the world and its fate, ours is a separate and unknown fate. We are merely visitors in the world.

Anyhoo, that’s my take on it. God, even E.T. needed to find home so it must be an important endeavour. That’s if for now, I’m er... going home.