Tomb Raider

It’s not often that I can lose myself in a game entirely, and spend hours just ‘bashing’ a game till I’ve finished it entirely. The most recent ones are The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, BioShock Infinite, FEZ, and Tomb Raider.

The last three are actually fairly recent, with BioShock Infinite being purchased about two weeks ago, and FEZ along with Tomb Raider only yesterday.

However, this post isn’t about losing myself in the aforementioned games. It’s more about the other rarity, which is when a reboot of the gaming franchise actually succeeds in being better than all other previous titles.

Tomb Raider, I conclude, has done this and more.

Everything about this game screams ‘NEW’, and indeed in gameplay it does feel that way. The most important thins though, is that not only has Tomb Raider brought in new gameplay elements (survival skills, XP, skill mastery, base camps, etc.) but it has also combined these with what would be considered truly original Tomb Raider elements such as ‘reaction time’ and other things. Also, a major change in the game is the almost ‘free roam’ style. Sure, there’s a main quest line, but you can deviate, explore, raid, and do other independent things regardless of where you’re at. I think that the other thing to note is that the chronological order has been completely blown away with this release, with it being set before all the original Tomb Raider games.

This brings to light a lot of things about Lara‘s past, but also helps the gamer connect to the character. In the original games, we played as Lara trying to get into tombs, kill whatever the hell was in there, and get out. No remorse, no mercy. Quick, clean, efficient.

In this game, however, we start doing the exact opposite. Trying to get out of a ‘tomb’, and simply seeking to get away from the cursed island filled with bat-crazy natives and a infinite forecast of rain. The cut-scenes that randomly dot Lara’s journey to becoming a ‘Tomb Raider’ add infinite depth to the feel of the game also, with Lara being scared out of her wits when first alone, having literally zero confidence in getting anywhere at first, and almost being sick when having to shoot a man through the head in self defence. It paints her in a totally different light than what I’m used to, and what many experienced players are, but I would say it’s been a positive overhaul, rather than a negative.

Honestly, I think that the line on Steam that I saw just about sums it up:

There’s a survivor in all of us.

The Evening Post – Issue 20

Good Evening!

Yeah, sorry for the lack of posts and all. I did have a post ready on my iPod, but that sucked, and I realised that I’m gonna have to limit my blogging to the desk…

I just can’t seem to ge the hang of this whole mobile blogging thing. It doesn’t seem natural. I did have some posts ready, but my eyes are way too tired to even begin typing all the words I had mapped out, so I’m gonna put that on hold till tomorrow. However, while I was away from my computer today, I did my usual routine, and then (of course), played some Junk Jack. I have to admit, since I’ve got all my Mythril tools, and I’ve managed to loot like 30+ worlds of all the Mythril available, I feel like the game needs an adventure mode, seeing as when you’ve got Mythril, the game kind of ends. Anyway, enough of my gamer’s plight, I thought I’d upload some pictures of my exploration below on my main, and 99% looted world. Beware, I am seriously overpowered.

Sorry it’s been another quick post this evening, but I really have gotta get back to watching the rest of this Adventure Time episode before I go to bed. If you haven’t seen that program, I suggest you Google it. Like, now.

亞歷克斯的！

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The Evening Post – Issue 15

Good evening fellow pressers, and readers. Yes, I do both of those things, so I can relate to both parties.

How’s life? Good? Bad? Oh, you’d rather not say? That’s fine, I guess we all have our secrets. Anyway, you know that post I said I’d been working on? I scrapped it. Yep. Gone. Deleted. Erased. All data value written over with zeros, for the tech neeks. I’ve decided to do a new post off the top of my head, since it feels natural, and I also have two events to tell you little people about in this post so, without further ado, I shall begin my epic tale…

Never let me run a bath. Really. I mean, like, if you ask me to run a bath and allow me to do something else whilst it’s running, you’ll reap the consequences, and they’ll most likely be a recreation of Noah’s flood in your own home. Neat, huh? Yeah, that’s not exactly what I thought when it happened to me on Friday evening. You see, I’d decided to run a bath, since my mother had been working so hard all day, and she usually never has one. I had good intentions alright, but for Alex, sometimes they just aren’t enough to guarantee that something’s gonna go well. My first mistake was leaving the bath to run, I’ll admit that, but really, who just sits and watches a bath fill? Anyone who agreed, I commend you. So I left the bath to fill, and decided (foolishly) to watch part of a movie called ‘The Replacement Gods’ on iTunes. It wasn’t my best idea, I can tell you that now. After a while I heard my mum shouting upstairs about a bath or something or other. My immediate response was ‘coming!’ but my memory soon jolted me into action. Minimizing the window (hey, it’s a habit, alright?), I sprinted into the bathroom only to come up to my ankles in water. Okay, I exaggerate, It came above my toes, but it was close. I swiftly threw all the towels I could find into place, turned off the tap, and drained the bath. So much for my ‘surprise’ for mum. It took a while, but after around forty-five minutes, I had managed to get the bathroom dry, and clear of water. My next task, as so pointed out by mum (who was not taking this well, I assure you), was to dry up downstairs where the water had seeped through. This was hard, because I didn’t have my trusty towels, but I set to work with my reliable *cough* mop. It took a while, I’ll definitely say that, but I managed to dry up all of the water that had found it’s way downstairs, and by the time all was said and done, I’d begun to develop blisters. If I was to describe it lightly, I would call it the most physical exercise I’d done in months. If I described how I really felt it, I would call it my own personal HELL. I have to be thankful that nothing was damaged though, as all the electrical circuits remained intact and usable…I just felt sorry for the carpet outside the bathroom. Of course all is well now, but Mum probably won’t trust me to run a bath until I get my own place…in which I hope the overflow has holes big enough to take large volumes of water.

Moving on to today…

Today was nice, and by nice I mean it was terrible at the start, but the evening made up for that. Kind of life’s way of paying me back, I guess. Anyway, I had pathfinders today. From 11 till 1. End of. That’s all I should have to say for all you guys to start going ‘aww’ and ‘poor guy’. If not, you’re just heatless, and I hope you can get a heart soon. It really is necessary for survival. The evening made up for my plight, however, when I managed to make my way to my good cousin Cadeem’s house, in which we decided to lounge on the couch with ginger beer and play Forza 4. *sigh* Good times, people, good times. The problem was that I was so wrapped up in playing that I lost track of time, and had to quickly rush off back home, seeing as it was nearing five, and I was meant to be back for four. Thankfully, my mother is a very lenient woman, and I escaped unscathed once more. The reason I’m telling you this is so that you aren’t disappointed when I tell you that we did record our Forza races, but unfortunately, seeing as the file is 2.2GB, and I couldn’t figure out how to shift it from my cousins laptop to my computer without some miracle where Dropbox suddenly gave me free space, I won’t be able to upload it today. I do, however, have some photos that I managed to take and move to my 512mb memory card from his camera to mine, so don’t worry, you can at least have some insight in to what I was up to.

I’m stopping this post here now, because I’m seriously tired (I had to fix another computer in the wee hours of the morning), so I hope this’ll be good enough till tomorrow morning. I’ll be starting my regular posts up again tomorrow, so there’ll be a lot more content being posted like before. I have to warn you though, I will be posting nothing on any Saturdays, so at those times you’ll just have to make do with the stale posts from the day before.

Alex Out.

再見!

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