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Big Breasts and Badasses: The Dividing Line of Gender Representation in Gaming
In which the author suggests that the new Lara Croft might be the best example of androgyny in gaming.
25 Feb 2015
Games
Some Worlds Are Best Seen From Outside Your Own Eyes
I don't have a problem if you want to play Grand Theft Auto from a first person perspective. Knock yourself out. But I won't be doing so anytime soon.
05 Nov 2014
Games
A Good Menu Sets the Mood: Part 4
Fez and Tomb Raider deserve special mention for the aesthetics of their main menu screens.
11 Jul 2013
Games
Sadism Is Fine As Long As It’s Short
With all the horrible ways to die presented in Tomb Raider, why are the impalings singled out as gratuitous or exploitative? I think that it has less to do with their content and more to do with their context.
27 Jun 2013
Games
Playing to Suffer, Suffering to Play
I have found myself struck with admiration recently by games that I have played that have put me in less than empowering positions, games that celebrate difficulty and hardship, struggling and deprivation, rather than empowerment and excess.
23 Apr 2013
Games
Survival as Facade in 'Tomb Raider'
The new Tomb Raider chronicles the birth of a survivor, but it's a story that is easier to see than it is to feel.
17 Apr 2013
Games
The Horror of 'Tomb Raider'
The game opens with a prologue straight out of a hillbilly cannibal horror flick.
11 Apr 2013
Games
Bringing "It" Out in Lara Croft
That intangible, violent “it” is burgeoning in Lara, but it’s also being contextualized so that I still feel bad when she gets shot in the head with an arrow.
28 Mar 2013
Games
With Great Vulnerability, Comes Great Brutality: The Evisceration of Lara Croft
Amid a hail of gunfire, the player-character crumples to the ground, defeated, that is, before a loading screen pops to revive her. At least, that's how most action games represent death. In Tomb Raider, I've seen Lara Croft stabbed through the neck, had her head split open on a coral reef, seen her torn apart by wolves.
19 Mar 2013
Games
Touchy Feely: 'Tomb Raider' and Haptic Design
As much as the mud on her face or the gorgeous environments, the physical animations of Tomb Raider recreate a more adventurous, realistic, and compelling Lara Croft.
13 Mar 2013
Games
Where the Heart Is: The Use of Home in Video Games
Home is where we see characters in a state of normalcy. We get to know what the protagonist does between adventures, and for a medium that depends so much on empathizing with the lead character, seeing who they are at home, away from it all, is a significant experience that more developers should consider investigating.
12 Mar 2013
Games
Why Is She So Feminine?
“She's all, 'ah,' 'eek,' 'oooh' all the time,” my daughter said, referring to the noises that Lara Croft makes when wounded in the new Tomb Raider. “Lara Croft is supposed to be tough.”
05 Mar 2013
Games
Size, Grandeur, and the Inevitable Disappointment of the Boss Fight
As much as I kind of hate its retrograde commitment to the classic boss fight, still I have to admire the “truthfulness” of Devil May Cry in allowing the numbers behind the image and the actual image itself to reflect one another. That giant-unborn-baby-guy boss is what he appears to be -- frickin' hard.
05 Feb 2013
Games
Boys Get Naked Better than Girls
In games like Kabod Online, male characters expose themselves to an audience. This makes them look stronger, more powerful, more manly than they do with their clothes on.
23 Jun 2011
Games
Watching As Gameplay: 'L.A. Noire' Merely a Visual Novel?
Watching becomes a rather central and active occupation in most games and very often requires more time than “doing something”.
21 Jun 2011
Games
Moving Pixels Podcast: Reflections on E3 2011
From the WiiU and Vita to the new Lara Croft, the Moving Pixels podcast looks at E3 2011.
19 Jun 2011
Games
Universal Game Design
L.B. talks about the convergence of game designs and the idea of creating one universal model in a single game.
11 Aug 2008
Reviews
Tomb Raider: Anniversary
While Tomb Raider: Anniversary succeeds in recreating the isolated mood and tone of the original, it lacks some of the nostalgia for the original's genre-blending conventions.
G. Christopher Williams
12 Jul 2007
Reviews
Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Everything you enjoyed about the legendary PlayStation title returns with all the Legend trimmings we fell in love with last year.
Mike Sage
10 Jul 2007
Games
Being Lara Croft, or, We Are All Sci-Fi
If the Lara facing us is a living contradiction, at once a sex symbol and a rejection of the objectifying gaze, the videogame's Lara Croft -- mute, unreal, and looking the other way -- is a virtual contradiction, at once a sort of riot grrrl and a sort of fetish.
Mike Ward
13 Jan 2000
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