Angelina Jolie looks like Abbie

....is good

I'm aware of the danger that this article poses. Lara Croft is synonymous with sweaty little fan boys the world over, with their grubby fingers pounding away on their Playstation joy pads as they oggle the pixelated beauty that is Lara Croft. However, I'm willing to face the danger of being grouped in with these filthy little goblins for the sake of journalistic integrity.

I was first introduced to Tomb Raider when, as fate would have it, I ended up getting Tomb Raider II as a replacement for my faulty copy of Broken Sword II for my Playstation. Feeling somewhat disappointed with this deal, I got home and put the CD in and started playing. About 2 weeks later I finally stopped playing. I fucking loved Tomb Raider II! It was puzzly, and exciting, and platformy, and action, and hot computer generated babe all rolled into one.

There were so many cool moments in TRII, that I dont know where to start. The huge jump across the snowy chasm in the mountainous level was great, and getting the shit scared out of me when my flare ran out in Tibet, leaving me in darkness with a big-ass abominable snowman chasing after me was most invigorating. What made me love the game so much though was the atmosphere. The scant, simple music which only played during important moments. The cool lighting effects when you sparked up a flare, or when you shot your guns in a dark area. But more than that....the Uzis. In real life i'm not a gun person. In fact, after doing the police contract through Hagley and brandishing an automatic rifle, i'd have to say that guns are not good things. But the Uzis in TRII are the epitomy of coolness for all video game weapons. They could take down a rampaging dog in a split second. My only regret is that I didn't use them more when I played through the game, out of fear of running out of ammo. But by the time I finished the game, I had tons of ammo so I could have gone hog wild. Oh well, hindsight's 20/20.

After the joy that was Tomb Raider II, needless to say I was as excited as a shit when Tomb Raider III was released. I bought it a day or two after it came out, and tumbled home excitedly to play it. I quickly realised that Eidos Interactive had decided to take a different tack with this game. Rather than the gung-ho diving antics and dog shooting fun of the second game, this game was all mind boggillingly tough puzzles and very little shooting. Hell, the very start of the first level has you facing a huge incline on which you will frequently die while trying to slide down. I can honestly say that Tomb Raider III is the toughest game that I have ever played. On several occasions, I actually swore loudly and turned my Playstation off in frustration. A large part of the frustration was caused by the save system. In the second game, you could save whenever you wanted. In the third game however, there are a limited number of "save crystals" that you can collect, and you have to decide when to use these precious items. It's fucking annoying when you finally manage to escape that rolling boulder, only to die soon after by falling into a pit of spikes and having to replay the whole damn section because you'd run out of crystals. Grrr, it was so hard! Even after buying a guide from The Gamestation I still had trouble. I eventually had to take a lengthy hiatus from the game, for the safety of those around me and the preservation of my own sanity. After chillin' out for a bit, I came back to the game and cheated. Yes, i'm not proud of it. But I used cheat codes to finish the game. The shame of this despicable act still haunts me to this day. While walking down the street, I can see it in people's eyes. "Cheater!" they seem to say. "You're a dirty birdy cheat!", their special brian waves tell me. Arrghgh! Will the torment never end!?.....anyway, Tomb Raider III did offer up some non-frustrating things, such as more skin tight costumes for Lara and a couple of extra actions, like crawling and monkey swinging. So that's nice.

After the unpleasantness with TRIII, I didn't bother with the subsequent games;
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and,
Tomb Raider: Chronicles
Lara and I still have some issues we need to deal with....but then the movie came out, and I forgave her straight away!!

When I went to see the movie just over a week ago, my mind was somewhat preoccupied with another matter. But I was clear headed enough to pick up on the fact that it was the shit. Yes, that's right. "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" is the absolute shit. It was probably the best action movie i've seen this year. On a scale of 1 to Yeah!, this movie is definitely Yeah! I wont go into plot details, because most of my friends who might read this haven't seen it yet. But I will break it down into some of it's more groovy factors.
1) The bungy ballet fight scene was extremely well done. Wonderfully coreographed, and it contains the always amusing "storm trooper" factor wherein all the bad guys cant shoot for shit.
2) The storyline was actually pretty decent, and faithful to the games. I wasn't expecting a hugely in-depth storyline, but I was pleasantly surprised. Also, i'm glad they stayed true to the fantasy elements of the games, rather than trying to make it more real-worldly.
3) The scenes between Lara and her dad were nice. And they were made even nicer because her father in the movie is played by her real life father, John Voight.
4) The cool factor of this movie is right off the scale. There are alot of moments where you just say to yourself: "That's cool."
5) But the main reason this movie rocks is....Angelina Jolie! She's absolutely perfect as Lara Croft. You know when you're playing a fighting game, and you win a round without losing any health and it says "Perfect!"? Well, that's what Angelina is. Sure, they had to pad her bra to match up to the ridiculous proportions of the game version of Lara, and to be perfectly honest they ended up looking a bit too pointy in some scenes, but I feel like too much of a dirty fan boy talking about that so let's never speak of it again.