On the Subject of Reboots

Hey, you! Which game is this? No, it's not a Resident Evil sequel, or any of those interchangeable survival horror games. No, it's not Uncharted or one of those interchangeable adventure/thriller Tomb Raider clones, but you're getting warmer. I'll give you a hint, which iconic game character is it?
Of course it's from the Tomb Raider "reboot", and that's the new Lara Croft. Ah, yes, reboots, when a publisher doesn't have any new ideas and wants to lean on the security of an established and successful brand while pretending to be fresh and innovative.

Lara became iconic entirely because of her distinctive design. The big tits, the pony tail, the shorts, the dual pistols. You've seen her. The new design is so bland and homogenised and typical focus group toss that if you weren't told it was supposed to be Lara, you wouldn't have a fucking clue. Irrespective of whether you like the old design (or the new one), that doesn't seem to be a very clever use of a well-known and iconic gaming brand. In their clumsy attempt to leverage the Tomb Raider identity they've managed to throw away perhaps the most important aspect of it. What's left? The name? What have they actually achieved? What it's really saying is "we don't have a strong enough character or story or design to stand alone as a new property, so we'll slap the Tomb Raider name on it". Just like all of the recent movie reboots, it's sheer creative bankruptcy.

What I find tragic is when fuck-witted idiots start praising the redesign as some sort of right-on, politically correct feminist statement because they think it makes them look sensitive to women's issues and modern and mature and will get them laid. Dismissing the remarkably enduring appeal of the original Lara as childish wank fantasy just because they dared to give her a pair of tits and not make her look like a man. Why are you so afraid of the old design? More to the point, why do you prefer to play games which feature female characters who look like some sort of pre-pubescent David Beckham, you fucking paedophile?

The convergence of game design is sad and pathetic. Publishers are scared of creating anything which has a unique style or character lest some up-tight cunt finds it slightly at odds with their own preferences and doesn't buy the game. Slowly but surely the mainstream games are merging into one big indistinct mush, like that website where you can average pictures of people's faces and you end up with some sort of marketing wet-dream, a soul-less shop mannequin of indeterminate gender or race or age. The new Lara isn't Lara, she's "generic female protagonist". The only people she'll offend is those of us with a fucking clue, but we're an increasingly marginal marketing demographic.