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We know the purpose of the reboot: depict Lara before she was a badass. If gasping in pain after falling into a pit, or later in the demo crying out while fending off an attacker, are scenarios you have problems with, that's a valid opinion you're entitled to, but what's one example of a better way to provide this depiction?
Some of the film critics I enjoy the most will not only point out their issue with how a film maker handles content, but will also point to someone who has done it better by way of justifying their complaint. Now, I might argue that this may not be possible for a video game critic speaking on gender issues because how many sorts of depictions of female characters do we *have* in video games?
Video game criticism is a nascent field compared to film criticism, so perhaps video game critics have to deal in hypotheticals if they cannot point to real world examples of superior depictions."
If you were to cover up the screen and just listen to her audio, one might think the same sort of things that one might think if they covered up the screen and just listened to the audio of Lara gasping in pain.
So...is the depiction of Keiko giving birth problematic, as well?
Separating audio from visual like this might not be the most solid ground for a critical analysis."
Sometimes I think female protagonists are a lose/lose proposition. Place them in danger and they are being "victimized." Make them strong and domineering and you're "making them act like men." And the times when we do have "strong female characters," they're just blank slates. Chell doesn't talk. Samus doesn't talk. They have the female structure, but that's about it. They do nothing that denotes gender in any way.
And before anyone brings up Commander Shepard in Mass Effect, I'm not convinced that's a "strong female character." I'm more inclined to believe that's a "heroic gender-neutral" character which therefore works as either a man or a woman, i.e. isn't really a strong female character, but a strong character we can slap either gender identity onto without it changing anything.
Personally, I think we all need to consider that this is a -demo- and not a video game. Of course Drake's trailer can be more active. He's not being portrayed at the beginning of his adventures. He's a hardened bad-ass. Of course Lara is going to be vulnerable. She has no experience in adventuring at all at this point. It's a reboot.
I think it's much more fair to wait until the game is out. Play the whole game. Then decide whether Lara is being portrayed as a victim. Five bucks says that by midway through the game she has her pair of .45's back and is regularly killing bad guys like a badass. Anyone want to take that action? ;)"
1) You network. Get to know journos.
2) Try to pitch features that are topical, and have original angles.
3) Learn who the professional freelancers are, look at where they are getting published, and pitch to those outlets.
4) Get lucky."
Gamers complain about the quality of reviews...but apparently won't sit still for reviews that are written after a game comes out, or after a reviewers has had time to thoroughly play it. So they hold some culpability for the state of game reviews. Etc."
Fallout 3 was my first real exposure to this sort of thing (if there had been prior examples of that sort of gore in all the video games I had played before, it either wasn't bad enough to make a lasting impression, or I just didn't notice it). My first character was of Very Good alignment, so my second character was a Very Evil psychopath. I called him Vault Boy.
One day Vault Boy was fighting through a bunch of bandits, I think - human opponents of some sort - and ran out of ammunition, so I switched up to a sledgehammer and pounded the final enemy with it. I was just laying on the trigger, and so I swung once too many times, and I hit the corpse's arm with a strong blow...and the arm exploded.
I'd blown enemies apart with my Very Good character, as I'd given her the Bloody Mess perk for the extra damage bonus, but I'd never actually -tried- to disassemble anyone. So I walked around the corpse and smashed its other arm, its legs, and finally smashed its head like a ripe melon.
And then I laughed so hard that tears streamed from my eyes and I saw stars, as the Imp on my shoulder realized all the fun that my psychotic, Very Evil character could have with this.
I decided that after every battle was over, Vault Boy would go around and smash all the corpses into chunks. As I traveled around the world and returned to scenes of past conflicts, the chunked-up bodies were still there. I imagined other Wasteland travelers seeing them and thinking "Oh, snap! Vault Boy's been here!" Cue manaical laughter.
Sometimes video games give us the opportunity to roleplay, and to therefore exercise parts of our psyche that otherwise may never see expression. We all have shadow selves and the propensity for violence. They're part of what makes us human. I am grateful for senseless gore in video games because it gives me a chance to reflect on that part of who I am, who all of us are, and to ask myself "Why do I think this is funny? How can I possibly laugh at these horrendous acts of violence?"
Because it's not real, and because there's an absurdity to those acts which reflect the absurdity of human violence and cruelty. Gore in video games gives us the opportunity to engage in those parts of who we are in a safe way. The only reason I enjoyed Dead Island was *because* of that ultra-violence, which reminded me of the current Fallout games. The game is otherwise a frustrating exercise in bad writing, unpolished visuals, boring fetch quests and RPG mechanics which probably ought to be under the hood.
Being able to get together with a few of my buddies and jaw about the frustrations of the day while taking them out on a crowd of walking dead who deserve no mercy, and laughing as I walk around with a mace after the fight is done and methodically smash the skulls of all the fallen corpses - they're zombies, after all, you can't be too careful - has a valid and beneficial value.
To speak directly to your point: it's the job of the developers and designers to make the tone of their games clear. If their intention was to employ gore to make a statement about the disturbing nature of violence, and instead gamers laugh about it and engage with their shadow shelves, I think that's more about the design of the game and the developers' inability to set the right tone than an indication of anything on behalf of the gamers. You cite examples where gore in video games achieved the ends you think it ought to, which proves it can be done. If that's not the effect gore has on the player, perhaps it wasn't used properly."