From actions where Lara proved that she’s a hero to be taken seriously, to more ludicrous
moments throughout the character’s video game history, Lara has no shortage of moments
that prove she’s a force to be reckoned with.
So today, we’re counting down the top 10 times Lara Croft was a Bad Ass.
And, unfortunately, locking Winston in the fridge didn’t make the cut this time around.
But shout out to all you butler killers out there.
10 Sky Ship Let’s start off this list with a classic
action packed Lara Croft moment; the collapse of the Sky Ship from the 2013 Tomb Raider
game.
It’s tense.
It’s terrifying.
And as the player, you’re forced to help Lara adapt from fighting off the bad guys
and surviving the life threatening collapse of this massive structure.
It’s one of the most cinematic and intense moments in the game, and it’s a testament
to what Lara is capable of; she can brutally take down a bunch of men with machine guns
on a boat floating in the air using her bow and arrow (and a hand gun, let’s be honest),
and can avoid getting dead when the ground from underneath her is literally thrown to
the wind.
If girl can survive that, she can survive anything.
And after zip lining and whizzing her way down into a waterfall, she’s still got a
sense of humour, declaring, “Something tells me
the others found an easier way down.”
Brilliant.
9 Killing Guards at The Louvre 8 The Scavenger’s Den Escape
There are a lot of fantastic moments where Lara is a total bad ass in the 2013 Tomb Raider
title.
It’s hard to choose from.
But arguably one of the best moments of the game was one of its earliest that established
the tone and also the stakes that Lara was facing off against.
The Scavenger’s Den Escape is exactly that.
After Lara is shipwrecked and captured, she’s faced with an extreme set of circumstances,
and fights for her survival right from the get go, all while suffering from an inconvincibly
painful injury to boot.
The scavengers den is horrifying, and we watch as an inexperienced Lara is thrust into a
whole new set of dangerous circumstances, and she handles herself like a total bad ass,
managing to escape and live another day.
7 Exploding Lara We had to add a bit of a comical number on
this list.
Back in the day, there used to be rumours that a cheat code existed that allowed players
to strip Lara down naked.
Yes, this was back in her polygon days, but it still enticed a whole lot of young men
playing her games.
Turns out, it was just a rumour, but another amazing cheat did exist; a very convoluted
one that allowed you to make Lara explode.
And it’s pretty darn epic.
Check it out.
How does this make Lara a bad ass?
Well, it takes one hell of a character to explode into a million pieces and then come
back and do it all again if the player so chooses.
Moving on.
6 Fighting an Alien Spider For starters, kudos to Lara for not running
scared of this horrific looking creature.
Second, it’s a spider from space which you joyfully get to encounter in Tomb Raider 3.
For context, you have been collecting artifacts throughout the game that were cared from this
ancient meteor in Antarctica.
When its revealed that your buddy pal Dr Willard is actually not your buddy pal but a traitor,
he ends up turning into this spider creature abomination due to close proximity to the
meteor.
Lara takes Willard spider alien on, and isn’t even phased by the fact that he’s absolutely
horrifying.
Fear is her bitch.
5 Bacon Lara The previous Tomb Raider games prior to the
2013 revamp weren’t afraid to venture into more mysterious territory, although the revamp
was guilty of it a little bit too.
They explored myths and legends from time to time, including the likes of the former
rules of Atlantis, a Sea Serpent, a Shiva Statue and even Egyptian god Apep.
Hell, we could do a whole list on mythological foes that Lara has taken on in the past.
One of the weirdest foes that Lara has taken on was something that’s been referred to
as Bacon Lara; a deadly and most definitely disturbing version of herself who is her doppleganger,
minus skin.
It’s just muscle, bone and sinew and is 100% nasty.
Copying your every move, you need to kill this thing by tricking it into falling into
a pit of lava.
Nothing like killing a clone of yourself that looks like it crawled out of a horror film.
4 The Great Pyramid 3 Home Sweet Home
2 Lara vs a T-Rex HOW IS THIS NOT THE MOST BAD ASS THING YOU’VE
EVER HEARD?
There’s a reason why people love the Jurassic Park franchise.
And this is Lara Croft’s take on killer dinosaurs.
So, for context, this went down in the very first Tomb Raider game ever, for the Playstation
and Sega Saturn back in 1996.
It was one hell of a surprise, considering prior to this, you were just an adventurer.
All of a sudden, dinosaurs shows up, and you’re shooting up raptros.
Next thing you know, a massive T-Rex rounds the corner, and s*** gets intense.
It’s no easy task defeating the T-Rex either.
And when you do, it’s so darn satisfying.
Needless to say for many, this is one of the most memorable moments in the entire Tomb
Raider franchise.
1 Lara’s First Kill This is perhaps the most impactful moment
in Lara’s history.
From the 2013 Tomb Raider game, we get to see a whole new kind of Lara Croft.
As we mentioned in earlier numbers, this game gave us a Lara who was inexperienced; this
was her very first adventure, and we got to see a side to Lara that previous Tom Raider
games never explored; she was more human.
She had to deal with experiencing some really traumatic stuff.
And she learned how to be a complete bad ass while doing it, surviving and beating the
bad guys.
It was a brand new retelling of her story, and it was fantastic.
So the defining moment where she kills another human for the first time is so intense and
emotional to witness.
She does it, because it needs to be done.
It’s kill or be killed, and we witness Lara become the character that we know she’s
destined to be.
There we have it friends!
What are your favourite Lara Croft moments?
Which ones on this list do you think are the most bad ass?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know your thoughts!
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