Sanc: one thing Shadow of Tomb Raider has is that there's a very lot of rather great vista : the game world is really well crafted.
Most environment are looking fantastic even with a lot of graphic turned down like i do, so i imagine for people with stronger system it must be really impressive.

I just wish the writing wasn't so much cringe with the player rolling his eye everytime a character open his mouth to apologise for something, to feel sorry for other people for no real reason and whine a bit here and there, or try to have some word of wisdom in the less appropriate possible moment (and that's overall why i go with "my" version of the character , Lara Croft evil cousin Lala Craft :D )

The most hilarious writing is still those cases in which you examine an ancient item/artifact that is broken, the game tells you to rotate and zoom around to find more information on the object, and when you have the camera right where the game want it to be, the more information is actually Lara Croft saying "oh it's broken there, we can see the shards" or something stupidly obvious like that.

It's a really good game for the exploration/vista/stunts , but the writing is really bad unfortunately.

Anyways, still on her quest for some new place to be, Lala Craft ran into more crazy stunts.

This time there was this huge structure used by the ancient mix of Inca and Maya people living there to travel.

Oddly that's a very similar structure she already went through in her previous adventure , were the devs lacking inspiration or was siberia visited by ancient Inca and Maya too ? that's was yet another mystery Lala was eager to explore.

After getting through, and running into some more crazy travelling place for the ancient people , Lala understood why they disappeared, because obviously those paths were so insanely dangerous, most of the ancient must have fallen to their death on their travel.

No wonder Lala saw so many corpses on her way.

.erercott: After trying out Shovel Knight for a while, I felt reserved due to it's mechanics. Hitting the shovel downward and the inverse for special attacks are a hassle, or hard to get used to. I botched it pretty bad, and couldn't get past the third level, but I did beat the King on my first try.

The kingdom speaks in such lavish and archaic words, sometimes it feels like I'm a character in a Rick Riodan book. Other times I feel invigorated by it's charm and level design. It's fun and unsurprisingly unparalleled.

The hallucinogenic text, the kaleidoscopic music, the haunting enemies. It's taking a while to get used to but I can immediately tell that the people who made it might've been brewing more than an instant classic.

Perhaps a stew of mushroom soup.

Nonetheless, it's clever design is fun to try and master. I feel like an indestructible knight dragging my shovel and whipping it around like a guitar.

Sanc: Shadow of the Tomb Raider

After more insane stunts Lala finally get to dive into another water way.

Seems to be a place in which the ancient people from the area (that seem to not be able to know if they're Inca or Maya) have been murdering a bunch of people in human sacrifice.

Though those creepy statues around the underwater site were rather weird and felt out of place.

Once Lala moved to another region, a big surprise !
Cosplayers again !

After meeting and killing in her previous adventures a whole army of samurais cosplayers, then an army of byzantine cosplayers, now Lala is meeting a whole city of maya / inca (the devs of the game still don't know that not only maya and incas lived several centuries apart but lived nearly a continent part too so there's no maya culture in peru it's inca devs ...) cosplayers !
And we have that woman that pretend to be their queen , the queen of the cosplayers , Lala had a hard time stopping herself from laughing at that woman's serious face.

But more concerning : this time the Maya-Inca cosplayers are friendly , though incredibly dumb because they're not able to recognize Lala as not being one of them (despite they never saw her and is ethnically obviously not from that part of the world) just because she is wearing some cosplaying clothing too...

Their friendliness is really bothering Lala Craft, because in the past the other cosplayers legion were hostile enemies, and so she was able to stab them all without a danger of being labelled as a criminal for the law, allowing her then to still travel freely the world in her quest to destroy all the ancient tombs .

Fortunately it seems luck was still on her side, the trinity mercenaries were in that cosplayer town too.
Similarly to Lala they were all wearing cosplayer clothing so the dumb people of that town weren't even able to notice they were outsiders, sigh stupidity have no limit in there.

It seems the leader of the mercenaries was on a quest to become the god of the cosplayers and remake the wolrd, or something silly like that. Lala was still smiling from thinking what would happen to them soon enough, she still had her trusty knife.

Sanc: Shadow of the Tomb Raider

After going for a swim , as Peru temperature is rather high these days, Lala Craft discovered some underwater creepy entrance.

Smelling an opportunity for more destruction, Lala decided to get in there.

And after more swimming she emerged into some huge grotto that obviously she started to explore and climb around.
After reaching some ancient ruin in some deeper grotto, Lala was rather surprised to findwhat looked as the ancestor of the giant robots/mechas.

Though the poor thing wasn't really mobile (it mostly was able to only rotate on itself ), this didn't prevented Lala to find some way to destroy it, at least it was for good reason this time as the contraption was blocking the exit

Once back into the cosplayers town, Paititi , Lala noticed that 2 of the cosplayers were starting to worship her for some reason.
"Those cosplayers are really dumb" Lala thought, but in the same time she saw a good way to get free food now.

Sanc: Shadow of the Tomb Raider

After having witnessed a lot of childish drama between the cosplayers , Lala finally accepted to help them on their families issues.
In normal times Lala Craft does not care at all about such thing, but those cosplayers were so annoying and embarassing to watch that she had to do something.

And because mass stabbing wasn't possible , she had to help them to solve their problems instead, because those dumb guys can't do anything by themselves, they need the newly arrived outsider to do things for them and solve their centuries old crap, sigh...

All the while sidekick Jonah has been even more useless than ever, the guy has been sitting on a bench for so long in that cosplaying town without even helping them or be usefuly to Lala in any ways.
Damned parasite Lala thought, but who know maybe he'll have an use later.

She went through a few places, noticed along travel and some talking that the cosplayers while friendly in appearance were practicing slavery, human sacrifices , butchering people and banished anyone disenting to their death.

Such a great pile of monsters Lala was thinking " a pity the devs of that game block my knife in Paititi, half of those cosplayer guys really deserve a fate as cruel as the one they do to the poor buggers they elect as sacrifices. "

Fortunately Lala Craft found that she was not alone in those hidden places, there were some cosplayers still busy working on the corpses, those guys would really pay for the other.
And that was only the beginning, the righteous stabbing party had just started, along some nice looking ancient ruins that would probably burn later anyways.

Sanc: Shadow of the Tomb Raider

The Great Stabbing party start !

A couple of cosplayers were discussing at the entrance of that large ruin, great time to test that "lock and shoot multiple targets at the same time with arrows" skill Lala just unlocked.

Of course this commotion attracted the attention of the many cosplayers roaming around this large ruined temple, convenientely filled with covers so Lala could safely ambush everyone .

And Lala isn't one to overlook an opportunity for an ambush.

Stab !

Stab and stab again !

Use climbing pick to stab, then stab with knife again !

Tackle then stab !

Lala indeed showcased a vast variety of stabbing techniques learned during all her psychopatic years.

Lala thought she should have launched an entertaining funny music for that party, Lala took an army out all by herself with a big smile on her psycho face
But Lala pointed that in all her adventure, there was no evil women mercenary to stab because the devs were cowards and never included women as enemy at gameplay time, only evil men cosplayers were then stabbed.

Lala mentionned in her memoirs that it's important to note she checked post-stabbing party to confirm they were all evil of course ! Lala would never stab accidentally someone not evil, or at least she wouldn't have planned for it because the game wouldn't let her !
Ok, her previous reckless actions had triggered that tsunami and apocalyptic tremors that killed thousand of innocent, but hey "shit happens" Lala wrote in her memoirs to defend her stupid actions.