So, at the risk of encouraging them with the attention, I’m instigating a new policy of pointing out games that, as a woman, I find laughable. Sometimes even offensive. Contrary to what you may think, I don’t really mind hentai or games like DOA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball. At least they’re upfront about their motives. I’m even fine with Elexis Sin, what with her being modelled after an actual living woman (ICBW). Sure, in Tomb Raider you spend an awful lot of time staring at Lara’s butt. However, it’s always suitably dressed for the prevailing weather.

No, the games that get me are the ones where porn-like women are totally irrelevant. Games like Conan with its stripper-style animation of rescued captive women [linked video NSFW].

Here’s X-Blades, an upcoming anime hack-and-slash which falls straight into the offensive pile:

Introducing Ayumi…

This charismatic heroine is a fearless treasure hunter who has often used her gun blades to fight her way out of seemingly hopeless situations.

See the X-Blades website for more character info. Here’s a picture of Ayumi.

Nice T&A pose. You know where else you can find women who pose like that? In newspapers. On Page 3 [also NSFW]. Quite apart from the fact that she looks about 14 years old, I suppose Ayumi ditched the chainmail bikini because it was too cumbersome, right?

Perhaps I’m not being fair, choosing a promotional wallpaper image. Here’s an in-game screenshot from the media section of the website:

Classy character design, there. Of course, being a kick-ass sword-and-gun-wielding heroine, Ayumi needed to be rescued by a man. Here’s Jay.

Jay is an adventurer like Ayumi and can also be found on the Temple Island. He rescues her from a deadly trap, tries (without success) to free her from her curse and attempts to support her in her fight against the Powers of Darkness.

And his picture:

Note the buffed and manly pecs. Marvel at the well-endowed codpiece. Gasp at his sexy revealing G-string.

No, wait. In my dreams. Us hetero ladies don’t get to play with hot men. I guess it might threaten the developers’ collective masculinity.

I’m not saying that the solution to female objectification is male objectification. It would just be nice if most (not all) character designers could get their heads out of their collective asses for five minutes and think about a world that contains people who aren’t white, male and aged 15 to 25. There are a lot of us out here, also with games consoles. Between us, we have a crapload of money and we’re not spending it on you.

I wonder why…

You could ask, well why don’t you unlock them yourself by actually playing the game? Well, errm, good question. Anyway, here’s the lowdown on unlocking the bikini outfits:

• Cream bikini - Complete the game and all time trials
• Black bikini – Complete the game, all time trails and collect all artifacts

So far I’ve nearly collected all the artifacts, but completed none of the time trials (and these are quite hard). So I’ve still got some way to go. However, when you’ve finally got Lara all dressed up in her bikini outfit you find that she can’t go outside! You can only use the outfits within the confines of Croft Manor. Boo. Very disappointing.

Black bikini:

Cream bikini:

Related posts:
Read Tikipod’s review of Tomb Raider – Legend here.

Update 11th Aug: You can now replace Lara’s white bikini with a black lingerie (sort of see-through) version by using this patch (235k) which is available from fileplanet here. This patch is only for the PC version (obviously), and also includes a 100% complete save game with every outfit unlocked for your viewing pleasure.

Update 2nd Jan 09: The Sun newspaper has a slideshow (23 pics) of the latest real life Lara Croft – Alison Carroll in a bikini and in her Tomb Raider outfit.

Update 28th Sep 09: There’s an awesome Lara Croft bikini mod, for all your Lara bikini modding needs!

Check out all the Tomb Raider stuff on offer.

It seems that glamour model Bianca Beauchamp bears a striking resemblance to the Elexis character in the game (Bianca’s the one on the left!).

Given that both the SiN Episodes and the games developer’s website (Ritual) have both now disappeared, Ritual Entertainment’s community website – Ritualistic – is the best place to keep up with any further SiN developments.

Update 9th May 06: Errm, when I said “rather sexy trailer” I was referring to how kick-ass the game looks as a first person shooter and not referring to the rather gratuitous bikini scene randomly plonked in the trailer. I’m looking forward to playing the game as its been a while since I completed HL2 and F.E.A.R and there’s been a shortage of really good FPS recently (Doom 3 was just boring).

Update 28th August 2010: Added link to http://www.ritualistic.com/ and added some more pictures of Bianca Beauchamp.