Lara Croft is Disappointed

A while back, the TF2 team announced a contest in which we were told to make promo items for the new Lara Croft game. The only stipulations were that it had to fit inside TF2, it had to be related to a Lara Croft game and it could not be Heavy in short shorts. On December 3rd, they announced the winners, and as good as they are, it’s left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths. Three items made it as promos and a few more were accepted, to be added to the Mann Co. store at a later date.

The winners were Lara Croft’s sunglasses – the Tomb Readers, The Crown of the Old Kingdom and Jungle Booty, which is a pair of short shorts for Heavy. The runners up were the Bootenkhamuns – a pair of Lara Croft boots, Orion’s Belt – a fancy gun hoist for Scout and Pocket Raiders, a pair of cute dolls that hang off one’s belts. As amazing as all these entries are, there’s couple of problems.

Problem number 1 – No weapons.
There are tons of hats in TF2. Tons of them. Hats are kinda getting boring. We’re starting to get copies of hats and redone ideas and stuff like that. Lara Croft is well-known for being a busty warrior acrobat who fires guns and shoots bad guys. This contest was the perfect opportunity to get a couple of weapons added to the game. There was no need to add any new stats or anything, a weapon reskin or two would have fit in perfectly. There were several extremely good submissions, particularly this beautiful sword, this fancy knife that doesn’t turn one into a dragon and Lara Croft’s pistols, what one could call her signature weapons. None of these wonderful entries made it into the game. All three weapons could have easily been made into reskins, but no, we didn’t get them. The Soul Reaver in particular is very nice and has been sitting at the top of the workshop for ages.

Problem number 2 – Duplicates
See this hat? This was one of the winners. See this hat? This is a Halloween-restricted item. The former is all-class. The latter is Medic only and can only be worn during full moons. Why? Who knows. The person who made this item actually made a side-to-side picture of the two hats, which I shall show you now.

I’ll be honest, the all-class hat is much nicer. It’s got lovely shading and all sorts. Looks cleaner and tidier. But what about the poor guy who made the Teutonkahmun? His work as now been shafted. He probably didn’t make much money on his hat either. That aside, why is one restricted and the other isn’t? They’re both rather bright and terrifying and neither of them really fit into TF2, so why isn’t the promo hat restricted? You could argue that it’s a promo hat, that’s why, but the Xenomorph Scout set is also a promo item and that’s restricted. I just wish Valve would be consistent with these things.

Problem number 3 – This didn’t get in.
You know what’s unique and rarely added? Weapons. You know what else is rarely added? Taunts. I haven’t played much Lara Croft, but I got this reference and so will anyone who played the old games. I remember I had a demo of one of the games (number 3 I think) and I used to drown Lara in the swimming pool. Why? Who knows. My sanity has not improved.

Problem number 4 – Where are Sniper’s shorts?
The Jungle Booty set that we’re getting contains one pair of shorts for Heavy. But the item creator had shorts for Sniper too. And they looked really good. If there’s anyone around here that looks good in shorts and suits them, it’s Sniper. He would have been able to do a good Steve Irwin (RIP – you died too soon and in completely the wrong way) impression.

I mean come on, this picture is way better with Sniper in it.

Oh well. Let’s hope the next bunch of cosmetics we get contains something more unique for a change.