The devil, they say, is in the details. This makes grim sense to me, as I’m being tortured by what seems to be my own personal demon, a foul creature which stabs at me from depths of minutiae that I can never seem to delve into to any satisfying extent. Percentages roar angrily around my head, and numbers course relentlessly through my veins. I wasn’t always like this.
I only wanted to play Shadow Of The Tomb Raider.
I hadn’t played a Tomb Raider game for about two decades, but I thought I’d give this one a go for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I was curious to see how far the series had come over that time. Secondly, it was free with Xbox Games With Gold.
So, I played for a few hours. The graphics were very pretty, Lara sort of looked like a real woman, and the game was fun (if somewhat derivative). I enjoyed myself. Eventually of course, the call of real life could no longer be ignored, so I turned the game off and played the role of a fully functioning human adult. The next day, I returned to the game.
That’s when everything started to go wrong.
The title screen now proudly displayed a completion percentage. A very percentage. 7.94 per cent to be exact. So, I had seen 7.94 per cent of everything the game had to offer. Or was I perhaps 7.94 per cent of the way through the story? Hmm.