An Interview with Raymond Croft

I've been a massive Tomb Raider fan from the beginning, when my family picked up Tomb Raider 1 on the Playstation 1 upon it's release. There was something about the series that has already appealed to me; whether that be Lara's archeological roots (I'm a History geek, through and through), or the fact that this was one of the first female video game characters I truly admired.

Whilst Lara has seen several transformations over the years, most notably, 2013's reboot, a strong fanbase has remained at its core. Cosplayers make up a large part of this, and throughout my time of being a part of this community, there's several cosplayers that definitely stand out and make an impression. One of these is Raymond Croft, bringing his male version of Croft to life for the past three years now. I reached out to him, and had a chat about all things Tomb Raider.

My Comic Con Survival Guide

San Diego Comic Con is just around the corner, and it got me thinking about comic cons in general, and what I usually do to prepare to going to one.

Comic Cons can be pretty fun. It's a great way to meet like-minded people, pick up some geek merch, and meet some celebs. Check out my Comic Con Survival Guide below!

How To Make a Minnie Mouse Cosplay

On the 29th of October 2016, I cosplayed as Minnie Mouse for the London MCM Comic Con. I don't cosplay often, mainly because it takes up a considerable amount of time and money to get a costume sorted, but this time around I thought I'd get something ready! 

Join me as I talk you through my quick and easy Minnie Mouse cosplay.

MCM Comic Con - May 2016

So, MCM May 2016 is officially over! It always goes incredibly quickly, but as usual, I had a lot of fun, both as Press for 8-Bit Girl and Geek Mash, and just in general on the Sunday, 29th of May.

I was busy taking a lot of photos this time around of some fantastic cosplayers. I also spoke to Lee Skittrell from Rising Star Games about their upcoming game. We got to sample a small section of it, a conga mini-game that was actually really fun. The object of the game was to boogie around a dance floor and pick up more people in your conga line. The winner was the player with the longest line at the end. I also watched some of my friends and fellow Geek Mash team members play Odin's Sphere, Koei's Attack on Titan game and Rising Star's Lumo. 

One of my highlights, albeit brief, was meeting Tomb Raider's Camilla Luddington. She was really friendly! Here's the picture below:

8-Bit Girl at MCM Comic Con: October 2015

Sunday 26th October was yet another year where I was under the guise of Press at the London MCM Comic Con. Here I was joined by my friends and fellow writers at Geek Mash, as well as getting some bits done for 8-Bit Girl on Twitter throughout the day.

The three day show saw 130,560 people pass through the doors of ExCel in London, breaking the previous record set in May's MCM (122,600). 

The show featured a plethora of cosplay, stalls, panels, merchandise, celebrities, artists, writers, games and more. I spent the Sunday in my Alice Madness Returns cosplay. Check out some of the pictures below, and see a whole album of MCM photos (including more taken by myself) over on the Geek Mash Facebook.

Alice's Adventures in MCM Comic Con

This October's MCM Comic Con in London was the second time I have ever cosplayed (I went as Mario a few years ago), and somehow it just made the whole experience more fun! 

During my time at MCM, I sat in on two talks-Tomb Raider and the Temple of Osiris, and the Resident Evil HD talk with Wesker himself, DC Douglas. I also got the chance to hang out with my regular con friends and Comic Village exhibitors, browse the stalls and check out other cosplayers. The queues were mental for the game demos!

Here's some of the photos taken of me as Alice. It was also nice meeting fellow matching cosplayers!

Meeting Slender Man!

Here's my Alice Madness Returns Cosplay!

I am a big fan of American McGee's Alice and Alice Madness Returns, so when I decided I wanted to cosplay at this October's London MCM Comic Con, it seemed like the perfect time to attempt to dress up as Alice! 

Thank you to everyone who suggested cosplays to me on Facebook and Twitter whilst I was deciding. It seemed a vast majority of you thought I should go as Alice (Lara Croft came up second). 

Here are some photos of my finished costume. I am attending MCM on Friday (in normal clothes), but look out for me as Alice at MCM on the Saturday and Sunday! 

What do you think of my costume? 

Leave your feedback in the comments!

My real-life Cheshire Cat!

Ryoko-Demon: Excellent Game Cosplay!

For top quality cosplay inspired by a plethora of games, films and anime's, look no further than Ryoko-Demon.

Her cosplay successfully nails the look and feel of each character, with her Team Rocket's Jessie (Pokemon) and Coco Bandicoot costumes being some of the best. 

Check out her Jessie (Team Rocket) and Coco Bandicoot cosplays below. 

For more, click through to Ryoko-Demon's gallery: http://ryoko-demon.deviantart.com/gallery/

Great Wii Fit Trainer Cosplay!

I never really saw anyone cosplaying the Wii Fit Trainer until she was announced as a new character in the upcoming Super Smash Bros. game for Wii U and 3DS.

This is the best one I have seen so far. The colouring is spot on!

Wii Fit Trainer cosplayed by Hayley Elise.

Great Bioshock Infinite Elizabeth Cosplay

Looking around on the internet, it seems that everyone who has played Bioshock Infinite loves Elizabeth. This reminded me that I had seen a fantastic Elizabeth cosplay recently.

Cosplayed by deviantART member Ormeli, you may recognise her as Alice from American McGee's 'Alice' games, which I featured in the past. 

Check out a few of her as Elizabeth below. The rest can be seen here: 

http://ormeli.deviantart.com/gallery/32019776

Tomb Raider Art Feature

Crystal Dynamic's Tomb Raider reboot was released last month and was met with great critical acclaim. Fans also loved it, with the game selling an impressive 1 million copies in just 48 hours.

I've been a Tomb Raider fan from the beginning, and have always found Lara Croft to be a strong, likeable character. The latest game is, in my opinion, fantastic, and is a welcome, and much-needed revamp for a series that was sadly in danger of becoming tired.

If you like browsing art online, you may have noticed that a lot of fan art and cosplay has been created for this latest Tomb Raider instalment. Here's few of my favourites below. I had so many more to include, but then this post would have gone on forever!

By Remoraz 

Cosplay by JennCroft

By hamsterfly

By Sophia-M

By Gigei

By Terribilus 

By Deivcalviz

Excellent Skyward Sword Cosplay!

Check out this excellent The Legend of Zelda cosplay by deviantART member Malindachan. 

Modelled on the Skyward Sword version of Link, every detail is spot-on! I especially like how that Link wig has turned out. 

Perhaps The Best Alice: Madness Returns Cosplay I've Seen!

I loved Alice: Madness Returns, and happened to stumble upon this rather excellent cosplayer last night during a brief browse.

Ormeli on deviantART has plenty of fantastic cosplays besides her Alice one, so it is worth looking through her gallery. However, I decided to feature her Alice cosplay photos, as she looks scarily like Alice Liddel from the game-the same frame, big eyes and face shape. Check them out below. You can also view the bigger versions via the Alice folder in her gallery.

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My Day at the Eurogamer Expo

So today I went along to the Eurogamer Expo at Earls Court, London. Whilst I've been to several other cons plenty of times before, this was my first ever time at Eurogamer! Join me as I give a run-down of what I got up to during the day.

8.40am, my train arrives at Earls Court station. I promptly go and join fellow Tweeter and blogger James Hare (aka RealityGlitch) in the line, and queue until the early entry and press lot are allowed in at 10am. In the line we witnessed plenty of people go crazy over freebies, and I picked up plenty of Streetpass hits. Then finally, 10am rolled around, and the doors opened...

Cheesy grin :s (photo taken by James Hare).

Inside:

Myself and James headed straight to the Tomb Raider section. It's one of my most anticipated games right now, and I wanted to avoid the queues this early on. You'll read my "hands on" impressions of this in a separate post soon, but in short, Tomb Raider's demo felt fluid, it was fun, and pretty refreshing to see Lara actually struggle for once. 

After this, we headed on to the Wii U section, where we were shown the "Panorama Mode" on the Wii U tablet. Choosing a Japanese scene, this mode placed you in the setting. Moving the Wii U tablet 360 degrees, up and down allows you to explore the scenery. In this case, I was able to walk through a busy Japanese street, traverse through cherry blossom trees, and take a ride in a cart with a Geisha. I was actually rather impressed with how clear the screen and footage looked, and I can imagine this is a fun little time waster when you first get hold of your Wii U console.

James Hare playing the Panorama Viewer on the Wii U Tablet

Also in the Wii U section, we tried out three mini-games in Nintendo Land; Donkey Kong's Crash Course, Luigi's Ghost Mansion and Animal Crossing: Sweet Day. I loved playing these, especially the Animal Crossing game! Children are definitely going to love these fun and easy to understand games, and they make great party games. (My full reviews of these will be in a separate post). Sadly I never got to try out Zombi U, due to the ridiculous average queuing time of 3 hours. Unfortunately it seemed that a lot of games had similar waiting times, and yet this was ten minutes in to the early opening!

After spending near enough fifty minutes inside the Wii U section, we headed off for a look around the place. The venue was huge, and there was plenty of games of all different genres and systems! Also, I was surprised to see that the merchandise section was so small, after being used to the abundance of stalls in cons such as the London MCM Expo, but ah well, I was here for one thing today-the gaming. It didn't stop me buying this though!:

Today made me realise how much people love a freebie. A good freebie at that, too. For instance, Insert Coin Clothing handed out a bunch of free t-shirts, keyrings, stickers, promo codes and a hoodie, and honestly, it was like being in the middle of a mosh pit at a metal gig when items were thrown. I happened to catch the end of one shirt, before being practically jumped on by a hoard of guys desperate for their chance of owning a free t-shirt, worth £35. Alas, I didn't grab the shirt, but I didn't have a chance...I'm surprised it even stayed in one piece after all the tugging!

After playing some great little co-op mini games with a bunch of people in the Wii U section, we headed to Borderlands 2. I was a huge fan of Borderlands, near enough completing every achievement, and seeing as I have not bought the sequel yet, I was looking forward to giving this a go. As I expected, Borderlands 2 hasn't changed much from it's predecessor  but then personally I thought this was fine, as I never had many qualms with the original. (Again, my hands on review will be in a separate post!).

Photo taken by James Hare...check out my concentration face, yo.

I then tried out Dance Central 3, playing a Nicki Minaj track (no, I'm not a Minaj fan, but then it was fun nonetheless). It's more of the same, but I love the previous two. I've often mentioned that it is a great way to get in shape, and it looks like DC3 will add even more energetic dance routines, as well as a  more varied playlist. My hands on review will come up soon!

The indie game section had some interesting looking titles, but unfortunately a few of them seemed a little disappointing. I tried out The Button Affair, a endless running game that sees you avoiding obstacles such as lasers, trapdoors and gun-wielding enemies. Sadly it all got a bit samey too quickly, and the graphics weren't really that impressive either.

After a lot of walking around, we tried out Carmageddon Funsize, an iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad version of Carmageddon, remastered for the handheld generation. It looks like it'll be a lot of fun, but in all honesty I found the controls a little too clunky, and ended up getting a bit frustrated. Perhaps I was just rubbish at the game, but I'm sorry, I just didn't find it that enjoyable. 

The final game myself and James tried out today was The Cave, which is due for a release on XBLA, PSN and Wii U. An adventure game with a puzzling twist, this co-op game was a lot of fun. I also bagged a free tiny figure at the end of the characters I chose to play:

Hands On coming in a separate post!

So all in all, my day at the Eurogamer Expo was great. Yes, there was a lot of queuing, but there were so many impressive games on offer, plus it was nice meeting some Twitter people. I'm looking forward to the next one! 

Now, check out a few more photos:

Photo taken by James Hare. Me with Sonic!

A panorama I took of the show floor. Please click here to see the bigger version.