Boomstick: Yeah, if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it; the best treasure hunters are the ones with the brawn to match their brain.
Wiz: Like Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider.
Boomstick: And Nathan Drake, seeker of the Uncharted.
Kicking off the fourth season are a pair of treasure-seeking adventurers of the video game world. The hosts will match years of training across the globe against a knack for making up plans on the fly, the adaptability to survive against an unlikely amount of luck, for as noted as the achievements of Lara Croft and Nathan Drake are, only one has the necessary skills to take a victory in a death battle.
Beginning the episode is a look at Lara Croft, born into a status of wealth and prestige among British aristocracy, but for her, such a noble upbringing did little to satiate a desire for a proper purpose in life; thus, she turned to adventure to fill this void. Her beginnings of a life filled with exploration was not an easy one, as it seems every telling of her story has a plane crash leave her stranded in the wilderness, forcing the young Lara to adapt to her surroundings and earn her way back home. Even then, these happenings do little to slow her down, using them as the catalyst to push herself to greater heights, seeking to become the treasure hunter she aspired to be for so long. To finally make good on this dream, Lara tracked down all manner of experts in the fields of survival and martial arts, learning from them to hone her own skills and be ready for whatever adversity she may come upon in her journeys.
The results of her training show nothing if not Lara's commitment to becoming an adventurer. Though the archaeologist carries with her an axe for scaling mountains that works just as well as an impromptu melee tool, more prominently, she bears an array of firearms she uses with proficiency, ranging from dual H&K pistols, assault rifles, shotguns and several other such projectile weapons such as a competition bow with all manner of arrows to use. It helps that Lara is consistently shown with an impressive degree of marksmanship using these guns, accurately striking moving targets in mid-air. Of course, if she ever finds herself disarmed, she is more than capable of standing her ground using her own body as a weapon; her preferred martial art, akin to kickboxing, is made even more of a force due to her own physique, which lends itself handy in such situations as keeping a heavy gate open while drowning or easily moving around the multi-ton blocks comprising the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Under no circumstances should Lara be considered underwhelming as a foe, for her résumé speaks for itself. All manner of treasures and relics, such as the Ark of the Covenant and Mjölnir, have found themselves within her grasp. Her feats stretch even further still; having successfully infiltrated Area 51 and found a stairway into heaven itself, Lara has also fought all manner of extraordinary entities ranging from Chinese dragons and the kraken, to T-rexes she repeatedly encounters, and likewise, repeatedly kills. As formidable as she may be, though, Lara is still human, and as such, is easy to forget her limitations and status as a treasure hunter and with it, the possibility for all manner of gruesome deaths. It seems that Lara has done a good job in keeping herself alive thus far, so actually encountering such an unfortunate end is a doubtful experience.
Having given Lara her due, Wiz and Boomstick move on to her newest foe, Nathan Drake, who, even while being tormented by the other boys at the orphanage he and his brother Sam were left to, found an escape in the daring exploits of his supposed ancestor, Sir Francis Drake himself. Together, the pair left the orphanage in search of their late mother's effects, particularly a journal regarding Nathan's explorer idol, tracking down the manor where they were stored; though the manor's owner Evelyn mistook the pair for thieves, she came to realize they were the children of her former boss, believing they could fulfill her legacy. They would become fugitives after the call of the manor owner alerted the authorities to the boys' location, having no other choice but to adopt a treasure hunter's life for themselves.
While Sam's success as an explorer wavered, spending time in and out of jail cells, Nathan's track record in the field is far steadier; thanks in part to the former navy officer Victor "Sully" Sullivan serving as a mentor and father figure to the young man. His time spent in the military would be to the orphan's benefit, giving him experience in hand-to-hand combat and gunplay, and in turn, Nate would rely on these skills, as shown by his natural talent for wielding and using all kinds of guns. While his primary weapon is a pistol such as the .45 Defender, any firearm can prove to be a reliable, deadly object in his hands. It becomes apparent, when seeing Nathan survive such mishaps as a self-induced train explosion while bleeding out, or falling from a cargo plane and going two days through the Sahara desert without any food or water, that he is just as durable as he is adaptable. His own physicality leaves little to be desired as well; lifting four-ton gates and making standing leaps that cover nineteen feet are but a few obstacles that have failed to slow him down.
Nathan has earned his status as an explorer through how he achieved his feats just as much as the accomplishments themselves. Several masses of mercenaries have met their end by him, treasures such as the key to Shambhala and the wish-granting Cintamani Stone have been claimed by him; and while he did indeed find El Dorado, it turned out not to be the fabled city that Francis Drake speculated it to be, but rather, a sarcophagus carrying an ancient zombie-ish virus that he helped submerge into the ocean. Some of the events of his life can be chalked up not to his skills learned from Sully, but a natural talent for adapting and improvising his plans as well as sheer good fortune, though it is just as much a weakness as it is a strength. Nate plans very little out of his life, insisting to make due with whatever comes his way, letting his luck handle the rest. Impractical as it may be, his strategy or lack thereof has thus far worked out in Nate's favor, as his myriad quests can attest, making up the shortcomings he may have throughout them.
Nathan Drake: (also carrying Elena) Oh, you know. Saved the world.
Both combatants have been given a fair rundown, and the time is soon to come. One advertisement for ProFlowers later, and now, it's time for a death battle!
In the grim overcast that looms above an abandoned castle, Nathan Drake, the adventurer related to explorers of yesteryear, finds a strange mechanism, runes illuminated upon his surface; unbeknownst to him, however, a figure watches him from the distance. The treasure hunter bests the puzzle laid upon the device, which disassembles and retracts, finding the Holy Grail waiting for him. Though he appears to claim it as his own, another figure is quick to stop him; leveling her signature H&K pistol at Nate is Lara Croft, the noblewoman explorer. The Grail, as Lara claims, is to be in her custody, and though she gives Nate the option to leave her be, he takes hold of the AK-47 strapped to his back, turning the offer down.
FIGHT!
The bullets fly as the two archaeologists chase each other down, hiding behind nearby pillars. As Nate checks his surrounding, peering out the corner, Lara is quick to open on her foe, grazing him with a round. Musing over his misfortune, he returns fire, though the Brit adeptly darts and vaults around the gunfire, closing the distance and narrowly missing Nate with a series of sweeping kicks. She earns the first hit of the fight, striking the explorer across the face, though she in turn gains a rifle butt for her trouble. The close quarters become short-lived, Nathan following up with a headbutt that sends Lara reeling downwards as she rolls backward and unleashes another volley of rounds upon Nate; though the bullets knock the Grail off its pedestal, the former orphan catches it and spares it from any damage. His attention is soon brought to Lara upon her panicking about him taking the grail without proper precautions. Without it, the entire contraption retreats into the earth below. The temple begins to collapse as the surroundings around the two plummet and shatter, Nate's dry wit remarking on it.
The temple floor begins to crack and give way, right as both Nate and Lara spot the former's jeep. Making a desperate chase to safety, the pair race towards the car, but only Nathan can clear the jump to solid ground, Lara being swallowed by the ever-expanding crevasse. What would be an untimely end for her is halted with a climbing axe; plunging it into the supporting rock wall to steady her descent. Nate, meanwhile, has started up the jeep, driving away from the crumbling temple and out into the surrounding desert.
Seemingly confident in the safety of his hard-earned gains, Nathan tosses the Holy Grail up and catches it with a free hand, unaware that Lara, mounted upon a motorbike, is catching up to him, leaping onto the truckbed of the jeep and smacking the former Nathan Morgan across the face with the competition bow and pilfering the Grail from him. Right as she prepares to exit the vehicle, the action-pro takes hold of her, getting in several strong hits; a missed hook gives Lara the opening she then needs to disarm Nate of the Defender and knock him to the floor. Ready to end the fight with an arrow in hand, Lara offers her condolences to Nate before witnessing the jeep about to crash into the temple ruins. While she manages to escape the car in time, Nathan can only recover to find himself moments away from being trapped in the ensuing explosion.
Lara is alive; injured in one arm and stranded, but alive nonetheless. As she looks around the dunes, she comes upon the sight of Nate, having survived the crash, stealing her family helicopter, about to take off, Grail in the copilot's seat. Lining up her shot, Lara hurls the climbing axe, a throw that lands the tool dead in the fuel tank, destroying the aircraft. While Nate tumbles to the sand below, seemingly no worse for wear, the primary rotor of the helicopter, barreling straight towards him, poses a far greater threat. Indeed, he can barely register the object before its blades impaling him, the rotor having run dead through his abdomen. The Holy Grail, meanwhile, lands right by Lara's feet, all hers to pick up and examine. Inspecting the relic and finding it to be in perfect condition, she heads off from the wasteland, leaving Nate's corpse behind.
K.O.!
While both remarkable human specimens, far above the norm, Lara is still the superior explorer. For comparison, while the twenty-ton boulders Nate has been shown to push is comparable to having the strength of ten men, the Giza blocks Lara can move far greater distances are at least seven tons heavier. Likewise, Lara has been shown to withstand being impaled on a metal rebar and still managed to survive the terrain of a hostile island for a week; a far greater accomplishment than Nathan being shot in the same area and passing out and needing intensive medical care for three days. Lastly, while Nate had some training from Sully, a former navy officer, Lara had proper experiences learning from all manner of experts, which works well compounded with more of a cooler head than Nate, who relied on luck too much for his own benefit, and said luck can run out if pushed too far. Both explorers are world-famous for plenty of reasons, but Lara had enough experience to take an edge where it mattered most.
Wiz: The winner is Lara Croft!
Lara Croft vs. Nathan Drake contains examples of:
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Lara plays this straight for most of the fight, but it's eventually subverted when she gets cuts on her right arm and brow after jumping out of the crashing Jeep.
- Composite Character: Lara's appearance here combines not just feats from the original Lara (the first game to Angel of Darkness), but from the second (Legend to Underworld) and third (Tomb Raider (2013) and Rise of the Tomb Raider; Shadow of the Tomb Raider hadn't been released at the time of this episode) incarnations of her as well. Feats and showings from the Tomb Raider animated series is also featured, along with ones from the Top Cow comic book adaptation.
- Chekhov's Skill: The hosts take note of how Lara can cause a helicopter to explode by throwing a climbing pick at it. She does this in the fight to kill Nathan.
- Deal with the Devil: Discussed by Boomstick when he asks how Nate can survive everything he does.
- Death by Irony: Drake, who is known for being Born Lucky, is ultimately done in by a bout of bad luck.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: This is how Nate meets his end, being impaled by the helicopter's rotary blades after surviving its destruction and the fall from it.
- Ironic Echo: When he first grabs the Holy Grail after being shot and almost falling, Drake muses there's "not a scratch" on it; Lara makes the same comment as a Bond One-Liner when she takes it as hers after killing Nate.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: After Nate survives the Jeep crash and gets the Holy Grail, he tries to escape in Lara's helicopter. However, he's killed after Lara brings it down using her climbing axe, and ends up falling a great height and being impaled by the wreckage after he lands.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Lara kills Nate and obtains the Holy Grail, but had to destroy her own helicopter after Nate hijacked it, thus leaving her stranded in the desert. Not like this is a big problem for her considering what she's been through, but still an inconvenience.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Lara's response to Nate knocking the Grail off its pedestal with a stray bullet. Given that the Grail temple starts self-destructing afterwards, it makes sense.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Lara starts the animated fight by threatening Nathan with her two pistols, forcing him to slowly turn around with his hands up. However, the latter responds to this by calmly taking his AK-47 into his arms and letting out a quip. It's only after the announcer officially starts the battle does anyone start firing.
