Lara Croft VS Nathan Drake

Lara Croft VS Nathan Drake is the 72nd episode and Season 4 premiere of DEATH BATTLE!, featuring gaming's greatest treasure hunters: Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider franchise and Nathan Drake of the Uncharted franchise. Lara was voiced by Eileen Montgomery (EileMonty)and Nathan was voiced by Gianni Matragrano.

Description
''These two adventurers are here to prove once and for all who's the pivotal Playstation plunderer! Lara Croft the Tomb Raider and Nathan Drake the seeker of the uncharted!''

Interlude
(*Cues: Invader - Jim Johnston*)

Wiz: Sometimes, an archaeologist needs a bit more than a shovel and brush, especially when their on the hunt for the most legendary of treasure.

'''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. He's Wiz and I'm Boomstick.'''

Wiz: And it's our job to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who will win a Death Battle.

Lara Croft
(*Cues: Tomb Raider: Anniversary - Main Theme*)

Wiz: Most people spend their entire lives in pursuit of wealth, status, and power, but Lara Croft was lucky enough to be born into them. However, despite attending the best schools, and living in her own mansion, she was missing one crucial thing: adventure!

(*Cues: Tomb Raider: Legend - Main Theme*)

'''Boomstick: Man, rich people are always looking for some crazy way to help keep themselves entertained! But if you have a lot of money and you take a lot of trips, it's good odds that one of those trips is bound to go horribly wrong.'''

Wiz: And guess what? It did.

'''Boomstick: Before she was even old enough to order a drink, a crash landing left her stranded in desolation. She had to learn for herself how to adapt and survive for over a week before returning to civilization as a whole new lady.'''

Wiz: In whatever Tomb Raider timeline you're looking at, whether it's on an island or the Himalayas, Lara's destined to this life-changing fate.

Boomstick: I'm never getting on a plane with her!

Wiz: Surprisingly, Lara's experience left her far from traumatized. Instead, she was inspired, hooked by the thrill of perilous adventure. So she struck out on her own, seeking lost treasure across the globe to make a name for herself.

'''Boomstick: But Lara's no fool, so first, she made sure she'd be ready for anything. She tracked down the best teachers she could find to learn her the ways of stealth, survival, and martial arts.'''

Wiz: She became proficient in numerous types of firearms, and her martial art of choice appears very reminiscent to kickboxing. She can even fight while blindfolded!

(*Cues: Tomb Raider: Legend - Mission Summary*)

'''Boomstick: So she's basically Batman, who treasure hunts, with guns! Speaking of which, Lara is famous for her trademark dual Heckler and Codge pistols, and I'm not talking about the things under her sweater. But she's also skilled shotguns, assault rifles, submachine guns, even grenades! And she uses them to take down everything from armed thugs to T-Rexes!'''

Wiz: Lara is also skilled with a competition compound bow, perfect for stealth kills.

'''Boomstick: And she's got enough trick arrows to make Green Arrow proud. She's got fire arrows, poison arrows, explosive tipped arrows, and even rope arrows for crossing gaps or grappling things, and while her climbing axe is supposed to be used for scaling up cliffs, you can imagine what the thing does to a human skull. Oh wait, you don't have to, watch!'''

(Lara jams it into a guy's skull and throws him away with it)

Boomstick: Mmm, lovely.

Wiz; Gruesome murder aside, Lara's extensive training paid off in big ways, she's discovered the legendary blade Excalibur, the Philosopher's Stone, the Ark of the Covenant, Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, and even Bigfoot, whom she also promptly killed.

Boomstick: Suck it, Sasquatch, she's survived dinosaurs, the Kraken, a Chinese dragon, and she even found the long lost Led Zeppelin song, "Stairway to Heaven".

Wiz: What? No, no, no, she found a literal stairway to Heaven.

'''Boomstick: Really?! Holy shit!'''

Wiz: For a 132 pound woman, she's surprisingly strong, she's held up a heavy gate for thirty six straight seconds, while drowning, she also regularly pushes around enormous boulders, like the giant blocks in the Pyramid of Giza. This makes her easily strong enough to, say, punch a man through a wooden beam.

Boomstick: Lara's also a crack shot, she can precisely tag multiple targets in less than a second, even if their button sized bolts or kunai flying through the air.

Wiz: She's skilled enough to infiltrate and escape Area 51, she's tenacious enough to take a bullet in the heat of battle and keep fighting, and she's tough enough to dive off a 250 foot cliff into water, with no injury whatsoever. The highest documented dive ever recorded is 193 feet, but unlike Lara, this diver underwent weeks of preparation and still broke his collarbone.

'''Boomstick: Hell, this girl can survive almost anything. When she was younger, she got impaled by a rusty metal spike, and was still able to complete an entire adventure while in constant pain.'''

Wiz: She wasn't even able to properly treat it, she had to cauterize it with a burning arrow tip.

'''Boomstick; Damn, that's hardcore! I think I've found my next ex-wife, and then there was that one time she threw her climbing axe at a helicopter, and it just...it just exploded!'''

Wiz: Yeah, the only logical explanation being she threw the axe into the chopper's air intake, shredded it's internals, which caused a spark that reached it's gas tank...

'''Boomstick: She made the helicopter explode with nothing but an axe! That girl's got one hell of an arm.'''

Wiz: I think we can all agree Lara is a badass, but she thinks so too, and can get a bit reckless.

Boomstick: If she gets too full of it, she could always find herself at the wrong end of a tree branch, crushed by boulders, mauled by wolves, shot in the head, stabbed through the face, all sorts of horrific, fatal mistakes.

Wiz; Even knowing that, the risk doesn't keep her from any of her bewildering adventures.

(We see Lara in a robe, about to shower, she is about to remove it, when she stops and looks at the screen)

Lara: Don't you think you've seen enough?

(She pulls out a shotgun and fires at the screen)

Nathan Drake
Wiz: Sic Parvis Magna. To most people, these words hold little meaning. But for globetrotting explorer Nathan Drake, it's his life motto. Greatness from small beginnings.

'''Boomstick: And beginnings don't get much smaller than his. Little Nate spent half his childhood in a boy's home, where he was raised by nuns, picked on by bullies and pretty much just hated on for every second of his life.'''

Wiz: Nathan found solace in his fascination with history, particularly the explorer who found El Dorado, Sir Francis Drake. And like his idol, Nathan dreamed of one day escaping the orphanage to go on treasure hunts of his own.

'''Boomstick: And he did, with his big brother, Sam. The treasure? Their dead mom's old journals about Mr. Drake himself. Turns out they were in some old lady's house, so they broke in, she called the cops and then immediately died from a heart attack.'''

Wiz: Obviously not wanting to be caught trespassing and standing over a dead woman when the police arrived, Nathan began a life on the run.

'''Boomstick: Talk about shitty luck. Man, all he wanted was a book!'''

(*Cues: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception- Main Theme*)

Wiz: Fortunately, Nathan seemed born for the treasure hunter's life. He's exceptionally athletic, has encyclopedic historical knowledge, and can find a way out of almost any bad situation with his quick wit.

Boomstick: He'd make sure that everyone would remember the name, Nathan Drake.

Wiz: After several solo adventures, Nathan eventually teamed up with Victor Sullivan, a former Navy officer turned expert con artist. Sully taught Nathan the ways of combat, both with his fists and with firearms.

'''Boomstick: Good thing too, because it seems like everybody out there wants to take a shot at Nate. He almost always has a 45 Defender or 9mm pistol on hand, as well as a couple grenades. Nate can also rack up the body count with just about any weapon he touches, including machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, and sniper rifles. Hey, when there's a literal army of bad guys out to kill you, you gotta become a one man army yourself!'''

Wiz: Ready for anything, Nathan set out to follow in his idol's footsteps and then some, he's discovered five lost civilizations, stopped multiple world ending threats, and even unlocked the secret of El Dorado like Sir Francis Drake before him.

Boomstick: Yeah, turns out it's not a city of gold, just a dead guy that turns people into zombies!

(Gabriel Roman is infected with the virus and turns feral, he is shot by Atoq Navarro)

'''Boomstick: Didn't see that one coming. Anyway, Nate wouldn't have done any of those things if he weren't physically fit for the job, he's strong enough to move boulders twice his size, and hold up a four ton gate for four seconds. '''

(Nate holds the gate long enough for Elena to pass through, then lets it go, and somersaults out of its closing)

Boomstick: He can climb huge cliffs with nothing but his fingertips, and constantly jumps humungous gaps without needing a running start.

Wiz: The standing broad jump world record is twelve feet and three inches, in this instance, Nathan Drake was able to make a nineteen foot jump from a standstill, nineteen feet! And he's always clearing similar jumps throughout his adventures.

Boomstick: Nate's got hops, but he's also got an iron hide, the dude is constantly falling dozens of feet, and just shaking it off, like that time he did a forty foot belly flop and got right back up, like it was nothing, that could kill a normal guy.

Wiz: Nathan Drake is nothing if not determined, when he found himself cornered on a train and bleeding out from a bullet wound, his solution was to simply blow the whole thing to oblivion.

Boomstick: What a convenient pile of propane tanks.

Wiz: But of course, he survived the crash, and even climbed to safety, despite having no way of knowing he'd get out of this whole mess alive at all.

'''Boomstick: On top of all that, look what he's wearing! It's freezing up there!'''

Wiz: Actually, explosions seem to be his exit of choice, like when he blew up a cargo plane while flying over Saudi Arabia.

'''Boomstick: After surviving the trip to the ground, he wandered the desert for two straight days, with zero food or water, but even with all that, when he found a bunch of mercenaries who wanted to kill him, he was still able to fight them off. How is this guy real? What kind of deal did he make with Satan? Cause he should know that that stuff comes with a terrible price, believe me.'''

Wiz: All of this just proves how careless and haphazard Nathan really is, this man rarely, if ever, has a plan for anything at any point, nearly every moment of his life, whether he's in or out of danger, Nathan's philosophy insists that he simply roll with whatever punches come his way. When it comes down to it, much of his survivability can be chalked up to an abundance of good luck.

'''Boomstick: And also, his incredible knack for improvising and adapting. Lucky or not, hundreds, if not thousands of bad guys have tried to beat him to some treasure, and lost. It's good odds that if you go up against Nathan Drake, your not just gonna lose that treasure, your gonna lose your life.'''

(Nathan and Chloe Frazer hold up a wounded Elena Fisher to Safety)

Chloe Frazer: What the hell did you do back there?

''Nathan Drake: Oh, you know... saved the world.''

Results
'''Boomstick: Ho ho, nice shot! Told you she had a good arm!'''

Wiz: Lara and Nathan have both displayed impressive feats of strength, durability, agility and weapon skills, but Lara tended to have the edge in every category.

'''Boomstick: Both of them were way stronger than you'd think. Nathan shoved a boulder large enough to weigh twenty tons. That means he literally had the strength of ten men. '''

Wiz: But in Lara's case, she moved several limestone blocks used in the Great Pyramids. Not only did she move them much farther distances than Nathan, but given their size and makeup, these blocks should weigh up to twenty seven tons each.

Boomstick: Lara's way tougher too, and has been through things that would've definitely taken Nate out.

Wiz: Like when she was impaled by rebar, but was still able to accomplish everything necessary to survive a hostile island for a week. Nathan suffered a bullet wound in the same area of the body, and while he powered through the pain for a short time, he soon passed out and was unconscious while under intensive care for three days.

'''Boomstick: Take my word for it, I've been through pretty much everything you could think of, and I'd rather take a bullet than rebar any day. And that rebar thing happened when Lara was pretty young. Later, she got all sorts of combat and survival training from experts, while Nate was mostly self-taught, with a few pointers every so often from a con man. Also, when the pressure's really on, Lara manages to always keep a cool head, much better than Nate.'''

Elena Fisher: So, you got a plan C?

Nate: Yeah, floor it.

Elena: What?

Nate: I'm getting on that train.

Elena: What, are you crazy?

Wiz: Nathan Drake did just about everything by the seat of his pants, and eventually, luck always runs out.

Boomstick: Yeah, she was just too croft-y for him.

Wiz: The winner is Lara Croft.

Trivia

 * This is the third season premiere to feature a male combatant and a female combatant. The first 2 was Boba Fett VS Samus Aran as the Season 1 Premiere and Dante VS Bayonetta as the Season 3 Premiere.
 * This match-up was previously done by the live-action versus series, Super Power Beat Down, making it the first time Death Battle's done a BatintheSun match-up.
 * Coincidentally, both fights have the same results with Lara Croft winning in both shows.
 * The song featured in the beginning and end of the trailer for this match is the Plasma3Music remix of Nathan Drake's Theme. The music in the middle is the main theme of Tomb Raider Legend, which is used in Lara's analysis as well.
 * This is the first ever Death Battle to use a new looking thumbnail, a new logo and a new analysis design.