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In my review of Rise of the Tomb Raider earlier this week I wrote about how the game's Expeditions replay mode, with its blind packs of game-altering cards, was "a blatant play for YouTube relevance and micro-transaction revenue". Crystal Dynamics has now both proved my point and challenged my cynicism by announcing some pretty novel and interesting Twitch integration for Expeditions.Inspired by the Twitch Plays phenomenon in which a community of viewers attempts to play games like Pokémon and Dark Souls together, Rise of the Tomb Raider allows viewers watching an Expeditions stream to vote on conditions that will change the streamer's game. If the streamer has enabled the feature and is broadcasting via the Xbox One Twitch app, every six minutes viewers will be asked to vote on one of two cards to apply to the player's game. That card will then be active for the next five minutes, or until the player dies or restarts.
As well as determining Lara Croft's outfits and equipment, Expeditions cards can make the game harder (by restricting health regeneration or ammo, say), easier ("enemies that land a melee attack have a chance of bursting into flame"), or sillier (big head mode, your bow fires chickens instead of arrows). The cards Twitch players can vote on will be drawn from these three categories and from a selection of 64 cards curated by the developer; the player doesn't have to own the cards in question.
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