The eighth generation of consoles was a good time for adventure protagonists Lara Croft and Nathan Drake, as they had superb outings in the respective franchises. Nathan’s Uncharted 4 turned out to be one of the best games to ever be released, and both these characters proved the genre has a lot of life.
Since they’re so similar, fans have wondered which protagonist would have a better chance at surviving if the danger level was maxed out. So, we’ve taken a look at the strengths of both characters and come up with our conclusion. In this list, “stronger” doesn’t mean who would win against the other; rather, it’s to determine which one of Lara and Nate is a better adventurer.
10 Luck & Improvisation: Nathan Drake
When it comes to Nate, luck is absolutely a part of his abilities as this is one of the reasons he’s survived. Lara too has seen her fair share of good fate by surviving impossible tumbledowns but none in the manner of Nate.
This is a guy who’s fallen down more gorges and valleys than one can count, and yet manages to grab just the right ledge or have a vital ally appear out of nowhere. He’s managed to snag away victories purely by luck, such as pushing the helicopter that took Navarro to the ocean and cutting a rope that led to Rafe Adler getting crushed by treasure.
9 Marksmanship: Lara Croft
We saw Nathan Drake wield a variety of weaponry over the course of his series, which included the likes of sniper rifles and RPGs, but for all his mastery with these weapons he still didn’t display pinpoint accuracy; at least not in a cutscene.
Lara Croft has been iconic in her handgun posing shots, and these aren’t just for display purposes as she’s a master at marksmanship. Even the inexperienced versions of Lara have shown the ability to use a gun she has no clue about and be incredible at handling it. Plus, she’s been shown having outright training in working with guns and bows, compared to Nate who learned it on the fly.
8 Strength: Nathan Drake
We can’t have a contest between who’s stronger without testing individual strengths, now can we? Here, Nate has the easy win as he’s been shown manhandling enemies at various points where his fighting skills might have failed him.
Other than that, Nate has used his significant strength to help him in unlocking puzzles as well, where he’s lugged around extremely heavy objects and held up huge doors for a long time. Lara’s never relied on her strength as she’s let her weaponry do the trick or figured out paths around obstacles.
7 Speed: Lara Croft
While Nate’s strategy in fighting against larger enemies has been to make use of the environment around him, Lara has been extremely effective in turning the tide in her favor with speed. Her quickness and agility have been off the charts on occasion, with even supernatural enemies unable to get a hold of her.
Not only does she sprint fast, Lara has been seen sneaking into small gaps and leaping across dangerous environments after creating momentum in her favor. Enemies have been defeated when they attempt to wrestle her down, as Lara’s too quick to counter.
6 Durability: Nathan Drake
At times Nate has felt like a one-man army, not because of his fighting skills, but because he just seems impossible to kill. Even in cutscenes, where things are canon, Nate hasn’t been kept down by any means. He’s been left to freeze to death, and still spruced right back up in no time. He was left in the desert with no water, and still killed dozens of men two days in.
Then there’s all the times Nate has fallen from impossible heights and only have a quip or two in response. He was shot point blank in the gut, and was still healthy enough to fight men armored to fight tanks. Lara’s got nothing on a guy like this.
5 Fighting Skills & Mean Streak: Lara Croft
Nathan was always a brawler by action, with there clearly being no skill training that he’d gone through before he started adventuring. This was most clear in his fights against Lazarevic and Nadine Ross where he got clobbered by opponents who had fighting skill.
Perhaps we could place Lara in the same ballpark as Nadine Ross too, seeing as she’s had significant fight training. Lara was brought up this way, and knowing various fighting styles was the deciding factor between life and death numerous times. However, even when going up against extremely strong enemies, Lara had that killer instinct that let her live. Unlike Nate, Lara’s willing to go the distance by any means necessary.
4 Intelligence: Nathan Drake
Most of Lara’s missions have seen her go solo or try to improvise as she goes along; she’s cunning that way, but she doesn’t have the tactical mind that Nathan does. He was always one step ahead of his opponents even when he got caught due to some plan already in motion.
While he claimed he didn’t think far ahead, Nathan clearly did do that since he was able to outsmart each one of his enemies in his respective games. Most of the time, it was the mess-up of his allies that gave away his position rather than Nate, who devised clever strategies to sneak past.
3 Survival Skills: Lara Croft
We saw both of these characters be stranded in scenarios where dying seemed like a 100% certainty, only for them to escape against the odds. While Nate might be ahead based on feats, he was bailed out in these moments most of the time rather than escaping on his own accord.
Meanwhile, Lara almost always survived by herself, relying on her instincts to know where to hide and where to seek shelter. She also had a vast knowledge of the wilderness, which came in very handy when she was dropped in the middle of nowhere.
2 Platforming: Nathan Drake
This was a pretty close point to contest between the characters, but ultimately we have to hand it to Nate for being in more situations where he was being shot at by dozens of enemies and still managed to complete incredible platforming sequences.
He had no limits to his stamina in this regard, as Nathan could cling onto just about every crack in any crevice who would be for however long he was required to. He solved puzzles solely because he had the ability to scale whatever height was before him, with these feats being even more impressive considering his allies were helpless in those situations.
1 Winner: Nathan Drake
Both these characters were exactly the same all things considered, but it was the luck factor that shifted it over to Nathan’s advantage. He has an incredible knack for being lucky, so much so that even the worst situation is bound to have something for him to escape.
Lara’s had her fair share of lucky escapes too, but they can’t compare toward Nathan, who also has the advantage of strength, tact, and an incredible durability that Lara doesn’t possess. If it were up to us to send one of these into an adventure with minimal chances of survival, then we’d go with Nathan Drake and our money would be on him to conjure an impossible getaway.