Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation

The Good
I loved the further improvements to the graphics in the game. Very beautiful. For the first time you can see the clouds on the sky moving. The various sounds in the background are stunningly beautiful to listen to. Another great thing about this game are the little movies in the middle of a level. Not to mention the story. Fantastic! Wonderfully crafted. It is almost like it has happened in real life.

The Bad
There is not much to say here. The only thing that I can think of is that the animals and people that you have killed disappear after a few seconds. There wasn't many weapons here like it was in the previous games. The urban levels can be very confusing at times.

The Bottom Line
A little bit easier than Tomb Raider 3, but much better. Everybody should by this game.

The Good
By the late nineties, Eidos Interactive had just deployed Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, which had nearly put Tomb Raider to shame. Thus, Jeremy Heath-Smith and his brother Adrian at Core Design had already hired a new team to reassemble their outdated Room Editor and replicate the competition. As a result, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation was released just several months later and is most notable for its peculiar level design.

Core Design challenged the formula by using inspiration from Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. The Last Revelation is set exclusively in Egypt via traversal hubs implemented into their Room Editor. That means Croft must backtrack to levels already visited and solve the bigger puzzle. This poses new threats, as the A.I. is tweaked so that skeletons à la Army of Darkness and ninjas straight out of Raiders of the Lost Ark can mimic most of Croft’s moves. Core Design introduced a rope swinging mechanic, that you might remember from Pitfall on the Atari 2600. Players will find themselves at home with The Last Revelation by shooting down even more crocodiles, but this time at The Temple of Karnak near the Nile River. Later in the game, Croft visits Cairo during toxin-like overcast sky in perhaps the most menacing set of levels by artist Andy Sandham. Thankfully, Croft sports a R75 to speed through an Armageddon, but sadly without Sean Connery in the sidecar.

For The Last Revelation, Peter Connelly makes his mark on the series with grandiose Egyptian melodies and still alluding to McCree’s playbook. With The Last Revelation proposed as the series finale, Connelly’s main title theme is composed to be melancholic. Much of his score is heavily influenced by The Mummy (1999), which came out the same year as The Last Revelation. Overall, Connelly mimics a variety of exhilarating Egyptian instruments over McCree’s heavy use of choirs, and this is a nice change of pace for Core Design’s fourth Tomb Raider entry.

The Bad
For their fourth Tomb Raider game, Core Design retained the archaic grid system from previous Tomb Raider games to maneuver Croft. In The Last Revelation, players will continuously pull levers, leap over chasms, and move crates as before.

The Bottom Line
The Last Revelation elevates its predecessors by channelling Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Core Design had pushed their antiquated Room Editor to its limits in what was supposed to be their last game headlining Tomb Raider.