Tomb Raider

The Good
It's strange how things can be all over the place one moment, and forgotten the next. 'Wing Commander' is the next best example; after a series of increasingly elaborate games and the spin-off 'Privateer' series, there was a flop film and then nothing, nothing at all. The last Wing Commander game came out seven years ago, and it's hard now to remember that it was once a major force in the PC games world. Star Trek will go the same way, in a few years. The lone and level sands will stretch far away.

Tomb Raider is another case in point. The series was everywhere for a good five or six years, and the character of Lara Croft was a pop cultural icon to rival Pac-Man. The Tomb Raider games became such a phenomenon that magazines and newspapers took to writing about the phenomenon itself rather than the game. The series merited a film that was a financial success, and a sequel which was not. The most recent game came out only two years ago, but the Tomb Raider series seems to be dead and gone. Only a few dozen months ago, Lara Croft was the wet dream of the kind of people who write for 'Wired' magazine, and caused the nocturnal emission of several pints of buzz words and grandiose musings on the nature of celebrity in the internet age and so forth. The character and physique of Lara Croft had the effect of reinforcing the media's stereotypical portrayal of computer gamesplayers as hormonal male teenagers with little experience of real-life breasts, or indeed women in general. (Thankfully, the few games which directly imitated the character flopped dismally, perhaps because hormonal male teenagers are more comfortable with images of black-clad Ninja men holding guns than they are with women.)

The impulse to write about the Tomb Raider phenomenon rather than the actual games is so seductive that I am doing so myself, right now, in what is supposed to be a review of Eidos' 1996 original. I could carry on indefinitely, if only a publisher would agree to finance me; and that is unlikely, because Tomb Raider is no longer the money-spinning cultural giant it once was. The lack of an impulse to scrutinise the games turned out to be a blessing, because the games were essentially the same, with slightly different graphics and different environments.

Tomb Raider is an unusually atmospheric platform game. Unlike the majority of its contemporaries, it takes a broadly realistic approach. The main character is a human being, rather than a dragon or super-deformed plumber; the environments are supposed to represent the real world, albeit that they are hyper-real in the style of the 'Indiana Jones' films, which the game resembles. The main character is, unusually for a computer game, a woman, and plenty has been written about Lara Croft elsewhere. As she is mostly viewed from a behind-and-above perspective, her breasts quickly fade from the memory, and although it is surprisingly erotic to drown or otherwise kill Lara - admit it, you enjoyed it too - her abundant physique quickly becomes mentally invisible.

The gameplay is, as covered effectively by Mr Ludicrous Gibs elsewhere, a mixture of jumping puzzles and "hunt the cog / switch" runabouts, complicated by the unusual control scheme. The player's control of Lara Croft is much less direct than in other platform games; she jumps of her own accord, and only on one of the invisible gridlines that make up the world. Performing a running jump from the edge of blocks is devilishly hard until you realise that you have to press the jump key a few steps in advance.

As such the platform action feels distanced, closer to being a puzzle game than a test of skill. It's not so much "can you make that jump" as "where will you jump next", and frequently you find yourself having to ascend shafts by leaping from edge to edge in a careful and unique sequence. The game's enjoyment comes from working out the puzzles and enjoying the spectacle, and at the time Tomb Raider was a very attractive game. Particularly if you had a PowerVR or 3DFX card, in which case the textures were smoothed off and the underwater bits had a gorgeous fog. The music is actually a set of ambient soundscapes which sound nice when listened to on CD, plus a theme which uses a lot of woodwinds, from what I remember.

The Bad
Apart from the abovementioned control issues, the game was generally of a consistent standard and only occasionally marred by excessive obtuseness (a level in which you have to fiddle with water pumps sticks badly in the memory). The biggest gripe is that of the series itself, which barely progressed from this game onwards; rather than using the character of Lara Croft in a new context, or fundamentally altering the gameplay, the people or organisation responsible for the product seemed content to pump out the same game with minor variations.

The Bottom Line
In its day it was a fun platform game, with frustrating controls, atmospheric locations, one or two impressive setpieces - an attack by a big dinosaur was particularly good - and an iconic female character who utterly failed to stem the tide of rape, prostitution, forced marriage, female child-murder, battery and casual, constant abuse which is still a woman's lot in 2005. I have no idea if it'll work on a modern-day Windows machine - the game emerged even before 3D cards were common. It also has a historical part to play in the story of Sony's PlayStation, because along with Wipeout it was one of the console's first wave of killer apps (if we count Gran Turismo and Final Fantasy VII as the "second wave"). As such it might be best to buy the PlayStation version and play it on your PC with an emulator, albeit that you'll miss out on the attractive 3D accelerated graphics.

Ah, I remember when Lara Croft was played by Rhona Mitra. She was almost the same age as me. And yet she never answered any of my letters, even though I sent loads. That made me very upset but I have calmed down now.

The Good
Tomb Raider's beauty lies in the level design - usually very simple, but giving off a very natural atmosphere, in places (most notably the Lost Valley) really giving the impression that people had lived and died there. Combat is more or less well executed, given the limited nature of the controls - Lara can jump and somersault around to effectively avoid oncoming foes. There are niggles (see below) but by and large it works well enough.

Graphically, the game has been left way behind by more modern games, but still exerts a particular charm. Somewhat humorously, the polygon count on Lara's most...ahem...prized assets is rather low, leaving the impression that Lara could spear her enemies by jumping on them with her breasts. Still, Lara as a whole still looks good, enemies (especially the T-Rex) look great and the backgrounds look natural. The textures don't look overly washed out, and the game looks great when using a DOS Glide wrapper like dgVoodoo.

The soundtrack is haunting and atmospheric, and the sound effects are crystal clear even by today's standards. The sparse nature of the sound, with the makers preferring to pass on using bombastic orchestral music, instead using subtle musical keys and effectively using sound effects to signal coming events, is in my opinion one of the most effective uses of sound ever in the history of gaming.

The Bad
The game looks and sounds great, and the level design is unbeaten, so it's fine if you're just watching the game. However, when you come to actually play it, you'll realise that the controls have been overtaken drastically in the years since. Lara is quite a pain to control at times, with her slow turns and sometimes lethargic reaction to the controls.

Tomb Raider is also a little repetitive at times, especially in the early levels, which rely heavily on a lot of searching for obscure items. While the level layouts are not hugely difficult to learn, a lot of the first four levels looks identical and it can be difficult to maintain your attention.

The Bottom Line
Tomb Raider 1, for its time, was an absolute marvel. The gameplay spawned a whole new genre of 3D platformers and still hasn't really been beaten today, even by its own sequels, especially more the most recent ones. Proof of this is Eidos' intention to release an "anniversary" edition of the game - updated graphics, sound and production values, but at heart the same old Lara.

The Good
For a moment, forget everything you know about Tomb Raider.. the endless uninspired sequels, the shameless attempts to establish Lara Croft as a digital sex symbol, the constant stream of shoddy merchandising tie-ins.... At the very beginning, Tomb Raider was a groundbreaking game with an atmospheric, exciting adventure that launched the 3rd person action genre.

One of the things Tomb Raider is best known for are its graphics. They may look hideously primitive today, but in 1996, the blocky level architecture, low-resolution textures, and angular-bodied heroine were state-of-the-art. The PC version looked good out of the box, with a smooth-yet-blurry standard VGA mode and a 16-bit high-res mode that was much more detailed but ran poorly on all but the best systems. But, with a 3D accelerator card and a downloadable patch, the visuals would take on a whole new dimension, with 16-bit color, filtered textures, high screen resolution, and a buttery-smooth framerate. It really put the Playstation version in its place, and was one of the first real justifications for spending $300 on a 3dFX card.

As a feminist take on Indiana Jones, Lara Croft spends the entire game doing just what its name implies: raiding tombs. Imagine the first 15 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark expanded to a 10-20 hour game, and you'll get the picture. Lara traipses around the world, visiting ancient underground caverns in the Andes, Egypt, and more. Thanks to a capable 3D engine, all of the locales are impressively expansive, and filled with signs of age, distress, and abandonment that give you a real sense of being the first human in centuries to explore them. Aided by an echoy, evocative ambient soundtrack and a lonely, strings-heavy theme song, this game effectively creates a feel of isolation. Save for a handful of human boss enemies, Lara is utterly alone, with only animals and genetically engineered monsters for company.

The gameplay itself is basically a 3D adaptation of the system seen in games like Prince of Persia and Flashback:The Quest for Identity, with plenty of running, jumping and dangling over large dropoffs. Lara has a wide variety of moves, and is quick and agile like an anime ninja. The frequent combat is enjoyable as well: Lara automatically locks on to her nearest enemy, and will keep firing at it until you release the trigger. This, combined with her ability to flip in 3 directions while firing and a somersault move that instantly makes her face the opposite direction, makes gunfights intuitive and free-flowing.

The Bad
The level architecture is based around cubes, and this impacts play control in a few negative ways. Most obviously, there is only one acceptable method of making a running leap from platform to platform. Lara needs to be roughly a "block" away from the edge, and the player must press the jump button shortly before she reaches it. Start too close or press the button too late, and she'll likely run right over the edge, often onto a bed of spikes or into a deadly freefall. This leads to many deaths, or at least a minute or two spent getting back into position for another try.

There are also numerous camera problems, which were typical in third-person 3D games during this time period. In particular, try backing Lara up against a wall, or trying to see around a corner in a narrow corridor. The game also uses a few too many key-fetch puzzles, which got a little tiresome by the end, even in 1996. Finally, the CGI cut scenes are truly terrible, with crappy video encoding and ugly character models. A particularly strong offender is the depiction of Lara herself. Along with sexiness, Lara Croft was supposed to bring "girl power" to video games, but it's hard to take her seriously when she has a wasp waist and her breasts look like they represent a full 60% of her body weight.

The Bottom Line
Sadly, the original Tomb Raider's dated graphics combined with the series' current-day status as the laughingstock of 32-bit franchises means that any gamer trying it for the first time today will likely be less than impressed. But trust me when I say that in 1996, it was something special.