Tomb Raider

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
You have to give it to the guys at Core, regardless of what happened AFTER this game got released, they managed to give us a fantastic action/adventure classic that followed in on the footsteps of Prince of Persia, but gave players chance to play in a fully 3d world. Amazing! From the first moments you ran around jumpin and performing acrobatic stunts while the camera followed you around tilting and panning as you moved you knew you were watching something special. And special it would be indeed! This game pretty much created 3D action-adventure as we know it, and that's no small feat indeed.

As mentioned above, the gameplay basics follow the lead of Prince's, with the addition of some more features to cope with the added 3rd dimension (such as the auto-aiming). You can roll, jump in all directions and control your jumps easily with pre-set jumping distances and a free-look camera mode (I never understood those that said it was hard judging jumps on Tomb Raider, heck they pretty much copied Prince's model to begin with!!). Graphically speaking the game is a beauty to behold, the engine (while prone to clipping problems) handles large massive areas with virtually no problem, as well as providing some nifty effects like when you are underwater. Granted, due to the technology they didn't have any colored lightning or stuff like that to play with, but the high-resolution mode is still fairly decent by today's standards. Another high point for the game was Lara's animations, which were truly a thing of beauty. Watching Lara perform sumersaults, swan dives, and even simple stuff like the handstand or the regular walk was a joy thanks to the fluid, life-like motions. I had literally seen no better character animation at the time and even today Lara still ranks high as one of the most life-like animated characters (heck, I even loved it when you fell down and broke all her limbs from the fall ;))

Add to that some stellar level design that gave us such wondruous experiences as the lost world level (that T-Rex, KICKED ASS!!) and you have in your hands the true heir to Prince's crown.

The Bad
Well, sound-wise the game was pretty weak. There wasn't any music save for some "ambience" sounds, and Lara's grunts and moans lost it's, uhm... "appeal" and turned annoying quite easily. The action itself in the game is good, but I really got tired of shooting wildlife creatures after the first few levels, luckily they throw some humans and those weird atlantean creatures your way later on, but until you get to them it's open season for wolf/bear/croc/etc.. hunting. Maybe it's me, but I never felt too heroic when taking out a a couple of bats with a shotgun.

Other than that, the only thing you can really pin against Tomb Raider is that for as many good things as it brought to the videogame world, equal amount of crap came with it. Namely the overdose of crate-puzzles, the over comercialization of game characters, etc, etc. But all these aren't faults of Tomb Raider's success, they are the faults of an industry that exploits it's own honest-to-good ideas with as much savagery as a pack of rabid hyenas.

The Bottom Line
Before the main concern for Core in terms of gameplay were the roundness of Lara's breast or her image as an "eXtReMe Girrrrrl", they gave us an honestly good game that managed to shatter all conceptions of what action/adventure should be. Tomb Raider didn't just introduce the 3d 3rd-person perspective viewpoint to the world, it also offered a magnificent gameplay experience that combined action, exploring, puzzle solving and acrobatic stunts. DO NOT be deceived by Lara's current state as a comercial cyber-whore, this first date with her was a roller coaster ride to remember.

The Good
When i first played this game back in 1997, it represented the "quantum leap" that next generation gaming promised (at the time) me. The 3D world it provided was begging to be explored.....2D had died with the 16bit era (for the time being)

Onto the review (!). TR basically involves the adventures of a young lady called Lara Croft, who is on a quest to find the Arc of Scion, an ancient artifact. The player travels through 4 different locales solving basic puzzles, fighting man and beast, engaging in platform based action, and exploring for items. Each world is broken into 3 or so sub levels. The locales are nicely varied, and the story is great, however the acting not so great :)

By far the strongest aspect of TR are the environments: They possess a great sense of mystery and wonder, and you cant wait to reveal the next cavernous area or underwater pool. Swimming down into a dark, deep pool is awesome! It should be mentioned that the sense of space is good despite the draw distance being quite small. The makers cleverly blacked out the far distance, which helps to increase the feel of "unfolding" a cave or cavern. It works very well. Overall, the sense of exploration is great. I have yet to find a game since which peaks my desire for finding out what is around the next corner, as what TR did. There is a real "abandoned" mood to a lot of the areas, which some people may find boring, but since the title IS "Tomb Raider", i myself believe tombs should be uninhabited. The use of music is limited to key areas of the game, and this minimalism works a treat, serving to enhance the eerie feel of the levels. Later TR titles got a little more mainstream with miltary zones, cities etc, which is the prime reason my interest decreased with these ,as they just felt like the series trying to be more "Action" based, rather than "Action Adventure"

One last note, which some will disagree on, is the use of fixed save positions. I LIKE this, because getting to the next one requires patience and discipline, and not being able to save every step makes it a bit harder overall. Maybe this is because i grew up in the era of 3 lives and no continues, but nothing beats conquering a hard play area after multiple attempts in ANY game.

Overall, a genre defining game which no serious game fan should not know about, nor appreciate for its revolutionary design and play mechanics

The Bad
The controls. By far the most annoying aspect to this game is the clunky control system. Lara moves nothing like the lithe young lady she is portrayed as. However, we must bear in mind that at the time, the sense of freedom was great, and my opinion in born out of being spoilt in the years since with control schemes of the current generation of games.

One other aspect is the difficulty of the puzzle sections of the game. They are not overly taxing, and this was probably done to appeal to a wider audience. However, some more hardcore puzzles probably should have been included in order to find extra items etc..

Overall I Believe the control system is the games only real flaw.

The Bottom Line
Atmospheric, challenging game, with minor control issues.