Raiding the tomb of the Saturn I discovered this
Written: Sep 22 '04
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Graphics for the time,animations, Lara's abilities
Cons: the controls and camera are disgraceful
The Bottom Line: If you like adventure games, and aren't daunted by poor camera and awkward controls, Tomb Raider is a decent advenure if its at a low price
|
|
|
| flash-hammer's Full Review: Tomb Raider for Saturn |
It's quite funny how things work in the gaming industry isn't it? Eidos and Core Design's Tomb Raider was one of the reasons Sony's PlayStation console was such a huge hit, and the game became synonymous with the system, it's sequels heralded by shops opening at midnight and such to let rabid fanboys get their hands on the latest chance to control Lara Croft. So what's funny? Lara actually made her debut for Sega's Saturn console. Granted the PlayStation and PC releases weren't far behind, but the Saturn can claim to be (in)famous for the beggining of Lara Croft's career.
The series is now much maligned by videogame fans the world over, but at the time, the original game was actually pretty advanced in comparison to what else was around, and while many deny it, it is a fact that a lot of gamers enjoyed the original Tomb Raider game, at least to a certain degree.
If you don't know, Tomb Raider is a 3D adventure game viewed from a third person behind the character perspective, where the idea is to navigate adventure-Queen Lara through a variety of Indiana Jones style adventures in caverns and lost world jungles, solving puzzles and disposing of any dangerous enemies she encounters. While this may not sound like much, at the time, the game was pretty revolutionary. While I may be wrong, I was pretty young, I don't remember any games that pre-date it sporting such a truly 3D experience. The caverns were vast, in true 3D, and sported no invisible walls.
The game's formula is solid enough, however it has to be said that the 'find key,open door' rinse and repeat process does get old very quickly, and the game itself suffers from a bad case of repetitiveness.
But the game does have some undeniably cool gameplay moments within. Lara's big selling point was how athletic she was, flips, rolls and running leaps to catch ledges look spectacular, and you cannot deny a feeling of 'cool' when you make a huge jump, just catching the ledge while a group of enemies swarm around below, unable to catch you.
It also contained a good few surprises that I was impressed by. Anyone who claims they weren't in awe the first time the Tyranosaurus Rex attacked them are either lying or just incredibly cynical.
The story of the game was something along these lines, the daughter of an English aristocrat, Lara Croft was ensured a life of luxury and wealth until a plane she was on crashed in the Himalayas, leaving her the only survivor, she had to learn to fend for herself, something which gave her an adrenaline rush like nothing else. Now disowned by the family for her wild ways, Croft makes a living as a freelance adventurer and archaelogist. When she is approached by a mysterious client about locating the 'Scion' artifact, she has no idea of the world of danger and adventure she is about to be thrown into.
Graphically, the game is incredibly mixed. The stages look awesome, and the character animation is spectacular for the game's time, but the character models themselves are pretty disapointing. It's hard to believe that anyone ever found Lara arousing, given that she looks like an incredibly bad action figure, with triangular breasts. The smaller wolves and such look like a blur, although credit should go to Eidos and Core for how good the dinosaurs look. We ain't talking Jurassic Park here, but they are definitely pleasing enough.
Sadly, the camera is tragic. On occasion, you will have to perform a death-defying jump, only the camera won't let you see the jump. Sure there is a button to look, but the minute you let go the camera resets, meaning you have to try and wing the jump, which if you are pretty far on into a level can be disasterous if it goes pear-shaped.
The sound in the game is pretty decent. The sounds the enemies make are fairly cool, and the gunfire realistic enough. Only Lara's in game voice really sounds silly as far as effects go.
The music in the game is sparse, only triggered by certain things Lara does, but what little of it there is is actually pretty nice and atmospheric for each stage.
Controls in the game look like this:
A:Jump
B:Fire Weapons/Action
C:Draw/Holster Weapon
X:Step Left
Y:Camera
Z:Step Right
L:Slow Walk
R:Roll
Here is where the game falls apart, the controls are absolutely disgracefull. While I don't have any complaints about the layout, the responsiveness of them, especially the jump and general D-Pad steering of Lara is despicabley bad. Jump has to be pressed a good few seconds in advance, meaning timing jumps is often luck, especially seeing as the game occasionally decides to just not react when you press the button. Couple that with the fact it's horrific to try and steer her into a jumping position due to the fact she moves like she has an iron rod rammed up her rectum and you have several hours of infuriation distilled onto a Sega Saturn CD-Rom.
On the whole, Tomb Raider really hasn't aged very well at all, and you have to wonder if it was ever the great game it was made out to be. While you can see that there are some good ideas in it, how many actions Lara has at her disposal and the fairly cool story of the game are both good points, and while age has taken it's toll, for the mid 90s and early 3D, the graphics really are quite good. But exactly how people played the game with such poor camera angles and controls, not to mention how repetitive it is, I doubt I will ever understand.
While I can't really say I regretted playing through Tomb Raider, I actually really did enjoy it in parts, it was marred by so many problems that I doubt I ever will again, and it's quite sad that a potentially good game was brought down to being an incredibly average one by some faults that with a bit more work could easily have been resolved. Tomb Raider was never going to be a full marks game from me, but I would have been willing to forgive the repetitiveness and graphics had the controls and camera not been so terrible.
On the whole, I think Im being fair dishing the game 3 stars and a recommended, possibly a bit too kind. But I did enjoy it enough to warrant the recommended, and it did have enough going for it, such as the graphics, general game mechanics and the 'wow' factor it did in limited quantities possess, but it wasn't ever going to hit over average, the controls and camera you can thank for that.
If you enjoy adventure games and see this cheap, it's probably worth a look and one play through. If you can get over the camera and controls, there is definitely a decent adventure to be found within the game.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
flash-hammer
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Reviews written: 728
Trusted by: 106 members
About Me:
NICE!
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.