From 1997
Tomb Raider
(Eidos Interactive)
System: PC/PlayStation/Saturn
By Jeff Kitts
Gamers intrigued by the technological superiority of Super Mario 64, but who don’t care to maneuver a fat little plumber around a cute ‘n’ cuddly 3-D environment, may want to investigate Eidos Interactive’s Tomb Raider, currently available for the PC, PlayStation and Saturn. A brilliant Indiana Jones-style 3-D adventure game, Tomb Raider is mammoth in size and complicated enough to challenge even the most veteran gamer–yet provides enough action and animal killing to satisfy the bloodthirsty.
The central character in Tomb Raider is Lara Croft, a sexy British aristocrat with a taut, athletic body who prefers exploring ancient ruins and civilizations to hob-nobbing with England’s upper class. That’s where you come in. At the beginning of each stage, Lara is essentially trapped in a maze of stone hallways, staircases, rooms and underwater passageways, and it’s your job to help her find the exit. But this is no easy task: You must flip the right switches, solve puzzles, find the right keys and open locked doors, all while fending off the resident wild dogs, bats, bears, alligators and dinosaurs that roam the ruins in search of a warm female dinner (for this, Lara is armed with pistols, shotguns, magnums and uzis–and boy, can she shoot). Lara’s explorations will take her to Ancient Rome, Incan ruins, Egyptian Pyramids and the Lost City of Atlantis, among other decrepit civilizations.
Tomb Raider’s most impressive feature is clearly the animation of Ms. Croft. Whether she’s pulling herself up on a ledge, performing a mid-air somersault, pushing a giant concrete block across a room or diving below the water and going for a swim, Lara is as fluid and realistic as they come. But such complicated movements do pose a bit of a problem with regard to control, which is slightly imprecise; you’ll spend a lot of time bumping into walls, slipping off ledges and sending Lara to her death via poorly calculated chasm jumps before you fully get the hang of things.
Graphically, Tomb Raider is a first-rate effort, boasting beautifully detailed worlds made almost entirely out of gray and brown rock; the effect is realistic, not technicolor cheery. Complementing the cold stone look is a soundtrack that thrives on silence: make Lara run, you’ll hear only footsteps; make her shoot, you’ll hear only gunfire (and hopefully the final grunt of a fatally wounded creature). The minimal audio (broken only by the occasional musical sequence) greatly enhances the game’s sense of tension and suspense–trust me, when a bear lunges out from behind a rock in a dead-quiet room, you’ll jump.
Aside from the control, Tomb Raider’s only other significant shortcoming is the fact that once Lara dies, you’re forced to restart the level (unless you reached a rare save point, in which case you only have to go back to that marker). You could easily spend 30 minutes solving puzzles, finding keys and slaughtering animals when an accidental slip off a high ledge causes Lara to die, destroying all of your hard work in the process.
A few glitches aside, Tomb Raider is a superlative effort that offers tremendous long-term value and sophisticated gameplay–perfect for those who prefer a smart, sexy, gun-wielding heroine to a pudgy plumber who collects stars and talks to penguins.
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