Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider is a new kind of 3D Shooter. The character you control is Lara Croft, wealthy aristocrat and part-time adventurer; in short, the female incarnation of Indianna Jones. You view the game from a third person, over the shoulder, perspective (3PP). You begin your quest for a lost artifact, and leads her into interesting intrigues. The exploration within each level is non-linear, but the levels themselves must be traveled through one at a time. The story progresses as you discover the secrets of first an Incan tomb in peru, then from there to Lati and Egyptian Tombs, and so on.

The focus of the game is puzzle solving, not fighting. The enemies that you meet are obstacles that make your quest harder. However, they would get real tough near the end of the game.

Tomb Raider is the first 3D action/adventure game featuring a modern woman as the main character. Lara Croft a great balance between a character that men will adore and women will relate to. She pulls off all of her aerobatic moves with style, finesse, and no small amount of attitude. She is incredibly athletic. She can bounce and jump in a variety of ways, both while firing her guns or with her hands free to grasp onto purchases while in the air. Lara poses in mid-air as if she was being filmed by John Woo. Tomb Raider’s camera is semi-intelligent. The intelligence doesn't go quite as far to pan, rotate, and sweep for a purely cinematic experience. Instead, it introduces quick cinematics and floats to each side of Lara for the best angle on the action.

Tomb Raider has fine graphics, and become very good and smooth when 3D acceleration is available. Once upon a time, Doom made everyone upgrade their 386 to a 486; Quake is responsible for upgrading to Pentiums; Tomb Raider is the one that make everybody rush out and get a 3D accelarator card.

Tomb Raider Gold is an add-on with two new episodes: The Unfinished Businese and The Shadow of the Cat.

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Eidos took the safer route for the sequel. There is hardly anything new in Tomb Raider II, just a new story with the same techniques. Of course, the main selling point is still the subtitle ...Starring Lara Croft

The most important improvement is in the quality of graphics. It is much finer now, and there is no point playing TRII without a 3D card. And after playing TRII, you would not tolerate the low resolution graphics of TR any more.

The most interesting addition to Lara is a flowing pony tail that flies when Lara runs or moves her head to look around. She also acquired some new skills at rock climbing. Otherwise it is the same game.

The Gold version is a mission pack called The Mask of Gold.

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Eidos did the same thing again. The game hasn’t really improved after two years. All the same stuff with a different background: switch China with India/London/... and here you are. The game is disappointing other than its only selling point: Lara Croft strikes again.

To be fair, there are slight improvements in graphics. And the monsters are smarter. The main fun comes from Lara's two new skills: crawling, dashing and monkey swing. Unfortunately, dashing simply means you have more opportunity to run and reload and reload until you are sick of it. It is the main weakness of TR3, and the reason why I didn’t even complete half of the game. The game is challenging in the sense that you have to practise run and run until you are fast enough, and the jump and jump until you land at the right spot, and then be prepared for the next challenge.

Tomb Raider III unfolds in a much more non-linear fashion than Lara's previous adventures. The levels are much larger with huge areas to explore. Lara will once again span the globe from the arctic pole to the islands of the South Pacific. But this time you will be able to choose your own destiny by selecting the order to play each of the 4 main levels. The levels are also more open, with multiple routes to the same end.

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Lara returns to her root in Egypt. And has kept the archaic rendering engine, stupid camera and maddening interface. It is the final test of the patience and tolerates of Lara Croft fans.

Egypt. Land of mythology, mystery, pharoahs... and the most complex tombs known to man. Tombs littered with mazes, puzzles and traps, designed to drive even the most persistent raiders to distraction... or to their deaths. So great is the glory of discovery that the fanatical explorer will risk life itself in order to discover and plunder their hearts...

The game will have better graphics and will use a new inventory system.

I haven’t yet played the game, but hopefully Eidos has learnt the lesson and do something less stupid than TR3.

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