It's Tomb Raider one remade using the 10 year advance in hardware and engine technology. Is it any good? Will this game stand up to the test of time and can they make a better game with ten years practice?
Most people who play this will have some knowledge of the original or will have played other Tomb Raider games. Therefore they may have played the original and already know the story and levels presented here. Will a remake do a genre justice that tends to have little re-playabilty, once you have worked out the puzzles, it's never the same again replaying a Tomb Raider game. The magic is lost, and it becomes an exercise in memory and repetition. The fun is in scratching you head working out what to do and where to jump to.
Lara Croft is approached by a man called Larson on the behalf of a woman named Natla, who happens to own Natla industries, a very large multinational. Lara is asked to look for the scion of Atlantis, at first Lara is skeptical as there are no leads to it's location. Natla provides her with one and she cannot resist going after the fabled artifact. Lara finds herself deep in Qualopec's tomb searching for the scion. After much work she finds it only to have Larson who has followed her try and kill her to claim the scion from her. Lara escapes leaving Larson unconscious and goes back to Natla for answers. Finding Natla missing from her offices she goes after the second of three parts of the scion, which Natla has leads on. The story progresses to some dangerous reveals about the nature of Atlantis and Natla, who isn't what she seems. Leading to Lara desperately fighting to save the world from subjugation from a horde of genetically engineered monsters controlled by an evil godlike power.
The story is told through cut scenes at the beginning and end of each level, there is little dialogue and interaction in the actual levels, Tomb raider for the most part is a solitary game, Lara spends many a lonely hour with only the tombs and some wild animals for company.
There has been an attempt to inject some emotion into the story, which is mostly the same as the first game except for a little streamlining. Lara's guilt at taking a life and her subsequent doubts and temptations about her descent into darkness are new to the story. Looking at the blood on her hands you almost feel sorry for what Lara has been forced to become in her quest. At first a desire to complete her fathers work, and ends up with her becoming a monster to fight another much more dangerous creature.
How would I define a Tomb raider game? Well you have large enclosed rooms with platforms, somewhere in the room is an objective and you have to manipulate objects and work out a path to reach the objective before moving on to the next.
Lara has a few abilities, she can shoot at things using a variety of weapons, shotgun, pistols, machine gun. She can also use a grappling hook to swing from, wall run and pull objects with. She can also climb on vertical columns, swim underwater, move crates and balls around, and finally perch on top of thin columns.
The environment is the puzzle for the most part, it is also hostile, falling too far, spikes from walls and floor, collapsing rope bridges, moving platforms and poles, huge indiana jones style rolling balls, flaming platforms and steam jets. crushing walls and ceilings, huge scythe like whirling blades. collapsing platforms.
Some platforms, poles and grapple hooks, lower or recede into the wall when you reach them or run out of time making timing important. If you take too long you fall to your death or have to reset and try again.
Puzzles take the form of finding keys, missing cogs from machinery to repair a dam, shooting certain jewels in fresco's to open doors, moving water levels up and down to reach certain areas. On several occasions you are asked to insert three or four artifacts into an object to open access to the next area. There are a few places where there are little mini-game puzzles, involving rotating scarabs, turning pillars so that symbols match. These have a logic, or a handy guide located on the hieroglyphs nearby. Though there was one of them that I half got the idea of and managed to do only by trial and error.
In one room there is a good puzzle where you have to bring down pillars so that light reflections make a pyramid shape that shines on a lock and opens the door. For variety at one point you have control of a crane which you must use to make jumps possible and also to smash down a piece of the scenery to progress. Another neat puzzle is one where a dopple ganger of Lara mirrors your actions in a symmetrical room. the problem is if you flip the switch to open the door she also flips the one that closes it. You have to use the environment to your advantage to take her out of the equation.
The puzzling in the game is balanced and logical for the most part, however maddeningly at time the developers use some dirty tricks. There are a few well hidden switches that really should be more obvious. I can see the developers quandary when it comes to making certain puzzles, some explanation should be given when the player is really struggling, a hint system that could be turned on or off even.
There is one particular puzzle that I am thinking about. You have a handhold and a path that is clearly visible as the right way to go, but you can't jump up to it as it's only a finger stretch out of Lara's reach. I spent ages trying to work out what to do. I eventually caved in an watched a you tube video walkthrough, where I learned that you have to swing on the grapple hook that swings you to that area twice or thrice increasing momentum which makes the jump achievable. There are other sections like this, in one area you cant seem to get into a room, it's easy you shoot out the glass window and you can easily get in, the only thing is there is no reason for you to suspect you can shoot out the glass, it's near the end of the game and the first time that glass has been seen, as there is a shortage of glass windows in most of the Tombs. It is just a new concept, and as such hard to make the logic leap to. The game needs a system, once a player has been wandering around aimlessly in an area for say half an hour that the game just displays a hint of what to do. Surely play testers give this sort of advice to the developers and they can add this to the areas where it's most needed.
Solutions just aren't always as obvious as they should be, which is a problem with Tomb Raider as a game in general. You are presented with large rooms, with lots of interactive scenery, and most of the time the objective is unclear. To be fair the game does sometimes shows you a hint by showing you a view of where to go, but not always. You are simply presented with the ability to explore the area trying everything you can think of until you realize the objective and then work out how to get to it and achieve it. There were a few times during my playthrough of the game that I felt disenheartened by completing a huge area, moving on to the next and finding yet another huge challenege. I didn't feel this way with Tomb Raider Legend.
It seems to be a problem with my familiarity with the game. Having played and really enjoyed the original on Playstation one and PC, completing it on both. I was familiar with the story and my memory was jogged by most of the levels, which are certainly not exactly the same as the first game, but the settings are. At times I found myself wishing the game was a bit shorter. That might sound silly, by the time I finsished this game the savegame clock said that I had spent very nearly twenty hours with Lara. That is almost the same as My first playthrough of Mass Effect. It felt like twenty hours though, playing Mass effect I was ready for another twenty. Gta IV I spent forty hours on and lost track of time. I am not sure why I felt like this, maybe I shouldn't complain about a game being good value for money and a challenge. I just got weary with this one, maybe it was a case of deja vu that caused this, that is what I am going to pin it down to. If you haven't played the original take it as a glowing recommendation, that this game will take you nearly twenty hours to complete and is excellent value for money. Especially if you take the option of buying this as downloadable content for Tomb Raider Legend, which makes it much cheaper.
The enemies are there to add some variety and a use for your guns apart from the boss fights. They include bats, bears, wolves, raptors, rats, gorillas, crocodiles, cougars, mummy cat humans things and big mummified birds that shoot fire. The objects you have to find are keys to doors in all but name, though some are interesting, at one point you have to find lead bars and turn them into gold using a statue of Midas whose hand had the ability to turn anything to solid gold, including Lara if she is silly enough to land on it.
A big questions that has always baffled me is why are these previously unexplored for thousands of year old tombs littered with guns, ammo and health. Surely it's time to let go of the old health bar and have Lara's health rebuild over time as long as no further damage is incurred. Also her pistol weapons have infinite ammo which is unrealistic, so why not have the other guns the same. I am aware that I want to swap one unrealistic feature for another here, but everyone I have ever spoken to about Tomb raider has mentioned the question of who leaves the ammo lying about, if there was a skeleton or decomposing corpse of a failed adventurer lying beside the ammo that would also be a good way of explaining the issue.
Thrown in for added value are quicktime events in the cut scenes. Something I never really like, especially when they get as complicated as guitar Hero on expert to complete, Spiderman III i am looking at you here.
There are also collectibles scattered in areas off the beaten path, which unlock concept art, outfits for Lara and also achievements.
At it's heart Tomb raider is a platform game, and it does it well, jumping around as Lara is a great experience, she is agile and strong, with her gymnastics. For anyone who loves the 3D platform genre, it's a must play. Be aware though, that there are some times when you scream at Lara and feel nothing but glee as she plummets to her doom and breaks every bone in her body in a sickeningly convincing thud. Her controls are excellent, just sometimes a little finicky as to which direction she will jump when swinging or hanging from things. The camera can be a pain in smaller area, especially when fighting monsters, one area near the end has targets you shoot which start time clock mechanisms, each time you shoot one for the first time two monsters are spawned, trying to get the lock on to choose the monsters and not the targets can be very hard when you are on a small ledge avoiding fire bolts.
The a.i. is very simple, the monsters basically run at you and attack, the shooting monsters shoot if you are at a certain distance otherwise they attack physically if you are close enough. At one point I saw two wolves running on the spot facing a wall, and shot them down, while they continued in the same locked animation. To be fair a.i. isn't a problem, this is a puzzle for your intelligence, not artificial.
There are four boss fights, all of them challenging, the first two especially. Dinosaurs, mythical beasts, all with good animation and a different strategy for beating them. The boss fights however are good examples of the lack on intuitiveness that the game displays. The first two bosses both require certain actions that aren't made very clear, both require a lot of practice to get past on the hard difficulty setting. Expect to look up a FAQ for these bosses, which I feel is a failing, as you should be given enough of a clue to get through without needing a guide.
The bosses all require use of the enraging system. This means that as you shoot a creature it becomes enraged, as shown by a bar that goes up when you are locked onto it. Once the bar is full a sparkle comes from the creatures head and it will charge you, at one point in it's charge a button press shows on the screen, hit it right and the game goes into bullet time and two targets converge on the creatures head. Hit the fire button at the correct time and the monster will be killed outright or suffer massive damage. When two or more baddies are attacking this can be confusing a glitchy.
Level design has always been a triumph of Tomb Raider. Each area is a lovingly crafted puzzle box designed to look like an ancient tomb, Roman, greek, egyptian, peruvian, and the mythological Atlantean architecture are well designed. Mostly workmanlike, but occasionally breathtakingly beautiful. There are fourteen huge levels to work your way through.
Graphics aren't actually bad, though they don't push any technical envelopes at all. workmanlike and dependable, frame rate can vary when the amount of details changes when panning the camera, but it's never a noticeable slowdown problem when playing properly. The character models when seen in the in game engine cut scenes show their lack of polygons, Natla especially.
Sound is there, yes, some dramatic music when beasties leap out at you, some tinkly relaxing music at other times, which is needed as you scream and throw the controller when Lara misses a ledge you were sure you were going to be able to reach.
Checkpoints are employed well. There is an ability to save, but it only saves at the last checkpoint, not at any point in the game.
There were no places where checkpoints were too widely spaced. Someone has made a study of seeing where in the game you would get killed and has placed a checkpoint before each one, this must be applauded as there are a whole lot of frustrating jumps, and knowing that you will be placed only a few paces back after trying something stupid that might or might not pay off encourages you to experiment.
The front end is satisfactory, some clear, plainly written menus and some nice extras including artwork etc. All unlocked during in game exploits.
There were a few glitches that I noticed, at one point the game froze and when i switched off and rebooted the save game insisted I was about an hour further back that I was, the only option was to repeat about an hours work. Which probably took half the time when you know what you are doing.
There was one area where a box that was moveable sank into the floor leaving only the top of it showing, I could still drag it around the room, sunk deep into the concrete floor.
There were a few jumps which seemed to only work when the game was feeling in an especially good mood, one in particular which I did about ten times in an area i couldn't work out, and would only let Lara catch the ledge on one out of ten tries. maybe I was going the wrong way, but I knew it worked, and was the only way I could see back up out of the pit. There are also a few areas where Lara sunk into the floor to her knees.
I received 185 achievement points for completing the game on hard. The achievements I didn't get are for completing the levels and finding all artifacts, and without dying, also under a certain time. To get them all would require several passes through the game, as some of the artifacts are very well hidden and death is only a mistimed jump away. Rock hard achievements then, in a game I was wishing over after about halfway, looks like I will have to settle for my 185 points.
There is no multiplayer, and it's not needed. Co-op might be an idea for these types of game. Might be fun to have a friend work out the puzzles with you.
Scoring
Graphics 7
Gameplay 7
Story 8
Level Design 8
A.i. 5
Total Score 7.0
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