The then-revolutionary 3D movement is now extremely stiff, the camera is extremely awkward (Mario 64, ALSO released this year, perfected this instantly, but that’s Nintendo for you…) and generally positioning Lara in the spot where you want her and facing the direction you need is a greater challenge than any boss or puzzle featured. There are fully voiced cutscenes, which given, once again, that it was released in the same year as the original Resident Evil, are not too bad… Not good, but not original Resi bad. There are a lot of dangerous wildlife, but you also get the odd human to shoot at, or … T-Rex to battle, and some of the puzzles were quite clever, some of them going on to be used by 1,000 other similar games going forward. Overall it was a really impressive set up at the time. Thankfully once you switch to weapon holding mode you automatically aim on the nearest enemy, and if there are two enemies and you have two guns you aim at two separately, as mentioned already. You can walk, run, jump, roll, climb on or across ledges, dive and swim in water, push and pull blocks and levers, pick up objects and fire not just one gun, but two at the same time! A lot of this was unheard of in a fully 3D environment, especially one with such a realistic setting and character models. Unlike Resident Evil, released a few months before this, Tomb Raider is fully 3D, with no fixed camera and no pre-rendered backgrounds. That’s not necessarily a complaint, or at least wasn’t in 1996, but I’ll get to that in a bit. The gameplay in Tomb Raider is, like, 85% platforming, exploring and puzzle solving, and 15% action / shooting things. I meant to catch her with one gun pointing at each big cat / lion (?), but… oh well. All this, and Croft herself was the first female lead protagonist to really take off, Samus Aran of Metroid never having hit it that big, despite the original Metroid and certainly Super Metroid being classics (not to mention she was hidden under a helmet for all her boxart and default gameplay sections). It may be… rough to look back on, but it did give a template for many action / adventure games to use going forward (and boy did they ever!). It may not seem like it to the younger of you, who are only familiar with poorly received sequels or more gritty reboots, but in 96 / 97 you couldn’t move for Lara Croft references, sponsorship and even playboy shoots, infamously. The cultural impact of Tomb Raider can’t be skipped over. It was remastered and released 10 years later as “Tomb Raider: Anniversary”. Well, rare Western developed game that was any good enough to get released in Japan, anyway… It was later ported to Mac, the iOS and Android devices, as well as the… *ahem*, N-Gage. Japan got the game on the Saturn on the 24 th of January 1997 and he PS1 version on the 14 th February that same year, showing it to be a rare Western developed game for the time period. It was of course soon released on the PS1, Saturn and the PC in North America on November 14 th 1996, with Europe getting the PS1 and PC versions on November 22 nd that year. Tomb Raider was released first in Europe for the Sega Saturn on October 25 th 1996, oddly. Still, along with giving you a look at the game that inspired the film, how does Tomb Raider play in 2020? Well… I know all about the series because, let’s face it, it was the first 3D series to actually become “Iconic”, with Lara Croft herself becoming a gaming icon in no time flat. I played the original quite a bit around various friends’ houses, and I THINK I played the second one, also around a friend’s house, but that’s it really.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |