Tomb Raider – Retro Gamer

This evaluation initially appeared in Sega Energy challenge 86, December 1996

Has the most effective ever third-party recreation simply arrived for the Saturn? Properly you’ll simply must learn the evaluation, gained’t you.

Tomb Raider has at all times regarded a bit particular. After we previewed it (solely, I would add) again in Concern 78, we needed to double-check which photographs have been art work and which really got here from the sport. We’ve been following the sport’s progress ever since and now seven months later we lastly have our completed copy.

I have to admit to a level of pre- recreation cynicism. Can a recreation that appears and strikes in addition to Tomb Raider probably have the depth of gameplay to make it the traditional many are hailing it as? Bear in mind, the normally unflappable journos on sure PC mags are hailing Tomb Raider as the closest factor to Mario 64, that can seem on the PC. There’s been hype, there’s been merchandising, there’s been an all-expenses paid journey to Egypt however we’ve seen this type of factor earlier than and when the video games lastly arrived, they by no means lived as much as expectations.

Fortunately although, Tomb Raider is one in every of, if not the Recreation of the 12 months. It’s half shoot-’em-up, half platform journey, half role-playing recreation all seamlessly built-in into probably the most spectacular graphical packages ever seen on the Saturn. There are locations in Tomb Raider the place the graphics are so good, you simply wish to stand and stare at them and also you in all probability will.

The sport follows the adventures of Lara Croft an Indiana Jones sort in a worryingly- exaggerated feminine physique. She’s been employed by a worldwide Mega Corps to trace down an historic artifact known as the Scion. Nonetheless, as soon as her journey has began excessive within the South American Andes it quickly turns into clear that darker forces are at work. With the background story safely disbursed with, let’s transfer on…

The sport is split into 4 sections with 4 subsections in every. When you knew precisely what to do in every part (and will handle to do it), it might take over 100 hours to finish the sport – instantly allaying one in every of our main fears: that the sport could be too quick. The key thrust of the sport is exploration. Discover the areas open to you to search out switches (to open additional sections) or objects corresponding to keys. Loads of the areas that you just’ll enter are populated by enemies – normally animals fairly eager on biting, scratching or chomping you to dying. These have to be ruthlessly gunned down with quite a lot of weapons. One for the animal rights folks, there.

The sport makes use of a novel ‘floating digital camera’ method that follows Lara’s adventures from behind and above. It’s a mark of the brilliance of this technique that as you run from room to room, leap, crash by flooring and climb, you rarely discover the dynamic modifications the digital camera has to make to maintain all the pieces in view. On prime of this, within the conditions the place it’s good to look very rigorously the place you’re going to go, the ‘head view’ is available in extraordinarily helpful. By holding down the Y button and manipulation the joypad, you possibly can direct the digital camera in a 180° arc. The truth is, Tomb Raider has such an ideal recreation engine that taking part in it feels remarkably pure and watching it’s virtually cinematic.

Recreation issue is about excessive however the curve is effectively judged level-to-level. Within the preliminary Andes adventures enemies are light-weight however, extra importantly, the ability wanted to progress is decrease. Though lots of the gameplay is exploration and puzzle-solving, success can also be very a lot dependent upon a great mastery of the controls. Lara can pull off a formidable array of forwards, sideways, backwards jumps and roles, and to get her to do probably the most difficult of them, you’ll have to synchronise a four-button/joypad mixture. That may not sound too tough to you Avenue Kombat, Mortal Fighter-types however in lots of circumstances, for those who mis-time your leap, it’s recreation over. The sport does embody a ‘Gymnasium’ characteristic the place Lara can observe her harder strikes. You’ll in all probability ignore this initially however after just a few disastrous performances, you’ll in all probability change your thoughts.

The key criticism with Tomb Raider is the sport save method it employs. Recreation positions can solely be saved when ranges are accomplished or once you come throughout one of many blue floating crystals. Now, all could be nice if these cropped up at common intervals however they don’t – two per bloody big stage is all you possibly can count on to see. On prime of that, the cheeky buggers disappear when you’ve used them making the well-worn tactic of ‘do a troublesome bit, save, do one other troublesome bit, save once more’ not possible. After all, making video games tough makes them last more however it additionally has the draw back of constructing them EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING IN PLACES.

Tomb Raider stands alongside Exhumed as the most effective 3D journey/shooter for the Saturn. Core have developed the sport particularly for Sega’s machine and the Saturn model is simply bettered by the Accelerated PC version (which requires a hefty Pentium and an costly graphics card to run). No dodgy conversions, no shallow gameplay, no low-cost Doom rip-offs – purchase Tomb Raider and also you’ll play it until your eyes go humorous. You actually should have this recreation.

GRAPHICS: 10
Good. Complete freedom in a fantastic 3D world. Unsurpassed.

SOUND: 9
Intelligent use of music to counsel approaching hazard. All the things else excellent.

ORIGINALITY: 9
The primary Saturn recreation to take trad platform components and bung them in 3D.

LIFESPAN: 9
Tough sufficient to final for ages with a great deal of secret stuff to bump up the replay worth.

FINAL VERDICT: 93%
Fairly probably the sport of the yr. Unique, lovely, difficult – the form of recreation the Saturn was made for.

James Ashton