Go back to home
Tomb Raider III
More than a few insiders are privately saying so. Despite the extraordinary success of the franchise (more than 3 million units sold worldwide in 55 countries and six languages), Core Design's advances in game technology were fairly uninspiring from Tomb Raider to TRII. The industry's early looks at TRIII, released less than a year later and featuring no major upgrades to the engine, have been met in editorial offices with a somewhat underwhelmed attitude.
Having stormed through the first two games, I attacked Tomb Raider III with zeal. Having solved it, I can't defend Eidos against critics who knock the series for its reliance on old tricks and lack of evolution.
But it is a heck of a lot of fun. Lara Croft's latest adventure is set off by a meteor strike in the snowy wastes of Antarctica. Scientists recover puzzling artifacts from the impact, and it's a no-brainer that Britain's most sensational Slice Girl is going to dig around for it.
Starting off in the jungles of India, Lara shoots her way through tigers, hangs by her fingertips along precipices, and weaves her way through treacherous underwater caverns. She shows off a few new moves, most notably the crawl (there are some nerve-wrackingly claustrophobic stretches of play where she has to crawl into tight tunnels with only the aid of flarelight) and the monkey swing, which is a wonderfully realistic lateral climbing technique for shimmying along ledges by fingertip. Just don't look down-it's a long way.
After you solve the jungle labyrinth, TRIII branches out in any direction you choose; you can select the order of the locations from here on out. There are four more to come-gothic London, the lushly tropical South Pacific (home of the piranha-ouch), the ice caves of Antarctica (glad you brought that kayak, huh?), and into the desert to penetrate Nevada's Area 51.
The designers put a lot of work into the five environments. The physical challenge of negotiating them is the real appeal of the Tomb Raider series, and the level designers know it. So they throw everything at you. Every five minutes you will encounter a new impasse that seems like it's the end of the line. Then you find a way. It's a rewarding brand of gameplay that tests your mental agility as much as Lara's physical agility.
Of course, I blazed through the game in five days. That's because nowhere is there a stretch of gameplay any more demanding than what you've already conquered in Tomb Raiders past. A lot of the same stunts reappear: for example, the old "pull the lever and then dodge the booby-trap boulder" routine is brought out not once but twice. Climbing across gorges by hanging beneath rope bridges-yeah, we've done that before, too. Even the enemies are largely familiar, with the T. rex of the original making an appearance in the style of a Bond villain that refuses to die.
A few new weapons, like a grenade launcher and Desert Eagle pistol, spice up the combat element somewhat, but there's no denying that TRIII is by and large a retread of ideas and encounters-and even specific puzzles-that we've solved before.
