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Tomb Raider 3: The Adventures
of Lara Croft
May 27, 2002 Price $1 (fold out cardboard case) You have got to be kidding me. I paid a lot for Tomb Raider III. Even though I received it for free in a shipping error from an online company--believe me, I paid. The five minutes that I kept it on my hard disk (fortunately it is an install of only a few megabytes of executables and icons) had me in complete agony. How the Tomb Raider series became a cultural phenomenon that has made horny father's able to relate to their sons by having some small thing in common is beyond me. Upon installing Tomb Raider III, I was under the impression that I had the latest and most advanced game in the series but evidently the fourth and fifth games were given alternate titles because the prior concluded with the death of Lara Croft (Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation) and the latter retold her teenage years (Tomb Raider: Chronicles).
Lest anyone think that all of these games are interchangeable: Tomb Raider III features the same horrid level graphics and texturing as the first two games, the same sprawling locations and use of vehicles as the last two games, and has the unique feature among the series of allowing players to select from a list which "mission" they first wish to subject themselves to . Tomb Raider III could be called "Tomb Raider: For Experts." Most players will find themselves dead and impaled upon improbably large spikes within the first five seconds of starting the game. There is zero learning curve (other than the ability to visit Croft's mansion from the main menu, where players can jump and roll around at their leisure) as players are dropped straight into a massive jungle filled with instant death and much boredom, wondering which switches might open which doors that they probably could not get to even if they knew. Years ago, I downloaded the demo for this game and managed to complete this same level. I cannot imagine possessing that amount of patience and understanding today and wonder why I did not apply that reserve back then to something more meaningful than this game.
To my defense, and those who thought this game worthy of positive reviews at the time, the genre (3rd person action-adventure) was a novelty for computer gamers. Since then, it has been done much better in innumerable games on both console and PC alike (though on the latter the genre seems to be dominated by medievally themed games). There is certainly no reason to play this one. The graphics are bad and even the desire to run them at high resolution must be curbed because doing so makes the fixed low resolution textures (always busy and repetitive) seem even more garish--if such a thing is even possible. The protagonist has rough joints and penciled on facial features that have not aged well. Players with game pads lacking analog directional pads or sticks (meaning that they can be pressed to exhibit varying degrees of movement, e.g. right vs. hard-right) will often find themselves spinning in place rather than running in the desired location, making the keyboard a better control device. At any rate, it lacks the fluid motion and environment awareness that mouse-look/keyboard combo games possess (such as Heretic 2, Severence, or Oni) as well as the visceral appeal that other game pad only games are able to muster, such as Spiderman: The Movie.
Tomb Raider III is a bad game. It is such a bad game that it makes people believe that the first Tomb Raider was in fact a good game. It very well might have been; but this game is as poor an excuse for rose-colored glasses as it is a poor an excuse for just about everything else. I feel dirty just owning it--and even getting it for free seems not enough to let me off the hook as it came with a second CD containing the demo for DaiKatana. I should probably be sentenced to community service just for having both of them within reach. Indeed, I was hesitant to even include a review here. Lara Croft
is too easy a target and there is no shortage of reviewers (even and
especially those who are by and large fans of the series) willing
to take pot-shots at the anatomy of the character as if cracking gratuitous
jokes about the absurdity of her body structure is akin to arguing
against the inclusion of it. Obviously, by its continued popularity
in the face of such "disapproving" commentary, it is not. by Richard Leader |
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