Tomb Raider

TOMB RAIDER
Core Design Ltd./EIDOS Interactive
Sony Playstation
Rating: Teen(Ages 13+)
Adventure/3D Platform

-- by Maria Muñoz

TOMB RAIDER, the newest first person game since Resident Evil, has the player take the role of Lara Croft, daughter of Lord Henshingly Croft, who was raised to be an aristocrat. After finishing school at the age of 21, Lara was assured great wealth, but on her way home from a skiing trip, her charter plane crashed in the heart of the Himalayas.

The only survivor, Lara learns to survive by herself against hostile conditions away from the safety of her home. Finally arriving home, she found the life of an aristocrat too limiting and restraining so Lara chose to travel on her own. Eight years passed and Lara had acquired vast knowledge of ancient civilizations across the globe. Her family disowned her, so she turned to writing to fund her trips.

Now it is time for you, the player, to take Lara on a journey into lost tombs, palaces, and mines. Not to fear, the player starts off with a double dose of guns to defend themselves with and a compass to help in direction. As the player progresses throughout the game, he can find more formidable weapons for larger foes such as an uzi or a shotgun.

With four equally intriguing areas to choose from, the player can send Lara into the frigid mountains of Peru to the Lost City of Atlantis. The stunning 3D graphics and beautiful musical score keep the player compelled to play on for hours and hours.

TOMB RAIDER is reminiscent of RESIDENT EVIL, one of the best sold PlayStation games in the market. If you liked RESIDENT EVIL, you will love this game. It has a fresh new twist to the Indiana Jones action genre and puts it into a game concept. The game also compares to SUPER MARIO 64 in a sense of camera direction and views. Granted, it isn't a 64 bit game, but it's great gameplay more than makes up for it.

Not only can the player walk Lara through ancient tombs of long dead kings and emperors, but they can also make her swim through the water-filled caverns and tunnels deep within it. The game handles the action of swimming really well by limiting the player to "about two minutes" of air once beyond that Lara starts to take damage and will finally expire without that always-needed oxygen. Suffice to say, a lot of the scenes in TOMB RAIDER are gruesome, but that's what makes it such an interesting and fun game to play.

Lara also has to solve puzzles to continue through parts of the tomb she may be in at the time, it could consist of throwing a lever or jumping a certain way.

Complaints with TOMB RAIDER include annoying camera angles in which the player cannot see where she is going. Also, the designers are obviously male as Lara wears close to nothing in the game and has to fight nasty raptors, wolves, and bears. Talk about no protection! Otherwise, TOMB RAIDER is an intuitive game set on taking advantage of the PlayStation's 3D power and it does it well!

Rating: ****