Lara’s back in a nostalgic and familiar adventure
Published by on June 6th, 2007
It has apparently been over ten years since Lara Croft first grunted, shimmied, and swan-dived her way though her first adventure on the PlayStation 1. Even now I can remember some of the classic levels from that game; like classic scenes from a favourite movie where you know every cut, every nuance of the story. But now, I get to play them all over again, only better!
The original game, produced by Core Design was something of a surprise. I had a design client in the gaming industry at that time and inside talk was that as previous Core games had been flops, they must have come across Tomb Raider after the real game creators left their laptop on a train! But it certainly was a genre defining title, spawning multiple attempts to trump it none of which ever really made their mark. Tomb Raider had the perfect combination of elements and most importantly a very well rounded (no pun intended) leading character: Lara Croft.
Playing the latest title, Tomb Raider Anniversary, is a revisiting of the very first game, brought beautifully up to date on the PS2. What they have done almost perfectly here is folded in just the right mix of the most important plot and location elements from the original, with enough unique tricks, traps, puzzles, and enemies, to keep us old fogies nicely challenged.
I’m sure anyone who was entranced by the original will remember classic levels such as The Lost Valley (come on, admit it, you too dropped your controller the first time that T-Rex turned up! - the bugger’s much harder to kill this time round), St. Frances’ Folly, The Colloseum, or Palace of Midas. I’ve just completed the second in that list and although it didn’t take me quite as long to figure out as the original did way back then, it was a challenge, with the same level of atmosphere and almost tangible sense of vertigo. I’m enthusing, I know, and I should know better at my age, but hey, I had one of the very first Tomb Raider fan sites, way back when all we had were 48Mhz processors, dithered gifs and 56k modems. Coincidentally I recently discovered an old archive disc containing those original Lara Croft Appreciation Society graphics and web pages - perhaps I should get them up online somewhere just for a laugh..? At least you can expect the pages to load quick!
