October 11, 2008

Tomb Raider III had made a great comeback for long-time fans of the game and still manages to be the best retro in the series, reminds Sohail Saleem

No column or page dedicated to retro games would be complete without the mention of this character or the games that the character stars in.

It won thousands of fans and became synonymous with Playstation 1 and assumed almost mascot-like status for Sony’s gaming machine, much like Sonic and Mario had done before on consoles by Sega and Nintendo respectively.

The character is none other than the famous Lara Croft; heroine of the super popular Tomb Raider series and today the game in the limelight is Tomb Raider III, the third adventure of Lara Croft on PSOne and PC in the year 1998.

Lara Croft was famous because she was the first female character who could put Indiana Jones to shame with all her fancy moves and tomb raiding/exploring skills. The game’s developers Core Design Ltd have not only made her the lead character, but also portrayed her as a strong, independent and brave character, something other games had failed to come up in the past. However, past games have had female characters stuck in the ‘damsel in distress’ scenario where a male protagonist, like Mario Bros, would eventually save the day. But by breaking the monotony, Lara Croft became an epitome of freedom and a heroine that females could look up to, even though she was made of polygons.

I chose Tomb Raider III because it was a kind of return to its roots for the series since Tomb Raider II ended up being too action-oriented and also lost the puzzle/exploring element along the way. Thus, it was nice to see the focus being shifted back to tomb raiding in the third instalment.

The game starts with Lara Croft in India, searching for an artefact known as the Infada Artefact. After finding the artefact, she comes across a doctor who tells her that the artefact she found is from a meteorite from another planet and that there are three other pieces of the meteorite hidden in London, South Pacific Islands and Nevada.

This starts Lara’s quest and with that the game gives a player an option of choosing destiny. As it had been in previous games, the levels have almost the same objective which was to solve puzzles, kill enemies and reach the end. Of course this was easier said than done.

Enemies in the game came in all shapes and sizes and consisted of more than just humans. You had to battle animals such as vultures, monkeys and dogs to name a few. Then you had your mythical creatures such as the statues of Shiva holding six swords in three pairs of hands that came alive when they saw you, you also had to battle some ancient lizards in the form of raptors and of course T-Rex. And finally, some mutant species rounded up the cast of enemies featured in the game.

Thankfully, Lara came equipped with a large arsenal of weapons to deal with each and every hostile situation. She had her trademark pair of pistols that have infinite ammo and effective against almost every foe. She also got to fight with a shotgun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, harpoon gun (for underwater battles), an MP5 etc.

No tomb is complete without death-traps such as collapsing floors, falling boulders and motion sensitive spikes so gamers would not miss anything in Tomb Raider III. But since Lara Croft is very nimble and had a large array of fancy moves at her disposal it was easy for her to dodge these traps. Player could jumps, flips, barrel rolls, shimmy across ledges, monkey swing across bars and wines, sprint and swim, etc., to escape or get past hindrances.

The good thing about the game is that Lara Croft is not shown as an invincible character, instead she is shown more like a human. This made the game more believable as she could exhaust, ran out of breath or stamina in situations like swimming, long distance jumps or freezing waters for a very long time. Having all these limitations made sure that the adventure was easy and death was unavoidable.

Moreover, you had an option of saving the game wherever you wanted albeit a limited number, but a good option to avail in levels taking about an hour to complete.

All in all, Tomb Raider III was a great comeback game for the series and, in my opinion, was probably the best game of the series on the Playstation 1. The environments were detailed, the sound of the guns, especially your pistols, was loud, voice acting (although there were no lip movements in the cut-scenes) was also decent and Lara looked quite nice in the FMV sequences.

Game: Tomb Raider III
Year: 1998
Rating: 8.5/10

Pros:

— The levels take you to exotic and mysterious places like Area 51 and jungles of IndiaChallenging puzzles and varied combat

Cons:

— Tough and overwhelming for new comers
— Limited number of saves made the game tougher