Tomb Raider

"Unsexy ladies have unsexy games."

There is scarcely anything more entertaining than witnessing an unruly mob of obsessed fangirls cosplay as their favorite RPG home girls and daydream about their fantasy anime boyfriends. But trust me, the boys can be just as bad at times. Lord knows how many revealing posters of Samus and Rikku I have seen in my years. Once you have revealed your obsessions, your friends shall almost certainly mock you for the rest of your life. People will tell you to get in an actual relationship or stop drooling over polygons. But trust me, there is nothing wrong with having an infatuation with a video game character. If anything, it gives props to the graphic design teams for adding realism to their characters. However, Lara Croft is one femme fatale who is not attractive in the least bit, in spite of anything that people may tell you. Pick your eyes above her chest for a minute and you may finally discover that she is a dull, unattractive, poorly crafted image. Tomb Raider is, quite simply, an unfortunate, shoddy action-adventure game that has quite possibly stood the test of time more horribly than any other game in existence. Even those who hailed it godly at its time of release now look back and scoff at how they were foolish enough to think that a sexy protagonist yielded a sexy game.

Lara Croft is basically the female equivalent of Indiana Jones, except she never got a good movie. And she never got a ride at Disneyland named after her. Nevertheless, Croft is a bold and wealthy explorer whom has adventured throughout the world. One day while strutting around her sleazy low-maintenance apartment in Britain after a long day of driving on the wrong side of the road and eating crappy food, she gets a call from an anonymous stranger. Croft is informed of a long lost artifact capable of unprecedented power, located in the frostbitten Himalayas, the fabled city/cesspool of Atlantis, and a bunch of other less-than-pleasant locales around the world. However, Croft is not the only adventurer informed of the discovery as she sets off for adventure…and blunder. She may have to kill off a few “rivals” along the way, all courtesy of her anonymous caller. Joy. I suppose that's what she gets for not screening or installing Caller ID. I suppose it's only interesting if you are either an archaeological buff or have zero taste in virtual women.

As the game unfolds, Lara finds herself exploring a cave beneath a frozen abyss. As she traverses through the passageway, the impending danger immediately makes itself evident when a series of poison darts launch out from both walls. The contrast is so awful that you probably cannot even see them. It would be a good idea to turn back now. However, Lara realizes that if she runs straight through the series of darts without hesitating, no harm will come to her. So then she climbs a few blocks and enters a chamber where swooping black dots that are apparently bats assault and bite her repeatedly. Time to bring out the weaponry. Lara draws her incredibly sorry excuse for a pistol, a consolation prize from the NRA, and fires randomly into the air, hoping to shoot down a few of the flying nuisances. Ten rounds are fired. Only one hits. Attempting precise aiming would only yield more failed results. At that point, Lara thinks to herself, “Screw this,” and continues on through the level. Suddenly, a giant acid-induced gossamer blob of pixels emerges from the pit and swipes at you. (Note that this is actually supposed to be a bear.) The player attempts to make Lara charge toward it, but the controller will not respond. The bear mauls Ms. Croft in a gruesome display of laughable flying red pixels, and you now have to begin the entire stage all over again.

That is simply one instance where unresponsive control will yield the death of you. Jumping is particularly infuriating, especially when it comes to leaping over a chasm. The game seems to have a difficult time registering two separate actions simultaneously, such as a running leap, which will send you spiraling into oblivion a good percentage of the time. Other times, the response simply lags, triggering a jump a full second after you press the button. Things don't improve a whole lot when it comes to attacking. Let's say you want to shoot something that isn't your television. Shooting the object or enemy should be he least of your worries. Actually aiming properly is a massive chore in itself, and even when you have finally gotten a fine lock, Lara will still not fire properly. Now let's say you would like to pick up an artifact. Standing in front of it and pressing the designated button does not work. So what do you have to do? Attempt to pick up the damn item from dozens of different positions until Lara finally responds. The abominable camera certainly does not do one hell of a lot to improve your situation. Despite the fact that the camera is supposedly manual, the game features numerous fixed angles where no matter how much you try to shift the camera in order to increase visibility, the game will automatically rotate the camera back to the original low-visibility position.

Surprisingly, that is only scratching the surface. One of Tomb Raider's most popular claims to fame is the countless amount of glitches present in the game. Hear me loud and clear, folks – a video game is not supposed to have glitches in the first place. Sometimes Lara will latch onto invisible objects or become trapped inside solid pillars. The camera will also often times phase right through walls. However, if you are looking for a game which will give you a straight-up challenge, whether it be in a good or bad sense, Tomb Raider definitely delivers. Unfortunately, it is not the type of difficulty that most gamers will be looking for. In terms of non-technical difficulties, Tomb Raider is overflowing with puzzles. The game offers practically no clues, leaving the gamer to seek out answers without a map. Normally, these kinds of obstacles are inviting in order to enable the player to figure out a dilemma by their self, but the game resorts to cheap tricks in an attempt to add a sense of challenge to the game, with the aforementioned lag being just one of them. I suppose the game deserves some merit for not being afraid to drive you loopy and avoid holding your hand through the entire game, but the setbacks are far too frustrating to give too much credit.

Now, normally this is the part of the review where I would either praise the soundtrack or damn it to the fiery abyss of Hell, but there practically is no music whatsoever to talk about. I suppose the developers desired to add a sense of dark loneliness by keeping the background silent until a predator lunges out at you, then playing a series of cheap sound effects strung together to supposedly sound like a rhythm, but to me, a lack of background music is robbing the game of its atmosphere (not that Tomb Raider has much atmosphere to begin with). Any track that does play when setting the stage or such is merely redundant. As for the visuals, it's like they took the spray can tool in MS Paint and splattered a gritty gray over every single texture in the game. Most of the environments are flat, with a few blurry lines and splotches to make things look like the graphic designers attempted to add detail. 3-D objects do not bulge out or expand in more than one direction. Then we get to Lara herself. Not only is she utterly repulsive, but she also looks like a giant deformed Lego figurine with a swelling chest to attract consumers. Every other character or enemy in the game appears either hideously deformed or something beyond that. So people say, “But this was 1996! Of course 3-D graphics looked horrible back then!” Yeah, because Final Fantasy VII, which came out merely two months later, was such an eyesore to gamers at the time and looks just as awful. Right…

Tomb Raider is a game that has, unfortunately, failed the test of time more miserably than any other. As both the shooter and action-adventure genres expand, Lara Croft fails to have even inspired a revolution. The controls are absolutely broken, the enigmas are nauseatingly annoying, the combat is irritable, and a new glitch is discovered around every corner. This is not to mention that the game not only looks like crap, but the audio is next to nonexistent. But perhaps most importantly of all, the game is quite simply not enjoyable in any fashion whatsoever. (Not surprisingly, I have not dared touch its sequels with a thirty-foot pole.) If you're a truly intrepid gamer who desires to conquer the most infuriating of titles regardless of how much they sap your sanity, I'm not stopping you from giving Tomb Raider a whirl. Just note that I am in no way responsible (legally) for any loss of sanity that may occur.

Lara Croft isn't hot, and neither is her game.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 01/08/07