Tomb Raider II

"A much better adventure for Ms Lara Croft"

The appeal of Tomb Raider has always been two separate things. The actual game and Lara Croft. And the fanbase of this highly successful franchise has always been tight and very loyal to the first lady of games. While the first game merely opened the door for Lara Croft to make her ongoing onslaught to the video game market and propelled herself into the spotlight, despite the rave reviews, it only really conquered great exploration in fabulous great 3D polygons. It wasn't bad, but it only really showcased one specific thing the playstation and Tomb Raider was all about.

However, this game is very much different. Tomb Raider II has to remain one of the greatest adventures Lara has ever embarked on and as a playstation game, it contends with some of the greatest games ever made for the console and the best pick out of the series. I say this because gradually, as interesting as the subsequent Tomb Raiders were designed, they became a tad predictable.

The prime of interest instilled in Tomb Raider is of course, Lara. It's revolutionary that for a computer character, she's become one of the most famous icons and role models for women. Yes, women. While many men are in love with her, Tomb Raider has attracted an equal strong fanbase consisting of females. Suprising?. Yes. Considering that Lara was initially designed to be just an action gal avec big chest, small waist and big guns. And while there remains many a people to hate Lara, she definetly holds the sparkle to create massive attention to her travels no matter how tiresome and boring they can be at times. People who have played this game and reviled it have dabbled with it because of Lara - the main propaganda of the series.

With the very misunderstood Angel Of Darkness bombing and Eidos suddenly being hoisted out of the production line for Tomb Raider, you should be suddenly worried. But if Tomb Raider takes a backlash of a U turn (for many of it's fans, that is), then reflect on this game to see Lara Croft at her best.

As if this game was a declaration of war against the first, Tomb Raider II suddenly makes no hesitation to get into the stride, pitting you in a very exciting first level of climbing to the Wall Of China and dodging a series of booby traps including claustrophobic caves where the random cliched scenario of huge boulders rolling themselves at you, spike walls closing in on you and the creaky ground soon to give way - whatever the reaction, the adrenaline is certainly pumping with enthiusiasm or frustration considering how much of a lesson controlling Lara is.

Two years have passed since Lara thwarted the corrupted business woman Natla (who shall always be remembered for pathetically trying to deck Lara and falling off a very very very high ledge) and now she's after an ancient dagger used in a historical war in which it creates a fire breathing dragon if you thrust it into your heart. As you would expect, Lara's lust for adventure and superiority over big bad men leads her onto the trail for the dagger but also on the run and hunt of a ganglord named Bartolli, who has the usual meglomaniac intentions of also wanting this dagger. But Lara finds herself in the middle of the feud between Bartolli and the monks, who have protected this dagger for the years past the war. Well that's our Lara, getting into scrapes and poking her nose in other people's business, and that's why we love her. Right?.

People who thought that it was a game in itself to control Lara can dust off some of the worries here. Reflecting back on the previous game and you would grit your teeth to find how slow Lara was - running. She has slightly faster boots here, making it not so much torture to run away past revolving blades and trying to turn around corners and such. She still doesn't qualify for olympic sprinting just yet though, while you have to applaud the technique Eidos have used here; the slowness of Lara precisions your sights onto her, and only her. You're most likely to have your eyes featured politely on the back of Lara's head. Okay, her butt does come into it also.

Thankfully, with or without the aid of cheats, Lara is available to experiment with a wider variety of weapons such as the M16, grenade launcher, shotgun and a very useful harpoon gun. What hasn't been installed yet is the hand to hand combat system which has been eagerly anticipated. But seeing Lara take pleasure in demising her foes with bigger and better weapons is definetly something to revel in. As much so as the screams of Lara as she plunges to her death from somewhere really, really high.

The levels are spectactular and the far most enjoyable thing in the game. The colourful towns in Venice, where you are treated to driving a boat in the canals to the underwater capers where you have to infiltrate a sunken submarine and dodge the sharks before your oxygen runs out is indeed excruiatingly brilliant. And the penultimate level of Bartolli taking his feud with Lara to her own home is a great masterstroke of Lara being ambushed in her own saftey box. Not only is it exciting that she is in her nightgown with a traditional shotgun to see off these bastards but the lights are out and the guys are swarming in with their baseball bats to seriously smash up Lara's bone structure. Does Lara ever grow more heroic than to trash the cliche of the big breasted girl running up the stairs instead of out the door?. It's ironic because she starts from upstairs, metaphorically meaning she has no other choice but to run out of the door.

What some liked in the previous game was the addition of Lara's mansion, set up as a small token of extra gameplaying and a training kernel. Here this is extended, with more rooms and a bigger training assault course in which you can time and set records. It helps tremendously with button control (which sadly still needs to be conquered). Also, if you ever do find the creepy butler following you around annoying, lead him into the fridge in the kitchen, and lock the door. Problem solved. Although you really wonder why Lara's sink could bathe a baby elephant and her stairs are so wide and square. And she has a bath she would have to stand in in order to prevent drowning.

Control buttons aren't exactly the main flaw in every Tomb Raider game but how the execution of moving Lara effects the game as a whole. For starters, there seems to be indecisiveness in the Eidos department on how fast Lara should be. Nobody is expecting her to go for gold but make it able to have a fair chance to run away from death ridden areas. Also, annoyingly, Lara seems to almost always bump into walls whilst trying to turn a corner. Unappreciated to the extent that Lara nearly becomes irritable with her tired voice squealching out because she's bumped into the same wall just an hour ago. And you are really trying to tell her "It's not our fault Lara!". While the action buttons, to shoot and to jump and do the acrobatic requirements are easily done, the actual movement of Lara needs immediate work on.

Exploration was the highlight and remains the sole weapon alongside Lara for Tomb Raider. Because of this, the lack of action is never sorely missed as you are always too far engrossed in the layout of each level, rendered in glorious absorbing graphics and objectives to climb, jump and whatever to traverse each level. There are some superb cases of stunts you may have to do in order to get to a certain point to grab an item or something superly beneficial to your goal. I also loved diving from the top to the bottom of a waterfall and know that I would need to climb, jump and backflip to get back up there again. It's the sight of Lara carrying out these small tasks that make it all the worthwhile.

Compared to the new riches of playstation 2 graphics, Tomb Raider doesn't seem so remarkable now but it very much was. Tomb Raider II sees Lara with her trademark pigtail (which she funnily didn't have in the last game). The traditional diarrhea coloured hotpants and grey t-shirt remain but the pixel of Lara and her stature have changed (in fact, close up her stomach looks tucked and pinched, has our beloved Lara got an eating disorder?). The locations are beautiful and conventionally atsmopheric with muted tones in the more dark and sinister of places that Lara visits. The best example of this would be in the underwater levels, where the dark depths of the water shroud Lara, giving her mere vision that is tightly claustraphobic if you stop dead to evaluate your direction and peer at the hazy images of the sand beneath Lara.

The FMV sequences are also better, while Lara's face looked like a brick that had been chiselled in the first game, in the FMV, she doesn't look so victimised here. You'll see a great display of stunning technical effects here that show the true talents of the playstation in action here. Lara's face might need just a little bit more of proportioning, but hey, they got the eyebrows perfect.

With Lara being the conservative heroine, it is expected for her to be so reserved. However, what is disappointing to her in this adventure is that the only depth that is covered is how she pulls through another dangerous climax instead of her emotions. Some find this preferrable as it shrouds Lara in mysteriosity (neologism..) and gives her that enigmatic poise. Having Lara find it with no nerves to take her pistols and gun down guard dogs and project her shotgun at those intruders arses is indeed heroic but maybe a quiver or even a persperational heated sweat drop down her forehead or heavy breathing would be confirmation that she is not completely wooden. It's nearly as bad when Lara is attacked, no blood or worries as she is merely pushed to a side - giving you the ponderance of why you need to kill these enemies. A fear factor or something to give Lara a sense of disadvantage would be appropriate, to truly entice you into thinking Lara's life has a lot at stake.

Ms Croft may also be called heroic for inventing the voice acting system, which has been left far too late for character development in vital character based games. The voice of Lara certainly describes immense detail about her. You can summise that she's in her thirties, sophisticated, well educated and mature and oh, not too be messed with.

And the orchestra music dramatically backs her up. Just as if desperately trying to get Lara to run for her life when the roof is suddenly about to collapse you hear the violin also desperately playing in the background, triggering something of a time limit for Lara to escape with her life, weaving a musical message of keep running Lara, keep running. Just as the wondrous piece of wind music that accompanies her when she's discovered a new area or derived an item from the highest of mounatains, lowest of caverns. The music does clarify itself at a theatre opera and so on.

The assumption of difficulty of any Tomb Raider game has always undermined and underestimated with the lack of Lara having to demolish her way through levels. Well, for people who simply pick up the game for the novelty of it and people who just like to judge, prepare to bite your tongue. While it's true that Lara doesn't embark on a Duke Nukem killing spree, her task is far more provocative and challening. You are always pitted with the logic of getting to one height to another, Tomb Raider takes advantage of the fact that they've created a landscape so enormous that you will have to examine it and use it to your own advantage as Eidos has. Those high up places, slopes, cracks and corners are there for a reason and it's most likely they will be essential for the completion of a level. The occuring questions of will I be able to jump from here to there?, What if I take a run up, will she just manage to grab on?, If she does fall, will the height kill her? are fantastic when you consider how thought provoking they can be. Being strategic is an amazing innovation that replays itself if Lara dies and you're constantly on the ball, trying to figure out ways to save Lara from breaking her neck again, or trying to prevent her sweet little buttocks being battered about from the cape fearsome heights she climbs herself up to.

You would like to think Tomb Raider was just the flawed stepping stone for this very much nourished sequel that has proven to cover solid ground it's the perpetuating saga and the archive of the playstation games. Tomb Raider II is a fantastic masquerade of Lara vaulting herself acrobatically (of course) to the spotlight where she will be remembered forever. You really need to play this game in order to truly understand the immense popularity of Tomb Raider.

A classic scene from a classic game, the end catchphrase summarises everything about the game....

With the last gun wielding intruder dead, Lara dusted off the scrapes and mere cuts compared to the bullets and flesh wounds she had caused the unwary men who forced their way into her home with the intent to kill her; how wrong and stupid an idea they would now realise from beyond the grave. Being bare foot and marginally dirty, Lara hurried to her bedroom and turned on the shower to wash herself off the unwanted blood and sin. As she climbed in, she noticed one last person, looking sarcastic she employs "Don't you think you've seen enough" before shooting one last shot from the shotgun at the willing pervert.

And yes, by the end of this game, you will have seen enough to dismiss any misjudgements you have qualmed against this eventful game and the legendary Lara Croft.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/28/04, Updated 07/30/04