Tomb Raider

Everyone has at least one well-known and much sold game on his list of games that he or she detests. I knew fellows which couldn't stand the sight of Prince of Persia or Virtua Fighter, despite their commercial and critical successes. Defunct Games' head editor Cyril slashed Myst. My personal hatred goes to Core's Tomb Raider. I never have understood the fuss about this game.

As a rule of thumb I don't like games in which you need to do a practice level in order to know how to control of the game. And what's worse, it didn't help - I kept dropping of cliffs and brigdes even after the practice stage. The camera-view makes jumping right nearly impossible. Controlling the game just feels so slow and gloomy, it's impossible not to yawn. The heroine of it all - Lara Croft - makes appriopriate sounds. While she climbs walls or shoot enemies - in a manner that seems like the game is performing on a PC that's beneath the required system demans - she groans and sighs like she understands the boredom of the player.

And how could the player not be bored? The surroundings all look exactly alike - grey, shaded, and some darkgreen colored moss. The enemies aren't exactly inspired either - no matter if it's a bear, a bat or a dinosaur, they just all appear, almost soundless, dark and dull colored, and will probably kill you, since they like circeling around Lara, which gives it a hard time aiming with the far for responsive controls. I especially hate the swimming parts, the framing seems even worse there or the cameraguy just gets drunk when Lara is swimming.

But there must be SOMETHING in the game, I thought, since all those stories of praise couldn't be based on this?? Does Lara look 'hot'? Well no, see just looks like a computer-rendered character. Are the in-game puzzle-element good? Nope, it mainly revolves about pushing buttons and blocks and pulling handles. That is, if you can figure out where you have to go, because I was lost most of time in the unfailing continuos greyness of this highly praised 'action'-game. I'd recommand you not to listen everyone's common praise of Tomb Raider and skip this game for something far more interesting.