Lara Croft: tomb raider extraordinaire. She is considered one of the most notable game characters in the somewhat limited history of video games, you know, in comparison to the history of something like grave robbers.
But enough about her history, lets talk about mine…
Thirteen years of age I was when Tomb Raider entered my lexicon of adolescence. She double pistoled her way into the gaming scene as I entered the tumultuous eighth grade. BANG! And there she was in all her limited polygons, shooting this, shooting that, swan diving here, swan diving there. Just as every school boy was once enthralled by Jessica Rabbit, so too were my friends and I enthralled, even more so, by this new generation of what could be considered a controllable “Jessica”. It seems silly now, but back then it was something that had never been done before. It took the stereotypical female, multiplied her by four (in a few key areas), gave her a lead role and attitude, equipped her with an arsenal of weaponry, and let her loose on an adventure of epic proportions. How could you not be enamoured by this digital creation? Wrestling fans had their ridiculously dressed and proportioned female counterparts to alpha males, and now gamers had theirs. Think of her as one of Duke’s lady friends.
Lara Croft was a system seller, too. She debuted on the PC, Saturn, and PlayStation. It was after only a short demo, courtesy of a PC Gamer demo CD, that I was sure I needed a system capable of running this fine piece of gaming art. Small problem: I had neither a PC or one of the consoles to play it (we were, and still are, a Mac family). You see, my parents introduced my brother and I to the original NES. They saw the corruption it caused via fights, tears, and thrown controllers. They never bought us another console. My gaming was limited to my Mac, and at the time Lara wanted nothing to do with my Performa. I put together a grand presentation for Ma and Pa, complete with pros, cons, promises, and pricing, for my bid for a PlayStation. I was rejected with the now classic line: “Games are for children, you are no longer a child. They will get you no where.” (Boy were they wrong, they got me all the way to Los Angeles, but that’s another tale). With my dreams crushed, my thoughts turned to buying the game and playing it at my friends house when I could. I decided against it. If I couldn’t have all of her, I wanted none of her.
I would like to say that, defeated, I turned my time and effort to my studies, becoming so successful that I was able to re-code Lara for the Mac. Alas, that is not the case. I believe I spent the rest of the year trying to perfect the melting of styrofoam with gasoline to create napalm of some variety. What? I grew up on a farm with access to the internet!
Courtesy of Feral Interactive, Lara has come to the Mac in the form of Tomb Raider Anniversary. This isn’t her first date with the Mac OS, as she has shown up in other forms through the years. Indeed, three years after her gaming debut, MacSoft would release Tomb Raider Gold for the Mac, which was the original game with the PC expansion added in to make up for lost time. For me, three years was too long of a wait to reconcile that initial sting of loss. Now here I am today, a grown man and willing to give things another chance. Some would consider this the most important and the greatest of all the games in the series. Aside from the accolades bestowed above, Tomb Raider was a solid game of action adventure and platforming. Like the re-releases of classic movies on DVD and BluRay, Lara gets a release with a new graphics and gameplay engine. It really is the same great game from so many years ago, re-dressed for today. Building off the success of Tomb Raider Legends, Crystal Dynamics (the developers of the last couple games), took some of the new features given to Lara and reworked them into the original. Lara now has the ability to use her grappling hook (to latch on to objects) and new moves (such as slow motion) in the classic environments from the original game. Some new puzzles have also been added, but all in all, the game is really a faithful recreation of the original that started it all.
That is to be taken with the highest compliments in mind. Just like Quake Live, Tomb Raider Anniversary doesn’t mess with what worked so well. It makes a few changes, but ultimately the experience and atmosphere is left alone. Why mess with the Colonel’s recipe when it tastes so good?
Speaking of PFK (that’s the French acronym for KFC. Considering I am writing from Canada I thought it best to appease my French speaking brethren in Quebec), there are some drawbacks, no matter how delicious the recipe tastes. While Lara moves around the world better than she did in 1996, she can at times move in ways that can result in severe injury or death. Enemies are sparse, while puzzle solving is abundant. Lara is just as oddly dressed as ever for her adventures, and after all these years of controlling Lara on consoles (as soon as I moved out of home I started keeping up to date on my console purchasing) it seems primitive to control her using the keyboard and mouse. A controller is strongly advised. Some might also argue that the path you take is very linear, this is true to the original. Personally, I do not mind this, but I know many find the lack of a choice to be disconcerting.
I gave Tomb Raider Anniversary a ride on my iMac 2.93Ghz with a ATI Radeon 4850. She ran just fine and I imagine a whole lot better than she would have on that old Performa 6360 (as a side note, why did those machines suck so much?).
$50 to relive the memories and dreams of a school boy? It is pricey for a twelve year old game, even if it is reupholstered. With that said, it’s a classic, a game everyone should experience. And there is just something about that Lara Croft that warrants your attention… perhaps it’s the accent.