Article Response: Tomb Raider

Ahem - I mean that if anyone was wholly unaware of the Tomb Raider phenomenon this article would tell them everything they need to know.

For someone who is aware of the phenomenon it is the best dissection of what her cultural position is and why the stock has dwindled so much over the last few years. Bravo.

It's a really good article, but I think the crucial link between the quality of the games and the ascendance of the brand is broken. I mean, surely in the last two years 10x as many people have seen the lucozade ads as have laid a hand on the games.

PS: I am mysteriously grumpy today. No offense. You too, Pete, y'cunt.

TR3 was the best selling PC game in Europe in 1998 and during the year following its release the shareprice increased five-fold. The crash came at the end of 1999 for many factors, although TR4 sales were certainly one.

Perhaps there is milage in the Mickey Mouse watch approach to the marketing, though.

yeah, that actually was fun. and the cheat codes.

still. jumping puzzles = TEH SUCK.

My biggest freakout moments in TR (I already knew about the dinosaur, a friend spoiled it for me):

When you run up to the exercise mat at Chez Croft and she talks to you about how to jump and move. It's like she's letting you use her body for awhile while her voice just floats around the house! Weirdness!!

When you see your doppelganger and realize you have to kill it.

Eh I don't remember the rest. It's really not about the freakouts though, it's about patience and aloneness and the steady march towards perfection, what all classic videogames are about, ultimately.

Best bit of any game - the 3rd section of TR III where you are in an abandoned choob station - I was thus able to live out a long held fantasy of running around such a place with gay abandon.

Dinosaur moment - so OTM it hurts. Fave memory of TR I - cracking the cog and wheel turning puzzle. That's another aspect - it was for me what I'd always wanted in many respects - a truly lifelike version of IF (minus the character interactions). Also, must add that Indy Jones is perhaps my favourite movie character, and to be able to perform something like his crazy exploits was great.

All in all, top work Magnus.

The Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine PC game that was a blatant TR-clone was actually kind of pathetic. Not least because they couldn't/wouldn't licence Harrison Ford's face, so they got their verisimiltude by playing the same three seconds of the Indiana Jones tune every time you accomplished anything.

The T-Rex in TR: classic. The T-Rex in TRII: dud.

The sequels failed to capture the ambience of the first game, by either going too far out beyond the premise of Lara as TOMB Raider and putting her in distractingly bland action scenarios, or making the levels overly complicated. Plus, by the time TR had sequels the Playstation had fully come into its own with others taking 3D and using it in newer ways.

i recently played TR Anniversary, the "remake" of the classic TR.

it is RUBBISH. they ruined:

- the dinosaur moment
- the entire movement/jumping system (which is unsuited to the analogue controller)
- the training scene (i.e. laura's house), the original of which is probably the most brilliantly-conceived (and voice-acted) training level ever created

oh, and

- balancing on the TOP OF POLES??