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Underworld: Tomb Raider's Future
Eidos’ adventurer is no stranger to puzzles, but Underworld’s teaser trailer, with its snapshot of Croft Manor in flames, poses a particularly tricky conundrum: how much do you really want Tomb Raider to change? It’s an issue Crystal Dynamics has clearly been struggling with, since this hardware generation tends to demand innovation alongside prettier foliage.
But Croft’s is an enduringly narrow remit, and she’s at her best when she’s running, jumping and, occasionally, shooting her way through a succession of ancient structures. Refinement is fine, but sweeping changes have proved treacherous before. Ultimately, the developer has opted to tweak rather than tamper, and the recent unveiling of the Thailand levels showcases gentle additions designed to enhance the existing gameplay without turning it into something else.
The most obvious improvement is that Croft can now shoot while clinging to a ledge or scaling a wall, a move that should break down the previous titles’ rigid barriers between platforming and gunplay. Equally, environments are now more open-ended and dynamic: there are multiple routes through most sections, far more agile enemies, and vegetation that moves as Croft pushes past – although it’s rather rubbery and geometric, and can give the impression that the famous explorer is wading through the plastic plants in McDonalds.
Elsewhere, Thailand is fairly traditional adventuring territory, with artfully derelict temples and large, multi-key puzzles suggesting that, if anything, Crystal Dynamics might be moving away from the bite-sized levels that made Legend so forward-thinking, and back towards the marathon slogs of the earlier games.
Stubbornly singleplayer, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Tomb Raider is no longer fashionable. Yet, from the languidly revealed vistas to the way it allows you to enjoy your exploration in peace and quiet, there’s a timelessness to the series that resists unnecessary change. A new installment may not be the event it once was, but even a brief glimpse confirms there’s still something very tempting about another trip into this vast, lonely and mechanical world.
I've always thought Tomb raider would be so much better off without any enemies, no combat at all. The singular pleasure of these games is the sense of quiet, careful exploration, of problem-solving. I have personally always resented the intrusion of obligatory combat sequences and I've certainly resented having to play a blood-thirsty murderer and ruthless killer of several endangered species.
If the new Tomb Raider game came out with no enemies and no fighting, just pure exploration and puzzling, I'd be more than happy with that. The joy of these games is surely to be found in the journey through each labyrinthine level, the rounding of each new undiscovered corner, the 'grand reveal' of each new awe-inspiring playground of climbing frames and puzzles?
To have to fight at all is just a needless distraction - and a jarring one at that. It jars with the otherwise sedate, relaxing and often quite stimulating (even therapeutic) pleasure of just vicariously living out an adventure in a fantastical world/s with the kind of athletic prowess most of us will only ever be able to dream of possessing, whilst solving logic puzzles and negotiating potentially fatal hazards...
I partially agree, sometimes the violent sections can seem all a bit "here we go again, it must have been oh, at least 32 seconds since I last shot at something". If Crystal Dynamics released the game without some heavy shooting action, very few people would buy it though. It would, at the very least, be far too big a gamble for Eidos to turn Tomb Raider into an Adventure game. The new trailer where Lara kicks a tiger in the head does seem a bit...weird, though. The Daily Mail will have a field day when they see it, I can see the headline now; "8-year old recreates cruel video game scene, Spaniel recieves mild vetenary treatment..."