Review: Tomb Raider III

By: Kirk Hiner

Genre: Action

Format: CD

Developer: Eidos Interactive, Core, Westlake Interactive

Publisher: Aspyr

Minimum Requirements: 180 MHz 603e with hardware 3D acceleration or 150 MHz 603e without, MacOS 7.5.3, 16MB RAM, hard drive, color monitor, 4X CD-ROM, QuickTime 4.0 (included)

Network Feature: No

3Dfx Support: Rave and Glide

Retail Price: $44.89

Availability: Out Now

I've never been much a fan of James Bond. I'm sorry for that, as I know I should be. I think that the only Bond movie I've seen in the theater is "Never Say Never Again," and I don't spend hours on end watching those 007 marathons that TBS seems to run four or five times a month. And get this...Bond fans everywhere are going to hate me, but I think that--next to Sean Connery--Timothy Dalton best played the role.

Now before you all firebomb my house, you should realize that I hold a soft spot for Tim because of his fantastic portrayal of Prince Barin in my all-time favorite movie, Flash Gordon.

"Tell me more about this man Houdini." Classic.

And now I'm going to say something that'll upset fans of 007 even more...Lara Croft is cooler than James Bond. I mean, think about it. She has the accent, she has the weapons, she has the attitude, and she has two things that James doesn't...

Oh, come on. I'm talking about her quad bike and pigtail. For cryin-out-loud, people.

So now I'm at Tomb Raider III, less than a year after playing and reviewing both Tomb Raider 2 and Tomb Raider Gold, and it's really great to be here. It's great to be in India, London, the South Pacific, Nevada and Antarctica with Ms. Croft. And what does she do in these diverse locales? Jumps, climbs, crawls, runs and kills. What else?

That was actually my concern coming in to Tomb Raider III. What could they do to separate this game from the other two? You may recall the commercials from when the game was released for Playstation and PC. The ads bragged of new weapons and outfits, but big deal. Well actually, the catsuit that Lara wears in London is a pretty big deal, but my fiancee gets scared when I speak about Lara that way, so I won't dwell on it.

Do we get anything new in Tomb Raider III that really matters? Well, unlike before, you have a little control over the path Lara takes to the end of the game. After completing a level, you get decide to which locale Lara visits next. This ends up being pretty much meaningless, however, as the path you choose in no way affects the outcome of the game.

Okay, what else? The moves! Ah, yes...the moves. No longer is Lara content to just run around and climb things. Sometimes an adventurer likes to swing across ceilings like a child on the monkeybars at the playground. By jumping and grabbing certain sections of ceilings, Lara is now able to swing her way out of many a dire predicament. But what if she can't reach the ceiling? Our heroine can now also crawl. Good thing, too, as there are suddenly many nooks and crannies which she can explore. Funny timing, that. Of course, these new abilities also mean new keystrokes to learn, but Lara has upgraded the obstacle course in her home to allow you practice time.

What I did find to be curious was the abandonment of the Tomb Raider II keyboard layout. I'd grown quite accustomed to using the 7 and 9 keys to sidestep right and left. To do so in TRIII, you must hold shift will using the assigned left and right movement keys. Not nearly as comfortable. However, in the separate TRIII setup file, you're given the option of reverting to the TR2 default keys. It'll sound hypocritical of me, but I didn't do this. I lost the TR2 tournament at the National Macintosh Gaming Championship in New York because of my inability to use the default keys, and it ain't gonna happen again next year.

Other entrants, you have been warned.

Then there's the blood. I read before receiving the game that Mac users are given the special option to turn off the blood "feature," thereby toning down the violence of the game. I don't really get that. A dead aborigine is a dead aborigine whether or not there's blood spurting from his torso. Plus, the blood actually looks more like...I don't know...a lava lamp explosion. At its goriest, Tomb Raider III never gets much more gruesome than the conclusion of Barbarella. Still, it's a feature that PC users don't have, so I'll take it.

Whereas the blood looks goofy, everything else is stunning. Unlike TR and TR2, Tomb Raider III actually has colors! Gone are the bland grays and browns of its predecessors, having been replaced by bright greens and blues. Adding to this are fantastic mist and lighting effects. Torches and fires actually prodoce smoke which clouds Lara's vision, and the shadows they cast are much more realistic than before. It doesn't matter if you're using Rave or Glide 3D acceleration, TRIII looks great in both.

Yet it doesn't exactly work perfectly in both...or without. On my 604/200 processor, the game would slow to a crawl whenever music was playing. Seeing as how the nastier villians are generally announced with fanfare, this proved to be extremely annoying. Westlake suggests installing the music on the hard drive to prevent this from happening, but my game partition was already pretty much maxed out. I don't have this stuttering problem on my G4, but now the game pauses every time Lara comes up from a swim. The system seems to be searching the CD at that point, so this may be a G4 issue.

I also encountered a bug which almost put me off the game. It'd be too difficult to describe the location here, but while in London I reached a point where I couldn't swim up a submerged hallway. There appeared to be nothing blocking it, but Lara just wouldn't go forward. After a representative at Aspyr assured me that I must've missed something, I found a walkthrough that talked of a PC bug which prevented Lara from progressing if the game was saved just before she hit the switch to open the door. I stand before you today to assure you that this bug has been carried over. My advice? Never save before hitting a switch. Either that or get a walkthrough that warns you of such things. You'll probably one anyway, as retrieving all of the secrets rewards you with a bonus level.

I dig Tomb Raider III. It's not my favorite game, but it has solidified Tomb Raider as my favorite series. As would a great action/adventure movie, it leaves me cheering. That, and how can you not love Lara Croft? Much like a character in a well-written novel, she makes you race to the end just to see how things turn out for her. And as computer gaming technology grows, I can hardly wait to see how Lara and the Tomb Raider series grows with it. If I may borrow once more from Timothy Dalton's character in Flash Gordon, I say to you, Ms. Croft, "Where you go, I follow."

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November 20, 2008