The first you will encounter is a speedboat. The developers spent so much time making Lara act real, I am glad they took her out of a cave so the atmosphere was more realistic.Īnother cool new feature of Tomb Raider II is that you can now ride various vehicles. When Lara started walking around buildings and such, it felt much more realistic. The caves make me feel like I am still just playing a game, and keeps it from being too realistic. I got real tired of seeing caves in the first game and now I have to work through another game of caves." Thankfully, you will find your way out of the caves and spend a great deal of time in other locations. The first thing that came to mind was "lame, more caves. The first level you encounter has you in a cave, which is where you spent most of your time in the original game. That does oversimplify things, but it sums up a majority of your actions.Īnother thing that the developers need to be commended on is the level design. It is the old "flip this switch and unlock that door so you can flip another switch to unlock another door" type of game. Most of the levels are based on flipping switches and finding keys, which did get a bit old after a while. You will climb, jump, swim, shoot and explore your way through tons of levels. You play from the third-person perspective with Lara always in the front and center screen. For those of you who missed the original game, this game follows the same basic formula. It was one of the most realistic-looking moves I have ever seen in a video game.Įnough about Lara for a moment. Then, using the leverage and strength from her legs, she pushes off from the wall and pulls the lever. Instead of just having Lara swim up and pull the lever, she actually swims up to the lever, turns her body sideways and braces herself with her legs against the wall. The lever is for opening a large, wooden door. Lara is swimming around and finds a lever underwater. There is one animation in particular that really stood out and made me take notice. I bet they had to rework this animation hundreds of times before they were happy with it. I can just see the developers gathered round a monitor while someone was showing Lara pull herself up from a cliff. This is an incredibly difficult task to pull off, and you can tell that this was a painstaking process to get right. The developers did an outstanding job making Lara look, act, react, and feel like a real person. I don't mean this in a polygon-perversion sort of way, either. Lara herself is one of the biggest overall improvements in the game. Everyone will have an opinion, but one thing will never be argued: Lara has definitely used some of her earnings to visit a specialized plastic surgeon, if you know what I mean. I do like this game better than the original in some areas, while I wish they would have remained more true to the original in other areas. I feel the same way about Tomb Raider II.
Sure, it was a good game, and it was revolutionary to have a female lead character, but it did have some flaws. When the original Tomb Raider was released, I was one of the few people who was not sucked in by the hype. You'll need to be a Tomb Raider master to pass the later levels.
With the exception of a few new moves, most notably her ability to climb, Lara controls the same as before (nope, no analog support). She faces a few more enemies, too, but the lethal environment (as well as a few awkward camera angles) still remains her greatest adversary. Lara also drives two vehicles, a boat and a snowmobile, during the course of the game, and you'll need both to solve some of the puzzles. She's going to die-a lot-but now you can save the game at any point so you can immediately retry the tricky parts. Lara faces spiked pits, compacting spiked walls, rolling spiked disks and.well, just lots of spiked stuff in general. Where Tomb Raider's emphasis was on exploration, this one is all about traps, traps and more traps. And even when you think the game's done, you get an epilogue adventure (with Lara wearing her skimpiest outfit yet, by the way). Playing through TR2 is like running a marathon (indeed, after each level you're shown how far you've traveled by the very end, I had jogged 86 kilometers). At 18 levels, this sequel is about 30 percent larger than the first game. Lara Croft's second outing may seem similar ' to the first, but TR2 actually packs a lot of subtle-and some not-so-subtle-differences that make it better than the original.
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