What was so great about early tomb raider games?
- Thread starter B-Cell_v1legacy
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Yeah early 3D games have not aged well and I honestly disliked the franchise even back then. Clunkly controls, bad combat, puzzles that existed just to pad out the game and mostly involved pushing and pulling giant cubes.
For reasons like this game, I am really not interested in the playstation 1 classic. Bad era in graphics and controls.
For reasons like this game, I am really not interested in the playstation 1 classic. Bad era in graphics and controls.
Basically, what everyone else is saying. Nostalgia, limited choice, people didn't know how to do the whole platforming thing, not liking the way games have developed, get off my lawn you punk kids, etc.
I don't even get the sex appeal, because she managed to look less human than Dot from ReBoot.
I remember them being kind of fun back in the day, though, so I can understand riding that nostalgia wave into judging the current one.
I don't even get the sex appeal, because she managed to look less human than Dot from ReBoot.
I remember them being kind of fun back in the day, though, so I can understand riding that nostalgia wave into judging the current one.
Eh, it depends on the game and the system. A LOT of Playstation games look really bad just because they lack Z-buffering so everything looks like it's floating in water. I don't want to be blinded by nostalgia but I find that N64 games hold up better graphically like Banjo-Kazooie.jademunky said:
But another problem with Playstation games is part of the success of the Playstation which is the large library, they let just about anyone put out a game on the system which led to a bigger library for people but also a lot more poor or experimental games like Enemy Zero that... don't really have the best understanding of what makes a game fun.
Can't say I'm nostalgic for the older games at all, and I still consider them better action adventures than the current ones. New Tomb Raider just seems to wanna try and emulate Naughty Dog, but without any of the charm or character. Maybe once they recast Lara and make her a just a treasure hunter again, instead her trying dig up her past or parents or something...Something Amyss said:
I meant Uncharted. The only one I could stand was the one where Claudia Black took over. Lara wins the "charm" contest in the same sense that she beats King Koopa in the "being human" contest by, well, technically being the only human in the race. After letting Drake get killed over and over lost all novelty in Uncharted 1, I turned off my console and sold it (not a horrible thing, since I got the disc free with my PS3) and ignored it until 3 became a free download for Plus, and...yeah. I'm not sure where he charm kicks in, but apparently it involves an ancient artifact that can give him a different personality.Casual Shinji said:
Tomb Raider, on the other hand, I hardly ever tried to kill Lara.
Yep, and I meant current Tomb Raider. Not that Uncharted is a bastion of charm and personality, but compared to what Tomb Raider is now it's like a super nova of charm. Again, maybe if they get rid of Camilla Luddington (Shadow is apparently her last time) they can start casting someone who can act and who doesn't sound like her nose is perpetually stuffed. Seriously, every grunt and effort noise she makes is like nails on a chalk board. But judging by the writing and the acting of the side characters in the '13 reboot she really wasn't the only problem.Something Amyss said:
As an old fart who was 15 when the first Tomb Raider debuted, I can confirm a couple of things.
Firstly, the supposed sex appeal was mostly just a lame media joke that was repeated ad nauseam (teenage boys alone in darkened rooms, playing a game with a female lead for hours on end, they MUST be masturbating, lololol). Although rumours of a nude patch were the stuff of playground legend, even for a hormonal teenage boy the original Lara wasn't really eye candy. Arguably that was added in later games as the graphics evolved, but perfectly pyramidal breasts? Please.
Secondly, the clunky controls were a source of great frustration even at the time. We may have been exploring a bold new experimental 3D frontier but that didn't mean we were completely taste-blind to clunky control schemes that were so confusing that people would accidentally swan-dive into ravines instead of carefully lowering themselves because the controls and camera were such a mess. People raged about the crappy controls and the unfair deaths.
What Tomb Raider did correctly was to be the first 3D game to successfully incorporate the sense of wonder and exploration into what could have easily been a straightforward action game. Truth be told we were fairly undiscerning gamers and many devs were content to ride the 3D hype and profited richly from half-assed arena shooters and platformers, so to take a stab at a more complex genre-blend was a gutsy move. Action-adventure or platform-RPG games had existed in the previous hardware generation but they were seen as something of an evolutionary dead end. Probably the best received example was Flashback, but it's notorious as the game where perhaps the majority of players never saw the end of the second level, due to poorly tutorialised game mechanics. Plenty of comparisons were made between Flashback and Tomb Raider (both in positive and denigrating senses) but Tomb Raider managed to win the public over despite all if it's many shortcomings.
A lot of what captured the gaming imagination were hype moments that have completely evaporated by now. But back in 1997, the promise of exploring big environments in a setting that wasn't FPS was really something. The bits where you dived and swam underwater were really mind blowing. The big enemies like the famous T Rex were really New for a 3D Game too. I'm really struggling to explain why all of these features were so exciting then, when they're utterly pedestrian and standard now. I guess you just had to be there.
Firstly, the supposed sex appeal was mostly just a lame media joke that was repeated ad nauseam (teenage boys alone in darkened rooms, playing a game with a female lead for hours on end, they MUST be masturbating, lololol). Although rumours of a nude patch were the stuff of playground legend, even for a hormonal teenage boy the original Lara wasn't really eye candy. Arguably that was added in later games as the graphics evolved, but perfectly pyramidal breasts? Please.
Secondly, the clunky controls were a source of great frustration even at the time. We may have been exploring a bold new experimental 3D frontier but that didn't mean we were completely taste-blind to clunky control schemes that were so confusing that people would accidentally swan-dive into ravines instead of carefully lowering themselves because the controls and camera were such a mess. People raged about the crappy controls and the unfair deaths.
What Tomb Raider did correctly was to be the first 3D game to successfully incorporate the sense of wonder and exploration into what could have easily been a straightforward action game. Truth be told we were fairly undiscerning gamers and many devs were content to ride the 3D hype and profited richly from half-assed arena shooters and platformers, so to take a stab at a more complex genre-blend was a gutsy move. Action-adventure or platform-RPG games had existed in the previous hardware generation but they were seen as something of an evolutionary dead end. Probably the best received example was Flashback, but it's notorious as the game where perhaps the majority of players never saw the end of the second level, due to poorly tutorialised game mechanics. Plenty of comparisons were made between Flashback and Tomb Raider (both in positive and denigrating senses) but Tomb Raider managed to win the public over despite all if it's many shortcomings.
A lot of what captured the gaming imagination were hype moments that have completely evaporated by now. But back in 1997, the promise of exploring big environments in a setting that wasn't FPS was really something. The bits where you dived and swam underwater were really mind blowing. The big enemies like the famous T Rex were really New for a 3D Game too. I'm really struggling to explain why all of these features were so exciting then, when they're utterly pedestrian and standard now. I guess you just had to be there.
Two different things.Specter Von Baren said:
The "floating in water" effect is because the PS1 is a 2D machine. It has a chip that does fast vector math(for 3d) but it can't render a true 3D polygon with hardware. You can achieve 3D by drawing triangular 2D sprites, but the texturing will not take perspective into account and will be visibly distorted. You can minimize the problem by subdividing polygons, but this means a higher polygon count and the issue will still be visible.
Z-buffering ensures that close objects are not obscured by distant objects. The environments in Tomb Raider are actually structured in such a way that they can be drawn correctly with the painter's algorithm, so they don't actually need Z-buffering. Unfortunately the renderer either doesn't take advantage of this structure or doesn't do it correctly. Fortunately the errors are uncommon, and in any case we have the PC/Dreamcast versions.
Name some better games that were available for the PS1 by the end of 1996. Your examples fail both countsB-Cell said:
Also, the camera and controls don't break the game. The third person camera isn't great, but there is a button to look around in first person and you generally have time to use it.
The controls are awkward, but are quite dependable when jumping. There isn't really anything that becomes much harder than it should be due to the controls, so I think this is a minor nitpick.
Tomb Raider was great for its time. There really wasn?t anything else like it at the time. Times, however, quickly changed, which is why the sequels quickly dropped in ratings scores. By 2018, the original games are relics.
Name anything that was released in the time of Tomb Raider that can match its scale and atmosphere. It can?t be done.
Name anything that was released in the time of Tomb Raider that can match its scale and atmosphere. It can?t be done.
Going back will suck yes. However, when the game came it, in relation to other games it was pretty great. Exploration, wonder, puzzles, combat. It was new , exciting and different. Comparing it to modern ( graphics, controls and sex-appeal) is just unfair. There is a reason this IP survived so long. It's not nostalgia, if it was truly great for it'a time.Xsjadoblayde said:
To be fair,very few Ps1 games have aged well,mostly due to the low polygon count. ( Little side note, i expect the psone classic to do poorly because of this). But at the time it was fantastic.