Tomb Raider 2
                  Developed by Core Design
                     Published By Eidos
             Price œ40 (cough, choke, splutter)
                 Min. system   P90,16Mb ram
                Rec. System   P166, 3D card
       Supports 3DFX, PowerVR and D3D graphics cards.

          Reviewed by Keeks on a P166 with 32 Megs
               (but still no 3D card *sigh*)

The Hype Machine. What is it about this satanic creation of the
entertainment business that makes people blind to the seemingly
endless crap that they throw at us poor saps? And we can't get
enough of it. We lap it up, every ounce of it, breathing it in
with every breath we take. From T.V to films to books to
computers. It is sad state of affairs. Have we lost our way as a
society, that we now believe whatever the money men want us to
believe? It certainly looks that way. I don't know, or really
care, how much money Eidos or Core Design put into the publicity
of the Tomb Raider games but I know it was a lot of money and it
definitely worked for them. Last year TR2 was the biggest selling
game of the year selling a whopping quarter of a million copies
across all platforms (i.e. including consoles, 80,000+ were sold
on the PC) in Britain. And all that in the 3 week run up to
Christmas. Also the original was the 3rd highest selling game last
year selling in excess of 175,000 copies.

The amount of copies sold or how much money they made out of
cheating people out of their hard earned dosh. What I do want to
know is what did they give the magazines that review the game,
along with the review copies to make the reviewers look at it with
rose tinted glasses? And can I please, please, please have some as
it has to be an illegal substance of some kind.

How can a reviewer look at a game, write an almost totally
negative review about it, list out every major fault with it and
still think it is one of the best games ever made? He named every
sin imaginable to the platform genre as the faults with TR2. Where
do these reviewers come from? I have a theory (to be debated in
full some other time) that there are people who didn't know what
they wanted in life, go get an arts degrees, ended up on the dole,
were plucked from the dole queue, stuck in front of a computer and
told to write. And what do they come up with; 'awe-inspiring
vistas'. I don't know want version he was playing but all I saw
were a few dark tunnels.

The review I'm on about appeared in the Christmas edition of PC
Gamer and was penned by Jon Smith (has to be a pseudonym). If I
copied the review and only changed a few words such as where he
has 'great' I'd have 'crap', I would have a perfect review for my
opinion on the game. But enough of this drivel, how bad is the
game really, then?

As you may have gathered by my slightly negative tone that I
didn't like this game. And you'd be right. It's crap (it's a lot
more than that but I believe that a lot of my true feeling would
lose their meaning in the translation to the written form). I
won't bore you with the plot (?) but it's about finding a dagger

that turns you into a dragon when driven through your heart.
Sounds exciting already.

The problem I find when reviewing games I totally despise is where
do you start? I never played the full version of TR1 but I enjoyed
the two demos and had high hopes that TR2 would be a good game.
The controls are fiddly, there are a lot of graphical glitches,
the sound is of a very poor standard and Lara doesn't have a very
sexy voice. It's lifeless and not the kind of voice from an
adventurer.

Let's start with the controls. Or should that be the lack of
control you have over Lara. The first thing I noticed is that she
has the slowest reactions for a hero/heroine.

I'm not saying that you don't have full control over Lara, it's
just she doesn't do what you want her to do when you want her to
do it. She has a reaction time of about 3 seconds. When you do a
running jump she takes three more steps after you press the 'jump'
button before she actually jumps.  Sometimes it feels you're in
control of an artic with the big wide swings she takes when
turning a corner.

I'm not going to be too hard on the graphics as I don't have a 3D
card (yet) and besides they not that bad. The quality of the
graphics are good and so are a lot of the graphical touches such
as the glass in windows breaking as you shoot it, but far too
often platforms seem to disappear and you appear to be standing in
thin air.  Walls also had this habit and you can see what is
coming ahead of you all too often. Lara herself is extremely well
drawn, as are the enemies but some are a little blocky. One thing
I will say is that the game never slows down no matter what is
happening on screen, but maybe that is only so because there never
seems to be more than 3 or 4 enemies on screen at a time. The
opening and in-game FMV sequences are of first rate quality.

Now let me get to the gameplay. If this game was written in the
early 80s it would be slated straight away because it forgets
about the basic law of platform games; don't have the player
making blind jumps.  All too often I found myself jumping off
platforms not sure where I was going to end up. For a platform
game, and that is all it is, this is a heinous crime. There is no
sense of adventure to be got from playing the game. All you do is
look around for the next switch to pull and look around so more to
see if it did anything like open a door. It's all too linear.

And that's about it. If you liked TR1 you'll love this but my
advice is to have a really good look at what you are playing and
don't let the marketing or PR people fool you.

Overall 55%








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