Tomb Raider Anniversary Edition

[Mike]

MacWorld are reporting that a free download demo of the latest Tomb Raider Anniversary Edition is available. Cool! I might just try that. (if it is mac compatible!)

[Mike]

Well I said that I would try this in February and have finally found the time to try it. I think it may have been a mistake to try because it is ACE! I love the TR franchise though the TRI and TRII were by far the best. I lost interest with TRIII which was just too much of a pain and too buggy for my liking. The one that really miffed me in TRIII was the jumping from rope to rope to get across a cavern. The only problem was that the PS1 jumped mid swing and stopped me from ever making the jump correctly. That was SOOOOOO annoying.

Anyway back to this version, the rendering is smooth and slick, the interaction with the environment is clever and well executed. The acrobatics are clever and there are new ways of interactive with the environment that make the puzzles seem new.

First Impressions? The demo dumps you part way through the first level with no introduction to the controls or how to interact with the environment (remember Lara's House the tutorial levels? They were a very entertaining part of the game! Especially the dumb butler who followed you everywhere grunting) so it was initially frustrating. After that it became rather gripping.

I am swaying between four and five stars but on this occasion I think that is more justified.

[Mike]

Just completed the Demo, fcuk'ing amazing. Just off to buy the game now. There will be another few months of my life wasted. The end taster was a smegging T-Rex. . . there was no way I could have done that with little pistols. . . . note to self. When the game arrives, save you AMMO!

[stimpsonslostson]

When the game arrives, save you AMMO!

Ahh the true sign of a good game. ResEvil4 on Wii is the best shooty/problem solver I've played for this precise reason. You go in all guns blazing and then find that you've run out and are faced with a chainsaw wielding psycho .
Bullet conservation is the key.

I'm not even going to mention the genius of creeping round trying not to shoot ANYONE in MGS.. oh hang on, I just did!
p

[Mike]

I just love the acrobatics on TR. I never really got into the whole Resident Evil thing. I don't quite know why, I suppose it was a bit like the Doom series. Too dark and 'atmospheric' for my liking. Sometimes I like to be out in the open doing some serious co-ordinated jumps!

btw. Doom 4 (the last one I played) was absolutely freaky scary man. I kept jumping at the freakin huge monsters that were jumping out. Never got the hang of the head shot so I constantly ran out of bullets. That made it a bit frustrating and boring.

Sometimes you just want to go in Star Wars Battlefront style - blasting the hell out of everything with unlimited bullets! The star troopers were the best to play in that game (save Hans Solo who was ace!) you could seriously do the whole 'peg it into a room, blast the enemy to shit' and then run out the other end without being killed!

[stimpsonslostson]

tomb raider anniversary edition £22 in my local blockbuster- its preowned with 6month guarantee.
p

[Mike]

For the Mac? Doh! I was not kidding when I said I was going to buy it. Amazon was my friend at £29.99 or summat like that. Should be delivered this week. Well, it better had do!

[Mike]

This has been despatched and will be with me by 11 August?! I hope it will be quicker than that!

[Mike]

It's arrived! Playing Croft Manor is much more involved that in previous iterations. Its like a miniature puzzle in it's own right and although there seems to be a massive refurbishment on at the moment I have managed to lock myself in the library (thus finding a nice pair of GUNS!) and hints of a sinister plot going on. So far the water has been turned off by the people installing the pool, the security system has been 'tampered' with and antiquities are in the wrong places. Once I find a grappling hook I will be rocking!

Its fun fun fun, and this is being played despite being at DnD last night and at Pool this evening. The new exercise regime must NOT suffer!

[Mike]

The smegging T-Rex is doing my head in now, I just cant get the hang of the adrenaline slow motion scenes and I keep getting eaten. Not good. It does not help that the apple mouse won't let you hold down two buttons at once either. Though a poor workman blames his tools. . . . oh well of to do something more productive and read for a bit.

[Mike]

20 times later. Still no luck. The manual says press crouch then the direction key to make a dodge. A website I have read says move the direction you want to go and then press crouch. Am rather annoyed with it today so will try again tomorrow. The whole process is rather frustrating, you would have thought they would have tested this out on real people before publishing the whole game.

In all honesty though, I think it is made harder because you can not manually target the creature using the right mouse button with an apple mouse and shoot at the same time (ie press right and left buttons simultaneously) I have two work arounds to try tomorrow.

First. Set the targeting to Advance Toggle then try the dodging.
Second. Press and hold the target alternative G on the keyboard (that sounds painful on the old hands though).

[Mike]

The first tip worked just fine and I did the whole cut scene first time once it was changed. In fact it was very easy. . . . I suppose that means you should always have the right tools for the job! Ie a mouse with two separate buttons. . . .

[mr_e]

I didn't realise that the Mac mice still had that lovely design feature! It's almost like they just didn't want to break the nice clean lines on the mouse...

Still, annoying parts of games frustrate the hell out of me (anyone remember the final mission on Driver, where they just boosted all the AI-controlled stats?) so it's good to see you've gotten around your Jurassic Park moment. Are there velociraptors waiting for Ms Croft next?

[stimpsonslostson]

anyone remember the final mission on Driver,

Oh GOD! yes. That was IMPOSSIBLE! I managed it once, after 2weeks of trying everything I could think of! that had to be the hardest videogame level I've EVER played.
p

[mr_e]

Yup, sounds like the one. I lucked out and did it relatively quickly, but it still stands as one of the worst level-design philosophy moments ever. The replay functions were really, really cool for the time, though. Thinking about it, they still are: I've not seen anything similar since.

On a random note, I remember once about ten years ago there were two guys on our pool team, at least in their mid 30s, discussing a Tomb Raider level. Such is the mass appeal and longevity of the franchise...