My chum Julian, who is a prince amongst men, contrived to acquire me a copy of Lara Croft’s latest outing for the PC… Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. I have been very keen to see what could be done with this franchise now that all aspects of games technology have advanced so far.
Alas, although I am only about a third of the way through it so far, I am mightily unimpressed. The graphics are downright primitive: there is simply no excuse for representing tree branches and foliage with 2-D sprites these days. Character models are boringly drawn, lack detail and either do not lip-synch at all or do so very badly. Two female character in the part I have just finished use exactly the same face model, hands look like baseball gloves … if graphically speaking U2003 powered ‘Splinter Cell’ is the current state of the art, then Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness is at least two years behind the curve. It is little more than a re-hash of the last Tomb Raider, which was looking tired even back then. The some of the graphics purporting to show the game on the Internet are misleading to put it mildly. If there is a way to get it to look that way I have yet to discover it. And yes, I am using a fairly high-end PC with a good graphics card and half a gig of RAM.
Additionally, the voice acting is flat, the controls are a f**king nightmare when attempting precise manoeuvres, camera control is dreadful and sometimes simply does not work at all, the story line is just a re-hash of all that went before it… in short, the whole bloody thing is un-engaging and frustrating.
To make matters worse, the program is buggy as hell, with entire documented features apparently unimplemented (I have yet to get ‘sprint’ to work no matter what key I map it to and unarmed combat does not seem to do much either). One character (a bartender) chats to Lara whilst appearing to be turned inside-out and all manner of graphic anomalies are scattered throughout the game, strongly suggesting extremely sloppy beta testing by the makers. I honestly cannot think of a single positive thing to say about this game.
I will probably complete the game regardless but if they had managed as much humour and snappy dialogue as someone did with the promotional stuff for the game, I might not be playing with gritted teeth.
Given that the ‘Lara Croft’ franchise is such a valuable property, if I was a shareholder with money invested in this I would be looking for boardroom-heads-on-spikes about now. I am very glad I got this game as a present but I would not recommend it to anyone. Save your pounds/bucks/euros etc. and wait for Half Life 2 and Deus Ex: Invisible War.
Hi Perry,
Have you tried that Dead-or-Alive, Xtreme Beach Volleyball, which I’ve seen advertised on the backs of buses, up and down Oxford Street?
Now that looks like it’s full of the latest graphics! 🙂
Rgds,
AndyD
Perry, I’d like to think that if graphic anomalies and glitches are really so frequent the problem relates to your hardware and not the lack of testing performed. Hopefully another reader has played this game and can comment on whether or not the problems you experienced can in fact be attributed exclusively to bad design.
I used to really like the Tomb Raider series but I’ve not purchased the last two or three games because I became rather bored – I’m not at all surprised to read that this latest game is yet another rehash of the once brilliant and original winning formula of the series.
Stephen: The most common graphic glitches I have seen are strange floating artifacts and smearing for the most part… I have recently run CFS3, IL-2, Elite Force 2, Devestation, Splinter Cell, Unreal 2 and UT 2003 all without wierd graphic strangeness like those I have seen on TR:Angel of Darkness. Sure, it could be a local config issue, but I doubt it.
I know how you feel Perry. I have always loathed TR so I won’t be bothering with it. Oddly enough, I have had a similar experience this weekend with Spyhunter. The game crashed 3 times in the first 90 minutes. In addition, the graphics are nothing special (cut-scenes are impressive looking if boring) as well. Its so bad I am taking it back to the shop. Kudos to Aspyr for a simulatenous release Mac/PC but jeez the game blows.
The game with the least glitches in recent memory was NOLF Mac. It ran beautifully, never crashed (which is for me a huge deal) and was great fun to play.
If I have to exchange the game I shall get Bloodrayne which is not supposed to be that great either. At least I can review for Chronicles (Vampire) magazine as well.
Eidos was eager to get the game out before June 30 so it could book sales for its 2003 fiscal year. I wonder if a rush to market meant they had to pass on fixing some of the bugs. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened in this industry. Gamers will forgive almost any delay if the end result is worth it but can be merciless if they feel they have been handed a crappy product. It will be interesting to see how Eidos fares out of all this.
Perhaps Eidos are hoping to get away with doing what a lot of games manufacturers who rush products out now hope to get away with: Releasing patches and bugfixes in coming months which address problems they know they left in the final code?
Westwood/EAP certainly used this tactic with “Command and Conquer: Generals” (releasing the first patch on the same day as the UK release and only a week after the US release and the second patch three days after the UK release). I’ve reason to believe Ubisoft and Lucas Arts have used this practice in the past too.
I just bought tomb raider AOD
and while I admit the graphic glitches are large I can live with them as far at the new game is concerned the new elements are very cool steath mode hand to hand combat – which works fine for me and the inproved graphics It’s a good game but I am disapointed in thier sloppyness if you can’t take the bugs put in on the shelf for 3-4 months and wait for the patches. It’s a very good game at the heart with many new interesting features