Tomb Raider

Tomb Raiders
Puzzle Platform - Sega Saturn
Battery Backup - 1 save
1 player

While I've always heard many good things about the original Tomb Raider, I never had a chance to play it. The Saturn version is reputably better of the two console ports, and the "s" in Tomb Raiders indicates the Japanese port. Aside from being disappointed that it's Jp dubbed, I was happy to bypass those humongous US cases.

Being a Saturn 3D title, I was immediately skeptical about its performance. Granted, TR would seem very dated by today's gamers no matter what. The textures are grainy, and pixellation is everywhere. But for its time, Saturn TR is one of the smoothest 3D titles on the system, with little framerate stutter. That leaves the game open to do its thing.

And Tomb Raider's thing is exploration. You play as Lara, searching ancient sites for treasures and artifacts. The locations are very mysterious and really lend themselves to puzzle-platformer mechanics. You get the impression that whoever built these sites did not want anyone to waltz into them and pillage. So there are puzzles to figure out, traps to avoid, and stretches & stretches of silence. The greatest asset to the game is its minimalism. Although the game has music, it is rarely used. There are also very few enemies in the game, and of these, most of them are what you would expect in an abandoned environment - bats and rodents are common occurances. What this means is that for most of the game, you are completely alone, with the sounds of just your footsteps and grunts accentuating that solitude. And it works. I found myself being overwhelmed by the vast unknown environments. I found myself being spooked when a tiger pounced on me after rushing into a new room. I found myself completely feeling what Lara was feeling. TR excels on a psychological level.

But all that would be moot if the game was lacking. Luckily, Tomb Raider has a really good mix of puzzles and platforming. The puzzles range anywhere from moving boxes around to flipping switches to figuring out how to traverse a field of traps without dying. There's quite a bit of variety to them, and the difficulty seems about right. Perhaps one aspect of the game that may not resonate well with people are its tank controls. That leaves Lara at a slight disadvantage in mobility, making combat and efficient movement a little bit cumbersome. But what is gained in the tank controls is its platform jumping precision. Each ledge is carefully designed to be a certain distance away from other ledges. The control scheme offers pinpoint accuracy in jumping distances, so being off by even one step could mean certain death. Every jump is calculated, and it's only achieveable by the tank controls. Loosey-goosey controls would not offer the same level of consistency. You get the impression that every single platform challenge in the game is a carefully crafted scenario.

I had a lot of fun with the game. It felt immersive. It felt challenging. It felt very detailed and meticulously designed. There's tons of secrets to explore and the environments are such that you want to explore. Every solved puzzle actually feels like an accomplishment, as you dig deeper and deeper into the sites. Strangely, the inclusion of other people in the game hampers its focus. It's as if the designers weren't sure if you'd be bored with natural predators and threw in people to fire back at you. The problem with that is it taints the overall feeling of solitude. Whereas stumbling upon a pack of alligators can be creepy, finding human opponents in these ruins come off as an annoyance. Still, the heart of the game is exploration and to that end, this is the best gaming effort I've played.