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GREAT MOMENTS IN GAMING: THE AMPHITHEATRE IN TOMB RAIDER (1996)

13/9/2016

18 Comments

 
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It's odd to think that my first experience of Tomb Raider was on the Saturn. We forget that for a long time Lara Croft was so synonymous with the PlayStation - becoming an icon of mid-90s Cool Britannia - despite hitting Sega's doomed console first.

Inevitably, Tomb Raider would look and play better on the PlayStation and PC, but I was none the wiser until later. That brief period of Saturn exclusivity certainly propelled the machine to strong early sales - but the later comparison between versions became yet another step on Sega's endless death march to hardware oblivion.

For most of us in the UK, it was the first proper 3D platformer; Super Mario 64 was still some months off a European release when Tomb Raider came out.

Suffice to say, it was a revelation - and every single plaudit that was lobbed its way was earned and justified. Including all the ones calling into question the assertions from Ian Livingstone and others that the hot-panted Lara Croft was a feminist icon.
ORIGINAL
I played the original Tomb Raider yesterday, for the first time in a very, very long time. It has aged, of course. Lara's pointed breasts are very much of their era, and the controls really are a pain in the secret parts; simply lining up to pull a switch is eight times the faff it needs to be.

But it still has something special, and for me it's the atmosphere. Somehow, those rough-hewn polygons and the limited draw distance conspire to evoke a dank, endless, emptiness. It feels somehow dangerous, like you're entering locations which haven't seen another human in centuries. That sensation is helped by the sparseness and economy of the soundtrack. There's restraint at play, of a sort you rarely see in games these days.

If there's one moment in that original which has stayed with me above all others, its when you enter the ruined amphitheatre in level 6. At the time, I had to linger, and just take it in; until that point the levels had been claustrophobic, littered with jagged rocks and boulders.

Somehow, I had turned a corner, and stepped out into an open space, which stretched off into gloom. As the delicate music swelled up, it spread out before me. It felt impossibly vast. Even though the Saturn couldn't quite cope - the corners were shrouded in shadow - that just added to the mystery: what was this ancient place doing so far underground? Why were there tigers in there? Who had built it? What lurked in the darkness?

I didn't need to know Lara's backstory, or her inner turmoil. I didn't need the character to be mourning the death of her father, or suffering from PTSD. I just revelled in the sheer awesomeness of what was before me. And I had discovered it. I was an explorer.
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UNHAPPY ANNIVERSARY
Everything I loved about that moment was ruined in 2007's Tomb Raider Anniversary.

Already by level 6 of the anniversary edition, the soundtrack had become a near constant accompaniment to my adventuring, scoring the exploration with a sledgehammer subtlety. Yet I knew what was ahead: my amphitheatre. The one I'd discovered more than ten years before. Surely it couldn't have changed that much?

Except this time, when I stepped into the space, it switched to a fully CGI cutscene. With gorillas. Throwing rocks at Lara Croft. There was no time to linger, or reflect. It propelled me immediately into battle.

The choral music swelled, building in tempo, becoming operatic, and in that something was lost. They took away ​everything that I had loved about that original moment. I was no longer in control. I wasn't allowed to feel what I wanted to feel. Instead, I was having it dictated to me.

Rather than let me feel awe, they were ramming a pre-packed emotional response down my throat; your life is in danger! These big gorillas are going to tear you apart! Quickly - shoot them! It's exciting, yeah?

There was no space or time to enjoy the sheer thrill of exploration, to bask in the discovery as I had in the original. I felt like I was being funnelled through the action as quickly as possible.

​The moment had been redefined for a new generation of gamers, whose attention-spans couldn't be trusted. Instead of being left alone to explore as I once had, I had descended into the catacombs with a full orchestra and team of CGI artists. 

Unfortunately, over the next ten years, that heavy-handed approach to Tomb Raider would only get worse.
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
GAMES OF MY YEARS: GAME BOY - BY MR BIFFO
GAMES OF MY YEARS: ASTRO WARS BY MR BIFFO
THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: SEGA MASTER SYSTEM - PART ONE BY MR BIFFO​


18 Comments
Blake
13/9/2016 12:12:09 pm

While there is little we can do about "dramatic" cut-scenes, but so very often, turning off music is the first thing I do after first launch, even before changing resolution. Rarely is the music good enough for me to allow it to break my anticipation.

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Chris Wyatt
13/9/2016 12:45:23 pm

I remember going round someone's house as a kid, and her brother was playing this game on his Saturn. That's when I decided I wanted a Saturn.

He was playing the Lost World level (if that's what it's called)? You know, the one with the valley and the dinosaurs. Maybe it was Lost Valley? Or am I thinking of Spielberg's Land Before Time now?

I think the girl had an Amiga and it was a hand-me-down-me-do from her brother. I got a bollocking from my mum for being more interested in my friend's computers than them. Ha.

Another reason for getting a Saturn was feeling that I missed out on Sonic, as all my friends had Mega Drives and I had a SNES. Parents, brother, shopkeepers; all were trying to talk me out of getting the Saturn; so you can see why it failed abysmally with all the persuasion to the other camp. I don't regret the decision, and in a way I'm perhaps glad I picked it over the Playstation. There were still plenty of great games, and seeing as my family couldn't afford to buy me tonnes of games, it's not like I was going to get through many of them anyway.

On the letters section on Digi, the theme was 'scary games' or something. I posted about this game, as it would freak me out playing it late at night; the claustrophobic-ness and the bare soundtrack; eerie silence until suddenly the strings are being played and you can hear the plid-plodding of Velociraptor's. My mum wouldn't let me have my own email account at the time, so the letter got printed with my mum's name instead of mine, I seem to recall. The letter was pretty lame, and I was surprised it got printed.

Sometimes the music wouldn't play at the right time, and would kick inafter you'd killed everything, stirring you into a panic when there wasn't actually anything left alive.

Probably, the best way to play this now is via DOSBox using a Glide wrapper and a high-resolution texture pack. The Glide wrapper allowed you to use much higher resolutions (e.g. 1280x1024), and the texture pack I used looked much nicer and was faithful to the original look and feel. I did this several years back, and was in awe at how good it looked.

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Stoo
13/9/2016 01:27:45 pm

Never played the old Tom Raider, but I can appreciate those wonderful moments of stumbling into places that are deep, dark and ancient, and a bit eerie. Quite a lot of that in the original Thief: The Dark Project.

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Jenuall
13/9/2016 09:24:56 pm

Indeed, one of many reasons why The Dark Project is a classic. I replay the first two Thief games every few years, still so good!

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lilock3
13/9/2016 01:58:19 pm

Poor Donkey Kong. Obviously he was jealous that Lara's popularity had eclipsed his own and decided to sabotage her game - only to be cruelly shot down by YOU! Poor Donkey Kong...

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Chris Wyatt
13/9/2016 03:28:02 pm

Now you mention it, after he moved out of the hustle and bustle of the city, being attacked by estranged Italian plumbers, he did hide away in a cave somewhere, hoarding bananas -- or am I thinking of Bin Laden?

Never mind.

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J
13/9/2016 08:32:56 pm

Buff Kangaroo got him.

znidz link
13/9/2016 02:20:15 pm

"endless death march to hardware oblivion" is a great Atari Teenage Riot track

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Damon link
13/9/2016 02:46:30 pm

I've said before (somewhere, to someone, ask around) that newer games don't seem to want to let the player explore. Even Skyrim usually forces you on some kind of guided sidequest if you want to explore. Why can't I just decide for myself I want to do something? Why does the game need to tell me what I CAN do?

I remember when I was younger in the games I played growing up... I would experiment to see what I COULD do. For years in Mario 64 I did a hard jump inside the pyramid which was not the intended way... until a friend later pointed out the intended way.

Now games seem to be very "my way or the highway". There's no sense of exploring or figuring them out. they're all kill, loot pillage.

Not to mention a lack of atmosphere. I think the bad hardware forced level designers to be more creative. Now that they can just render what they want -- if it lags oh well blame the user or console manufacturer then patch it later-- they don't need to be creative, so they aren't.

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Kelvin Green link
13/9/2016 07:54:51 pm

I sometimes (often) wish that these games developers who are so intent on making films would just go and make films instead, and leave us to our games.

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MattL
21/9/2016 12:30:15 am

I agree with this sentiment. I think it stems from some sort of inferiority complex that certain types of gamers - and I guess game developers - have, needing to prove that games are as good as films when there is no point making a comparison. They're different artforms. It's funny that the kind of games scores the self-described 'hardcore' love and hold up as examples of great music would just be considered generic blockbuster bilge if they accompanied a movie. Yet this chippy lot band together and vote Skyrim higher than Mozart and Beethoven in the Classic FM chart most years now...

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Paulvw
13/9/2016 08:07:37 pm

There were great sound effects to give you the feeling of being in wide open space when you were up high in the original. Plus the save point diamonds were a fair challenge, a bit dark souls bonfirey, rather than the save where you want system in the later games that completely destroyed the pace of the game.

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Jenuall
13/9/2016 09:53:30 pm

The sense of isolation, exploration and discovery in TR1 is still hugely impressive even 20 years on.

I replayed both the first and second games over last Christmas and it's so disappointing just how much the style of the game changed even back then. The first game is all about exploring isolated, practically empty locations with the odd bat or other wild creature trying to eat you to spice things up. You're free to explore, learn about the space you're in, and solve some pretty well formulated puzzles. In the first level of the sequel your funelled down a single route and are pushed through a bunch of instant kill proto-QTE scenarios (sequences of moving walls, rolling boulders etc.) that feel so far removed from the original. Then you have a series of Venice based levels where Lara, who although she kills a lot of animals in TR1 only fights about 4 people for the entire game, turns into a mass murderer and seems to gun down scores of goons with each level.

It was really surprising going back to them after all these years to see just how much changed between the first two games. I know they lost Toby Gard after the original but it's like the developers weren't even aware of what made the first game so good!

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Virtual Hermit
14/9/2016 12:03:29 am

Ah yes Tomb raider, I first played it on my playstation and loved it to bits. It was all about the exploration, traversing those dank catacombs and ancient mysterious places. There was a strong sense of loneliness which really hit home how far away you were from civilisation. I seem to remember the music was few and far betwwen and only kicked in for important moments, great stuff.

I've played pretty much all the other Tomb raider games but nothing beats the original. I feel I must mention Tomb raider - The last revelation, it felt like a return to the original games strengths, I almost finished it but got stuck years ago and never completed it.

I implore you to give Tomb raider - The last revelation a go, it was the fourth game in the series and I believe the last one to appear on the PSone.

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Dangerous Dave
14/9/2016 01:32:59 am

Tomb Raider was one of my first playstation games. It would be many months before I got my first memory card, so I knew the opening six or seven levels very, very well.

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KummaSumma
14/9/2016 08:42:40 am

I've been waiting for someone to say/write this for a long time.

I got TR with my PlayStation one Christmas and remember going to my room at around 8pm, hooking up the hifi to the console, turning off the lights and settling in for an all night crank-athon... I mean TR session.
I've always thought the original was underrated and overshadowed by Lara's character as portrayed in the mainstream media and the godawful films that came after.
The feeling of being airlocked miles underground in an environment that was long ago abandoned (yet somehow sustained the contents of a well stocked zoo) was utterly believable- much like a great horror or scifi film where the plot sounds ridiculous and unbelievable yet when carried by great actors and a good script somehow becomes gripping in its plausibility.
Yes, soundtrack is sparse, beautiful and perfectly mirrored by the deafening silence between the pieces.
Have also always felt let down by any sequels for the very same reasons you have mentioned.
I miss that game a lot- and possibly in part due to that period of my life before a career and kids where I had enough time to play games (let alone do all night sessions).
Thanks again for the well put eulogy.

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GP
14/9/2016 09:12:24 am

Similar gaming moment for me was in Unreal when you first step out of the spaceship, vortex rikers.

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Peter
14/12/2016 02:37:31 am

A well written article that I completely agree with. The first time I played TR was such an awe inspiring moment that the memory is so fresh with me, it was like it was yesterday. That step up from playing NES & Megadrive games to the thing of sheer beauty in Tomb Raider was such a steep step that even today, 20+ years on, I look back on it at as a moment of great importance in my gaming life and life in general! KummaSumma makes some great points and I reminisce with him about those glory days of games like Tomb raider. I'm a 30+ something person now but even if I got the time to play games today, I really wouldn't want to because the quality simply isn't there. We grew up in time when a very special game like Tomb Raider was released, we should be forever thankful for this.

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