Tomb Raider 1 Analysis - written by Scottlee - Level 15 The Great Pyramid

Review

Scores

Review

In the FMV prior to the final level, Natla is more suitably dressed for an office board meeting rather than a confrontation with the world's toughest female at the top of a tower filled with slimy death traps. Maybe that's what put Lara off her guard. I know I certainly wouldn't have let queen biitch push me off that ledge before getting a single shot in. It wouldn't be the last time our Lara would mess it up at the final hurdle, either. (Willard *cough* Hut *cough* Soup *cough* Antartica).

No point crying over spilt milk though. Lara gets pushed off and that's it. Deal with it love! Such a sentiment brings me to the main talking point of the mini-movie, that of how on earth Lara gets pushed with such velocity that she could cling to the side of the other ledge. I watched it through about 15 times last night because I'm a whiny so and so and also because these irrelevencies start to become interesting when you haven't had a new title for two and a half years.

I've got one workable theory. Do you remember Superman 2, where those guys in black came down to earth with the super human strength of the man of steel himself? Remember how when one of them hit someone the victim would fly through the air in a straight line until they hit something? Well we know how Natla has some kind of inhuman power. How else would she fly? Perhaps that power enabled her to push Lara a lot further than a nomral person could, hence why Lara could reach the other ledge?

Anyway, The Great Pyramid is a lot more than just the end boss tussle I expected it to be. It's almost a full level, in fact. First up comes a fight-to-the-death with a kind of Atlantean experiment gone wrong. Then we get an intermission of traps, boobys, sprints, and jumps to get past. Then finally it's another confrontation with Natla again, only on this occasion you're not protected by the player invincibility that comes with watching an FMV.

The initial arm-wrestle with the Atlantean is probably the level highlight though. The sheer design of the thing is almost enough to win it this honour. I say 'thing', but that's exactly what I'm going to call it from now on. Over the course of these analysis threads I've come up with all kinds of stupid pet names for the creatures I'm supposed to have been killing ; horseymen, boneymen etc. Well, I'm all out of creative suggestion now. So I'm just going to call that boss creature "The Thing". In reality it's probably not biologically versatile enough to be properly compared to John Carpenter's Thing. A much more appropriate comparison might come from the film, The Fly, where an experiment goes wrong at the end and out pops an abomination the likes of which you couldn't imagine ever being produced twice. TR's "The thing", also compares well to what’s left of The Terminator after Michael Biehn blows it in half with a stick dynamite. And if you’re sick of film analogies, how much of the opinion do you share that TR’s “The Thing” has the same haircut as Fabrizio Ravenelli?

Ok, Enough of that. Despite it's ugly looks, The Thing still manages IMO to be the most enjoyable boss fight of the series. TR2's end battle matches it for gameplay, but not when it comes to the imagination fed into the creature design. The Thing is a piece of artwork never seen before and never likely to be seen again. The adversory in the Dragon's lair on the other hand is just a token red dragon. The merits of the TR3 end boss are the other way round. Plenty of thought has gone into the design of the monster, but little if any on the gameplay. All you do is run around a circular ledge and occasionally turn round to shoot. And of course there weren't really any bosses at all in TR4 and 5. So, well done Mr Thing. In ScottLeeLand you are now officially the best TR boss of all time. Just don't spend your £25 worth of book tokens all at once.

Natla's appearance at the end is more of a sting-in-the-tail last stand than a boss fight. It's good fun though, and the sheer enormity of the room she confronts you in makes it much more than just another 'jump from side to side and avoid the fireballs' situation. Natla swings this way and that is if trying out for the national Quidditch team. She clearly doesn't want Lara to just swan off out of the building in one piece. She even finds it in her to pick herself up for one last shootout after Lara's blasted her out of the sky. Good show Jacqeline. Top marks for effort.

The sandwich filling of these two confrontations is a rather tasty little assault course, a course made all the more harder by the tendancy on my TR1 disc to mess up at this point and cause the screen to start shaking. I guess it must be scratched or something. Oh well. The same thing happened the other night when I was in the earth section of the Lost City of Tinnos on TR3. Such is life. No point taking the games back to where I bought them from, I suppose. The guy would probably just laugh at me and say "Well what do you want for 15 knicker?"

The elements to the assault course are all more or less taken from the various parts of TR1 that have come before it. This is certainly no Krypton Factor though. One could rant all day about the multiple death variations you face during this little segment. It's all well implemented into the scenery, however. I can't see any causes for criticism or complaint, unless you're the sort who quickly gets bored of the trial and error sections of the TR games. Sure we could do with more puzzles in a level. But you have to look at a final stage a bit differently than what you would the others. This is an escape, a dash, a sprint for the exit. Could you really have Lara floating backwards and forwards with keys when the foundations are shaking so much and about to collapse? Well...you could I suppose, and that's what brings me to my final point.

Take your mind back to the scene where you have to slowly walk Lara through an assortment of spikes. Wouldn't it be great if they had something like this in the TR movies - a big temple about to collapse and Lara being forced to sweat over something that requires fleeting movements? It's absent gems like this that just can't be compensated for by emotionless forays through the snow on dog-led sledges. Hey Mr movie maker! Play TR1 before you write your next Lara script. You just find more inspiration than you can write down. And you can start by making a note to include those falling swords. 8/10

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Scores

Best part - If your a PSX owner, the walk down the corridor right after you kill The Thing is very disturbing. I say that because you can only save when you see a blue crystal on TR1, and right after you kill the The Thing you automatically think "Uh oh, give me a damn crystal!!". So, off down the next corridor you go to look for one, at which point you start to hear the distant sound of a mish-masher. It's hard to explain why that's scary in just words. Perhaps a PSX forum member can help me out.

Worst part - Those unrealistic lava flows! Only in TR1.

Secrets - 3/3 good ones. These three are the best in the game. I had no idea about the first one until I looked it up on Stella's site just now. The other two I've always been aware of but been put off trying for because of the risk factor. The next time I play TR1 (which will be the 6th), I'll definitely have to go for all secrets.

This 100th link I came across when I typed "The Great Pyramid" into the Google search engine

http://papertoys.com/pyramid.htm

This is actually quite bizarre. Click on the link and see for yourself. "Send your friend a great pyramid!" LOL

This level is most like....
The Great wall, Natla's mines

percentage probability that Tony blair lies out of his backside on a daily basis - 100%

Final word - An overall review of the original Tomb Raider game I put onto another site back on Feb 25, 2002

Title - "Tomb Raiding is fun"

Pros
Innovative new 3D exploration format

Cons
Under-developed graphics

The Bottom Line
To re-iterate popular opinion, Tomb Raider DOES provide a rare balance in an industry full of 'one or the others' - in this case Action and thought.

Full Review

A catalyst for a billion discussions in a billion bedrooms worldwide, this seemingly 100% commercial idea of planting a female heroine in an Indian Jones' style video game is a great success. Lara Croft is a warming presence in even the most dangerous of situations. And what a game she has to run around pouting in!

"Tomb Raider" has some of the most interesting level designs I've seen in over ten years of gaming. They're not the endless Einstein maps of some of the lesser budget RPGs usually seen on the PC. But in the context of what this game is about, I don't honestly think that highlighting Lara's 'debut' was the best marketing ploy to go for with this game. The structure of the game itself is too good.

Of course, not everything can be perfect. The graphics fall far short of what should be expected in this day and age. And the final FMV you encounter on concluding the game is short and hurried to say the least. I actually only counted five or six in the entire game. Given the obvious appeal of Lara's sultry personality, more effort could have been made with scripting.

In completely the opposite direction of the praise/criticism scale, TR's music is exquisite. The timing of the short orchestral pieces that crop up now and again are second only to the quality. From sharp and jolting bursts of pace whenever Lara is in imminent danger, to creepy, mystical ditties in times of curious discoveries, this games' music is something the owners of a Hollywood movie wouldn't mind possessing. I personally stuck the game C.D in my hi-fi one morning whilst getting ready for work.

If we're going to go self-referential in the light of the concluding sentence to the previous paragraph, then I will finish by saying this. I have completed this game four times in two years such has been the desire to go back and experience it again. The level quality, music, replay value (helped by the existence of hidden 'secrets') all make it a classic to line the shelf with.
The end

It's not very in-depth, but I was only messing about at the time with nothing better to do. I wrote it for a site that sells cut-price titles to on-line credit card shoppers. I'm surprised I could still find it there after all this time. Ok, well that just about wraps up TR1...Au Revoir.

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Scottlee -12. February 2003, 22:15