Boy, those were the days.
I was as hooked on video games then as I remain today, only I had fewer titles to demo and more time to play the ones I had.
When Tomb Raider came along I was playing games like Duke Nukem 3d, Doom II, Warcraft II, etc. This was my first taste of a 3rd person action/adventure game and I loved it.
Looking back I can’t recall whether I had the demo or the full version, but it’s long lost by now.
If you’re having trouble remembering what it looked like, I found this on YouTube:
The music of course isn’t the original, but the opening menu and first level brought back instant memories.
When I heard they were putting out a new Tomb Raider game (Tomb Raider: Underworld, aka TR:U or tru) I wasn’t immediately interested as I was playing (and still am) The Witcher. After seeing this trailer, I became very interested:
Tomb Raider: Underworld Thailand Trailer (HD)
Ah yes, the demo! I wanted to see for myself whether this game was truly as good as it it’s supposed to be. Right before the Christmas holidays kicked in I grabbed the TR:U demo and decided I’d go back and check out the last two games in the series while I was at it.
Thankfully I also got my hands on an XBox 360 controller which made playing the games so much better.
Before playing TR:U, the last TR game I played was the first one. Wow, what an experience. Yeah, there were definitely times I yelled “NO!” at the monitor when I made a jump I didn’t mean to do, but I usually chalk that up to me getting used to the game. I still chalk it up to that even after beating the demo a time or two. 
I enjoyed TR:Legend and TR:Anniversary just as much, although I am thankful that the controls were changed from TR:Legend – I just find the camera up/down control very awkward.
Even so, I bought it and TR:U so I can get the full story. With TR:U in my collection and TR:Legend hopefully arriving this week, I was really bummed out to see this news come across my feed reader last week:
- play.tm – Low Tomb Raider sales hurt Eidos
- kotaku.com – Disturbance In The Workforce: Lay Offs Strike Crystal Dynamics
- shacknews.com – Rumor: Tomb Raider Dev Cuts 30 Employees Following ‘Disappointing’ Sales (of 1.5 million!)
- joystick.com – Eidos confirms Crystal Dynamics layoffs
- Eidos disappointed with TR: Underworld sales, stock drops
- eurogamer.net – Tomb Raider: Underworld sales hit 1.5m (You would think an article with that title is going to be good news, but no!)
Complete shock to me.
I think the game is awesome, and I’ve only played the demo! I like this quote from the comments page for the last link:
Disappointed? Have they not played even the demo of their own game?
To be fair, I’ve only played the demo. I’ll have to followup to this post with my endgame impressions. I’m really hoping the game wasn’t artificially ended so they could use the rest as DLC as many users have claimed (link is just one example).
Even more disappointing is that the DLC sounds like it will be for the XBox 360 only. Yay for your customers Microsoft.
Demos:
More info:
- Here is an interview with the creative director, Eric Lindstrom for Tomb Raider: Underworld from play.tm
- Here is play.tm’s TR:Underworld news page.
- Wikipedia entry
- Eidos forums for the Tomb Raider Series
Oh yeah, I haven’t said anything about TR:Anniversary yet …
I’ll let this review speak for me.
Lastly I’ll say that Eidos brought back Toby Gard to work with Crystal Dynamics for TR: Legend and gave him the role of lead designer for TR:Anniversary. Toby Gard conceived the idea of Tomb Raider and designed the original incarnation of Lara Croft. According to Wikipedia, Toby “served as cinematics director for Tomb Raider: Underworld, and was credited alongside Eric Lindstrom for the story”.
Little wonder all three games have high ratings.
