Review by: Brian Pipa

You are Lara Croft, wealthy aristocrat and part-time adventurer. You set out on a quest to find one of the
three pieces of the ancient Atlantean Scion, a talisman of incredible power. After discovering the fragment, things get ugly, Lara finds herself face to face with one of Natla’s hired goons. Using her cunning wits and athletic strength, Lara escapes! As she delves into the reasons why Natla would double cross her, she uncovers a mystery that reaches back before the dawn of recorded time to the treachery that destroyed the Atlantean civilization and the disasters that struck the world when it fell. Enter the Tomb Raider world in 15 massive 3D environments within four lost civilizations: Vilcabamba, Labyrinth, Egyptian, and Atlantean.

I’ve been waiting for Tomb Raider for a while, hoping it would be all it was hyped to be and I wasn’t disappointed.
Your controls for the protagonist, Lara Croft, are directional movement, action, jump, walk, sidestep, and roll.
These basic moves control all of Lara’s impressive moves. You start out with dual pistols with unlimited
ammo as weapons, and other weapons like an UZI and a shotgun can be collected as you progress through the game.
You can jump in a number of different ways: sideways, forward, straight up, etc. On long jumps, press the action
button to grab hold of the ledge if you almost miss the jump. The jump button is also used for swimming.
The action button is used for firing guns, grabbing ledges, and picking up various items found throughout the game.

Some of the many enemies are wolves, bats, bears, alligators, and even dinosaurs. All of them are rendered
using textured polygons and look very good. Other types of obstacles are poison darts, falling floors, and swinging blades.
It’s quite a challenge getting by the many enemies and booby traps in the game. There’s even an Indiana Jones type
boulder rolling at you on one level.

One of the more impressive parts of the game is the swimming. Unlike the “swimming” in Quake, which seemed more like walking underwater, in Tomb Raider, you see Lara executing a beautiful breast stroke (no pun intended) with precision. Holding the jump button down causes her to swim and the direction of swimming is controlled by the direction keys. While in the water, there is an air meter that shows how much longer she can stay under before getting air. The swimming is really well done – the whole screen turns a light shade of blue while underwater too.

The levels themselves are fairly huge and take a while to fully explore.
The gameplay is much less centered on killing enemies as it is getting through the obstacles and figuring where to go
and how to get there. It’s involves much more thinking than a straight killing game like Quake does. It’s an
enjoyable mixture – one that I enjoyed immensely. The demo is a nice compact size, so definitely give it a look,
and if you like that, the full game would probably be a worthy investment. A couple drawbacks though –
no multiplayer or network support and no level add-ons, so once you finish the game, that’s it.