Gaming's first lady, Lara Croft, is arguably the most iconic figure in the entire industry - pretty impressive considering she was only born in 1996.
Known for her brains, bravery and Kelly-Brook trumping norks, Croftie never faded physically but the same couldn't be said for her increasingly hackneyed archaeological jaunts.
Despite a solid first comeback which probably peaked with Anniversary, both Crystal Dynamics and publishers Square Enix obviously concurred that Lara - usurped in some ways of late by PS3 rival Nathan Drake - needed one of those oh-so-fashionable reboots.
This is no Underworld though; dangling from some kind of cloth cocoon and readied for sacrifice, waggling the stick towards a nearby flame sets our baby Lara on fire and - after a scare-raising encounter with an indigenous nutjob - she's soon squeezing herself through some claustrophobic crevices and emerging into the moonlight.
Tending to her cuts and bruises, this plainly isn't our Lara. Her fear is tangible. Indeed, the horror (and the mystery of the unexplained) are what Crystal Dynamics are using to drive the action.
BERMUDA SORTS
See, there's some seriously freaky faeces going down on this isla caníbal, from the crafty, unhinged natives to the wreckage of planes and boats from all eras strewn across the coastline.
A strange magnetic field appears to draw craft, much like the mythical Bermuda Triangle, to their doom. Horrid deaths abound, too. We've seen Lara lulled into a false sense of security before being stabbed to death; we've seen her legs splintered and her skull pop like a melon.
This is survival of the fittest, kill-or-be-killed territory. Nevertheless, riddles abound. Just how is it they can speak English? How did everyone end up in this earthbound purgatory? And just how are Lara's jiggly bits going to blossom by at least three cup-sizes in only a few years?
Now the really good part. While Lara's more concerned with getting her shapely derriere off this hellhole than scooping up relics, adventure has ironically never been more prevalent in her life. Exploring the island, quasi-free-roaming-style (albeit punctuated with the obligatory 'epic' set pieces), will see Lara scavenge a serious arsenal of armaments while acquiring new climbing skills - giving the game a tantalising Metroid-y element that promises layers of depth never before seen in a Croft outing.
Combat - another decade-long bugbear - is also getting some serious loving. Lock-on is out, free aim in... and with pistols, shotties and (our favourite) a bow and arrow, Lara won't be short of savages to spear.
In keeping with the theme of desert island survival, you'll spend large chunks of time at various base camps after reccies. Here you'll whip up new items from bits of driftwood and crabs' legs (probably) and upgrade Lara's skills, RPG style.
There'll even be the chance to hang out with fellow human survivors including Lara's famous mentor, Conrad Roth - but not until you've saved the old fart's life. Square-Enix are plainly deadly serious about this reimagining - right down to the removal of stretchy-gorgeous Lara babe Alison Carroll
(real-life models are now verboten). If Crystal Dynamics can deliver on some pretty epic promises, we might not only be dealing with a rebirth of Tomb Raider - but also the heralding the arrival of a new genre.
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Comments
24 comments so far...
tmten on 9 Feb '11 said:
the graphics are better than uncharted anyway. must be pc shots. either that or airbrushed, although they're pretty much the same thing these days (gpu smirks).
MattyR95 on 9 Feb '11 said:
It doesn't look better than uncharted (IMO anyway). I hope she isn't going to be a bloody mess in the entire game like in those screenshots.
tmten on 9 Feb '11 said:
"It doesn't look better than uncharted"
higher res, better lighting, less aliasing, sharper textures, etc. it's all in the art (and the eye of the beholder) anyway. still, looking forward to trying this, if only for the meta-proustian rush of some parallel '96 when we all had supercomputers and i didn't f**k it up with that girl that time...
flash501 on 9 Feb '11 said:
Must say, I'm really looking forward to this.
Padua on 9 Feb '11 said:
Yeah i agree with tmten,
... it is like comparing the visuals from Halo 1 with Halo 3 ...
Looks even better than LA Noire, or even the pics from Uncharted 3 to me. Crisp!
Hope the game play is as good as the visuals.
k-mysta on 9 Feb '11 said:
i don't know if its an uncharted beater bu i really like the idea of trying to survive on an island.why hasn't this been done before?this could be something special.
aawells07 on 9 Feb '11 said:
i dont really care if it beats any other game i just wanna good game that is all i hope it at least competes with uncharted as that means it will be a stellar game.looking forward to seeing some gameplay along with some skyrim as well
shogunreaper on 9 Feb '11 said:
Never really got into tomb raider, don't plan to start now.
I'll stick with uncharted.
Dom Bom on 9 Feb '11 said:
I like my women to be dirty...
CrispyLog on 9 Feb '11 said:
I wasn't going to pay this much attention, but it actually sounds really interesting so I will have to keep my eye on it.
jonboy1969 on 9 Feb '11 said:
'Kelly Brook trumping norks' ???? Have you watched Pirahna yet?
damoxuk on 9 Feb '11 said:
Well if it's anything near as good as Uncharted then i'll buy it no problems
Imaduck on 10 Feb '11 said:
I'm actually more interested to see where this heads than any Uncharted or Tomb Raider so far. I'm all for it doing really well.
Barca Azul on 10 Feb '11 said:
For me it looks like a pretty new IP that they have slapped Tomb raider name on it.
Visuals are good, better than uncharted, not sure, but they are very dark and depressing so far.
I liked underworld a lot as a game and interested to see where this one goes, it looks more horror than tomb raider though so far.
So......she got implants then!
Paranoimia on 10 Feb '11 said:
Love the 'better than Uncharted' troll comments. These are publicity shots, and as with most games, are rendered at a higher resolution than you'll ever see in the final game, on any platform.
I was always a huge Tomb Raider fan (even loved Angel of Darkness), and laughed at the claims that Uncharted could ever be better than Tomb Raider. But I was very, very wrong.
If this does get Lara back on track, I'll be very happy. But it will have to be very, very good if it's going to get anywhere near Uncharted. And I don't mean visually, I mean in terms of the whole package. Visuals aside, the sound, story, voice acting and gameplay are all going to have to take a massive step up in order to even set foot on Uncharted's playing field.
lonewolf2002 on 10 Feb '11 said:
I still have the glass bottomed boat scene embedded in my memory for future prosperity.
craiglackenby on 10 Feb '11 said:
That's near what I was going to say, also these multi platinum game shots aren't going to have the amount of AA say KZ3 or Uncharted have.
I would like this to knock Naughty Dog/Uncharted of the top spot but I consider it highly unlikely. If they did ND would come back with something even better and it would be in favour of gamers as healthy competition is.
I think this game will be a 8-8.5/10. A good game but not a memorable great game.
Square Enix have got the potential but they have dropped the ball recently with 3 games off the top of my head, FF13, FF14 and Mindjack. Mindjack was f**king awful, you shoot from cover and no lie, half of the time your bullets are shooting the cover
The AI thinks it has a line of sight with the enemy when it doesn't and shoots straight into walls that have enemies on the other side. When they're not doing that they are standing in the open getting downed, so you have to go in the open to revive them and get downed your self.
MrPirtniw on 10 Feb '11 said:
Looks a lot darker and more menacing than Uncharted's semi cartoonish style- which I quite like. A survival horror/adventure platform game could be very special indeed. I'll be keeping an eye on this methinks.
T-Jani on 10 Feb '11 said:
Going on GFX alone this is nowhere near uncharted's level.
mike_mgoblue on 11 Feb '11 said:
Tomb Raider is the All-Time champion of this genre!
Lara Croft -- the star of Tomb Raider -- is the one this "crown" belongs to.
Lara Croft is the ONE sitting in this genre's "thrown"!
If you add up the combined sales of both Uncharted and Uncharted 2, you end up with HALF the sales of the original Tomb Raider's EIGHT MILLION units sold!
Remember, one of the things Uncharted has been criticized about is DISAPPOINTING SALES!
Compared to Tomb Raider, we see that Uncharted is NOT POPULAR!
This is the same thing Killzone has been criticized for. Killzone 2 launched during the same time period as Gears of War 2. Gears of War 2 has outsold Killzone 2 by a ratio of 5:1.
Of course, Killzone 2 & 3 can blame that on themselves, since they don't bother to include popular features that add replay value, such as Online Campaign Co-Op the way the competition does. Killzone 2 didn't include any form of Campaign Co-Op at all. Killzone 3 only offers Offline Campaign Co-Op in a split-screen. That might have been okay in the PS2 era with Killzone 1, but NOT in the Online HD era we live in now where Xbox 360 games have been including Online Campaign Co-Op since 2005 with games like Perfect Dark Zero (starring Joanna Dark -- the ONLY person tough enough to compete with Lara Croft!). If you can't play the Campaing mode of a FPS in Co-Op Online with your friends, the game is worth a rental but not a purchase in today's Online HD environment.
Uncharted 1 is a game that received virtually no awards due to the fact that it launched at the same time as another high-profile game -- Gears of War. When Uncharted and Gears of War launched during the same time period, history shows us which game completely ECLIPSED the other! Gears of War received all the awards for Best Graphics, Best Gameplay, and Best Game of the Year!
Uncharted 2 received many awards in 2009, but only because 2009 was such a weak year on both the PS3 and Xbox 360. Microsoft even said specifically that 2009 was a "reload" year, since 2007 and 2008 wer such great years and they knew 2010 would be, too. The best game released for Xbox 360 in 2009 was Forza Motorsport 3 (the greatest racing game of all time). But we all know that there is no way a racing game would ever receive the award for Game of the Year, not in today's era.
If Uncharted 2 had been competing against some of the higher-budget high profile games the first Uncharted game did, we would have seen Uncharted 2 get ECLIPSED in the same way Uncharted 1 did. Heck, even games like Mass Effect 2 and Bayonetta (the Xbox 360 version, since the PS3 version was garbage with inferior graphics and awful laod times since Xbox 360 transfers data at 16MB per second compared to only 9MB per second on PS3) ended up being Game of the Year instead of Uncharted 2 in many instances for various websites, magazines, and newspapers.
This brings us to what will happen when Tomb Raider is released. Tomb Raider is a LEGENDARY series! Tomb Raider has MILLIONS of loyal followers! FAR more loyal followers than Uncharted has owners.
Tomb Raider's screenshots here have graphics that blow Uncharted 2 out of the water!
This is not a surprise since the Xbox 360 GPU displays up to 500,000,000 polygons per second compared to only 275,000,000 polygons per second for the PS3 GPU. This is the reason why Xbox 360 versions of so many games have better graphics.
Examples:
* All-Pro Football runs at 60 frames per second on Xbox 360 but only 30 frames per second on PS3.
* Soul Calibur 4 runs at 1280x720p on PS3, but 40% higher resolution of 1365x960p on Xbox 360.
* Saints Row 2, Grand Theft Auto 4, Bayonetta, Red Dead Redemption, Street Fighter 4 and MANY OTHERS all run at true HD native 720p on Xbox 360, but run natively at Sub-HD resolutions that are not true HD on the PS3 -- they have native resolutions lower than 720p. For example, GTA4 and Saints Row 2 run natively at 640p on PS3. And Street Fighter 4 on PS3 runs at only 1120x630p.
The same can be said for Crysis 2. The screenshots of Crysis 2 completely blow every other First-Person Shooter out of the water. When people saw the screenshots of Crysis 2, everyone thought it must be screenshots of the PC version. But the developers specifically said in a recent interview:
"All screenshots of Crysis 2 have been either the Xbox 360 version or a PC set to run with Xbox 360 specifications. Either way you are seeing the Xbox 360 version."
It's the same thing with Tomb Raider.
Tomb Raider is BACK, and our legendary Lara Croft is going to tell anyone else that "thinks" they have a crown, "That 'crown' belongs to me!"
MattyR95 on 11 Feb '11 said:
You're talking through your arse...
liveswired on 13 Feb '11 said:
Depends what people mean on graphics - if your on about textures, effects, resolution sure the PC can output millions more pixels than console BUT Uncharted 2 has the art direction, colour, cinematics and beautiful graphics.
This just appears dull and generic - no matter how many times you increase the resolution it simply doesn't look as good as Uncharted 2!
craiglackenby on 14 Feb '11 said:
Lets see what the review says
Guest1459 on 17 Feb '11 said:
'Raider was left on the starting grid by Uncharted where ledge-leaping was concerned'
What?! Did the author of this article play TRA or even Underworld?
Uc is a third person shooter with very simplistic platforming elements, it's practically on the rails compared to games like Sands of Time or Tomb Raider, not to mention the game helps you by magnetizing you every time. It's neither precise not fun, if anything TR absolutely decimates Uc in this aspect.
Not to mention all the acrobatics Lara can perform.. seriously, this is ludicrous. i'm willing to bet someone hasn't played a TR game since AoD.
What's next, God of war having a more complex battle system than Bayonetta, hmm?