Tomb Raider:the Last Revelation Review

8.5

Format PC

Developer Core Design

Publisher Eidos Interactive

Genre Adventure

The lovely Lara Croft is back for her fourth adventure. Mark Hill is the man with the gratuitous one-liners

Unless you're a big Lara fan, the kind that buys the special edition Lucozades, beer mats, watches, beach towels and other endless merchandise, the kind that trembles with uncontained anticipation over every new release and would happily play the first three from dusk till dawn, you have by now stifled a yawn and thought to yourself: 'A new Tomb Raider? Well big friggin' deal.' You see, besides being a huge seller starring one of the most marketable characters in popular culture, the series has earned itself a reputation for rehashing its original success and not adding anything new bar a couple of wetsuits and vehicles here and there. The consensus is that, while the first game was an innovative masterpiece of its time, the series has stood still, oblivious to the exciting new developments going on around it.

Well, butter my buttocks and eat me for breakfast if Lara hasn't got tired of staring at her own arse, taken a long hard look at where games are heading, straightened her boobs and said: 'I can do that.' For once there have been some major changes. And nobody could be more surprised than us. So put your scepticism to one side and we'll tell you all about it.

'We're going back to our roots, man'

The Last Revelation is being sold as a 'getting back to roots' for the series, a recreation of the feel people had playing the first game. Before you start whinging about how all they've been doing so far is recreating Tomb Raider I anyway, let us say that TLR is most definitely a step forward. Not a gigantic unholstering-pistols-midair-and-shooting-every-other-game-in-the-head double somersault forward, but a move in the right direction, nevertheless.

In a recent Supertest, we mentioned that the way for the series to progress was to 'take it down the Half-Life route. Not go first-person, but use the engine and the dynamics more. More NPCs that are interesting to talk to. More story elements'. And, to a certain extent, that is exactly what Core have done.

Traditionally, the plot has been an excuse for Lara to travel halfway round the globe, kill some endangered species and hang on to some ledges. This time, the story is absolutely central to the game. For once, the outrageous acrobatics are just a way to advance from one part of the unfolding narrative to the next and, as a result, it is less a collection of independent levels and more a continuously flowing tale. You could say that Lara has moved on from commercials to full-length films.

Raiders of the Lost Tomb

The comparison to movies isn't gratuitous. If it hasn't already gone unnoticed how Tomb Raider has sipped from the Indiana Jones' stream of inspiration, this time it sinks its teeth in and sucks the very life out of the unshaven, whip-toting big screen adventurer. Consider the following storyline: The action begins in a 1984 flashback in Cambodia, where a young Lara Croft is being taught the adventuring trade by eminent Austrian archaeologist Werner Von Croy. At the end of this training level you're forced to flee for your life, leaving Von Croy for dead. Cut to the present day, swapping Asian jungle for Egyptian desert and flat chest for pyramidal voluptuosity. Lara, hired by an unknown source and helped by a guide, searches for a tomb, takes an amulet and unwittingly releases the spirit of the evil Egyptian god Seth. It transpires that Von Croy didn't die, that he's intent on getting the amulet and, to top it all, hates Lara's flat and muscular guts for what happened all those years ago. She learns from another archaeologist, the fat and friendly Jean-Yves, how she can banish Seth from this world and sets out on a quest through Egypt, fighting Von Croy's minions and Seth's dark forces.

The flabbergasting thing is that this isn't the point where you start playing the game, it isn't a background that's been explained to you through a painstakingly long FMV. You have lived through the flashback and trained with Von Croy. You have found your way into Seth's tomb and foolishly freed him, you have spoken to Jean-Yves and solved some basic puzzles on his advice. It's like playing through your very own Indiana Jones flick. Mythical objects, supernatural happenings, puzzles involving ancient texts, artefacts and tricks of light, Tuareg enemies, they're all eerily familiar and enjoyable. All that's missing are the fat Nazis and snogging a beautiful but squeamish blonde (now that's a Tomb Raider game people would pay good money for.)

Clever dicks

Let's not get carried away. This is still a Tomb Raider title, it's still a platform game at heart and it isn't about to revolutionise the industry. But we'll discuss its shortcomings later, right after we've pointed our stubby little fingers at all the things that made us go: 'Cor, golly and bleedin' hell!' (Which doesn't mean Lara 'reveals' anything in The Last Revelation not seen outside unauthorised over-18s' websites).

As you'd expect, the lady in khaki shorts has been given yet another facelift and general make-over, and so have the settings and the enemies. The latter fall into three categories: animals (scorpions, crocodiles), humans (turban-masked henchmen, SAS soldiers) and supernatural beings (skeletons, animated statues, Egyptian gods). All have been given such an AI boost, they'll be challenging you to a game of chess with one hand and beating you over the head with a large stick with the other.

The skeletons take cover if you start shooting at them from above, crocodiles chase you in and out of the water, armed soldiers shoot you from a distance, then unsheathe their swords and get closer. What's more, they can monkey swing, somersault and generally do anything you do, so there's no escaping them. The clever bit, though, is how you can manipulate some of the enemies to your advantage. You have to entice the indestructible Sphinx to smash through doors you otherwise can't open, use the no-brain undead templars to the same effect, and even set up creatures that have a dislike for each other to cancel one another out (like the fire and ice wraiths).

Put your hand in a crack or shatter a vase hoping to find something useful and you could end up with a screen full of beetles. We're talking thousands of the disgusting little buggers, moving in a wave of crawling black legs and fluttering antennas, intent on smothering you unless you have a burning torch handy. Get stung by a scorpion and the screen undulates, making jumping around difficult and mildly nauseating.

I Sphinx, therefore I am

There is a much stronger puzzle element in The Last Revelation than ever before, to the point where a couple of levels almost play like a 3D adventure. You have to read scrolls, figure out riddles and solve genuinely abstract problems, not just get the green key from over there and stick it in the green door over here, but the kind of thing you're more likely to find in a puzzle book or, damn it, the much missed point-and-click adventures. The problem here is that, while there is more interaction with other characters than ever before, there's not nearly enough. You meet people who send you in the right direction, but you don't actively interact with them. The puzzles themselves are easy enough and amply hinted at, so the average punter will be able to crack them without making their brains hurt too much, but those wanting more of a challenge should remind themselves that they're lucky to get any sort of mental contest at all. At least there is some imagination at work. Where else would you get the chance to play an ancient Egyptian board game against a god on a board the size of a room?

The new inventory system casts another twist in favour of the more complex, thoughtful approach to leaping from one platform to another. Most of the items and weapons you collect now have a Combine option - so, for example, you can stick the lasersight to your revolver for some sniping, the flashlight to your binoculars for peeking into dark recesses of the tombs or try mixing objects to solve puzzles. Some weapons have different types of ammo, and you need to figure out which to use in every given situation.

Sniping works both ways, once the Egyptian army gets involved, adding an element of stealth to the action as you move in the shadows, picking off snipers hidden in alcoves. And if that isn't enough, you can use a crossbow in first-person mode.

Tomb-Life

Which brings us back to that Supertest comment about taking things down the Half-Life route. There are plenty of scripted moments that carry the action through, like when the camera swings away from you to focus on an oncoming jeep full of none-too-neighbourly soldiers or an enormous snake-like monster coming out of the ground to vomit a plague of locusts on you. Or how you walk into a room just in time to witness a guard being taken into the jaws of a six-foot scorpion, which you have to kill without harming the guy in order to get a key. And the influence of action-packed films doesn't stop at Indy. You'll probably notice Stargate, The Fifth Element, The Mummy, James Bond and Disney's Aladdin creeping in at the back of your mind. There's even a small recreation of the warehouse in Reservoir Dogs, complete with moribund cop (well, SAS soldier actually).

The FMVs, camera angles, the quickfire cut-scenes, scripted elements, the way friendly characters and enemies act and the familiar archaeological puzzle-solving all give the game an incredibly cinematic feel. But, of course, that's the problem: it's a film you're watching, not acting in. A film you participate in, but which stars mega celebrity Lara Croft. You don't feel personally involved and you're not the main character. In spite of all the efforts to give Lara a history, we've all seen her die so many times, so matter-of-factly, that her fate isn't all that important to us.

What are the scores, Lara Jones?

Like we've already said, despite all the improvements, The Last Revelation is still a platform game. You may not die as annoyingly often as in the past few efforts, but it's still a case of move Lara over here, hop to that ledge up there and backflip into an underground stream. There's a lot more to it than that, but you can't escape the essence of the game. It is still constrained by the limitations of having to develop a PlayStation game alongside a PC one (even if the PC version looks much better, has bump mapping, more cockroaches and a couple of extra features).

When you're used to the freedom of playing action games with a mouse, having to resort to a gamepad or keyboard feels incredibly limiting. Besides, Core can only go so far before having to bow to the pressures of the mass market and avoiding many drastic changes.

So, if The Last Revelation is the best title in the series, why does it get the lowest score?

The original Tomb Raider was ground-breaking enough to warrant a massive Classic score, but I would argue that, in retrospect, neither TRII nor III deserve that status. It's not that they're bad games, it's just that they don't provide the amazing experience a Classic award warrants. And, frankly, neither does The Last Revelation. It would have to go far beyond a platform adventure and become something that defied categories; it would have to draw us into the story to the point where we'd forget we were playing a game. By its very nature, Tomb Raider can't do either of those things. If you enjoyed any of the other titles, The Last Revelation will blow your socks clean off. Just don't expect any miraculous changes if you never liked it in the first place.