This assessment initially appeared in Sega Energy difficulty 86, December 1996

Has the most effective ever third-party recreation simply arrived for the Saturn? Properly you’ll simply must learn the assessment, gained’t you.

Tomb Raider has at all times appeared a bit particular. After we previewed it (completely, I’d add) again in Difficulty 78, we needed to double-check which pictures have been art work and which really got here from the sport. We’ve been following the sport’s progress ever since and now seven months later we lastly have our completed copy.

I need to admit to a level of pre- recreation cynicism. Can a recreation that appears and strikes in addition to Tomb Raider presumably have the depth of gameplay to make it the traditional many are hailing it as? Bear in mind, the normally unflappable journos on sure PC mags are hailing Tomb Raider as the closest factor to Mario 64, that can seem on the PC. There’s been hype, there’s been merchandising, there’s been an all-expenses paid journey to Egypt however we’ve seen this type of factor earlier than and when the video games lastly arrived, they by no means lived as much as expectations.

Fortunately although, Tomb Raider is one in every of, if not the Recreation of the 12 months. It’s half shoot-’em-up, half platform journey, half role-playing recreation all seamlessly built-in into one of the crucial spectacular graphical packages ever seen on the Saturn. There are locations in Tomb Raider the place the graphics are so good, you simply wish to stand and stare at them and also you in all probability will.

The sport follows the adventures of Lara Croft an Indiana Jones kind in a worryingly- exaggerated feminine physique. She’s been employed by a world Mega Corps to trace down an historical artifact referred to as the Scion. Nevertheless, as soon as her journey has began excessive within the South American Andes it quickly turns into clear that darker forces are at work. With the background story safely disbursed with, let’s transfer on…

The sport is split into 4 sections with 4 subsections in every. When you knew precisely what to do in every part (and will handle to do it), it will take over 100 hours to finish the sport – instantly allaying one in every of our main fears: that the sport could be too quick. The main thrust of the sport is exploration. Discover the areas open to you to seek out switches (to open additional sections) or objects resembling keys. Loads of the areas that you just’ll enter are populated by enemies – normally animals fairly eager on biting, scratching or chomping you to dying. These have to be ruthlessly gunned down with quite a lot of weapons. One for the animal rights individuals, there.

The sport makes use of a novel ‘floating digital camera’ method that follows Lara’s adventures from behind and above. It’s a mark of the brilliance of this technique that as you run from room to room, bounce, crash by flooring and climb, you hardly discover the dynamic adjustments the digital camera has to make to maintain all the pieces in view. On high of this, within the conditions the place you want to look very fastidiously the place you’re going to go, the ‘head view’ is available in extraordinarily helpful. By holding down the Y button and manipulation the joypad, you’ll be able to direct the digital camera in a 180° arc. The truth is, Tomb Raider has such an ideal recreation engine that enjoying it feels remarkably pure and watching it’s virtually cinematic.

Recreation issue is about excessive however the curve is properly judged level-to-level. Within the preliminary Andes adventures enemies are light-weight however, extra importantly, the ability wanted to progress is decrease. Though a variety of the gameplay is exploration and puzzle-solving, success can be very a lot dependent upon mastery of the controls. Lara can pull off a powerful array of forwards, sideways, backwards jumps and roles, and to get her to do essentially the most sophisticated of them, you’ll must synchronise a four-button/joypad mixture. That may not sound too tough to you Road Kombat, Mortal Fighter-types however in lots of instances, should you mis-time your bounce, it’s recreation over. The sport does embrace a ‘Fitness center’ characteristic the place Lara can follow her tougher strikes. You’ll in all probability ignore this initially however after a couple of disastrous performances, you’ll in all probability change your thoughts.

The main criticism with Tomb Raider is the sport save method it employs. Recreation positions can solely be saved when ranges are accomplished or whenever you come throughout one of many blue floating crystals. Now, all could be wonderful if these cropped up at common intervals however they don’t – two per bloody large stage is all you’ll be able to anticipate to see. On high of that, the cheeky buggers disappear when you’ve used them making the well-worn tactic of ‘do a troublesome bit, save, do one other troublesome bit, save once more’ inconceivable. After all, making video games tough makes them last more nevertheless it additionally has the draw back of creating them EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING IN PLACES.

Tomb Raider stands alongside Exhumed as the most effective 3D journey/shooter for the Saturn. Core have developed the sport particularly for Sega’s machine and the Saturn model is simply bettered by the Accelerated PC version (which requires a hefty Pentium and an costly graphics card to run). No dodgy conversions, no shallow gameplay, no low-cost Doom rip-offs – purchase Tomb Raider and also you’ll play it until your eyes go humorous. You actually should have this recreation.

GRAPHICS: 10
Sensible. Whole freedom in a good looking 3D world. Unsurpassed.

SOUND: 9
Intelligent use of music to counsel approaching hazard. Every part else very good.

ORIGINALITY: 9
The primary Saturn recreation to take trad platform components and bung them in 3D.

LIFESPAN: 9
Troublesome sufficient to final for ages with a great deal of secret stuff to bump up the replay worth.

FINAL VERDICT: 93%
Fairly presumably the sport of the 12 months. Unique, stunning, difficult – the form of recreation the Saturn was made for.

James Ashton