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Written by Victor Godinez, MCT
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Tuesday, 05 June 2007 |
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 Eleven years since its debut, Lara Croft's original "Tomb Raider" adventure is a getting a nifty face-lift.
"Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary" for PS2 and PC hit stores on Tuesday, with a PSP version coming later, and the game's publisher, Eidos, stopped by my office to allow an early peek at the reinvention of the landmark title.
"Anniversary" is more of an homage than an exact replica of the original game. All of the greatest moments (yes, the T. rex battle included) are gussied up with modern graphics and gameplay.
It was jarring, though, to see vintage video of the original "Tomb Raider" side by side with the upgraded stuff.
While I remembered "Tomb Raider" being a visual treat, my spoiled, next-gen eyes were nearly sliced open by the jagged edges, blocky characters, flat surfaces and bland, low-res background textures.
It burns!
Given how bad the original "Tomb Raider" now looks, the improvements in "Anniversary" on the PS2 are even more amazing.
Waterfalls look like honest-to-goodness flowing water, you can see more than 15 feet ahead of your character before everything turns to a dark haze, and Lara has actual fingers, rather than boxy appendages.
The amazing thing is that "Anniversary" isn't running on an HD console like the PS3, but on the plain ol' PS2.
That's the console that immediately followed the original PlayStation, where Tomb Raider was born.
So you wouldn't expect the graphical leap in "Anniversary" to be so dramatic.
But it's obvious that there is some truth to the argument that developers can milk much greater performance out of a console after they've had several years to learn its tricks and quirks.
After all, when "Tomb Raider" was released in 1996, the PlayStation was still a fairly new platform. "Anniversary," though, arrives at the end of the PS2's life span, and developers know now how to squeeze every last drop of power from the hardware.
Granted, I would have preferred to see "Anniversary" on the PS3, available in full HD resolution and testing the boundaries of the new technology. But Eidos, the publisher of "Anniversary," clearly wanted to take advantage of the fact that far more people own a PS2 than a PS3 right now. As they pointed out, "God of War 2" just came out, and that PS2 game has been a best-seller. And during their visit, the folks from Eidos said that future "Tomb Raider" games will probably focus on the newer consoles.
Regardless, "Anniversary" looks like a great companion piece for anyone who played and enjoyed the original "Tomb Raider." And, if the demo is any indication of the quality of the final game, it could signal that Lara has finally climbed out of the pit of mediocrity that doomed most of the sequels to the classic original.
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Victor Godinez:
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