Tomb Raider Creator On Galleon Delays

Thanks to C+VG for their interview with Toby Gard, original creator of Lara Croft, as he talks about his horrendously-delayed console action title, Galleon. This title, which was started after his company Confounding Factor was formed in April 1997, and was at one point in development for the Dreamcast, is now due on the Xbox, with GameCube and probably PS2 versions to follow - Gard says of development: "It's just been incredibly difficult. It's taken enormous will power for us to keep going; it's been a huge struggle for a long time. Our biggest problem is that we're too small... There's less than ten people here now, and that's just crazy." He also comments briefly on the latest Tomb Raider title: "I don't know about that - you've played it, haven't you? It crashed after ten minutes when I played it, which is a bit of a shame really."

Comments

Control issues

[silentbobdp]

First, the controls: they're not awful, they're just different. After the first couple of levels, I never thought about the controls because I knew how to do what I wanted. Essentially, they became transparent.

Bullshit. The TR series controls have always been right up there with Resident Evil when it comes to cumbersomeness. Just because you "get used to it" does not make the controls good. There should be no learning curve when you're controlling a character in an action game. Core still doesn't understand that Lara should fucking JUMP WHEN THE BUTTON IS PRESSED, NO MATTER HOW REALISTIC IT IS TO SHOW HER PREPARING FOR THE LEAP! It's ridiculous choices like that that ruin the game's control, and always have.

And every bad review I've read does point out that there are good things about the game. Just not enough to make it worth playing.

Re:Let's all pile on!

[neostorm]

There may be some redeeming values to this game, but all in all it's not too great. I think games like Angel of Darkness should take the fall in order to get the message across that shit will NOT continue to sell.

Once you start accepting trash, publishers will just continue to shove it down your throat. So arguing in favor of an obviously rushed game from an obviously "lets milk this franchise baby" publisher like Eidos just means you're making it easier for poorly developed titles to be successful in an already over-saturated market of crap.

Re:Galleon

[Alkaiser]

Co-op play didn't make Chocobo Dungeon 2 any fun. I do also find it sad that the thread got hijacked.

There just aren't enough good pirate games out there. This looks like it might be passable, but I'm getting a "Possible a good game, but more than likely a mediocre one" feeling from all this.

And why does the article not link to the Official Galleon site? The Interplay site hasn't updated its screenshots since 2002.