Tomb Raider - A Tarnished Legend

An anonymous reader writes "1UP.com has posted a fantastic piece on the Tomb Raider series that examines how the franchise has been tarnished over the past few years -- and questions whether Lara can still win back the hearts of gamers. What's especially amusing is the inclusion of GameRankings scores, demonstrating the series' consistent drop in quality (Tomb Raider 1 averaged an 89%, while the latest installment, Angel of Darkness, came in at 54%.)."

Comments

Tomb Raider used to be good?

[Rowan_u]

I'll admit that i didn't own a playstation 1 till it was well past its prime and I played Tomb Raider long after finishing other classic shooters like Turrok and Goldeneye. However, let me be the first to say that I couldn't stand Tomb Raider 1. I never picked up on any of the sequels after that. The game carries a stigma with it now, due largely to the enormous assets on its cover shots. This stigma is well earned . . . life is too short to play bad games. Using sex appeal to sell games is fine, but when thats all you have left, something is wrong.

a good game would sell

[bbkingadrock]

I believe if they made a good game of hers, it would sell. Look at the Vin Diesel game The Chronicles of Riddick. That product had almost no level of respect, but the game was good (so I've heard) and it sold decently well.

Certainly having a fanbase that already respects your series helps, but a good game would sell. There are enough review sources out there that word gets around when a game is worth buying.

Re:I second that.

[dbhankins]

If you mean better than the VGA graphics of the original DOS and Playstation versions, then... you already can have that.

TR1 + VDMSound + DGVoodoo = high-res Tomb Raider on WinXP. The sound hiccups a bit, and I haven't figured out how to fix that yet, but otherwise it's great.

Re:Why are they not smarter by now

[slthytove]

In video games, though, there is the added pressure of hardware rapidly changing. It's not even an issue of "Oh, that game doesn't really look great by today's standards" any more - in the case of computer games, Windows computers released in the past 5 years simply can't even *run* games for an earlier platform than Windows 95 (and even most games designed for Windows 95 have trouble running on Windows XP). With the pace that is set by the games hardware industry, game developers almost have no choice but to come out with stuff quickly, before their development machines are obsolete.

Films are different - yes, technology has changed (VHS, DVD), but most homes have a VCR, and so they have the ability to pop in an old tape and appreciate it, even if certain parts of it (special effects, special features) are lacking. That's not even an option for many gamers to appreciate old games without skirting gray areas of legality (emulation) or having an old computer lying around. Game companies wanting to make a profit need to come out with stuff while it's hot, and sadly that results in many products being less than fully realized.

I actually liked AoD...

[fuzzybunny]

Tomb Raider's one of the few games I could get my girlfriend interested in. She didn't like playing it, but rather would sit and watch and help me figure things out--I am pretty good at the fiddly action bits, while she's more of a thinker type. Your stereotypical guy-girl breakdown, I guess.

I didn't think Angel of Darkness was so bad, aside from the random dude popping up and the weak ending. However, seeing the teasers for Legend, I'm really looking forward to a new instalment coming out, maybe one with a bit of a new take on the same old same old.

Re:Why are they not smarter by now

[darthwader]

It's really simple to explain: it's hard to do good work.

I know, once it's finished, it seems easy. So helpful people say "just do another thing like that one, only completely different". But it's not easy.

What happens is this:
1. Game company (or movie company, or car company or any other sort of company) makes a lot of things.
2. Most of the things they make are average, some are way below average. Consumers brand everything that is less than way above average as "sucks".
3. One or two turn out to be really good (way above average). The consumers like those ones.
4. The company tries to make more like the ones that turned out good (the sequels).
5. They make a lot of sequels.
6. Most of them suck. See (2).

By the way, the reasons consumers say that anything which isn't well above average "sucks" is simple: once they see the absolute best, they raise the bar, and want everything to be that good. Essentially, people want everything to be well above average, which is illogical, but nobody ever said people are logical.

As to the question about exploiting for the short term, that's not the idea. The ideas are:
1) You've got to ship something, or you go out of business. A crappy game (movie, car, etc.) released now is better than a perfect game never released.
2) You really don't know how popular it's going to be until you release it. People are fickle.

But I think that the main factor is the simple one: by simple math, most things are average or below. And most consumers are only excited by games that are well above average. So most consumers are going be disappointed a lot of the time.

Re:Oh gee I wonder why?

[Dunbal]

Step 2: Churn out the same damn game every year for the next 5 years.

Step 3: Where's the profit?

Heck, if it works for Electronic Arts, why can't it work for Tomb Raider? Hmmm, perhaps they are paying their employees too much and not working them hard enough...I must have a word with management...

Tomb Raider 1 was great

[rsilvergun]

if you liked Flashback, the 2D game that it was a 3D version of (and amazing if you liked Fade to Black). If you came to it from the N64 the (for the time) expansive environments and freedom wouldn't impress you. But if you took it for what it was (a sequence of cleverly timed jumping and key puzzles with a little action in between) it was great. It's like people who play Vagrant Story or Land Stalker and complain about the block puzzles. You either like it or you don't, and if you do those are great games.

I won't appoligize for the sequels though, they were just more of the same, and after 2 there was no excuse.