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Lara Croft Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness (PS2) Eidos/Core
When is a game not a game? When it's rushed out of the developer's bug test phase in order to cash in on an overly hyped motion picture that in itself is relatively poor. Angel of Darkness is a perfect example of everything that is wholly evil and wrong in today's gaming industry. Eidos and Core Design have essentially taken a well-respected IP and beaten it to death in public more times than we care to remember. The original Tomb Raider on PSX was a fantastic, genre-busting game. Lara's exploits were sexy, refreshing and new, and the 3D action/adventure genre was taken up at least a notch or three.
Lara can handle two armed masked men at once.
Angel of Darkness, on the other hand, is a "game" -- and we use the term "game" loosely here -- that's inexcusably flawed. Featuring a plotline that'll bore most gamers to tears, clunky controls, and bad level design, Angel of Darkness quickly becomes an exercise in, "Can I really battle through another level of this crap?" But the worst is still to come. The final retail copy of Angel of Darkness that shipped to stores across the U.S. featured some gut-rending fatal crash bugs -- not just one or two, but lots and lots. GameSpy's reviewers stated that the final code played more like a buggy beta pre-release than a proper finished product. How on earth can this be assumed to be acceptable behavior for a title costing fifty plus dollars? Still, some people stand by Lara and her never-ending adventuring technique, but rest assured, the next Tomb Raider had better give up free sexual favors to make up for this latest tragedy.
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hardcore_pawn: I've not laughed this hard for a long, long time. Don't get me wrong, because I wasn't chuckling at some great, clever story development -- no sir. I was laughing because upon loading a newly opened retail copy of Angel of Darkness I personally endured three fatal crashes (power off/power on situations) in the first ten minutes of gameplay (and that included some rather lengthy cut scenes too.) That's simply inexcusable. Trying to cash in on the shapely buttocks of Angelina Jolie in the new TR flick was obviously just too tempting.
As a result, Core Design has been cut out of the loop for future TR titles -- which is a pretty significant step seeing as how it actually created the series in the first place. It's a sad shame that this industry seems totally geared in some respects to churning out sub-par games just to ride the hype-wave of other mediums. Hopefully, this is the last we'll see of this kind of thing for a long time to come.
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ferricide: Talk about an embarrassment. Eidos spent forever promising the world, and ended up instead with this aborted attempt to update the sagging Tomb Raider franchise. It's a complete crash-filled, tedious mess. I think that the one good thing you can say about this game is that it generated some truly amusing reviews. Actually, it also finally forced Eidos to admit that the series is a disaster at this point and put the boot up Core's deserving fundament. Usually, I don't have it in for a developer -- but I think the last game Core made that I enjoyed was Wonder Dog for the Sega CD. Anyone remember Project Eden? I didn't think so!
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Psylancer: When Tomb Raider arrived at GameSpy, I promptly popped it in to check out the action. Minutes later it crashed. When the game wasn't crashing, the controls were angering me. When the controls weren't angering me, the level design was boring me to tears. When the level design wasn't boring me to tears, the puzzle structure was befuddling me with its ridiculousness. Oh well, at least the game was prettier than previous Tomb Raiders. And the music was actually rather lovely. Unfortunately, the sights and sounds were not nearly enough to cover up this wreck. This game might have ruined the Tomb Raider franchise forever. Fortunately, however, Crystal Dynamics looks ready for the challenge and they have lots of experience with dead things, so if anyone can resuscitate the series, it can.
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