Video Games I’ve Enjoyed Over the Years (Part 2)
This is the second instalment of the video games I’ve enjoyed over the years series.. For those who haven’t seen part one then check this link out https://medium.com/@stevewood_54779/video-games-ive-enjoyed-over-the-years-part-1-d4cc129e23ab
This is not a list of the best games in history. It isn’t comprehensive. This is just games that I’ve played over the years and what i thought of them then vs now. So lets get back into the list..
7. TOMB RAIDER 1
This is the perfect way to transition from Sega to Playstation. Tomb Raider 1 was originally released as a Sega Saturn game but was quickly brought into the Playststion fold and with great success.
You play as a woman named Lara Croft who had a very skinny backside and huge breasts where if a woman with such a figure were to do the things that Lara does in real life, she would have a spine made out of powder by now such would be the strain. You’re trying to collect pieces of an ancient artefact known as the Scion. It’s in 3 pieces and you have been hired to go into a series of various environments solve puzzles and dice with death at every turn to retrieve them.
The game itself was a revolutionary one for a couple of key reasons. The first from a technical standpoint. It was the first game on console where all the buttons on the control pad each had their own function (there was even a button for sidestepping). The second revolution was that it was a shooting game with no human opponents. Well. OK. Not many human opponents (4 in total) Instead you’re shooting bats, wolves, panthers, lions, gorillas, bears, velociraptors, a T Rex, alligators and mummy type things that i really have no idea what they are. The irony of this is that the developers didn’t want to promote violence between humans but instead choosing to encourage shooting what are now endangered species in 2018.
The game has plenty of various environments that have their own individual challenges. Peru which is the easiest of the environments. Your problems here is the T Rex in the lost valley level. which in 2018 now looks ridiculous but hey this was 1996 after all.
Greece is the second stage of the game. 5 levels make up this area the highlight of the Greek zone (hey we’re playing sonic again) is either St Francis Folley with it’s impossible to believe central chamber. The square Colosseum because the developers couldn’t do a circle at that point. But the most famous Greece moment is the hand that turns you to gold. The amount of times we killed Lara by standing on it and watching helplessly as she turned to gold are many and numerous. But it’s a simple puzzle that no one it seems can fathom.. Go into the room put the lead bars you’ve collected on the hand, turn them to gold, then leave. What could be simpler? There’s a massive scenery change part way through with the lovely golden colours giving way to the blue bricks of the sewers and the underground tomb but these levels are technical and require a lot of savvy to get through
After 5 levels in Greece you get 3 levels in.. Egypt. Naturally. These levels are tough and very demanding mentally and it’s here the game designers really excelled themselves and did a frankly brilliant job in level design from both a game play point of view but also aesthetically (the levels look stunning at this stage). But you don’t have much time to admire the scenery because you have a third piece of the scion to collect in the sanctuary of the scion a level that nearly never happened (it was just going to be one tiny room) It becomes one of the most awe inspiring and jaw dropping levels of the entire game. The centre piece of which in the first part is a giant Sphinx which when opened gives you access to another huge room with giant statues and fluxuating water levels and again it looks stunning. But as good as the Egyptian levels are I do sometimes wonder looking back in 2018 if the exploding mummies really were necessary but that’s an aside to some stunning scenery and game play that is among the best in the entire Tomb Raider series from this era.
Ok so you now have all the pieces of the Scion surely nothing can go wrong now right? Er. This is a video game so no, wrong. You stagger out of the Sanctuary of the Scion meet some evil lady called Jacqueline Natla and her henchmen 2 of whom you’ve met already. They take your weapons and the Scion. Oh no. Disaster! So three levels in the area known as the Lost Island finish the game. These levels are tough. Very tough. You go down some mines in the first level known as Natla’s mines. You get your weapons back jump over lava pools and kill the henchmen one by one.
Then you solve one of the greatest mysteries of all time when you take on the next level. Atlantis. Although I’m pretty sure Atlantis never looked like this.. A giant chamber fills it’s centre with rooms of terror and death to get through to reach the top where you come across the games final level. The Great Pyramid. Stupidly you don’t see a single pyramid though.. Oh yeah. Forgot. They don’t learn how to do shapes that aren’t square for a while yet . But in the defence of the Atlantis level. When you get good at the game then this is easily the best level of the game. It has such variety of challenges and types of obstacles and puzzles that it becomes instantly enjoyable and a huge challenge that you can still overcome nicely.
And then we come to the final level. the Great pyramid. The level starts with a big boss that is an utter pain in the ass to kill. I remember one time I killed the big boss only to have a bit of his exploding body hit me and killing me, yeah gaming sucks ass sometimes.
So you kill the boss (I realised a long time ago by the way that this is just now turning into me just talking about Tomb Raider 1) What next? well you’re not done yet. You’ve got to get out and there’s obstacles and puzzles in the way and something else that I’ll come to in a minute. You solve a puzzle dodge a boulder drop back into Atlantis shoot the scion for reasons i don’t understand yet and then make your way through some rooms and caves and get the heck out of there. But at the end there’s one more thing. The final boss is Miss Natla herself. She can fly, she’s a bitch to kill because she can fly (it’s a game why should it make sense??) If you’re lucky you’ll kill her and a few monsters easily enough.
So you’ve killed the Natla boss. But now there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that you’re still not yet done. But the good news is that this is the last room of the game and (thank god) you merely have a few death defying leaps across some randomly placed columns to reach Nirvana and the end of the game.
But in summary Tomb Raider 1 was never meant to be a short game heck it takes 7 hours if you’re good to complete it and that’s without trying to find every single secret in the game (a secret area is normally a room or ledge that has extra medi packs or ammo in or on them) But the thing that gets me about the game then and now is the sound. Seriously, the emphasis is on loneliness and isolation. Most of the game has no sound track in the background so that when music does start up it grabs your attention. It REALLY grabs your attention. Today compared to the modern Tomb Raider games yes the graphics look hopelessly dated (it was released in 1996 for gods sake) but the game play is still superb and something that the modern games sort of come close to but not in the way that Tomb Raider one does. I’ll return to the Tomb Raider series a few more times in this series and you’ll see for yourselves the progression in style and design and technology over the next few years.
To make this not just a Tomb Raider article I’ll talk about one more game in this article that believe it or not was released the same week as Tomb Raider.
8. DESTRUCTION DERBY
Yes released at the same time as Tomb Raider. OK I promise not to mention that game again until the very end. Was the first Destruction Derby. So basically it was a driving game that encouraged accidents rather than driving with finesse and style to get round the track as safe as possible. Here you’re rewarded for hitting opponents and spinning them out. But you do still get rewarded for finishing first if you’re lucky enough to do so.
Because of it’s crash and bash nature the game was always great fun to play and the replay value (something i mention a lot in this series) is superb especially when you get to replay the figure 8 course or indeed the famous Destruction Derby arena where it is really last man standing.
By 2018 standards however I’m afraid to say that yes the game is hideously dated and basic by modern standards (take wreckfest in 2018 as a comparison) but Destruction Derby definitely paved the way for other similar games in the future.
The game modes were wreckin racing where you are in a normal race except you get points for spinning your opponents and “wreckin” them. You get bonus points if you knock your AI opponents out without of course taking yourself off. Stock-car racing which is a standard race mode no need to wreck anyone just win.. But of course try not hitting anyone on a figure 8 course. The final mode is of course the Destruction Derby in the Destruction Derby arena. Just a bowel filled with you and 19 opponents. Drive around and survive if you can.
the physics are good for the time too. The cars handle as you think they should. They take damage as you think they should and they pull to one side when they take too much damage when they should. This game in spite of it’s dated looks really did take that element of the game seriously which is a very pleasant surprise.
Again it doesn’t stand the test of time and it’s hopelessly dated. It’s even dated compared to later games in the same series. But it’s still great fun to smash things.. Right?
And that’s going to do it for this article. I hope you enjoyed it in spite of it being a bit Tomb Raider heavy. Next time I’ll look at a rally game. another Tomb Raider game and another Destruction Derby game and the game that started the Playstation revolution (driving wise)
Thank you for reading and there will be more nonsense from me soon