More Retro Gaming - Tomb Raider III

Over the summer it has been fun revisiting some of those games that I have played in the past and enjoyed so much back then and now again today. The conclusion I have drawn is that there is much more to a good game than good graphics and wonderful sound, it all comes down to a good story and good game play. It makes sense of why a game like Minecraft which has become such a big hit with its blocky graphics, because a good game is more than that and why Microsoft paid a reported £1.5 billion for the company that produced it.

The game that I'm playing at the moment in the limited tome I have is Tomb Raider III from back in 1998 on in its PC form and later in 1999 in its console form. In fact I'm playing the original Sony PlayStation version of the game rather than the PC version which you can still play today via the Steam Store which has be completely patched for today's computers and operating systems. This game is the third, in what turned out to be a long series of games that gone on which has millions of fans around the world that is still being produced today.

The first of the Tomb Raider series came out in 1996 and is said by some that PlayStation's success in the mid-1990s can attributed to this one game. The original game was set in a 3D world and involved the player leading the main character, Lara Croft, through a number adventures set in a series of tombs, and other locations. These adventures revolve around  killing dangerous creatures or other humans, while collecting objects and solving puzzles to gain access to an ultimate prize, usually a powerful artefact.

The third game in the series starts millions of years ago, when a meteor crashed to Earth, landing in Antarctica, then a tropical paradise. It is during an excavation a team picks up unusual readings from the meteorite's impact zone. It is while instigating the readings the a body of a sailor who served on Charles Darwin's expedition on the H.M.S. Beagle discovered. Following clues from the sailor's journal, the researchers expanded their search beyond the impact crater to other parts of the globe, where the Beagle's crew travelled. One of these places is India where Lara Croft happens to be doing her own research, and so starts the game.

What I love about the series is of games is just the imagination of the developers, the game play, the stories and the music. The whole thing is the complete package. It takes you into the world of the lead character and makes you want to play and play from dawn to dusk and in some cases throughout the night as well. The are just amazing games from start to finish.

So why play it on a computer game console that was built between June 1997 and December 1997, well that is easy it was the sort of console the game was made for. It would be easy to play it on a modern windows machine and at resolutions the game would never have been played in, but it won't make a difference to the game play just the way it is controlled and looked. In fact it will be easier to play with a controller than a keyboard and mouse.

Hopefully before we get to Christmas I will have a chance to play some more games on my old PlayStation including some of great driving games like Gran Turismo 2 which sold over 9 million copies, and then there is the early releases 2D of the Grand Theft Auto series of games. Look out for more post coming soon.