Lara's best bits

 

Tomb Raider for the original PlayStation was released in 1996 and was the first time most console gamers had played a third person action game. The original game in the on-going tomb raider series really showed off the new hardware and pointed the way for a thousand copy cat games to follow.

As the series went on though the innervation got scarcer and  new ideas got a bit thin on the ground, by the third game, it all seemed a little stale and by the numbers,

However with each new entry to the series there were new features added to the formula to try and convince gamers to invest hard earned cash on next Lara Croft adventure.

Tomb Raider 

The first outing of miss Croft was an absolute game changer. We had never seen levels of exploration as large as this, the tombs and underground temples seemed to go on forever with labyrinthine tunnels and chambers filled with traps, creatures and lost treasures.

But not only did the extend out in front of you, they also towered above you as well! One of my stand out moments of the first game as scaling a huge underground water fall and viewing the enormous chamber it sat in from the roof of the cave it sat in, only to perform an elegant swan dive from the falls pinnacle into a freezing pool 50 feet below.

You could also partake in the disturbingly cathartic practise of getting the heroine of the piece to the lofty heights of a level and swan diving her off onto the concrete bellow, breaking her neck with a sickening crack...or was that just me?

It also featured the interior of Croft manor, Lara's homestead and the training area for the game. It featured stairs, a ballroom with an impromptu  assault course made of packing cases and creates and also Lara's bedroom and bathroom that feature in the final cut scene of the game (spoiler).

Tomb Raider 2.

 

 

Tomb Raider 2 had it's work cut out to match the quality of the original. It kicked things off with a cut scene intro that had dragons, the great wall of China and monks fighting. This was a far more epic beginning to the game than TR1s intro that featured wolves being shot in the snow.
The second game also has a much larger version of Lara's home, Croft Manor. This time round it has full indoor and out door areas with gardens, a full assault course with death slide and cargo nets and a maze with a hidden secret.
The house also has Lara's butler who wanders the house after you carrying a clattering tea set and occasionally farting, If the old codger really starts getting on your nerves you can always lure him into the kitchen and lock him in the freezer where he will probably freeze to death...again was this just me who did this?
The game now featured full open environs including the great wall, Venice featuring canals, and even a oilrig and sunken ship level. 
It was also the first TR to feature a vehicle. You could hop into a speed boat and tear round the canals of Venice while "classical music" plays along in the background (it's not an actual famous piece of classical music, it was written by Nathan McCree for the games score, but it sounds great and fits the level really well) and you gun down gondoliers and Dobermans.
You can also use a spear gun in the underwater levels to shoot endangered species of shark.
With the more open areas and new vehicles, TR2 really adds new depth to the series, while still keeping all the aspects that made the first one great.

Tomb Raider 3; The adventures of Lara Croft  (because all she had done till then was just a walk in the park?)   

 

By the time the third time game rolled around the tomb raider franchise was getting a little stale.

Core design added some interesting features to number three that gave it a much needed refresh. First of all there is a bigger training section at croft manor that features a vehicle section, shooting section and allot longer assault course.

The second feature unlocks after you have finished the first section, once you have completed the India 

Section you get to choose one of three country's to carry on Lara's adventure. You can choose Nirvana 

In the US, London England or Antarctica.

The plot jumps between three continents and involves a cosmetic giant who wants eternal youth, a desert government research lab with a dark secret and a meteorite crash site. This non linear plot means you get I little more choice than the first 2 much more linear titles.

                                                                     And the rest of them

After the first three the tomb raider games there were several spin offs from chronicles, through to last revelation but these were way after I lost interest in the series.

After the disaster that was The angel of darkness and the vanilla but passable tomb raider Legends, tomb raider was rebooted yet again with tomb raider in 2012. 

As much as I enjoyed the 2012 reboot, I still consider TR1 for the ps1 the best one in the series, it's so basic now that you can play it on your phone but it remains as epic and engrossing as it did in the 90's on the first Playstation.

It's good to be bad

Everyone likes a bad guy, from Darth Vader to Gargamel, a decent villain always out shines the goody goody lead.
We all have our arch villain favs we love to hate, and here are the ones that have had an effect on me over the years.

Kain- Blood omen legacy of kain.

Kain is the anti Edward, pale pouty teen  heart throb he is not. This father to the vamps of Nosgoth, Kain has hacked slashed and drained his way across time and space to pursue his dreams of total domination of his world.
As with most antagonist however he creates his own nemesis in the form of his ex lieutenants Raziel, this upstart had the audacity to out evolve his master by growing wings, Kain, not to be one upped by anyone tore said wings off and had him thrown into the nearest vortex. Raz over reacted by becoming an eater of souls with the mission to slay every blood sucker not under the sun and consume their souls.    
For being underhand, scheming and just plane black hearted, Kain is a force to be reckoned with.

Bring a Flamingo to gun fight!

Violence, in the real world we get as far away from it as possible (at least I do, you might be a nut job who enjoys beating merry hell out of kittens, to each his/her own). So why is it that the tools most games use to let us interact with the virtual environments seem to run on bullets, shotgun shells or napalm?

 

Well no today, today I'm thinking about the boom sticks with a little less boom and a little more pizazz, pop and just plain HUH?!?!? 

 

      

The groovitron - Ratchet and Clank

Why blast enemy bots to pieces when you can force them to shake their funky stuff to 70's disco sounds, with the Grooitron you can avoid murder on the dance floor and slip by while your enemy jumps, jives and moonwalks, far to busy to bother shooting you full of holes.

Wabbajack - Oblivion/Skyrim



Any weapon gifted to you by the prince of madness has got to be good for a laugh, right?
The wabbajack is a daedric artefact in the form of a staff with four screaming faces at one end of it, and it functions very much like all the other magic staffs that you can loot from most areas of Tamriel but with one major difference,  point it at an enemy and one of several random effects kicks in. It turns your victims into chickens, mud crabs, a shower of coins and most disturbing of all- a sweet role, which you can then eat! messed up.

Shrink ray - Duke Nukem  3D/forever

As if Dukes ego was not big enough already, with this green glowing gun you can reduce any hulking pig cop enemy to the size of a bug, and then you get to crush em under your size 14 combat boots, hail to the king baby.

Portal gun - Portal 1/2

This may be the most awesomely powerful non lethal weapon ever conceived by man or megalomaniac evil rogue AI woman. 
Developed by ex shower curtain and now big science military contractors Aperture Science, the portal gun allows you to connect two portals via a quantum space hole allowing instantaneous travel between to points- this means you can fall into a hole in the floor and fall out of a whole in the ceiling. Add to this the fact that there is no loss of inertia, lets you use your forward or downward momentum to launch out of the exit portal and over gaps far to wide for you to jump.

How is that a weapon I hear you ask, well when you can drop a crate into a hole in the floor and have it fall out of the portal you have just placed above that poor, innocent and heavily armed robot AI killing machine around the corner then you will see the result of thinking violent thoughts with portals- "I don't blame yo..."crunch.    

 

What's it got in it's pockets?

Inventory management, it's in almost any RPG, adventure or point and click game you can mention.

Keeping track of you celestial pants of god hood is complicated enough without the rest if the useless, oversized or just plain weird junk that some games throw at you.

Looking over some of the items I have jammed in my nether weave bags, sacks of holding or in one case just stuffed into my trousers ( I'm looking at you George Stobart) here is my list of the oddest things that have prevented me jamming that new GEP gun into my hold-all.

Hoate club membership card- world of Warcraft 

 

Picked up when your Death knight first sets large iron booted foot in Azeroth, the horte club card is a white labeled object and as such is not classed as a junk item. 

But after countless players logging forum posts and requests as to its use and the location of the titular club, it turned out to be just another story item with no function except to give a snippet of back story to the starting location.

Envious eyes- vampire bloodlines

Not so much as a useless item, just plain gross. When you visit China town in the latter stage of the game you come across the worlds creepiest shop keeper since the guy from res evil 4 (greetings stranger!)

This sinister fellow tells you a tail of theft, betrayal and revenge that culminates in you breaking into a freezer in the local triad run food store to swipe the eye balls from a recently dead gang member- quite how you get them and store them on the way back to the vendor are thankfully left to your own imagination (although I'm sure it involves a Mellon baller and a baggy).

Tequila worm- Broken sword, the smoking mirror.

 

Broken sword has had its share of weird and wonderful items to examine, combine and generally damage your mental health. But among the gourmet dog biscuits, satin heart panties and clown noses is the fleshy and gross tequila worm.

Found after the series lead character George Stobart swigs from a bottle while fighting a fire in a spider infested living room (don't ask), said worm is picked up, pocketed and can be shown to any NPC you run into who respond in everything from disinterest to utter revolstion.

Being broken sword you will properly combine it with an umbrellas and a coat hanger to escape an angry goat, as I said, it damages you mental health.

Wert's leg- Diablo 2.

 

The Diablo series has always been about the loot, from armour to swords and shields, these games encourage the collection if items, gems and ton and tons of gold.

However, among all the weapons and cash you pick up its wert's leg that stands out.

Belonging to Wert the one legged resident of the town of Tristram from the first game, this prosthetic limb seems useless compared to your broad sword of ork cleaving, however it has more to it than meets the eye.

Combine it with other items in game and prepare for a bovine surprise.

Rolls of film. Resident evil 2

 

Resident evil games have always been tight with inventory space, so having to carry around a shotgun, that odd chess piece shaped plug and the ever so sort after green red herb mix is hard enough without  Umbrella inc's undeveloped holiday snaps filling up valuable blocks.

The rolls can be developed in the photo lab safe room and turned intersting but useless photos of some aspects of then Raccon City outbreak, but until you do they sit in you bag where you could have put that extra clip and avoided the zombie dog that is now eating your face, damn.

Any weapon larger than a pistol- Deus Ex.

 

Guns, lot's of guns. When you're preparing to take on the NSF it's important to pack some heat, just don't expect to carry a flame thrower, rocket launcher and still have room for your favourite sawn off as well.

As with the rest of the game, it is all about compromise- and the blocks in you inventory ensure you never feel complently prepared for you next mission, forcing you to think round situation instead of gunning your way through the whole game.