More thoughts on Tomb Raider: Anniversary

It's good. There, now you don't have to read all this.
by AC - permalink

I've put in some more time with Tomb Raider: Anniversary, and I realized pretty quickly that it's a damned addictive game. It's actually hard to stop playing it. Most of this is probably because it's my first play-through, so I'm having to figure out all the puzzles (lot's of "Oh, I see" moments). Very few -- if any -- of the puzzles I've seen so far have been lifted straight from the original. I'm in the early stages of the second episode, taking my time and looking around a lot.

The combat is still a little wonky. I was more than halfway through the t-rex battle by the time I finally started to get a feel for the "adrenaline dodge" mechanic. In crowded quarters, against multiple enemies, it's even trickier. In fact, other than the rex fight, I think I've only managed to pull it off three times. Then again, like the original, the majority of the gameplay is exploration and solving environmental puzzles, which is definitely a positive. But there's a bright side to the combat, courtesy of Dragon's Lair: several cut-scenes feature quick-reaction controls, where you'll have to stab a direction to dodge an attack. It took me off guard at first -- I got my face torn off by a velociraptor (though judging by its size, I think it may actually have been a utahraptor). It's a new gameplay element for me, but I like it, and I think it bridges TRA's engine-driven cut-scenes with the gameplay brilliantly.

On the graphics front, the motion blur is becoming less distracting, and it's worth it for the distance fogging effect that makes the larger areas just stunning. In fact, I'm more and more impressed by the visuals the more I play. There's a slight bloom effect in open-air areas that works beautifully. TRA is so resource-light that I can run with all the eye candy enabled and a little anti-aliasing with 8X anisotropy at well over 60 FPS. It's just a really well-optimized engine, because it still looks great even without any bump-mapping (if there is some, I haven't seen it). Water effects are subtle and realistic, both from above and below. Poseidon's key room in St. Francis' Folly is particularly notable for that reason. Lara has a ton of animations that are generally pretty seamless, and her character model doesn't lose any quality the closer the camera gets to her.

TRA is also notable for its load times, or lack thereof. New levels and saved games load exceptionally quickly, and not just as compared to recent games. I'm talking three to four seconds, better than Quake III, and for the record, that game is eight years old. It's a far cry from games like Far Cry, or Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and Quake 4, where loading a new map can take upwards of twenty seconds, and even loading a quicksave can take as long as five or six. While TRA has no quicksave function, checkpoints are numerous, and if you die or take a wrong step soon after finding one, it takes only moments you quit your current game and continue from the last via the main menu. More evidence that this new engine is just brilliant.

Digressing completely, I want to mention a work-around for Half-Like 2: Episode One that seems to be working, though I'm not terribly happy about it. After beating HL2 with only a few crashes by, apparently, unloading WindowBlinds, I decided to try my luck with HL2 E1. First try, I watched the opening cinematic, Dog pulled me from the rubble, and it crashed. Classic looping-sound crash. I noticed a texture setting that was different in my HL2 and HL2 E1 config files, so I changed it, completely syncing up the settings for the two games, and tried again. This time I got a looping-sound crash during the black screen before the cinematic even started. Lovely.

I didn't want to do it, but I tried running the game in DirectX 8.1 mode (as opposed to 9.0c) and it works. There's no bump-mapping, which is okay except when pointing your flashlight at things in the dark; Alyx in particular looks downright creepy. There's also no HDR, although bloom works, and Source HDR is so system-taxing that I tend to just use bloom anyway. Other than that, the game looks just fine, although running in DX 8.1 mode means the graphics settings reset themselves every launch, so you have to reset resolution and just about every advanced setting each time you start the game. But that only takes about thirty seconds.

As an added bonus, with no bump-mapping the game runs at what seems like nearly double the framerate (I was playing with v-sync enabled, and didn't run any benchmarks). Just lightning quick, even in big, complex areas with a lots of light sources, and even during combat in those areas. It's a trade-off, and may be worth it if you prefer high framerates to having every possible graphical extra turned up.

The bottom line is that I was able to play through the entire game without a crash, and that's kickass. Alright, almost the entire game. For what I think was the third consecutive time, it crashed during the train ride at the very end of the game, immediately before the citadel blew itself to hell. I don't know what that's about, because it used to work fine. Whatever.

UPDATED: June 23, 1:00am-ish