I remember the first time I saw Tomb Raider, and the game immediately caught my eye. No not because it had a "hot chick" for an protagonist, but due to the style in which the game was set up. In reminded me of Prince of Persia, one of my favorite platformers in the old days, only this executed in 3D, and that was truely interesting for me. In fact this comes closer to a 3D version of the Prince of Persia concept than Prince of Persia 3D, which is really sad.

The game introduces Lara Croft, a girl who was born to be an aristocrat, however an accident made her having to keep herself alive by nothing but true survival instincts, and for the first time in her life, she felt, alive. This incident caused her to become a true adventurer. She is hired by a rich woman to find a certain artifact from ruins of the old mayas. From there the adventure begins that will take Lara to maya ruins, Greek ruins, Egyptian ruins and in the end even a realm that I won't reveal to prevent spoilers.

Due to the Prince similarities I wanted to try this game and soon a friend gave me a free demo containing the 2nd part of the game's second level: The City of Vilcabamba (I also used this demo for this review, although I do have the full version too).

The big difference with Prince is that this is fully 3D and that Lara uses firearms in stead of a sword, and Lara can do a few more things than the prince could, like swimming for example. The prince elements come out most of all in having to climb higher up areas by jumping grabbing and pulling yourself up, timing out your jumping work well and tiles being loose falling down after you made them even more loose with your own weight.

This game has no general time limit, although when you die it's instant game over, however the full version features a savegame feature and you can save anywhere you want, and you have multiple slots, meaning you can place some markers for yourself in order not to have to play the full game over when you die.

Like many games of its time the game does NOT support WASD controls (perhaps later installments of the series do, but I'm now limiting myself to the first installment only for DOS).

You will need to use the arrow keys to move around. When holding shift you can walk slowly. With "end" and "pgdown" you can strafe. Alt is jumping and ctrl is holding on to stuff. With space you can draw you guns or put them away. While you have drawn your guns ctrl can be used to shoot.

You can do a few more things by combining things. In the full version Lara's house is featured in which Lara tells you exactly what you can do to move well through all obstacles the true game will offer. Of course in her own house, Lara is not in her adventure clothes, but rather in her casual suit and she'll be unarmed, so during this tutorial you cannot practice shooting.

By default Lara is armed with two pistols providing unlimited ammo, however their power is weak. Lara can get herself better weapons like a shotgun, a pair of magnums and a pair of uzis, of which the ammo is limited, but their effect is much greater. Along the way you can get yourself medipacks, but Lara will only use them when you tell her to, meaning you have some control over when Lara needs to heal herself or not. Use your medipacks wisely as you won't get very much of those. The game does also provide some "key" items you may need to open certain doors in order to progress in the game. Although you can easily "miss" them, you can always go back to get them anyway. The levels are overall designed with the idea in mind the level should always be "finishable".

When swimming you need in to keep in mind that you cannot draw your gun while swimming and if you fall in the watter with your guns drawn they'll automatically put back in their respective holsters. Also note that Lara can like a real woman only hold her breath for a short time, so make sure when you go underwater that you have Lara's head above the water every now and then so she can breathe. The game gives you a nice oxygen gauge, but it depletes pretty fast and when you run out of oxygen, Lara will drown meaning a game over.

Some very great plusses of the game:

• Lara will automatically try to aim when an enemy is nearby and in shooting range. No this does not make the game too easy, but far less frustrating.

• Controls are very clear and easy to understand.

• The game shows which doors opens whenver you pull a switch. I know this is kind of a standard today, but it wasn't very common in the old days, and Tomb Raider was in fact one of the first game to feature this.

• Ancient history looks well-researched so you really deem yourself in the old ruins

• High quality graphics for its time

The cons of this game:

• The camera positions are pretty annoying. Basically the game features a chasecam, in which the camera "chases" Lara and to always be behind her back. However if there's too little room for the camera the game tries to automatically find another spot. Mostly that leads to not being able to see well what you are doing, which can easily lead to your death and when this happens a lot, this can be quite frustrating. (In the game's defense, this is one of the first games to feature a chasecam system, so you can't expect the best, as the routines used today are a lot better, but you gotta keep it in mind)

• One level starts with a boss that is almost impossible to beat, and since the cheat codes work with "making Lara dance" (for which this boss gives you no chance and cheats reset at each new level), this beast can remove all the fun of the game, especially since compared to that boss everything that comes next is easy.

• There are no checkpoints. Dead is dead. You need to use your savegames wisely. Not uncommon at the time of the game's release, but something to keep in mind.

Despite its cons, and it's clear base in the Prince of Persia series, Tomb Raider does stand out on its own and even set a few new standards for 3rd person 3D games for later games to come.

Lastly, when finishing a level the game provides some nice statistics. As the game has no scoring system it has not real value, but maybe completionists can take advantage of this.

Playing this game in modern times

Well, the demo and the full game are both perfectly supported in DOSBox (I used DOSBox after all to show these screenshots), but here's the rub. The full game uses a CD-ROM with audio tracks, and that can be bothersome. If you have an original CD from older times you may want to copy the contents of that CD-ROM into an ISO file and use that in DOSBox. I must note that you must then properly mount it an an image and as a CD-ROM. The DOSBox manual should surely tell you how to do this.

If you don't own the game yet, you can legally obtain it at GOG.com by going here, and you get a complete set of the first three instalments of the series.

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