A successful game is followed up by a successful sequel which follows roughly the same path. The sequel is exciting as both more of the same and a chance to see something new. Depending on the sequel does with it, those things may lose their appeal by the time it comes to another entry (especially if only a year has passed) and you can’t really pull off the same trick again. As such It’s hard for the third game not to end up seen as either a bigger departure or a return to the original.
For Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft, the narrative is mostly that of back to the original. More puzzles, more open-ended settings, fewer gun battles. Lara gets another upgrade to go with the continuing elevation of her name, moving from starring credit to part of the title, but it again doesn’t change much. The second game’s generous provision of being able to save your game at any point is jettisoned in favour of needing to collect and use up save crystals, although they aren’t fixed to the spot like in the original.
Some of the sequel’s other features, like the flares and fumbling around in the dark, are retained. This is the first game to get me consistently playing via capture card and my laptop screen rather than my TV, just to make it easier to adjust the brightness, in the vain hope of seeing what I’m doing. There is also the new idea of letting you choose which order you want to play the locations in, which is nice (and was also implemented in Rick Dangerous 2… just saying). That only kicks in once you pass the opening levels in the jungle in India though.
I didn’t mention the Minecraft-level pixel textures on solid blocks in my Tomb Raider II piece because they didn’t affect how I felt about it too much. And many of its levels, particularly the Great Wall opening, were set in places which actually are largely angular. Tomb Raider III setting off in the jungle, with right-angled trees everywhere, doesn’t play so well. If I’m going to fumble around uselessly in the dark for a switch which sets an almost-certain-death-trap in motion, I would like it to be somewhere a bit less terrible-looking.
It’s a shame that it opens so badly and is so ridiculously difficult again (at least one review at the time suggested that it was a deliberate tactic to get people to buy strategy guides) because some of the later levels have genuinely interesting ideas. Area 51 lends itself to a whole different type of mystery. Setting a level in Aldwych tube station in London, out of use by the time of release, is an ingenious way of widening out the definition of tomb and the kind of space that might be explored. Here lies that weird extra bit of the Piccadilly line, 1907-1994. Even as the Tomb Raider formula ossifies and I find myself, to my surprise, enjoying this series even less than the Strike one, at least there’s some spark of invention in there.
