Why we need another Lara Croft
Check out my new feature atricle over at Sisters Noir – “Why we need another Lara Croft”.
R-TYPE Dimensions and Tomb Raider Beneath The Ashes
R-TYPE Dimensions is an updated version of R-TYPES 1 and 2. I downloaded the trial of the first level earlier. By pressing “Y” you can switch in real-time between the original 2-D in-game graphics and purty new 3-D vistas. It is 3-D in the way that R-type Delta and R-TYPE Final were – still side-scrolling but with 3-D sprites and scenery. It all looks bloody brilliant! Another cool thing about this is the addition of “Infinite Mode” which affords you infinite lives (R-TYPE games are notoriously hard and not particularly generous with extra lives). The best thing though, is that R-TYPE Dimensions allows you to play 2 player co-op on a single machine or using XBOX live. Not even R-TYPE Final (the seminal R-TYPE game on PS2) had this features, it had only a baffling (and terribly disappointing) A.I. mode, where you sat and watched random spaceships fight while you imagined you could actually fly them. Bugger that.
Tomb Raider Underworld, on reflection
Some of the single room puzzles can take a while and are pretty clever, harking back to similar locations in the original games. Combat appears to take a backseat, and although shooting two enemies at once and shooting off walls when climbing is pretty cool, it is gravely underused. Many of the cool moves from Legend (where combat was awesome) seem to have been removed which is a shame, because Lara’s motion capture makes her really fluid. Being a Crystal Dynamics game the combat in Legend was very reminiscent of Legacy of Kain: Defiance, which was no bad thing because that was immensely fun to play.
Got me an X Box!
The reason I made no blog/s yesterday was because I’d gone out to do a spot of Christmas shopping (which was more than a spot, really) and for a bit of retail therapy by buying myself an X box 360. We’d had a look in Game’s window on Friday night as we walked past and spotted the 60gb hard drive premium model with Far Cry 2 and Gears of War 1 & 2 for £189 but I thought I’d better have a shop around to make sure there wasn’t anything cheaper.
A tomb yet to be raided
Unfortunately yesterday when I looked at Amazon I found they had changed the release date for Tomb Raider Underworld on PS2 – it’s been put back to the 9th Jan 2009. Now I’m sure this has to do with technical limitations of the console in question, but I want to play this game before then. So yesterday I decided I’d actually buy an X Box 360 and play it on that. I was going to get it today, but I thought well it’s Sunday and I won’t have much time to play it, so I’ll either go on a mission Thursday (now that late Christmas night shopping has kicked in) or early on Saturday.
