Tomb Raider 2 review by Tyson
Overall
Buy
Lara Croft is back for a whole new adventure. If you enjoyed the first Tomb Raider then its sequel will be worth buying. While not everything is perfect it still has enough polish and quality to be in your PlayStation library.
Gameplay
The story in Tomb Raider 2 has Lara Croft in search for the Dagger of Xian. It is said that whoever plunges the dagger into their heart will turn into a dragon. In order for Lara to get a hold of this dagger she will need to travel to places like the Great Wall of China, the streets of Venice, the sunken ship Mario Doria, and to the Tibetan Mountains.
The core gameplay in Tomb Raider 2 is still built around exploration and combat. I found exploring the environments to be a lot fun. There are a lot more traps in the environment as well. You will constantly be at danger and just like the first game a misstep or badly timed jump will cause Lara to meet her maker. Thankfully a new save system where you can save anywhere helps remove a lot of frustration from these kinds of deaths. One cool feature that I liked was that a few levels give you some vehicles to drive around in. You drive a motorboat in the canals of Venice and you get a snowmobile in the Tibetan Mountains.
Puzzles in the game haven’t changed much from the first game. You will still be flipping switches or picking up items like keys to open doors. One new thing you can do in this game is destroy certian parts of the enivorments such as shooting out windows to progress through a level. Also many of the games jumping or swimming puzzles will really test your abilities.
I feel that the combat hasn’t improved from the first game. Tomb Raider 2 has you fighting more then just animals or demon like enemies this time around. You are going to be fighting mainly human based enemies in this game. This get frustrating since many enemies have guns and can quickly take bits of your life bar away or even start attacking you before you can even see them. Thankfully you do get some more weapons this time around. Weapons like the gernade launcher that explodes guys into bits or the harpoon gun for underwater fighting are pretty neat though.
Control
Tomb Raider 2 uses the same control setup as the first game. Lara still moves on a grid like system which is helpful for lining up jumps. One new feature of the control setup is you now have a button for flares. These are mainly used to help light up dark areas of the game.
Graphics
The graphics have some improvements from the first game. Lara now has her ponytail out which looks great. It was also neat how Lara will get different outfits to wear throughout the game. I did like how the lighting system is much better then the first game. The issues I did have with the graphics is that many of the games human enemies don’t look that good compared to Lara and that some areas are way to dark.
Sound
I find the audio to be just as good as the first game. I really liked the voice actress for Lara. The main theme used in this game still sounds great. Also much like the first game there isn’t a lot of background music but in some weird way it does add to the games atmosphere.