First time I played Tomb Raider was in mid 1999. It was one of my first 3D games. A friend of mine brought the Tomb Raider 4 Game CD and we were real excited about the 3D effects. Back then, Direct 3D cards were the trend and I had a cool Intel i740 D3D AGP. So, the game quality came out pretty cool. Open GL was pretty new then. Only Vodoo cards had Open GL and they were costly. Later NVIDIA bought Vodoo and Open GL became a must for PC Games.
Anyway, though I started with Tomb Raider 3, but it was actually the 4th installment of the series that made me a fan of the franchise. Tomb Raider 4 had a huge leap from it's previous version both in graphics and story, specially the story. The adventures in Egyptian Tombs and Pyramids, the cool action, the puzzles, and made me mesmerized. And at the end when Lara got trapped in side the Pyramid rubble, it just created a hunger inside me for the next installment of the game. But when it finally came out that hunger transformed into a bad stomach ache. Tomb Raider 5 was really disgusting. I had no idea what they were trying to make with it. As all other Tomb Raider fans, I also thought that the next release will be better, but hell I was wrong. Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, Tomb Raider: The Legend... all were so horrible that I never was able to play any of them more than an hour. When all other PC games improved with character controls, Tomb Raider was stuck with it's old system. Yes the graphics was good, but the control was bad. And it was just like the old puzzles and old temples, nothing new. Just when we all thought that the franchise is finally gonna die out.... BOOOM.... they make an awesome reboot that's just out of this world.
The graphics is extraordinary. I never had the chance to check the Hair Render option with my NVIDIA GPU (it only works in ATI). But it's not the graphics, but it's the Story that's special. In my opinion, this new Tomb Raider has the best story of all of it's early releases. It got ancient Tombs, Monsters, Shipwreck, Gun Fight, Stealth Kill, Bow and Arrow, Puzzles, Friendship, Betrayal, Supernatural, occult..... everything that makes Tomb Raider the best Adventure Games ever. I give it a 10/10 rating for all it's aspects: enjoyment, graphics, game play, etc. It's a shame that I don't have a good GPU to enjoy it in it's full quality. But it is one of the best game I played in years. And I'm looking forward to it's next sequel. Hope they wont mess with it this time. Let's just cross our fingers.
:)
:(
hihi
:-)
:D
=D
:-d
;(
;-(
@-)
:P
:o
:>)
(o)
:p
:-?
(p)
:-s
(m)
8-)
:-t
:-b
b-(
:-#
=p~
$-)
(y)
(f)
x-)
(k)
(h)
cheer