Tomb Raider: Gold

The Good
I decided to re-review this game after seeing how poor my original review was. So this is a four level addition to the original Tomb Raider .

Gameplay-

The basic idea of the game is still the same here. Find artifacts, solve puzzles and kill monsters. But these levels do it with a classy execution. The second and fourth levels wind up tall, and complicated passage ways at the top of a oblique or statue. The puzzles aren't as hard as the ones in the original, but still require some thought. The first Atlantis level might drive you a bit crazy at first. Hint- don't climb down to the floor when you first enter. The gun play is a bit better here than in the original. Fighting the mummies and mutants is far more forgiving this time around because the fights usually happen on flat floors or where there's ample space. The platforming in the game is a lot of fun. Particularly the the cliff crossing . The traps can look a bit intimidating at times, but never impossible. Overall, the gameplay was excellent.

Sound-

Tomb Raider has never had very bad sound, but it doesn't stand out either. Almost all the sounds are recycled from the original game. But at least it isn't repetitive. The music is minimal, but effective. It's Red-book audio, so you can stick it in a cd player to hear it. The average sounds of the walls moving and mummies screaming was still cool though. So the sound is average. but not bad.

Graphics-

Ah yes. The area where Tomb Raider has almost always shined. Just like the sound, a lot of it has been recycled from the previous game, but that is not a bad thing at all. The Atlantis walls still have that creepy pulse, Egypt still looks dusty and the monsters actually look a little better. Perhaps because there are more of them to look at. The overall look of the game is very good. One of my favorite new things is the outdoors levels. you can look right up at the stars ! That's a good thing since some of those levels can be claustrophobic at times. I was really impressed by the draw distance. In the first Atlantis level you can almost see clear across the canyon. Lara's character model hasn't changed, but it would have nice to Lara's model from Tomb Raider 2 used.

Controls-

You can edit the controls to suit how you want to play, so no need to explain them.

Tech specs-

Only 8 MB of hard drive space ? All right ! This game will take up almost no space on your PC. It has on the cd it'self patches for most of the major video cards at the time. Voodoo 1, Voodoo Rush, Rivia TNT, Matrox....I had never heard of Matrox before this game ! I couldn't use any though because I don't have any of those cards. But I'm sure it look better with one of them. And you don't need any old DOS sound cards to get it to work on a Windows PC. I can't remember what the sound settings were, but they worked. And one last note, this game has a screenshot key ( the forward slash key ). It takes them in PCX format. This is something that the original didn't have and was much needed. To wrap it all up, very nice package !

The Bad
Gameplay-

As I said in my older review of this game these levels can be needlessly difficult at times. Some of the problems can be the cameras fault, but some of the passageways to other areas are almost impossible to find without a guide( Like the first Atlantis level ). And no new cutscenes ? Or story ? Either Core didn't have a lot of time with this, or they were being really cheap.

Tech specs-

This was actually my fault. I didn't read the manual for those sound settings for Windows, and bought a sound card with DOS drivers to hear the game. I suppose manuals are worth reading. On another note that isn't my fault, this won't run on any Windows after Windows ME. That's because it was designed for DOS, and all Windows before Windows 2000 were DOS based. Anything after ME is NT based. As a result, it won't run AT ALL on a new PC without patches. And those patches are actually hard to use. Sigh And one last thing, there are supposed to different DOS and Windows versions of the game, when in reality they are the same. To run it in DOS you need DOS 6, and to run it in Windows, you have to use the MS-DOS prompt. It can be misleading. Oh, and before I forget, the screenshot key doesn't take one screenshot at a time, it keeps dumping them in the hard drive until you press the key again. Don't forget to press that key to stop them !

The Bottom Line
If you are a hard core Tomb Raider fan, get this game ! If you wan't a good Tomb Raider game, try Tomb Raider 1 first. I recommend this game fully, but with some caveats. Only get it if you are willing to put with some of it's more bothersome aspects. But otherwise, enjoy !