Game Theory: Tomb's Edge

Posted 03/26/2009 at 3:00pm | by Thomas McDonald

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My first thought was, “Aw, not this crap again!”

I was somewhere in the second location of Tomb Raider: Underworld. There was a jump that needed to be made—there’s always a jump that needs to be made—and every time I tried to get the right angle, the camera disappeared into Lara Croft’s gigantic backside like a twitchy colonoscope. If I turned a little bit, Lara herself vanished into the rocks.

Twelve years on, and with Tomb Raider creator Core now little more than a stack of devalued assets, the problems that plagued the series are still haunting Lara Croft like the Ghosts of Polys Past. Underworld is a creaking old hulk of a game, building very slightly on Legend’s meager innovations but still delivering most of what fans expect: running and jumping, some combat, puzzles, and Dr. Lara.

Then I turned to Mirror’s Edge and could not imagine two more sublime contrasts. It is the anti-Tomb Raider. Faith is Bizarro Lara: a wispy, mopey Asian goth with the body of an anorexic 12-year-old boy. Everything about Mirror’s Edge is fresh and new, from the bright whitewashed concrete and dazzling sky of the setting to the groundbreaking running and jumping controls. The sensation of motion and the feeling of control is something actually innovative. Not innovative in the sense of “really good and a little bit new,” but a by-gum fresh way of interacting with a game world.

And I hated it. Oh, how I hated it, with a hatred that burned hot and radioactive like the Springfield reactor. Put aside the insipid story, characters, and social critiques, and you have a maddening kind of Stockholm-syndrome gameplay that tries to convince you that repeatedly plummeting to your death when you fail to pull off improbable moves is actual entertainment.

Just for laughs, I returned to Underworld after I escaped from Mirror’s Edge, and you know what? I found myself enjoying my time with the old girl. Gamers are like middle-aged men (and I’m both): They may look at the skinny, quirky new girl, but they always stick with the solid, reliable woman in the end.

Thomas L. McDonald has been covering games for 17 years. He is Editor-at-Large of Games Magazine.