Lara's Boss Resigns From Eidos Board

Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for their report that Jeremy Heath-Smith, managing director of Tomb Raider developers Core Design, has resigned from the board of both Core and parent company Eidos. According to the article, Heath-Smith "..was closely associated with the development of the hugely delayed Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.. [which has] been widely criticized since its launch for showing signs of extremely poor quality control, with serious gameplay bugs abundant throughout the product." However, as the piece points out, "..it is of course possible that the departure is for personal reasons and was planned prior to the launch of the game.. [but] it's fair to speculate that he may well be the sacrificial lamb required by Eidos."

Game is terrible

[moankey]

Someone's head should roll for that thing.
They took a good franchise and ruined it. I wonder what the studios are going to do since that new Tomb Raider movie is coming soon and Im sure the quality of Angel of Darkness will affect the popularity of the movie as well.

Re:Game is terrible

[Hedonist123]

"I wonder what the studios are going to do since that new Tomb Raider movie is coming soon and Im sure the quality of Angel of Darkness will affect the popularity of the movie as well." Nah, I think you're deluding yourself a bit to think that game releases have that much to do with their movie releases. The Resident Evil movie was terrible when released, and the box office showed that, even though the game was still great. Same with the Final Fantasy movie, though that wasn't nearly as bad. There have

Re:Game is terrible

[Trystero]

Chances are, the movie may flop, though I imagine it will have less to do with the relative success of the game than it will with the failure rate of sequels in general this year. I don't think that the first Tomb Raider movie's audience was made up heavily of TR gamers, and I don't think it would be the case with this one, either. The movie will succeed or fail on its own merits (or lack thereof).

Re:Game is terrible

[analog_line]

How do you ruin something that was already crap?

Surely some mistake?

[lightspawn]

The game got a 5 star rating from Maxim [maximonline.com] AND got its own publicity stunt in the form of TakeLaraToWorkDay.com [takelaratoworkday.com]!!!

Well, that will teach me never to trust Maxim - or publicity stunts.

Seriously though, isn't the whole tomb raider think sharkjumpular by now? Sure, it was novel to have a female protagonist and explore ruins, but we've had enough of each over the last few years, and the TR games didn't get any better.

Re:Surely some mistake?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Maxim review is ridiculous. By his use of the future tense, it's fairly obvious that the reviewer didn't play the game, and probably cribbed most of the text from a press release.

They didn't have to mention Tomb Raider's stale gameplay, they didn't have to find any one of the myriad bugs. Just play the thing, for Chrissake.

Not that I expect any sort of journalistic standards to Maxim's reviews section, but really now.

Re:Surely some mistake?

[Guppy06]

"Well, that will teach me never to trust (...) or publicity stunts."

Not familiar with Acclaim, are we?

Tomb Raider -- Good idea, poor execution

[Ender Ryan]

I think Tomb Raider has always been a really good idea, both as far as game potential and sales potential. Tomb Raider is essentially a female Indiana Jones with big boobs - who wouldn't mind that? Seriously. Mixing adventure with FPS/action with sex appeal - a good formula for a game. Unfortuneately, the gameplay, graphics, storylines, etc. have always been sub-par.

I disagree, though I won't defend TR 3 and 6

[dh003i]

Apparently, there's something about multiples of 3 in TR that means they just have to suck and be buggy.

TR 3 sucked, and so does TR 6 (but TR 6 because of it's bugginess and controls).

The Tomb Raider games had exceptional gameplay, interesting stories, and usually average graphics (though the first one, and the fourth one, had exceptional graphics for their time). The problem has always been that they rush the game too much. There are too many bugs in all of the releases.

Tomb Raider: Does anyone care anymore?

[Synic]

I think by the 3rd title in the series everybody who didn't get turned off already was bored stiff by the monotonous and irritating puzzles and lack of anything new. I'm just curious to see if Tomb Raider 2 movie bombs because I'm thinking that the core audience of "fans" of the video games have all stopped caring about the series altogether. Personally, when news sites started carrying articles on Angel of Darkness I just thought, "too little, way way too late," (especially since the graphics look very dat

Ouch...and TR:AoD isn't so bad

[jvmatthe]

This could be the nail in the coffin for Tomb Raider, and I for one will be sad to see it go. It was such a promising concept when it was released, but Core fell into two traps. One of them was the yearly release cycle and the other was a faulty concept of improving game design. And, the creativity in the new TR game (Tomb Raider; The Angel of Darkness) is a great step forward, but people are falling all over themselves to bash the bugs and controls. Bugs, I can see, but the controls are just fine.

A lot of what I have to say can be seen in Lara the Murderer [curmudgeongamer.com] (about the series itself) and this TR:AoD first impressions article [curmudgeongamer.com] and my later update [curmudgeongamer.com]. I think they're a better read than a Slashdot post, but oh well.

If you step back and look at TR1, TR2, and TR3, you can see a progression. TR1 was brilliantly designed, coherent in story and goals, and technologically impressive for its time. TR2 showed more of a story, but took the game in two different directions that didn't suit it. First, more guns and more killing of humans. This seemed a deliberate act to make the game appeal to action movie fans that weren't as much into exploration and movement puzzles. It also put Lara into urban settings, a setting for which the game engine just wasn't suited. The technology has improved, but not much at this stage. Vehicles you can ride have been added, a gimmick that doesn't work very well. Finally, in TR3, you have a collection of loosely connected levels, more killing, more guns, and more vehicles. None of these make the game interesting, and a save game bug in the final version corrupted my game, at which point I gave up.

Until the new game, that is. While the reviews were negative, they did comment that hardcore TR fans might be able to overlook some flaws (bugs and controls) to enjoy a game with a great story and some classic TR design. As it turns out, the issue with the controls has been blown way out of proportion. They're different, but they are not poor. The reaction seems sluggish to some, but I've found it to be more than acceptable, even comfortable.

There are bugs and you will encounter them. They should have been gotten rid of before shipping and I regret that the PS2 version won't ever be patched to fix some of them, especially the graphical slowdown in certain areas, But having just passed the 2/3 mark last night I can say that they have not been painful and haven't diminished my interest in the game. I've laughed at a few of them, and I hope there is a next game that has more time to iron those kinds of issues out, but my experience isn't nearly what you might think from reading reviews and posts on USENET.

The best part is certainly the story. The voice acting and writing are actually decent, which is better than can be said of many other games, and it does have the classic TR level design in certain areas. Moreover, it now has a graphics engine now allows for realistic urban areas, and for once those can feel like a natural part of the game.

It isn't for everyone, I'll admit. But it also isn't as bad as people have made it out to be either.

Re:Ouch...and TR:AoD isn't so bad

[Trystero]

Sounds like you didn't try TR4 (The Last Revelation). For myself, that was the best one since the first. I really enjoyed it, and had high hopes for the series.. until *sigh* TR5 (Tomb Raider Chronicles). Of course, maybe I shouldn't judge TR5 too harshly. I never finished playing it. Because it kept crashing early in the game. At the same exact spot, on two different computers. Ah well. I'll probably still get TR:AoD, but not until it drops a good 20 dollars in price.

If you can find TR4 for a good