Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Prophecy

THE BAD:
Horrid password save system, limited weapons and items, 3-D perspective issues. General lack of innovation.

SUMMARY:
A moderately ambitious Tomb Raider game comes to the GBA. Lots of jumping and climbing in a 3d environment, which is at least a good idea. From that premise, its all downhill though...

The graphics in the game occasionally have a hard time conveying the comparative spatial relationship between locations, meaning you will fall to your doom or into a spot you'd rather not be with annoying frequency. Also, if you do fall to your doom, you get to restart the level, stripped of all the items you've picked up in the course of it.

Combat in the game is simple and dull. You start with infinite ammo pistols, and acquire twin Uzis and eventually magic pistols (how clever) which use ammo. All of these weapons are unspectacular and the other items in the game are similarly thrillless. The original PS1 TR game was a virtual smorgasboard of gameplay diversity in comparison. You autoaim of course, and the enemies at least show different types of AI and some of them are fairly smart.

As far as traps and exploration, its similarly straightforward. An awful lot of "traps" have an on/off switch right next to them which calls the entire definition of a trap into question. The trickier ones (such as they are) involve finding item x and putting it in location y. Much backtracking as in Castlevanias, but unlike them, this game is dull enough so as to make you eventually resentful of all the backtracking.

The worst element of this dull title though is the save system. It is password based (very high tech, Ubisoft) and even worse, eliminates all of your items when you start the new level. Which means in order to actually carry forward the stuff you find, you have to play huge chunks of the game at once. There is also no sleep mode, no contrast contols, and no configurable button options. In short, the developer's lack of ambition extends to the technical aspects of the game just as much as it is seen in content and gameplay.

There is a slight story here which will not be winning many admirers. There are a diverse number of settings anyway, and the sound effects are nicely done in an ambient style with no annoying music to be repeated over and over. All in all though, this is a thoroughly average game with no major flaws that will excite few and which will discourage many by its prehistoric save system and lack of variety in gameplay elements. Still, as there are so few great GBA titles and fairly short play times for many of those, a few of you who are very desperate for anything with some meat to it on this system may end up picking this up anyway. Just don't expect mucn.