What is Tomb Raider II?

Tomb Raider heroine and cyber pinup girl Lara Croft has been an international success since early ’97, but the game’s original publisher, Eidos, deprived Mac gamers of the chance to participate in the pop culture phenomenon. Even PlayStation junkies got to play Tomb Raider I and II. But thanks to Aspyr Media, Lara has been raiding tombs on the Mac recently. Is it too little too late? Tomb Raider II’s engine is long in the tooth; its once-cool graphics are dated; and it lacks a multiplayer option, which has been the hot area in gaming for some time. However, late arrivals are better than no-shows, and Tomb Raider II still has plenty to offer.

Tomb Raider II is the sequel to Tomb Raider, which may make you wonder where the first game is. Aspyr is packaging Tomb Raider I with a couple of expansions in Tomb Raider Gold, due in early ’99‘ Lara’s job in Tomb Raider II is to track down the Dagger of Xian, an ancient Chinese artifact that possesses the power of the dragon. The plot, as in most action-adventure games, remains secondary to gameplay. The real purpose of the game is to move Lara through a series of puzzles and bad guys and get to the next level.

Tomb Raider II’s gameplay is a surprising mix of easy and ridiculously hard tasks. The easy jobs consist of auto-aiming (where Lara shoots from the hip to kill enemies) and navigating around the landscape and inside buildings.

When you encounter creepy crawlies, just shoot them and they die. Running is the default method of locomotion, so that’s easy, as are turning, jumping, and swimming. The hard tasks consist of combining precisely timed keystrokes to make Lara somersault, do swan dives, grab ledges, somersault sideways on and off surfaces, and so on. Sometimes you have to repeat a jump several times to get Lara to grab onto a ledge.

One frustrating element of gameplay is the camera angle. Because the game functions in the third-person perspective, the camera swings to and fro behind Lara and often ends up askew. When you’re backed up against a wall, for example, you can’t move the camera behind Lara to see where she’s going to jump next. For making long jumps, plan on a lot of trial and error. You remedy that, however, by saving often. More than anything. Tomb Raider II makes you a conscientious saver.

Exploiting Lara’s agility will prove challenging even for experienced gamers, and the timing of keystrokes will frustrate many casual players. On the other hand. Tomb Raider II’s difficulty is what most hard-core gamers welcome. If you have a gamepad, program it and use it to control Lara more smoothly.

Once you master all the fast moves — and we do mean master — Tomb Raider II is a lot of fun to play. Its mix of action, puzzle solving, and adventure is balanced and challenging. Doing a bunch of somersaults off ledges to escape from attacking tigers is very cool. Tomb Raider II also gets kudos for incorporating historic landmarks, which other adventure titles often ignore, and featuring a tough-as-nails female character as the protagonist. Many have criticized Lara as a teenage boy’s fantasy with obscene proportions, but that’s not quite true in the game.

Tomb Raider II is a long-awaited and welcome addition to the Mac game library. We recommend playing it in Glide (3Dfx) mode for maximum raiding fun.

Ho, Jennifer. (February 1999). Tomb Raider II. MacAddict. (pg. 60).

Download Tomb Raider II for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.5 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Minimum Requirements

• PowerPC @ 80 MHz
• 16 MB RAM
• 4X CD-ROM drive
• Color display
• System 7.5.3
• QuickTime 3.0

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver