Many games today rely on 3D polygons and mechanics for the game to appeal to the current generation of gamers. So, the feel and look of games need to be as beautiful and captivating as possible to really get people to pay attention to your creation.
PlayStation 1, created by Sony, had this privilege to be one of the first to use 3D technology without it crashing or rejecting the file size of the disk it self. Sometimes the file sizes will cause games to have more then one disk holding the data of the game; two to three disks a time. This dawned the age of games today as we know and love them to be, since the 1990's.
Tomb Raider 1 (1996) was one of the first games to have this feature, the scenery and characters were all made up of 3D polygon's. Things were not perfect, but mind blowing back in the day, as Tomb Raider hit the shelves, everyone wanted to see this new creation and feeling of game play.
Precision was the key to getting around the areas which Lara Croft (The main character you play as.) had to explore and collect artefacts. Jumping was measured out in squares, as the scenery were managed in blocks and not curves, determining your jump depending how late or early you were to jump to the next ledge. Although, the nicest thing about Tomb Raider were the secret areas, they contained health packs and other boosts to help you on your mission.
Because of the restriction of sizes and dimensions or areas, Tomb Raider is a very short game, playing time only lasts for 5 hours. Textures and sprite images to replace items which are circular (Because Polygons with much more rounder edges were much larger sizes then normal blocky objects) were quite distorted and very hard to see. Though this was the original look and feel of a late 90's game, and had many gamers left in awe and amazement of how something could harness so much information on one disk, and be playable.
Now, keeping the complexity of Tomb Raider 1 in mind, years ago, it was amazing. Whilst time passed, graphics and file sizes developed into a much more larger scale, creating much more prettier and understandable games. Uncharted 1 (2006) had a great reputation for itself for its graphical perspective and story. Tomb Raider and Uncharted have quite a similar story dealing with the characters so it's a nice way to compare the two.
The areas are quite complex and advanced 3D, having much more then just blocks and secret areas, but curved and predictable areas which help you navigate where you must go. Having a hint to where to go is always nice and keeps players on their toes, instead of trying their hardest to find where they have to go next. The story is also shown in cutscenes rather then in game (Although many games such as Assassins Creed have been able to pull this off very well.) to let you know the next big part of the game is happening.
Precision is slightly taken away from new games entirely as Uncharted 1 has a smart AI system where the computer knows exactly what it can latch onto and what it cannot. Whilst a while back the AI system was merely simple, and had a few commands which aloud you to climb, shoot or do something in the level its self, so it was quite buggy and was in need of a few tweeks, but that was not sorted out until later models of games I believe.
Textures are key to making a game look visually appealing. The nicest thing about today's games is many are now on Blue Ray disks rather then original CD's, holding more information to play the game. (But you still get the odd game with two disks.) This enables more detail into games rather then resorting to the lowest setting possible for a render.
