Played through alongside Anniversary. It still fucking slays.

One of the most satisfying games I can think of when you're willing to put the time in to learn the controls. The level design makes the most of both the simplistic moveset and design elements (the game is on a grid system) for an ultimately cohesive experience. The level design flows without feeling like you're being railroaded from place to place. Not all games (see: the remake) have That...

Anyways, I'm looking forward to replaying through the rest of the pre-Crystal Dynamics games in the near future. It's been long enough.

A very interesting and weird playthrough as someone who has no knowledge of this series outside of "Lara Croft hotted video game woman". The controls obviously took some getting used to, as they were baffling at first for this sort of action-adventure platformer game. But I got used to them much more quickly than I thought, and I actually ended up seeing how this control scheme helps this game in some ways. It requires you to really consider every jump, whether to jump from right the edge of a cliff or do a jump with a running start off of it. You have to carefully climb down walls to not take damage, you have to take time to crouch down before making a leap.

Tomb Raider does a lot in the service or "realism", which I'm usually not into in games but I can't say I wasn't impressed by it here. Stuff like no music in-game, only cold ambient noises, your underwater oxygen meter taking time to refill when you rise up, and the animations for stuff like pushing a block or picking up an item. These elements combined with the form of methodical platforming and puzzle solving made Tomb Raider actually fairly promising to me when I started.

But unfortunately as the game went on its flaws overshadowed what I liked about it. For one, combat in this game is never anything more than a nuisance or completely trivial. It mostly involves holding the action button while backflipping away from enemies, but if they get close enough the camera flips out so much that it becomes a mess trying to get in a position to start shooting again. By the last third of the game, I had so many healing items that combat basically became a health-losing race, especially against "bosses". It's strange because they occasionally have these rooms with lots of pillars for cover in order to set up these dramatic fights with other characters, but all I do is stand in front of them and unload my shotgun a couple times.

The slow, "realistic" nature of the controls also became a detriment. Way too often I ran into the issue of Lara taking 2 or 3 more steps than I intended, falling to my death, or the walk button taking too long to actually stop my current pace, or just the tedium of having to wait for Lara to push a block by one square. Also, way too often I ran into the issue of walking right past the next point in the level because of how everything tends to blend in with the each other.

The puzzle solving aspect of things, while occasionally interesting, can be frustrating by the fact that it feels like the game sends enemies after you after every step of a puzzle. Like, I pull one switch and four apes just show up, and then I get to the next part of the puzzle and four more apes show up. This process got so repetitive and frustrating, especially with how annoying combat is.

This game also loves cheap deaths. Things like putting an enemy right around a corner you weren't expecting, or a fall leading to spiked you wouldn't be able to avoid the first time, and just countless things that seems to only exist to encourage save scumming, which I did freely. I understand its the nature of an ancient tomb to have countless traps, but I could tell when one obstacle was clever and required engaging problem solving and when another was something I had not chance of avoiding, like entering a small room and having a gorilla spawn the exact moment I walk in.

The story might as well not be here, and honestly I kind of wish it wasn't. The way the game just puts you in a locations that is continuous across several levels, sometimes going back to certain locations from different levels to emphasize the fact that their all continuous, with no cutscenes or narration or music in between, it's a really strong first impression. But when voice acting all of a sudden starts and you're watching a cutscene, its jarring and overall uninteresting. I get that the cutscenes function as transitions between locations, but basically every aspect of the story did not stick at all.

With all these negative points, it would make sense to give this game a more negative score, but I honestly did find playing through it fascinating. It makes a lot of bold decisions that I honestly think work really well when it does. I played this less because I thought it was gonna be a good game and more as a curiosity, a piece of gaming history I'm not familiar with, and in that front it provided a very interesting and educational experience. I could also see the sequels to this game being much better, but I'm probably not playing those for a while.

Describing what a movie is about is pretty easy. Most of the time it’s just a direct depiction of a story, so summarizing the plot is good enough. Things are a little different for games, because the gameplay and the story can be emphasized in varying degrees. For example, Tomb Raider seems to be about preventing powerful artifacts from falling into the wrong hands, when it's actually about jumping. As overly simple as that seems, its focus on the mechanics of jumping makes for the most compelling movement I've ever seen in a game. Modern games have jumping and climbing as an ancillary part of combat and exploration, but in Tomb Raider it’s the gameplay in itself. Even jumping straight up requires decision making, because grabbing onto things isn’t handled automatically. Forward jumps require you to actually build momentum with a run, and trying to jump before you’ve taken enough steps will lead to you sprinting off a cliff. While mostly used for combat, side jumps have their own niche uses, and so on. Every motion needs to be carefully considered against your list of options, because choosing poorly will make you lose part of your very scarce health supply. A system of limited save points also means that screwing up and falling into spikes can be extremely punishing, and you get used to taking every step seriously. It’s a nuanced and tense system for platforming that has gone woefully underutilized by the games of today. This is another case where I could describe all the little interactions and things you can do to improve your gameplay, but taking away the discovery would take away part of what makes this game so cool. In the latest Tomb Raider games, there’s nothing like this to discover. You'll automatically grab and stick to walls by moving the control stick and that's pretty much all that’s ever required. The sense of danger isn’t from the mechanics, but from the movie magic and visual spectacle. Even though the original doesn’t have those technological advantages, the sense of presence and personal involvement is so much greater than the modern interpretations of the genre. It accomplishes so much with so little that it's become one of my favorite games of all time.

I absolutely understand that this game was revolutionary for its time - time however, has not been quite so kind to Tomb Raider.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good game, however it reeks of potential for all of the things that the series would achieve in the future. I feel that the original, while it deserves respect, has been left in the shadow of its superior sequels and its own reputation. The janky controls feel outdated and stiff, the lack of a sufficient aiming system led to many an unfair death, and the replayability factor feels very low.

I enjoyed my time with the original Tomb Raider, when I was actually making progress. However, unlike a game like Dark Souls, frequent death did not teach me anything about the way the game works. Due to the aforementioned outdated control scheme, I often felt like Lara had a mind of her own, and so death left me frustrated and with nothing to show for the last 30 minutes of playing time after each death.

In spite of my overall enjoyment of this game, I feel it is unlikely that I will return to it for any reason in this day and age.

É muito comum ao se criticar um jogo antigo dizer que ele "envelheceu mal". Eu mesmo já utilizei essa expressão diversas vezes, mas ultimamente tento evitá-la. Esse argumento, além de potencialmente vazio (afinal, o que é "envelhecer mal"? E o que seria "envelhecer bem"?) mascara uma abordagem teleológica muito comum ao se discutir games. Ela parte do princípio de que há uma forma "correta" de se fazer jogos e julga os games antigos pelo quanto eles se aproximavam ou antecipavam nossos padrões modernos.

Tomb Raider é um exemplo notório disso. Os controles de tanque e a personagem frágil vão contra tudo o que se espera de um jogo de plataforma 3D hoje em dia. É um tipo de abordagem que só parece possível num mundo que ainda não sabia a forma "certa" de se fazer o gênero — problema que só seria corrigido com a vinda de Mario 64.

Mas se pararmos de ver TR como uma espécie de atavismo ou um desvio de percurso dentro do gênero, fica fácil de perceber que ele funciona perfeitamente bem para os seus propósitos. Ele não envelheceu mal: ele só não se encaixa em padrões modernos do gênero, padrões que nem existiam naquela época, porque ele não pretende criar uma experiência similar à maioria dos jogos de plataforma 3D. Sua intenção, antes, é traduzir a experiência dos platformers cinemáticos de outrora para o mundo tridimensional, com toda sua cadência e precisão. Algo que ele faz muito bem, de forma que nem o próprio Prince of Persia faria no futuro.

Não quer dizer que é um game perfeito, com um combate simplista e nada satisfatório que vai ficando mais enfadonho com o tempo, com os inimigos virando esponjas de bala que nunca morrem no final. Mas seus defeitos são isso: defeitos, não partes que "envelheceram mal". E, a despeito de seus defeitos, ainda é um jogo e tanto. Por isso mesmo é considerado um clássico.

"An Interesting Start For Lara Croft Hampered By Aged Controls"

Beginning in 1996, the Tomb Raider franchise has had a long, storied, and accomplished history spanning nearly 25 years. Lara Croft is one of the most iconic video game characters of all time, finding popularity in the video game art scene, cosplay scene, and even finding her way to appearing on the "big" screen with two blockbuster films to this date! However, many forget her humble beginnings, so I figured I would go ahead and check out this groundbreaking title!

I'll come right out and say it - the controls have not aged well, even with mods to make them better. This game has tank controls for movement, shooting, and platforming, and its a very awkward and frustrating experience. The difficulty is fairly high for some fights in the game, with the fights against human opponents and one particularly huge dinosaur being very difficult to overcome. While progression was still made on my end, the game just didn't feel "good" to play.

The sound is alright, and some of the tracks are fairly exhilarating for combat scenarios, but the effects just fall a bit flat to me. There's a large amount of repetitive ambient noise that plays in the background in between larger, ore dramatic tracks, and this does little to add to the game's immersion.

The visuals are pretty good for such an old title despite the environmental textures appearing a bit plain and wonky at times. The facial animations are cool to see, and give Lara a sense of emotion and reaction to many events in the game. The character animations are very advanced for 1996, with Lara being able to acrobatically scale obstacles with style and finesse. Enemies are distinguishable from the environments, and are terrifying to fight against.

The gameplay is fairly straightforward, and there are some systems that are very solid. There is a good blend of action, exploration, puzzles, and platforming, giving the game a nice well-rounded feel. Puzzles aren't too difficult to figure out. Exploration is pretty cool, mainly due to the game's nice color scheme and varied environments. Action and platforming are presented well enough, but there's a huge issue with the game that makes these portions of gameplay unbearable to play through...

Despite having some great presentation from the era that still holds up well to this day, the gameplay suffers a bunch due to the game's archaic control scheme. Tank controls do not work well in this title, as the lack of camera controls are also very frustrating. While Lara is able to lock on to foes without turning the camera, its hard to get her to focus on certain enemies, making combat a chore. Dodges and jumps are slightly delayed and very awkward to complete without the ability to fine-tune your directional controls, so it makes Lara feel like a stupid bunny hopping all over the place. Its really not that fun, and causes Lara to take heaps of unnecessary damage.

Platforming is where this game suffers as well. The controls translate ever worse to platforming sections, and there were many times I died trying to complete a maneuver over and over again! There are specific angle where Lara can grab on to objects, and they are pretty unforgiving, leading to countless trial and error moments. Sometimes there is such a small window to properly time a jump where it makes you repeat sections dozens of times. Altogether, the controls ruin the main portions of gameplay.

Sadly, my experience with this game was ruined by its controls. I liked the systems it had in place, but I couldn't enjoy them to their full extent due to lackluster and dated controls. It is impossible to change now, since there are no camera controls or strafing controls included in the title. Besides the controls, the rest of the game is fairly modern by today's standards. You can clearly see its influence in many modern Action-Adventure titles! Still, I will Not Recommend playing this title unless you are really willing to put up with some awful controls. It didn't have enough going for it in order to make me ignore its age, but I still respect the progress it made as a game!

Final Verdict: 3/10 (Poor)