La primera aventura de la Señorita Croft por alla en el 96, con una atmosfera como pocos juegos para su epoca y con una representación de las plataformas mas verosímil a nivel de ambiente como kinestetico.
El gameplay puede ser algo cuadrado para estándares actuales, pero el juego permite que el jugador se tome el tiempo necesario para calcular los saltos y superar a los desafíos sin llevarlo de la mano, una joya la verdad.
El gameplay puede ser algo cuadrado para estándares actuales, pero el juego permite que el jugador se tome el tiempo necesario para calcular los saltos y superar a los desafíos sin llevarlo de la mano, una joya la verdad.
cult classic, but not the game for me.
the emulator was ass, UNPLAYABLE
un juego fantastico que marco una epoca.
The 5th Generation absolute zoomer filter
They just don’t make games where you can hear the Devs laughing at you for being a stupid little piss baby who walked into their perfect set Insta kill traps like they used too
Also people seeing this game is zoomer filter. I’m a zoomer dealing with chronic pain in hands thanks to meds and beat this game so get fucked
Also people seeing this game is zoomer filter. I’m a zoomer dealing with chronic pain in hands thanks to meds and beat this game so get fucked
For as much as I appreciate the Tomb Raider franchise, I can't say the same for the first game. It's one I like in concept, and I love watching others play it, but I've decided this game is just not for me when it comes down to picking up the controller and trying it out. I find picking up items frustrating. Keeping track of where I'm going while also making sure Croft's positioning is correct is a nightmare. Having no sense of direction as I hit endless corridors of dead ends, traps, and vicious animals behind me gives me endless anxiety. It has never been a fun time for me, yet I can understand how satisfying the gameplay is when something goes your way. Doing cool flips while gunning down your enemy is the most badass thing. What I can say has given Tomb Raider its lasting power is the cutscenes and ever-changing environments the deeper you progress. I know what fucked up shit happens in this game. Even with the advancement of game graphics, Tomb Raider wouldn't and doesn't feel as raw as it does without the blocky textures. Despite how primitive and dated this game is, it's also precisely why it works at all.
mi primera paja
My introduction to the Tomb Raider franchise was the deeply unpleasant, poorly designed 2013 reboot, an awful game and an awful experience that somehow did not deter me from playing its sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and having a much better time with it despite the presence of a lot of modern AAA design elements that really put me off of that sort of game. Having, I guess, committed to those, I figured I would return to the roots, as I so often do with these things, and I’m glad I did because Tomb Raider 96 is both an excellent 3D platformer and in incredibly WEIRD game full of funny quirks and bizarre choices that are I think mostly pretty bad in concept but never affect the play enough to do any actual harm to the experience.
The core of the experience, then, is that platforming. If I had to compare it to a modern game it would be less the modern tomb raiders and uncharteds that are often compared to this and something closer to a precursor to the Ubisoft 3D Prince of Persia lineage. Most of the levels here do involve other elements like occasional combat and puzzle solving to a greater or lesser extent, but Tomb Raider MOSTLY just sticks you in often very large, occasionally complex 3D environments and asks you to kind of just jump over to that ledge, then that one, then that one. The platforms are often gussied up as pleasant environmental features like natural rock formations, bridges, statues, etc. I think the game does a good job in general of disguising how rigidly all of its geometry adheres to a clear grid structure, disguising it sometimes with the aforementioned décor and sometimes letting the jagginess of the early PS1 dev cycle create the illusion of restriction, when the reality is the game is clearly this square on purpose. And that’s a good thing, it lets the game demand a great deal of precision from you, but it also means you very rarely find yourself in a situation where you’ll be making a jump you shouldn’t be trying, or where you’re uncertain about the scripting of a sequence because of the environmental design. It makes the world feel a little bit more artificial, with how obviously constructed around Lara’s verb set everything is, but it makes for a more rewarding play experience.
Lara’s verb set rules, by the way. As one of the biggest ones if not THE progenitor of semi-realistic 3D platforming, it’s wild how much of this feels exactly right for the needs of the game. Tomb Raider came out before Playstation analogue sticks and LONG before 3D action controls had been standardized, so there IS a learning curve, but there’s also an optional tutorial selectable from the main menu to walk you through the movement specifically (it tellingly doesn’t teach you about weapons or inventory or contextual actions). Once you have a handle on things it becomes apparent that your set of actions is slightly more robust than something you might find in one of the older, less streamlined Assassin’s Creeds or those weird Lord of the Rings games. The big difference between Tomb Raider and one of those is that rather than any action being contextual, you have to actively press and/or hold every button for every action as you need them, for things like jumping at the right moments, grabbing ledges after a jump, shimmying, dropping and catching, everything you do requires active input. After just the tutorial and a couple of the early, simpler levels, these controls were singing to me. The experience is so engaging when you have to be ON it at all times. And while it is a somewhat clunkier experience by nature than more modern games, the team at Core Design was obviously aware of this and accounted for it. You have dedicated buttons for slow walking, taking small sidesteps, and quick 180 degree turns – everything you need to be able to position yourself with the precision necessary to do what the game asks. It’s a somewhat complex control scheme but it’s an excellent one, that understands the limits of the controller, the hardware, and the map design and elegantly adapts to their needs. This is how you create a genre.
Of course, it’s not all jumping around cool obstacle courses in Tomb Raider, but before we can talk about the OTHER stuff you get up to I think it’s important to discuss Lara Croft herself, and the game’s narrative. Tomb Raider doesn’t really HAVE a much of a narrative, maybe ten minutes of cutscenes spread over a fifteen-hour game, and usually with absolutely no connective tissue between levels, just a results screen that tells you how fast you went and how many animals you shot and how many secrets you found then BAM you’re in the next one. What scant few cutscenes it does have are MOSTLY here to make Lara Croft seem COOL AS FUCK bro. She’s a hot babe who lives in a MANSION built on STOLEN WEALTH. And YEAH, she may break into tombs and ruins and historical sites and ROB THEM and then SELL THE GOODS for CASH and yeah, she starts the game by taking a job to do exactly that for somebody and only stops because that person tries to double-cross and kill her, but she assures us out loud early on that SHE’S NOT IN IT FOR THE MONEY, only the THRILL. It’s a very weird and funny portrait of an anti-hero who is simultaneously supposed to be one of those detached 90s asshole characters who we like despite knowing they’re a shithead while still being thumb-twiddlingly self-conscious about her moral character. They’re constantly making sure to try to make Lara seem not as evil as she obviously is, these white British developers seemingly aware how much of A Problem this premise is politically even back then when mainstream media was still getting away with A Lot. She’s not in it for The Money, she seems at least KIND OF annoyed when an innocent man is killed by equally innocent wolves that she led him to, she HAS this big mansion but she’s converted it into a gym! (do not worry about the many stolen artifacts she is hawking in the foyer). She’s not as bad as THAT OTHER adventure archaeologist, the evil French one who uhhhh, litters? That is the only evil thing he does that Lara does not also do. She kind of vaguely thinks genocide is bad, I guess. It’s really funny, she’s seriously awful.
So that’s Lara, some kind of meandering adrenaline-seeking sociopath, so it is fitting that the other bit of the gameplay loop that kind of mindlessly pads out these levels is all the GUNPLAY as she mercilessly guns down random bats, wolves, bears, crocodiles, gorillas you fuckin’ name it, if it breathes Lara will shoot it with guns. A borderline comical amount of animal violence and it’s all so needless. Bats do no damage to you and they go down in one hit why are they here??? There is no aiming mechanic you just pull out your guns and mash the fire button until there are no more bats. It’s super funny to fall into a hole in the first level and be absolutely run over by a gigantic bear you didn’t know was there. None of the combat in this game is good and there’s not even that much of it but it feels very cool to jump around and shoot guns in mid-air. There are precisely two human enemies in the game and they’re both miserable to fight so I GUESS I would rather just mow down endless wolves but I am mostly wondering if Tomb Raider couldn’t have just had more slapstick adventure action in the vein of running away from large boulders or something.
Or maybe more dinosaurs. There are dinosaurs! coulda just been dinosaurs the entire time. See this is the secret third pillar of Tomb Raider: that it’s an extremely bizarre game, where just every element that ever made its way onto the ideas whiteboard also made its way into the game. What if there were dinosaurs in level THREE, no buildup, no story context, no sense of design pacing, and then they’re just GONE. Hell yeah gamer. At one point there’s like some King Midas themed shit and every time you turn into gold and die it’s accompanied by this incredible cartoon BONK sound effect, like, why?? You remember Pierre the evil French archaeologist? He appears in like EVERY level to try to kill you like the fuckin terminator. You never know when you’re gonna turn a corner and find Pierre there ready to pop you, and you have to shoot him like a hundred times until he does NOT die but instead runs around the nearest corner or behind a pillar or something where he will DISAPPEAR, ready to harangue you again in the next level. This happens like twelve times it’s insane! This game’s primary inspiration is obviously Indiana Jones but we cannot forget how big John Woo was starting to hit in America and I guess also the UK in the 90s and this is extremely obvious in Tomb Raider because Lara has the iconic two pistols and all of her attacks involve huge jumps and flips and shit it’s so funny and out of place in this otherwise very strictly laid out rules-heavy platforming game to have Lara just blasting infinite ammo pistol shots as she does a ten foot horizontal flip eight feet in the air from a standing position. All of these choices are nonsense but they add up to a game that does have something of a unique identity from its inspirations and certainly from its successors. Tomb Raider 2013 could never and more importantly WOULD never.
I don’t really know how to sum up a game as uneven as Tomb Raider. I feel like I just spent a lot of time bashing parts of it that feel half baked or like they don’t work, but the core appeal of it is so good, and makes up the majority of what you’re actually doing outside of setpieces. I barely talked about the puzzles which I think have a pretty high hit rate. They’re not like Puzzle Puzzles as much as they are just further extremes on the idea of environmental challenges most of the time. When it’s focused on stuff like this, using your core verbs to interact with the environment, Tomb Raider is almost unassailably good fun. It’s just when it does almost anything else that things get shakier. I do appreciate that it leaves the immense racism that is baked into the premise MOSTLY in the margins, as much as possible, in favor of a much stupider story about Atlantis. All the villains are Bri’ish stereotypes of Americans and French people so the worst shit gets left to context but it’s impossible to truly escape from it, as much as Core Design tries to divert you from thinking about it. I do feel that the things that are successful in this game and the things that aren’t are SO obvious that it’s hard to imagine Tomb Raider 2 being this weird, which would be a shame. That combination of incredible polish and comically rough edges in all the right places really make this one what it is, for me.
The core of the experience, then, is that platforming. If I had to compare it to a modern game it would be less the modern tomb raiders and uncharteds that are often compared to this and something closer to a precursor to the Ubisoft 3D Prince of Persia lineage. Most of the levels here do involve other elements like occasional combat and puzzle solving to a greater or lesser extent, but Tomb Raider MOSTLY just sticks you in often very large, occasionally complex 3D environments and asks you to kind of just jump over to that ledge, then that one, then that one. The platforms are often gussied up as pleasant environmental features like natural rock formations, bridges, statues, etc. I think the game does a good job in general of disguising how rigidly all of its geometry adheres to a clear grid structure, disguising it sometimes with the aforementioned décor and sometimes letting the jagginess of the early PS1 dev cycle create the illusion of restriction, when the reality is the game is clearly this square on purpose. And that’s a good thing, it lets the game demand a great deal of precision from you, but it also means you very rarely find yourself in a situation where you’ll be making a jump you shouldn’t be trying, or where you’re uncertain about the scripting of a sequence because of the environmental design. It makes the world feel a little bit more artificial, with how obviously constructed around Lara’s verb set everything is, but it makes for a more rewarding play experience.
Lara’s verb set rules, by the way. As one of the biggest ones if not THE progenitor of semi-realistic 3D platforming, it’s wild how much of this feels exactly right for the needs of the game. Tomb Raider came out before Playstation analogue sticks and LONG before 3D action controls had been standardized, so there IS a learning curve, but there’s also an optional tutorial selectable from the main menu to walk you through the movement specifically (it tellingly doesn’t teach you about weapons or inventory or contextual actions). Once you have a handle on things it becomes apparent that your set of actions is slightly more robust than something you might find in one of the older, less streamlined Assassin’s Creeds or those weird Lord of the Rings games. The big difference between Tomb Raider and one of those is that rather than any action being contextual, you have to actively press and/or hold every button for every action as you need them, for things like jumping at the right moments, grabbing ledges after a jump, shimmying, dropping and catching, everything you do requires active input. After just the tutorial and a couple of the early, simpler levels, these controls were singing to me. The experience is so engaging when you have to be ON it at all times. And while it is a somewhat clunkier experience by nature than more modern games, the team at Core Design was obviously aware of this and accounted for it. You have dedicated buttons for slow walking, taking small sidesteps, and quick 180 degree turns – everything you need to be able to position yourself with the precision necessary to do what the game asks. It’s a somewhat complex control scheme but it’s an excellent one, that understands the limits of the controller, the hardware, and the map design and elegantly adapts to their needs. This is how you create a genre.
Of course, it’s not all jumping around cool obstacle courses in Tomb Raider, but before we can talk about the OTHER stuff you get up to I think it’s important to discuss Lara Croft herself, and the game’s narrative. Tomb Raider doesn’t really HAVE a much of a narrative, maybe ten minutes of cutscenes spread over a fifteen-hour game, and usually with absolutely no connective tissue between levels, just a results screen that tells you how fast you went and how many animals you shot and how many secrets you found then BAM you’re in the next one. What scant few cutscenes it does have are MOSTLY here to make Lara Croft seem COOL AS FUCK bro. She’s a hot babe who lives in a MANSION built on STOLEN WEALTH. And YEAH, she may break into tombs and ruins and historical sites and ROB THEM and then SELL THE GOODS for CASH and yeah, she starts the game by taking a job to do exactly that for somebody and only stops because that person tries to double-cross and kill her, but she assures us out loud early on that SHE’S NOT IN IT FOR THE MONEY, only the THRILL. It’s a very weird and funny portrait of an anti-hero who is simultaneously supposed to be one of those detached 90s asshole characters who we like despite knowing they’re a shithead while still being thumb-twiddlingly self-conscious about her moral character. They’re constantly making sure to try to make Lara seem not as evil as she obviously is, these white British developers seemingly aware how much of A Problem this premise is politically even back then when mainstream media was still getting away with A Lot. She’s not in it for The Money, she seems at least KIND OF annoyed when an innocent man is killed by equally innocent wolves that she led him to, she HAS this big mansion but she’s converted it into a gym! (do not worry about the many stolen artifacts she is hawking in the foyer). She’s not as bad as THAT OTHER adventure archaeologist, the evil French one who uhhhh, litters? That is the only evil thing he does that Lara does not also do. She kind of vaguely thinks genocide is bad, I guess. It’s really funny, she’s seriously awful.
So that’s Lara, some kind of meandering adrenaline-seeking sociopath, so it is fitting that the other bit of the gameplay loop that kind of mindlessly pads out these levels is all the GUNPLAY as she mercilessly guns down random bats, wolves, bears, crocodiles, gorillas you fuckin’ name it, if it breathes Lara will shoot it with guns. A borderline comical amount of animal violence and it’s all so needless. Bats do no damage to you and they go down in one hit why are they here??? There is no aiming mechanic you just pull out your guns and mash the fire button until there are no more bats. It’s super funny to fall into a hole in the first level and be absolutely run over by a gigantic bear you didn’t know was there. None of the combat in this game is good and there’s not even that much of it but it feels very cool to jump around and shoot guns in mid-air. There are precisely two human enemies in the game and they’re both miserable to fight so I GUESS I would rather just mow down endless wolves but I am mostly wondering if Tomb Raider couldn’t have just had more slapstick adventure action in the vein of running away from large boulders or something.
Or maybe more dinosaurs. There are dinosaurs! coulda just been dinosaurs the entire time. See this is the secret third pillar of Tomb Raider: that it’s an extremely bizarre game, where just every element that ever made its way onto the ideas whiteboard also made its way into the game. What if there were dinosaurs in level THREE, no buildup, no story context, no sense of design pacing, and then they’re just GONE. Hell yeah gamer. At one point there’s like some King Midas themed shit and every time you turn into gold and die it’s accompanied by this incredible cartoon BONK sound effect, like, why?? You remember Pierre the evil French archaeologist? He appears in like EVERY level to try to kill you like the fuckin terminator. You never know when you’re gonna turn a corner and find Pierre there ready to pop you, and you have to shoot him like a hundred times until he does NOT die but instead runs around the nearest corner or behind a pillar or something where he will DISAPPEAR, ready to harangue you again in the next level. This happens like twelve times it’s insane! This game’s primary inspiration is obviously Indiana Jones but we cannot forget how big John Woo was starting to hit in America and I guess also the UK in the 90s and this is extremely obvious in Tomb Raider because Lara has the iconic two pistols and all of her attacks involve huge jumps and flips and shit it’s so funny and out of place in this otherwise very strictly laid out rules-heavy platforming game to have Lara just blasting infinite ammo pistol shots as she does a ten foot horizontal flip eight feet in the air from a standing position. All of these choices are nonsense but they add up to a game that does have something of a unique identity from its inspirations and certainly from its successors. Tomb Raider 2013 could never and more importantly WOULD never.
I don’t really know how to sum up a game as uneven as Tomb Raider. I feel like I just spent a lot of time bashing parts of it that feel half baked or like they don’t work, but the core appeal of it is so good, and makes up the majority of what you’re actually doing outside of setpieces. I barely talked about the puzzles which I think have a pretty high hit rate. They’re not like Puzzle Puzzles as much as they are just further extremes on the idea of environmental challenges most of the time. When it’s focused on stuff like this, using your core verbs to interact with the environment, Tomb Raider is almost unassailably good fun. It’s just when it does almost anything else that things get shakier. I do appreciate that it leaves the immense racism that is baked into the premise MOSTLY in the margins, as much as possible, in favor of a much stupider story about Atlantis. All the villains are Bri’ish stereotypes of Americans and French people so the worst shit gets left to context but it’s impossible to truly escape from it, as much as Core Design tries to divert you from thinking about it. I do feel that the things that are successful in this game and the things that aren’t are SO obvious that it’s hard to imagine Tomb Raider 2 being this weird, which would be a shame. That combination of incredible polish and comically rough edges in all the right places really make this one what it is, for me.
The only game I have for swag Saturn other than virtual fighter
I'm sorry but I just can't play this game with Tank Controls. Usually I'm fine with 'em but this game just cannot click with me
It's a classic and the starter of a great series for a reason, honestly.
My sexual awakening
Oh yeah, Tomb Raider, used to do it when I was a kid. Got me six months in juvie.
pretty impressive for a ps1 game, but i'd rather submerge my gonads in fluoroantimonic acid than play this again
I only breifly played the original Tomb Raider back in the day for just a bit, as back then I only really delved deep into TR2. Now going back to it with the 2024 Remaster Collection, I can give a much more time forward look at it. The core fundementals of the game play still show in spades. The tight level design really does show in many of the levels and it's expertly crafted prescion platforming does stand apart even like 30 years later. The remaster does a fantastic job with it's updated visuals to keep the intended look of the game while ironing out some outdated polygons and it was a fantastic design choice to be able to switch between updated visuals and the original look with a simple button press. I was constantly switching back and forth between them. The original graphics while super dated does have a nostalgia window completly unique to the graphics of that time period that you don't see too often anymore. New control method's exist for players who refuse to adopt the original controls. Normally this wouldn't annoy me so much but the game is so expertly designed in almost precise grid that the original controls are what defines the gameplay to begin with. I will never complain about more options in a game though and certainly not for a remaster but I do encourage people to try to the original controls.
Having said all that playing Tomb Raider in 2024 the game as much fun as it has been to relive and experiance comes with equal parts of frustrations and design choices that I do not miss. Tomb Raider has really reminded me of a time when some of the biggest hurdles of early 3D gaming lies entirley in the camera. Tomb Raider is a platformer that requires precise jumps and timing and I am constantly trying to battle the camera to be able to see where I am running or going. So many times the camera is centered on Lara's chest or facing directly at her giving me no indication on where my feet are positioned in comparison to where I am looking to jump too. The remaster does try to incorparate a modern style camera flick, but it just doesn't work much of the time and it never stays in place and always seems to snap back to the original view point. Most of the games in this era had button held fixed first person viewpoint to help get a better look at surroundings to which this game has as well. This is sometimes your only way to view whats around you but when you let go of that button it will snap back to that original view. I completly understand this was the norm of the day and experiancing it again after 30 years of modern gaming will certainly irk anybody who goes back but I can't say I entirely can blame the game for the time period it was in.
I also am just not a fan of it's saving system. Whether that be the crystals or unlimited saves. I played TR on the PC back in the day so I'm used to unlimited savings as it is for this series. TR is a game that has a lot of traps and tight jumps that a lot of the time leads to instant deaths. I don't know if it's just modern gaming that has made this more annoying to me know more than anything but I do remember feeling like this back in the day but I feel like the game encourages save scumming. It felt like I was playing on a emulator and was constantly refreshing my save. Because let me tell you, if your going into this game blind for the first time you will die a lot. I mean a lot. There are no checkpoints, even between finishing levels it's all manual saves. You die you go back to your previous save no matter what. It's been quite some time where I have to constatnly remind myself to keep saving becuase I would play do a large amount of stuff then die and have to constantly keep replaying sections over and over again. It's built into my DNA at this point that saving is for quiting my play session or after finishing a level. It took a lot of mindpower to keep myself saving constantly. I always wanna complete sections before savings and I would constantly die and hate myself for not saving. I play a lot of old games but this game really tested my patience when it comes to this. Also towards the end of the game the enemies just are constantly swarming you bum rushing into you and it's extremely hard to deal with. The enemy design at the end was really frustrating.
The level and map design are always these games biggest strenghts and weaknesses. For the most part the games are sharply desigened and are great at rewarding exploration. Their are numerous secrets and things to collect that reward keen eyed players. Platforming feels really great when you get in the groove and still to this day the precise prescion required to make jumps or traverse feels unique even to this day. This is not auto jumping of Uncharted or the reboot franchise for sure that a lot of people are used to for sure. There are few levels in the game that I really was impressed with it's layout and structure. Although we equal amount of priase does come with caveats as well for me. There are some levels where I really couldn't not figure out what to do or where to go. Whether that be an alcove that is just out of view of the camera or a room hidden in the mess of graphic blocks that is hard to see or seeing the door in the distance and just not knowing how the heck do you get over there? One thing to note about the remaster is with the updated look they have taken some liberites to changing how the stage looks and that can be a hamper when traversing the level. Keys are especially hard to see and are so small and blend in to the background. I've skipped numerous keys in stages that were in plain sight, spending so much time looking around only to switch back to the original graphics mode and see a bright key right out in the open. That and having modern lighting in the remastered graphics can some times leave the stages to look rather dark making it hard to naviage compared to how always bright the original mode looks. Also Remasterd graphics sometimes add ceiling and open light sources that were not there in the original and sometimes it takes me a second to realize that those are not areas I can reach and were just added in for atmosphere. Switching between OG and Remaster graphics was fun but almost a straight up gameplay mechanic needed if playing soley in Remastered.
Overall playing Tomb Raider was very nostalgic because it really did show it's warts and all that is totally 100% because of it's era in gaming and while I found it overall frustrating to go back to, I did admire it's design choices and what it accomplished and can see why other games tryied to mimick it's style.
Having said all that playing Tomb Raider in 2024 the game as much fun as it has been to relive and experiance comes with equal parts of frustrations and design choices that I do not miss. Tomb Raider has really reminded me of a time when some of the biggest hurdles of early 3D gaming lies entirley in the camera. Tomb Raider is a platformer that requires precise jumps and timing and I am constantly trying to battle the camera to be able to see where I am running or going. So many times the camera is centered on Lara's chest or facing directly at her giving me no indication on where my feet are positioned in comparison to where I am looking to jump too. The remaster does try to incorparate a modern style camera flick, but it just doesn't work much of the time and it never stays in place and always seems to snap back to the original view point. Most of the games in this era had button held fixed first person viewpoint to help get a better look at surroundings to which this game has as well. This is sometimes your only way to view whats around you but when you let go of that button it will snap back to that original view. I completly understand this was the norm of the day and experiancing it again after 30 years of modern gaming will certainly irk anybody who goes back but I can't say I entirely can blame the game for the time period it was in.
I also am just not a fan of it's saving system. Whether that be the crystals or unlimited saves. I played TR on the PC back in the day so I'm used to unlimited savings as it is for this series. TR is a game that has a lot of traps and tight jumps that a lot of the time leads to instant deaths. I don't know if it's just modern gaming that has made this more annoying to me know more than anything but I do remember feeling like this back in the day but I feel like the game encourages save scumming. It felt like I was playing on a emulator and was constantly refreshing my save. Because let me tell you, if your going into this game blind for the first time you will die a lot. I mean a lot. There are no checkpoints, even between finishing levels it's all manual saves. You die you go back to your previous save no matter what. It's been quite some time where I have to constatnly remind myself to keep saving becuase I would play do a large amount of stuff then die and have to constantly keep replaying sections over and over again. It's built into my DNA at this point that saving is for quiting my play session or after finishing a level. It took a lot of mindpower to keep myself saving constantly. I always wanna complete sections before savings and I would constantly die and hate myself for not saving. I play a lot of old games but this game really tested my patience when it comes to this. Also towards the end of the game the enemies just are constantly swarming you bum rushing into you and it's extremely hard to deal with. The enemy design at the end was really frustrating.
The level and map design are always these games biggest strenghts and weaknesses. For the most part the games are sharply desigened and are great at rewarding exploration. Their are numerous secrets and things to collect that reward keen eyed players. Platforming feels really great when you get in the groove and still to this day the precise prescion required to make jumps or traverse feels unique even to this day. This is not auto jumping of Uncharted or the reboot franchise for sure that a lot of people are used to for sure. There are few levels in the game that I really was impressed with it's layout and structure. Although we equal amount of priase does come with caveats as well for me. There are some levels where I really couldn't not figure out what to do or where to go. Whether that be an alcove that is just out of view of the camera or a room hidden in the mess of graphic blocks that is hard to see or seeing the door in the distance and just not knowing how the heck do you get over there? One thing to note about the remaster is with the updated look they have taken some liberites to changing how the stage looks and that can be a hamper when traversing the level. Keys are especially hard to see and are so small and blend in to the background. I've skipped numerous keys in stages that were in plain sight, spending so much time looking around only to switch back to the original graphics mode and see a bright key right out in the open. That and having modern lighting in the remastered graphics can some times leave the stages to look rather dark making it hard to naviage compared to how always bright the original mode looks. Also Remasterd graphics sometimes add ceiling and open light sources that were not there in the original and sometimes it takes me a second to realize that those are not areas I can reach and were just added in for atmosphere. Switching between OG and Remaster graphics was fun but almost a straight up gameplay mechanic needed if playing soley in Remastered.
Overall playing Tomb Raider was very nostalgic because it really did show it's warts and all that is totally 100% because of it's era in gaming and while I found it overall frustrating to go back to, I did admire it's design choices and what it accomplished and can see why other games tryied to mimick it's style.
Waaaaay too dated for todays standards for me
So my knowledge of this game prior was that Tomb Raider is a massive franchise known for it's high action and massive titties, so imagine my shock when I get a game that's so quiet and slow-paced. There's a bit of whiplash when you go straight from a scene of Lara spraying bullets into a bunch of wolves then entering a super quiet, surreal tomb. The game's controls feel very messy at first, but once you get used to them, you realize the game is designed around them almost perfectly. Puzzles and platforming are a lot of fun, and it can feel satisfying when you figure out a tricky challenge. The combat isn't that great, but you don't have to deal with it much until the end, and the last few levels suffer because of it. They pretty clearly exhausted all of their ideas after the third group of levels, so the final ones just feel rushed and poorly thought out. Regardless, I had a ton of fun with this, and hopefully the sequels can bring more fun. 4/6
I love both old and clunky games with all my heart - I can count on one hand the games I've been physically unable to enjoy because of their controls, and sadly this is one of them. I adore a lot of what the classic Tomb Raider titles do, but despite trying so, so many times over the past 18 years, I simply can't play them. My brain is incapable of adjusting to the movement and platforming; despite classic Resident Evil and its ilk feeling almost second nature to me at this point, Tomb Raider eludes me. I cannot have fun with it. Progressing past the second level feels torturous.
I'll probably give it another shot next year.
I'll probably give it another shot next year.
Takes a while to "click", but when it does, damn.
The one game I've always wanted to finish since childhood. Could never complete it on PS due to the one-use save crystals (seriously why). Steam port is really good. Story is definitely not what you play for - it's more the platforming and exploring. That penultimate boss though wtf.
It's a really cool design for the time, but the controls are an absolute mess. Laura controls like she's ice-skating, and since it's a platformer that requires precise movements, this is a pretty fatal flaw.
Poligonos formosos
i simply do not give a fuck who you are, this game has aged extremely well. a dev team of only 6 people made a game with controls and level design this intelligent? in 1996? simply incredible.
Yeah I gave it a 4 1/2, fight me. "ooh it aged bad," i will Kill You.
Played on PC, I loved it on Saturn but the save crystals ramp the challenge up to ferocious heights in a game that's already hard with save scumming. I Love This Shit, games that require practice and mastery of their controls and systems are my jam. Tomb Raider works on such a consistent set of rules that by the end game you can eyeball a room and figure out where you can and can't move.
Also the variety of locales is incredible, I'd recommend playing just to see the crazy ass final levels.
The story is great, Lara is just a callous villain who is purely out for herself, she is incapable of introspection or finding a deeper meaning in her actions and I love her for it. She spots a fucking T-Rex roaming the earth? She draws. She doesn't give a fuck.
Recommended for cool good looking people, ugly people who smell will not enjoy it.
Played on PC, I loved it on Saturn but the save crystals ramp the challenge up to ferocious heights in a game that's already hard with save scumming. I Love This Shit, games that require practice and mastery of their controls and systems are my jam. Tomb Raider works on such a consistent set of rules that by the end game you can eyeball a room and figure out where you can and can't move.
Also the variety of locales is incredible, I'd recommend playing just to see the crazy ass final levels.
The story is great, Lara is just a callous villain who is purely out for herself, she is incapable of introspection or finding a deeper meaning in her actions and I love her for it. She spots a fucking T-Rex roaming the earth? She draws. She doesn't give a fuck.
Recommended for cool good looking people, ugly people who smell will not enjoy it.
So in my earlier review I had said I didn't like the save crystals, and upon replaying it on PS1 with the save crystals, I take it back: love them actually. The fact they are single use forces you to consider how far you can progress without saving and when you absolutely need to use one to overcome a challenge. In a game based around careful and thoughtful gameplay they fit perfectly in a way save-scumming just doesn't. Such a good game.
Un clásico de los juegos de acción en 3D, grandioso diseño de niveles y muchos secretos por descubrir. Pasan los años y sigue siendo tan bueno como antes.
Bir türlü geçemediğim bubi tuzakları, unutamıyorum. Oynamam, oynattırmam.
Tomb raider is an amazing game, it is the beginning of 3D adventures from a more realistic point of view (at least compared to what was usual at that time).
It's an almost completely diegetic experience that makes us feel there, but it's not perfect either, it doesn't seem to care about breaking the suspension of disbelief with all those objects and secret weapons scattered around, and with that save system of the pc version that ruins the challenge being preferable to play the playstation one version.
Anyway thank you very much Lara.
It's an almost completely diegetic experience that makes us feel there, but it's not perfect either, it doesn't seem to care about breaking the suspension of disbelief with all those objects and secret weapons scattered around, and with that save system of the pc version that ruins the challenge being preferable to play the playstation one version.
Anyway thank you very much Lara.
Chess on a jungle gym.