Its atmosphere and control scheme really work their way under the skin. It starts off feeling plain, cumbersome, but once one learns the rules and begins to believe in its spaces, it's an absorbing and memorable experience. We're so used to user friendly, context-driven control schemes, and environments we look past or through or around with markers and maps and UI. It's you, Lara, and the world; it's navigation above all. This game has some puzzle solving and too much combat, but the first is really just understanding your surroundings and the second is usually finding a spot where you can shoot whatever is threatening you without getting close to it. It all comes back to moving around---understanding the space, and the controls are in total support of aiding that understanding. Setting up jumps, the hang-time in the air, there's a tension and reward to it all. It's 3D platforming, baby.

And while navigating, almost all we hear is Lara's footsteps and voice. Very little music. There's a real sense of solitude to it. When we hear something other than her, it puts us on edge, and it probably should because the enemies feel like they're out of a fixed-camera survival horror game. Those environments too, huh? Always emerging out of the darkness, always larger and more ominous than you think they're going to be. I love the pulsating, emerald tones of the water. Its Egypt, with its layered underground somehow illuminated and spotted with palm trees for contrasting colour. It's a rude surprise that it decides to end like System Shock 2.

It's tough to care about whatever the story is with those bowling alley cutscenes, and the horror atmosphere is unsupported by the plentiful resources, but it's easy to put those aside when the design brings you close to its space like this. I've played the 2013 reboot so I know it gets worse, but I'm curious about the other early entries now.