![]() This would be something you could get the hang of even in our spoiled present-day, sure, but consider that Tomb Raider also includes limited single-save checkpoints: you’re going to end up more frustrated than happy in a game where you need to work things out through practice, when the game punishes you for having to practice. It was frustrating at the time but for a modern player, it will probably feel absolutely archaic.Įverything looks 3D, especially in continuous motion, but you still have to be aware of this invisible grid you’re playing within: movement isn’t quite as free as you’re visually led to believe, and miscalculating can be a real problem when you’re trying to successfully see through the kind of platforming ambition that Core Design had for Tomb Raider. It’s functional for leisurely exploration but is restrictive and frustrating when dealing with one of the game’s many death traps. Unfortunately in practice this feels pretty rough, particularly due to the tank controls for turning movement. This should, in theory, lead to Lara fluidly moving around each level, negotiating her dangerous surroundings with ease and finesse. Functionally, it’s similar to how movement works in the original Prince of Persia games. This allows the player to use the grids to learn and judge the distance of a far away ledge before taking a jump. This was from before the era of analog controllers, so it made some kind of sense at the time. To maximize the use of Lara’s move set effectively, the developers based all of the game environments on a 3D grid system. As Stefan Fouracre-Smith wrote in a 2021 retrospective : It’s a remake of the original Tomb Raider, which historically remains a vitally important work, but in the present plays a lot like a 3D action adventure game with some of the more annoying aspects of 1996 contained within. Tomb Raider Anniversary came out the next year, in 2007, and was built using Legend’s gameplay and engine. It helps, too, that they were able to look around at what else was going on in games at the time, like with Ubisoft’s heralded Prince of Persia reboot series: controlling Lara was a lot more fun in Legend than it had been in some time, because she had all kinds of things she could do now, and you could do them more easily than before. When you consider that Legend scored 8/10 and B grades all over just a few years later then, it says something about how much Crystal Dynamics had managed to clean up said well. Whether that’s entirely the heart of the matter is up for debate, of course, but it couldn’t have helped: it at least had helped poison the well. Metacritic scores aren’t everything, of course, but Angel of Darkness scored a 52 out of 100 on PS2 and a 49 on PC in 2003, and was so panned that Paramount blamed it for the poorer than expected domestic box office for the second Tomb Raider film that starred Angelina Jolie. ![]() ![]() Legend modernized the design of Lara Croft a bit, as well as the gameplay, and everything was just implemented in a much more enjoyable fashion across the board. They began their run with a reboot of the entire series titled Tomb Raider: Legend, which released in 2006. What helped save it - in addition to stopping the production of these games for a few years so the stink of The Angel of Darkness could float away and be forgotten - is that development duties were handed over from Core Design to Crystal Dynamics. Those initial Core Design games - of which there were at least one of them released every year from 1996 through 2003 - went from astounding in their ambition and gameplay to a mess that nearly killed the franchise entirely. The first adventure of Lara Croft eluded me for years, however - growing up as an N64 kid instead of a Playstation one had a lot to do with that, especially since Tomb Raider had lost much of its cool factor through overexposure and underdeveloped sequels by the time I had a Playstation 2. Tomb Raider isn’t new to me, by any means. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link. ![]() This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before - of which there are still many despite my habits - and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. ![]()
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