How many of you guys know the name Lara Croft from games like Fortnite, Dead by Daylight, or Call of Duty? Perhaps you’re already familiar with the name from her heyday in the 90s. In recent years, Tomb Raider has been sending Lara Croft onto multiple video game expeditions in order to market their brand. I think it’s wonderful that her name is being spread amongst a wider audience, but what about the franchise itself? Tomb Raider’s first game, which holds the same title as the franchise, debuted in 1996 on the PlayStation 1. With its dated graphics and controls, the game is a clear product of its time, yet its gameplay remains engaging after nearly thirty years, even earning itself a remastered version in 2024. The game stars world-famous archaeologist Lara Croft who is hired by Jacqueline Natla from Natla Technologies to recover the Scion, an ancient artifact with mystical powers. However, the Scion isn’t all that it seems when Lara, after surviving an assination attempt from one of Natla’s goons, learns that there are other pieces of the Scion. Using her wits, acrobatics, and gunslinging skills, she will go on a globetrotting adventure for the other pieces before she can finally behold the true origins of the artifact.
The game’s story may read as your typical McGuffin chase. While unraveling the Scion’s mysteries may be interesting, cutscenes in the game are scarce and the gameplay hardly contributes to the plot, resulting in a barebones story. Instead, you can tell that the developers honed in on curating the gameplay experience.
In Tomb Raider, Lara must progress through various levels that typically take place in ancient and abandoned locations such as caves, lost cities, or tombs. There are no tutorial pop-ups, maps, or any material guidance, so you’re left to explore the levels in full immersion with no guide. The layout of each level is like a labyrinth at first, with various locked rooms and unreachable places. Confusing as it can be, it’s like solving a massive puzzle; through exploring, you put together a map in your head that is constantly being expanded and used as you find keys to open locked rooms across the level, revealing new passageways, previously unreachable areas, and keys to unlock even more locked rooms, until you eventually find the passageway or key to the level’s exit. It’s an ultimately satisfying experience to enter a level completely clueless and then leave it having overcome the vast layout, even becoming familiarized with it. Specialized platforming and puzzle segments exist to engage your brain and give you a break from exploration, and the looming threat of hostile animals such as wolves, bats, or mummies keep you on your toes. Combined with the silent ambience and the loud screeches of these speedy creatures, Tomb Raider’s atmosphere matches the foreboding feeling of exploring a forgotten place with unknown traps, mechanisms, hostile creatures, and potentially mystical origins. One major downside to Tomb Raider’s level design is that it’s possible to get stuck despite feeling like you’ve explored every inch. Most of the time, these bottlenecks are the fault of gimmicks specific to the level, such as the gold bars in Palace Midas or the water switch in the Cistern. Other times, it’s the fault of the environment for obfuscating areas mandatory to progression. In a game all about exploration, being stuck not discovering anything is no fun at all. Still, one could argue that overcoming such hurdles merely requires you to think outside the box a little, and thus, are ultimately rewarding.
Though the gameplay remains solid today, the graphics are comparatively dated. The geometry is blocky, the textures are pixelized and sometimes stretched, and the lighting is flat, though that doesn’t stop the game from managing to depict their locations in (most of the time) believable ways. Iconic landmarks—such as the Colosseum or the Sphinx—are still grand and breathtaking locations and are accentuated by the game’s soundtrack that depict the wonder and age of these locations. If the rough textures of the original game are too ugly to bear, the remastered version contains a toggle for newer graphics, containing higher quality textures, lighting and an upgrade to many 3D models. However, the blocky geometry persists, and that’s because the blocky geometry is essential to the way the controls work in this game.
Tomb Raider’s controls are its most controversial aspect by far. Lara has a robust moveset where she can not only jump forward, but also somersault backwards or sideways whilst shooting in mid-air, grab onto ledges and shimmy them, perform a roll that turns you 180 degrees (and somehow doesn’t break your bones), and can either run or walk, the latter preventing you from falling off of ledges. Though she can do a multitude of things, the camera angle is uncontrollable by the mouse or right stick and the movement keys are oriented based on Lara’s direction and not the camera’s. The controls are precise and predictable; Lara’s jumps cover the same distance every time and are perfectly adjusted to the game’s blocky and grid-like geometry, contrary to other games where jumps might automatically correct their trajectory to latch onto a ledge or make the landing. However, these controls are undeniably foreign to a modern-day audience, so they may be frustrating at first. Thankfully, the remastered version has a setting to turn on a modern control scheme, allowing you to move Lara and the camera like you would in most modern 3D games. Still, a game whose platforming is built around this precise yet archaic system can’t be translated so cleanly to the snappier controls of today. The platforming might still feel marginally clunky, and certain segments might be easier with the original controls. The experience is significantly different.
Because of the more palatable graphics and the modernized control scheme, the remastered version is likely the definitive version to play for first-time players nowadays. Unfortunately, the remastered version is sold on Steam and GOG as a bundle for the franchise’s first three games and the price reflects that at $29.99, though recent sales on Steam have gotten as low as $11.99.
Overall, Tomb Raider has an ultimately satisfying and complex level design, and though its graphics and controls are dated, the remastered version has made both factors more palatable for a modern day audience. However, even with the modern control scheme, the game is still affected by being built around the original controls, so a portion of the difficulty curve still persists; a difficulty curve that, instead of demanding incredible skill, can feel like the game is on a completely different wavelength from you. Still, having Lara and the camera move like they do in Fortnite goes a long way in improving the experience.
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