Worth noting at the start, this is a review/diary of the 1996 Tomb Raider, not the 2013 Tomb Raider. That will become obvious pretty quickly when you start reading this entry, but I've been asked about it so I figured I should make that clear.
Review:
One of the first adventures for one of gaming's most iconic character, Tomb Raider is a technological showcase that remains impressive to this day. The 1996 Action-Adventure game puts you in the shoes of archaeologist, treasure hunter and millionaire Lara Croft for the very first time, as she travels the world on a job to seek these mysterious treasures of unknown origin. In a post-Ocarina of Time world, I feel like it's easy to call Tomb Raider a bit outdated. For a lot of people this game will have aged poorly, it has tank controls which most people would accredit to being a 3D game designed before analog sticks were commonplace. It's slow, precise, and rather difficult. I personally think, though, Tomb Raider holds up surprisingly well. It's slow, methodical, precision based gameplay is so its own thing that, while I can definitely see more modern gamers bouncing off it pretty quickly, I think it kind of wraps around to aging beautifully. Its story is a classic pulp adventure novel, Lara is just an amazing character, truly a tour de force in the scope of gaming women. The puzzles are fun. And it just feels so innovative, to this day it is impressive. I didn't fully love it, while I appreciate and respect the choices in the game, I did tend to find it frustrating overall. But I liked it, and I'd be excited to play more Tomb Raider going forward. 7.4/10
Diary:
10/5/25
Before I even actually begin the game, I am faced with a very difficult choice. What control scheme do I use for Tomb Raider? I am playing the Remastered trilogy version by Aspyr, which means that I now have access to "modern" controls. The original Tomb Raider was, as many early 3D games on PS1 were, a tank control game, Lara's only movement option is to go forward and instead you turn her to change her movement. I don't hate this, it's not my preferred way of playing a video game by any stretch, but I played RE1 earlier this year and while it's definitely a learning curve to understand tank controls, it's something I COULD get used to. The problem is that the classical controls are also very complicated and nuanced. There are so many different button combos to do so many different things, like "hold the walk button to make Lara walk up to a ledge, press back on the D-pad to get her to in position, get a running start, hold the jump button so that when she reaches the ledge she'll auto jump and then hold the action button while she's in the air so she'll automatically climb the ledge on the other side of the gap". It's a control scheme that has such a sharp learning curve that I'm worried it'll negatively impact my experience.
That being said, the modern controls are objectively terrible. Sure, Lara controls way more like a modern video game character, it is a more natural control scheme for the character. But you lose ALL nuance with it. Lara can no longer side flip, no longer back flip, no longer easily utilize most of her kit. It's a really bad incorporation of a more modern control scheme and I don't know how it made it through testing! I feel like I'm kind of screwed no matter what I choose, to be honest. Like, I feel like the classic Tomb Raider controls are objectively better but progress is going to be much slower because of them as I try to learn this control scheme, but modern controls, while they might make it easier to play, also make the game worse!!! I'm going to give it my best shot though because I really want to play this game, I'm entering my Tomb Raider era frfr.
I do have an idea, though. I think I'm cooking. So, I'm a big fan of the Super Nintendo controller. I play more games with it than people probably imagine I could. I have the NSO SNES controller that has the double triggers and it turns out this controller is great for so many applications. I don't just play retro games with it, a vast majority of RPGs I've played I also use the SNES controller for. And I've realized that the NSO SNES controller is, effectively, a PS1 controller. It has a dpad, start and select, four face buttons, four shoulder buttons. I'm thinking that if I eliminate the sticks entirely, that it'll really help me out with this control scheme. I've been gaming for so long that I just instinctively go for sticks for movement and that is not how Tomb Raider works so I think if I just eliminate the impulse, I'll be able to adapt much better. We'll see how it pans out!
One last thing I want to cover, yes I realize the "haven't even started playing" section is four paragraphs long: I can't think of the original Tomb Raider without thinking of Life With Derek. If you've never seen or heard of Life With Derek congratulations on living a better life than I, Life With Derek was a early 2000s sitcom that originated in Canada and got syndicated on the Disney Channel for a very brief period. It was an incredibly bad show whose entire identity was "what if the Brady Bunch but the kids had deep socio-political differences in their ideologies which cause them to fight constantly. The eldest girl was a super leftist feminist type and the eldest boy, the titular "Derek" was a slob and a misogynist and a conservative, it was a choice. Anyways, they did an entire episode on the Tomb Raider hype like 10 years after and the plot of the episode is that the eldest daughter finds out that her stepbrother and his friend/the eldest daughter's boyfriend are obsessed with a game called "Babe Raider", which sees a scantily clad Lara Croft type adventurer going through dungeons. The girl is horrified at first before she decides to give it a go and finds herself really liking the game, thinking it's very empowering to women despite its surface level appearance of being objectifying. And then she finds out there are nude codes and she's disgusted again and why are we having an episode about this debate and this rumor in 2005 a whole decade after Tomb Raider made its splash!
11/4/25
A whole month later. Yeah, Tomb Raider ended up getting shelved because I was trying to get some drafts done and then also I did the Halloween-a-thon. I got a draft done. Embarrassing. But now I'm here, I'm playing the Tomb Raider finally, probably one of my last games for the year given what I have on the docket. For what it's worth, I was in fact cooking. The Super Nintendo controller does wonderful things to this day, I swear. I think it's because really most controllers since has been kind of built off the formula, but it still has so many use cases in the modern day. Anyways, Tomb Raider feels pitch perfect on it, which it should. The pre-Dualshock PS1 controller was literally a Super Nintendo controller. The game itself still controls a bit awkwardly, I'm not exactly sure how to move fluidly yet so Lara keeps stopping and starting. But like, it feels really good to play on a SNES controller.
I am terrible at the combat. This isn't surprising, just like a Blue player in Magic, in most cases I'm awful at combat and will try to avoid it whenever necessary. I think the biggest problem for me is that I'm not great at dodging. Tomb Raider is so particular about its inputs that doing any of the inputs to dodge can go wrong pretty easily. Hitting back and jump to do a backflip is almost always going to result in Lara just backstepping, you have to very specifically remember "hit jump and then hit back". Which I know is how it works in theory, but when I'm in the midst of fighting a bunch of wolves, I am kind pf panicking. I'm sure I'll get there, luckily, there isn't a ton of penalty for dying, at least not in the Remaster I'm playing. You can save on the fly and just reload from that save, it makes it super convenient. Or it would, if it didn't take me until level 3 to figure out that was a thing. I replayed level 2 from the beginning so many times.
While the control scheme is a bit awkward for me, I also kind of love it. Like it's so unique and such it's own thing, I find it super fascinating. A lot of people would probably say it's aged a lot, and that's fair. We do tend to look down upon tank controls quite a bit nowadays as some relic of an era when people were trying to make 3D games without analog control and I won't say it's entirely undeserved. But I think for Tomb Raider the control scheme really works. There is a modern control scheme in Tomb Raider Remastered and I debated doing that but I'm really glad I didn't, the precision in Lara's movements with the original control scheme, how methodical everything feels, there's so much purpose to every action you take. It's so weird because you can kind of see how this would inevitably inspire/evolve into the Uncharted/modern Tomb Raider kind of gameplay. Those games are obviously more accessible and more forgiving than this, but they are also very deliberate, very precise. It's something that just feels right, even as awkward as the control scheme can be sometimes.
I am blown away by the level design for this game, though. Like it feels so ahead of its time. Every level is so fun to explore, there's lots of secrets hidden all over the place and little nooks and crannies to look in. Part of me wants to really delve in deep to these levels and try and find everything they're hiding, because I personally feel like I've been doing a good job of combing the levels and keep finding only one of the secrets areas in them. I assume you have to get very good at how Tomb Raider works and do some really advanced techniques to really find some of this stuff, which is an exciting prospect to me. I almost certainly won't, because I want to play other games eventually, but like, it's so cool. Even if most of the collectibles are just health packs, it always feels like I earned them, like I was rewarded for exploring the level in depth. I even got a weapon earlier than I was supposed to because I explored so thoroughly, I love that. At least I assume that's what happened, I got an achievement for it.
Lara is also such a cool character. Like, getting the elephant out of the room, I am a person attracted to women so I have a lot of appreciation for how attractive Lara is. This is obviously one of the most famous parts about Lara Croft, that she's such an iconic sex symbol for gaming history, and has made her legacy arguably much bigger than the franchise she's from. As early as the second game in the franchise, Tomb Raider started inserting Lara Croft's name into the titles, the subtitle of Tomb Raider II is "Starring Lara Croft". But also, she just rules. Like, I'm a big fan of the modern incarnation of Lara, an excitable woman who loves her work dearly and who cares a lot about ethical boundaries. She's very endearing to me. But classic Lara just owns. She is a classical pulp hero, a woman who storms ancient places for the thrill of exploration, armed with a pair of pistols and a pack to store other things. She's not exactly a good archaeologist, she would probably be discredited in real life, but she's just so cool. She doesn't care about anyone or anything but the spirit of adventure, and that's something I think has stayed consistent in the franchise even with the radical shift in her character.
I am really surprised how quickly this game gets into the extranatural stuff. I'm used to the pacing of the games that would be inspired by/evolve from Tomb Raider, where things start off pretty grounded and then slowly get more and more supernatural until, by the end, you're just fighting some sort of magical being(s). But Tomb Raider does not waste any time. Level 3? Dinosaurs are still alive. This was not a surprise, I think the image that probably is conjured in your head of the first Tomb Raider is likely battling the T-Rex. It's one of the most famous things about this game. But I'm surprised it happened so quickly, I was sure it would be like "the final area has dinos" sort of thing. Though I guess dinosaurs aren't alive anymore, I killed them. Lara was killing animals en masse even back in 1996, who could've imagined!?
11/5/25
I lost basically all my progress tonight. Hoo boy! I'm going to guess the ability to save on the fly was, itself, a feature of the original game (which like, wow, that's incredibly ahead of its time), as the more I play Tomb Raider the more designed around saving any time it feels. Or at the very least, was built around frequent saves, maybe save points. Wish they were included in this game, to be honest, because then I might remember to save. Anyways, I beat the final Peru level and did a good chunk of the first Greece level and then fell to my death and was forced to reload at the last time I saved, which was in the middle of the Peru level. So I'm going to be redoing my progress again next time I play. Annoying, but like, that's on me.
Something I do want to highlight that I love about the remaster of this game is that it's one of those remasters where you can change to the original version at any time. One of the things I loved about the very excellent Wonder Boy in the Dragon's Castle remaster was that ability to change the versions on the fly. It's such an obvious thing to include, especially in games with two distinctive visual styles between the remaster and the original. In Tomb Raider's case, the later version is meant to be as in line with the PS2 games onward visually as they could possibly get without remaking the game. This isn't just a nice visual thing either, there kind of is a gameplay reason for it. The new version has more dynamic and arguably better lighting during gameplay, the shadows are very nice and the game surprisingly does look beautiful in some places despite being a likely cheaply made remaster of a PS1 game. But, the game is designed around how bright the original looked. So, when trying to search for secrets or health pickups, it's pretty convenient to make the game the PS1 version because a lot of the dark corners are no longer in shadow in that version.
I mentioned in my
previous gaming diary on a Tomb Raider that Lara seems to get betrayed a lot. And yeah, that happens once you finish the first set of levels too. She was hired to dive into this temple in Peru to find its treasures by a billionaire and, after collecting said treasure, she is ambushed by a hitman. After a brief fight with said hitman, they reveal that the billionaire, Jacqueline Natla, has hired another treasure hunter to find other treasures hidden across the world that connect to the one Lara found in Peru. After breaking into Natla's office, Lara discovers a journal tells her that the other treasures, when combined with the treasure in Peru, will allow the wielder to find some sort of hidden treasure. So Lara sets off to Greece to try and head off Natla's plans. This story is about what I expected but I do like it, it's very pulpy which fits the vibe. Also, if you're keeping track, you should add "Eurasian Lions" to the list of animals that Lara has caused to go extinct, because the last Eurasian Lions outside of India are in the Greek tombs she's raiding and she kills them outright. Also Gorillas? I don't know where the Gorillas came from.
I just want to take this moment to also shoutout Stellalune. I tend to have a walkthrough up on either my PC or my phone when I game, even if I don't really use it, just to have a grounding point on where I am in the game and how much I have left. I've consulted a lot of GameFAQs guides over the years (you know it's good when it has a killer ASCII art at the top) and, to my chagrin, a lot of IGN guides for more modern stuff. But for Tomb Raider, I found Stellalune, a Tomb Raider fan who has been running a
fansite for the series since 1998!!! It's a wonderful resource that I'm excited to find still exists and is still being updated, Stella has included updated guides for the Remastered versions of the original Tomb Raiders and I hope, should Middle-Earth enterprises ever get that new Tomb Raider out, she returns to do a walkthrough for that too. It warms my heart that someone so passionate about the franchise, despite its numerous ups and downs, is still committed to giving the most in-depth experiences possible for Tomb Raider fans and newcomers alike. And if you want to see what the site used to look like, there are tons of screengrabs on the Wayback Machine, it's beautiful, just peak 00s fansite.
11/6/25
It feels a bit like progress is slowing down, like the levels keep getting longer and longer as the game goes on. Like, it now regularly feels like I'm spending about an hour on each level. I don't mind it of course, I really like the levels in this game and the fact that they do have so much running around, so many moving parts, is really cool to me. It's just I'm rapidly realizing that this game is going to be taking longer than I thought it was going to. Admittedly I am also both trying to explore these levels in-depth and also dying a bunch because I still am getting used to the combat, so I have to redo large chunks of levels. I just get so into playing the game that I forget to save and also don't want to do a thing where like "I complete a single task, I save". No disrespect to people who would do that, obviously, play a game however you want. I just personally would feel bad about doing that.
I find it very interesting how, in the Greek stages, there's just this recurring boss fight now. Every so often you'll run into the other treasure hunter Natla hired and have to get into a shootout with him. It gives the Greek stages a nice tension, like this other treasure hunter can be around every corner, stalking Lara, waiting for her to drop her guard before he strikes. Not only that, but he sometimes brings "friends", unleashing some of the animals that have been trapped down here for centuries on Lara as he attacks. It's especially a problem for me, someone who is bad at the combat, to have this attacker showing up at potentially any time. But I do enjoy this element, I think it really adds a lot of depth to this game. Tomb Raider spends a lot of time between plot beats, essentially having plot in between each set of levels, so having this element really ties the story into the gameplay in a nice way. Now if only I didn't lose like half my health each time I encounter him because I don't see him straight away.
I'm really starting to piece together what's possible with the platforming in Tomb Raider. Part of the learning curve for finding secrets in these levels is looking at random geography and kind of piecing together a logic with it, a path the developers want you to follow. For instance, in the first Greece level, there's a room that seemingly is just there for flavor. It contains within it a series of seemingly randomly placed slopes that Lara can jump onto but, seemingly, can't do anything else with. You can jump between them but it's not readily apparent what this accomplishes. But, if you jump off one of the slops at the right angle, Lara will flip onto another slope, at which point, if she's facing the right way, Lara can grab onto a ledge above you. I like this, Tomb Raider's platforming is so precise and clunky that I like that there is some neat movement tech to it, something more akin to a Mario game. Something faster paced. It's cool.
The Greek levels also have some killer setpieces so far. Like, Peru was cool, don't get me wrong, I liked it a lot, but the only really notable setpiece in my opinion was the T-Rex fight. The first level of the Greek section was built around this tower room. The room is very tall, you start at the top of it (so any misplaced jump right away will cause you to fall to your death) and in the center of the room, there is a tower. And around the outer walls, there are four doors to unlock by finding switches hidden throughout the room. What you have to do is methodically climb your way down the tower, finding the four switches to unlock the four rooms, and then methodically climb all the way back up to hit up each room, which each have a puzzle related to some mythological figure, so that you may find the four keys. Once you have the four keys, you have to climb all the way back down because, at the foot of the tower, is the locked door. This seems very tedious describing it, but when you play it, it's like a perfect little encapsulation of everything great about Tomb Raider's platforming. How precise it is, how methodical it is. Having to work your way around this tower multiple times makes you feel like you really understand Tomb Raider, it's great.
The other level I got to before I had to stop for the night, like I said, these levels are like an hour long now, was a Colosseum level. The Colosseum level, as you might imagine, has a lot of fighting in it. It seems like I wouldn't like this as I'm bad at, you know. Combat. But I think a Colosseum setting actually does make the combat more manageable for me? I think because the actual battlefield is such an open area, the Colosseum actually allowed me the space to learn the combat more, I don't know how to explain it. Though I still mess up the flips a lot to dodge, it's a bit embarrassing. I know that "jump THEN direction" is how it works in theory but I keep doing them the wrong way in practice. I'm too trained on like more modern video games where do things at the same time. Oh, also, randomly found out that the auto-targeting system will just keep firing on an enemy after they've died. Which may be part of the reason why I've been so bad at combat, in hindsight.
11/8/25
It's so weird getting to a level in the original Tomb Raider that covers similar and/or the same themes as a Tomb in Rise of the Tomb Raider. In this previous gameplay session, I encountered the Cistern level of Tomb Raider, a level taking place inside a giant ancient Cistern with puzzles built around raising and lowering the water levels. Kind of like the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time but good. Rise of the Tomb Raider also has a Tomb exactly like this, a large Cistern where you have to raise and lower the water to progress. It's kind of this nice parallel between the two eras, I have to wonder if Rise was originally intended to have more direct references and/or be a reimagining of the events of the original Tomb Raider at some point but then got reworked. It would make a lot of sense as Rise is the first game after the origin story and it covers a lot of ideas like searching for a lost city through clues hidden around the world and a heavy focus on Greek history.
I'm admittedly starting to get a bit exhausted by how long and complex each level is. Like, in theory I like it. I think it is an effective use of space, this was originally a
Saturn PS1 game and while the PS1 did drastically increase the amount of space a game could have, it still wasn't a massive amount of space. A lot of games had to be on multiple discs. So essentially having every level in Tomb Raider be a full hour+ long dungeon is very effective. In practice though, it's kind of becoming an endurance test, especially with how often I'm dying. Granted, a lot of the deaths are my fault, I'm trying way too hard to be clever in a lot of instances. But already these levels are taking me an hour and then probably another 20-30 minutes is replaying sections because I'm trying not to save scum. Idk, I like this game still but it's testing my patience a little bit as I go on. Can't imagine having to do this with limited saves, I'll tell you what.
The more I play this incarnation of Tomb Raider the more I wish this incarnation of Lara made it into the modern Crystal Dynamics one more. I know that a goal for that version of Lara was to be more culturally aware, Lara had long been seen as a controversial figure in gaming due to how clearly sexualized she is. I mean the woman does handstands when she climbs up on a ledge so the gamer can get a full view of her body. But I think in a more modern reevaluation of Lara's character in these games, these things are actually very cool and very progressive. I made fun of Life with Derek for having this debate in 2005 and now I'm having this debate in 2025. Like, I just find Lara really cool, a woman who knows she's hot and owns it effortlessly, showing off for nobody but herself. And while I really like the modern characterization of Lara, I wish some of this coolness had made it into her. Also how does Lara not have her twin pistols in the modern games? This is like literally one of the most iconic things about Lara Croft and it's crazy to me that Tomb Raider 2013 made such a big deal out of Lara getting a second pistol during the final boss only to have her go back to one in the following game.
I'm finally experimenting more with the other weapons because like, they just give you way more ammo than I thought they were going to. Like, ammo is a collectible hidden throughout the levels and, much like something like a survival horror game, it's a pretty scarce resource. And because you can't really replay levels, if you miss ammo, it's just missed. But I finally got the third weapon, the Magnums, and actually the ammo is way more plentiful than I thought it was going to be. Like I have hundreds of Magnum shots loaded up right now. I'll probably still rely on my basic pistols for most encounters because I want to conserve my ammo for trickier encounters but like, I'm happy to know I don't have to be as restrictive as I have been. The shotgun though does give you like nothing but I presume that the shotgun is very powerful to make up for it. Anyways, the Magnums are real strong, I might be more likely to use them when I hit a tougher enemy going forward.
11/10/25
Every time I think I'm running out of patience for this game, something happens to pull me back in. I reached the end of the Greek section, the final Greek level was super cool (which is good because it's the only full level I got done in this section, oops) and we get a really cool FMV filling in the backstory of the game. Millennia ago, the Kingdom of Atlantis was ruled by a trio of kings, kings from which the great civilizations of the Inca, the Greeks, and the Egyptians descended from. They ruled together in harmony, until one day the king who would later found Egypt began to corrupt the civilization of Atlantis, conducting terrible experiments to turn the people of their glorious city into nightmarish the monsters. The other two kings, appalled by this practice, deposed their former comrade, buried him deep in the sands of Egypt, and sank the city of Atlantis, presumably destroying all his horrid experiments with it. This is, bizarrely, still a parallel this game shares with Rise of the Tomb Raider, a game which sees Lara Croft finding a lost civilization of horrible mutants that was buried under a large iceberg.
Something I really appreciate about Tomb Raider's level design is how natural the flow of the levels feel. Like, the idea is that Lara is delving into these hidden tombs and I really enjoy how each set of levels starts with Lara entering in through a cave that maybe has some artifacts or some structure that indicates that these lost civilizations were around, before solving the necessary puzzle to find her way into the lost tombs. Admittedly, this is one of the reasons why I feel like Peru failed to leave as much of an impression as Greece did, the first couple Peru levels were just cave levels with some ruins in them, but I enjoy the very natural flow the levels have as a result of this. The third set of levels, Egypt, really highlighted this fact for me, as Lara literally does enter down into this unassuming cave where there's only an obelisk and, by finding a hidden lever, opens up the "puzzle" to allow her to go deeper into the cave, finding a whole entire lost tomb. It's so cool, this is something I loved about the modern Tomb Raiders too, how even as the game gets more and more supernatural the actual design still feels very grounded.
We're now entering the point of this game where we're fighting literal nightmares. So you get down to the final part of the Greek levels and there's a temple down there flanked by two statues of centaurs. After solving a puzzle that I had an embarrassing amount of trouble with, you fight the area boss, which is one of the centaur statues come to life. Except, it doesn't exactly look like any centaur you've probably seen before. It's a horrible nightmare creature instead, a monstrous abomination that has a pale head with an elongated skull and a mouth full of sharp teeth. And it throws fireballs! I'm glad that they showed one of the horrible mutants BEFORE we got the reveal of what's going on, I think in the modern day this story might've gone differently where we are left in the dark about what the Atlantean Kings had done that caused the split and for them to be sealed away. But I like that the game shows us the consequences before the actions, letting the player immediately go "oh, they were playing god and creating horrible nightmares".
With that knowledge, the game is then allowed to just go ham when you get to Egypt. The mummy enemies in Egypt are just actively horrifying. Potentially the scariest a mummy has ever actually been in fiction. The mummies in this game are given the plausible deniability of having once been human, that maybe they've been warped through some sort of immortality. But it becomes very clear very quickly that these things aren't human. The launch themselves at you like the Fleamen from Castlevania. They have sharp, sickle like arms to rip you apart with. When they walk, they give the impression of being slow, their steps being deep and loud, but once they lock onto you they move like crazed animals. They have rows of sharp, daggerlike teeth. And they screech. Just like actually the most terrifying a mummy has ever been.
I'm a bit embarrassed about last play session because like. A lot of my progress was stalled by just me being very unobservant. This happens a lot and I hate when it happens, I always feel so dumb looking up a walkthrough (shoutout to Stella once again, you've been a great help) and it's just like "you didn't look around this corner". It happened twice to me, once in the final chamber of the last Greek level where it turned out that there was a passageway under the temple hidden between two rocks that I just missed while swimming around for like 15 minutes, and the second time when I had to go behind the Sphinx's head and just totally missed that as an option. I don't know if this is like weird, but I blame myself more than I blame the game when I'm stuck on something because like, I don't know. I guess I feel like with how many games I play, the onus should be on me to know how games work rather than blaming every inconvenience in my playthrough on the game in question like so many other people tend to do.
I am having to use my other weapons more. As we get into the late game, it's no longer seeming like an option but rather a necessity. Which I guess is the intentional design of the game. It explains why they give us so many Magnum Rounds, at least. The kind of basic enemies I was facing in the first 9 levels of the game are kind of gone as we enter Egypt. Sure there are still some Crocodiles and Panthers, normal wild animals that I can unload my basic pistols onto. But the most dangerous enemies, the Mummies, eat normal ammo like it's nothing and I'm finding it increasingly necessary to use not only the Magnums but also the Shotgun. Thankfully they seem to go down a lot fast, the shotgun might kill them in two hits? It's very difficult to tell because my combat capabilities aren't good. I miss A LOT and obviously that's less than ideal for weapons with limited ammunition. Hopefully I get the hang of this and I can survive encounters better as I near the ending.
I find myself alternating between long periods of doing the new graphics and then switching back to the old. I can't decide which one I like more, to be honest. The newer graphics are more accurate to what classic Tomb Raider would look like, they feel visually in line with later games in the series like Legend (I'm calling out Legend specifically because it's been on my mind lately as a later Tomb Raider which is apparently good). And in many ways they look great, especially with how Lara looks and moves. But then the classic graphics just have so much charm to them, the blocky pixelated Lara with her face that looks more like a 2D sprite. And, in many ways, the classic graphics are better for gameplay in a lot of situations. Especially with how much swimming I've had to do, I'm just going to say it, the water looks better in the classic version. The newer version tries to look realistic by making the water look kind of dark and muggy, especially in the caves, but underwater in the classic is clear and atmospheric and very pleasant, I like it a whole lot.
I am enjoying Tomb Raider, but I am also at the point where I'm looking forward to it ending. I think I'm on the homestretch and like, I don't want to say the game is overstaying its welcome. I appreciate much of what it's doing, especially with the limitations it has being the first of its kind. But while I enjoy the story and enjoy the levels and all that, the fact that a level can regularly take an hour if I'm doing it perfectly and near two if I'm dying a lot is wearing me down. I want to see it through to the end, I will see it through to the end, but I went into this wondering if Tomb Raider might be a top 20 contender and as I'm approaching the finale I'm like "this game might be a little lower on the list than I first intended". Down there with games like
Wild ARMs and LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, the high 7s.
11/12/25
Progress has, effectively, slowed to a halt. This is not necessarily the game's fault, this is a combination of my own lack of skill and my hubris. I keep going for extended periods of time without saving thinking that I'm playing the game fine and I could probably go the entire level without saving. And then I miss a jump or get corner trapped by a panther or just fight a mummy and am not quick enough on the draw to heal. All these scenarios happened a lot in the previous levels (I only got a level and a half done, I know!) It's not a problem that the game is getting more difficult, of course, I'm late in the game, it'd be ludicrous to expect it not to be harder. But it does not change the fact that I'm beginning to feel like progress is either slow or nonexistent. There were a few times in this last play session I got so frustrated about having to replay certain chunks that I thought of putting the game down indefinitely. Like, it's not that I dislike the game, I still like most of it, it's just getting rough in a way that I'm finding unfun.
I do wonder if the Egypt level was one of the first conceptualized and, by extension, conceptualized before they knew how the space limitations of the PS1 disc were going to impact the project. In my mind, the first two Egypt levels are the best thought out so far. Despite the two levels being entirely separate, the ways in which they connect and fold back in and out with each other really make the player feel like it's one larger temple. You open up into a large underground chamber that contains a Sphinx and you quickly see the end goal of this duo of levels, there's an obelisk with four switches and a door that will not open. You have to delve deep into this tomb to find the four artifacts needed to activate the switches and then make your way back up through the tomb to find the obelisk. While there is a level break about halfway through the tomb in question, this is done seamlessly, with you coming out at the opening area by the end in what seems to be a very logical way. It genuinely makes me wonder if they originally intended for this game to have a number of interconnected tombs but found out having the level structure where things have an opportunity to unload and reload was better for the PS1, leading to this more "linear hallways and puzzle rooms" design.
This game is, unironically, getting kind of scary as we near the end. Like, it's not only that the mummies are these horrible mutant that can just plow through Lara, but very often all you have to indicate that they're even around is the sound of their footsteps. Because the camera is so locked on Lara the entire time, it's very easy for enemies to get the drop on her. I have been jumpscared so many times by one of these horrifying monsters launching itself from out of frame, screaming at me. This game is a scarier game than Resident Evil, I swear. It's such a problem too because the mutants can just drain through your health like it's nothing and move so fast that by the time they've stopped attacking you, they're somewhere else and you can't reposition yourself fast enough to where you can blast through the enemy before they swing back around to tear down the rest of your health.
This also brings me to another criticism I have of this game. So, I'm bad at the combat, that's no surprise, I've mentioned this a hundred times. But now that we have so many incredibly fast, incredibly strong enemies, the combat has gotten such a different context. Like it feels like what the game now actively wants you to do is be very methodical about it. Trigger an enemy to appear and then find some sort of safe vantage point to fight from. This explains the very sudden difficulty spike, i.e. having enemies that mow through health, and also how vertical the design is. There are a lot of rooms now where you can position yourself above or below enemies to avoid them rather easily. This totally makes sense for everything else about how Tomb Raider is designed, you're meant to really think about your movements, be very methodical, don't rush into things. But then the game just puts you in a room with an mummy for fun that completely lacks a vantage point and goes "hope you can kill them before they get to you, idk". I feel like the design is conflicting with itself a little bit.
I got to pet the cat in this section!!! Literally an achievement in this game (though one that didn't register as me having got due to the way I end up playing these games), actually. In the third Egypt level, you find a giant Sphinx buried underground, presumably with the face of the lost Atlantean King who was sealed down here for their transgressions millennia ago. This Sphinx is huge and, eventually, you have to climb to the top of it to put in four artifacts to progress in the game. But if you handstand at the top, you can pet the sphinx! It's a very cute interaction, I love it a lot. You're not literally petting the Sphinx, it's not a programmed thing, but it must've been one of those memes in the community because a lot of the achievements in this game are memes, I've found. There's even one about using a glitch to get an unreachable item, which is also annoying because there are achievements to collect everything in the game, meaning you have to learn how to do this glitch. Thankfully, like, the "corner bug" seems to be one of the most well documented tricks in Tomb Raider, the guide I keep referencing actually mentions how many things you can skip if you know how to do the corner bug a few times.
I just, no longer know how I feel about Tomb Raider. I like it, don't get me wrong, I like this game. It's just, it's seeming to me like one of those games that starts off really good and just gets worse over time. And those games are very contentious. I think people either approach them from the perspective of "this game started out really good and I already fell in love with it, so the later game is less of a problem for me" or "this game started out really good but it's kind of losing its luster as we go on". Both equally valid viewpoints and both I've held over the years about various games. Tomb Raider just seems like it's going to fall in the latter camp. I want to finish it but I'll be glad to be done with the first game. Hope the rest of the sequels are better when I get around to those.
11/14/25
I just spent like three hours on the same level. And I'm not even done with it. So, the first level of the final set, the Atlantean levels, is a type of level I really love in games. It's a level where you're stripped of all your resources and you have to get crafty with how you progress in the level, solving puzzles and sneaking around until you can assemble your inventory again. Any time a game has a level like this, I'm in, I love it when a game strips you down to only your base movement and goes "you know how to play the game now, earn it all back." Small hiccup with how Tomb Raider handles it, however: almost all your inventory are optional pick-ups. The only thing you have to reclaim is your basic pistols. You could, theoretically, fail to pick up your additional weapons like your Magnums or your Shotgun. Furthermore, the game does not do a good job of telegraphing how to reclaim your lost weapons, having them either be dropped by enemies (enemy drops are something that has never happened in this game previously) or even having them locked behind hidden passages.
As you could probably imagine reading that, this is not a hypothetical situation for me. This just happened. The enemy that holds your Magnums, the first boss of this level, exists above a massive lava river that serves as something of a point of no return. If you decide to go down into the lava river and start your platforming there, you will not be able to climb back up and reclaim your magnums. So, let's say hypothetically you are like me and are assuming that each weapon will be locked behind a puzzle and, even if they're not, you would not assume that the weapons would be dropped by an enemy because that's not a thing that has happened in this game before now. And so you don't realize that the Magnums are just lying on the ground back where you fought the first boss, so you go down into the lava river and only realize that the magnums were dropped back in the first boss arena when you check your walkthrough for help on a platforming thing. AND you had already saved over your file that would put you back before said boss. So you have to restart the level over again to fix this error, losing about an hour of progress and probably resetting two hours of game time as I died a lot in that intervening time.
That being said, while it's been kind of a bummer playing through it, I do actually really enjoy this level. My toxic gaming trait is that I actually adore limited resource stealth sections in games. I think this might be why I enjoy survival horror so much too, I think a game gets a lot out of limiting what the player can do and forcing them to think more purposefully about how they play. Which in a way is just what Tomb Raider 1 is about, it's a very methodical, very precise game. It's a great way to reset the player before the finale, to make them hyper aware of their platforming and movement so that whatever happens next, they don't lose focus on playing well. It just so happens that, you know, I'm bad at games and so this is going very wrong for me. But I do enjoy it.
I found a very cool secret in the last level of the Egypt section. So, the last level of Egypt is built around this giant buried sphinx, as I previously mentioned. The whole structure of the level is climbing around the room where this sphinx is hidden to find passageways to get the twin artifacts that will open the door in the Sphinx's chest. When you climb atop the Sphinx's head to place the Ankhs, though, you can look out and get a view of the entire level. And just off to the side there's something floating in midair. You may rightfully think to yourself "oh this is probably just a bug or something", lord knows PS1 games can be buggy. But if you take the risk and jump for it, you can unlock Lara's final weapon like three stages earlier! I didn't get an opportunity to use this weapon but I've been so conservative with my ammo so far that I'm thinking I'm okay to just go guns blazing in the final parts, to be honest. It's super cool to be able to just grab all these weapons early if you're just observant and good at the platforming, it's genuinely one of my favorite parts about this game.
We got another FMV sequence in this section and like. Man, the FMV sequences sure are something. The FMV stuff didn't get a visual overhaul like the rest of the game did in the remaster, they literally just upped the resolution. On the one hand, this is very charming. I love these old PS1 cutscenes so much, they're so goofy looking but I can also imagine how revolutionary this must've looked. Like having people who almost look like people was probably such a big deal in 1996. But also like, man these cutscenes would not be done this same way today. I've been generally pretty positive about Lara's depiction so far, I think that while she's very obviously designed first and foremost to be attractive, her character owns it well enough to where it comes off as cool and confident more than like "objectified", you know? But in the cutscenes she's jiggling like a Dead or Alive character and if it wasn't so comical, I'd be more upset about it. It's a lot. It's the first time in this game that Lara has felt like she was specifically designed for the male gaze, y'know?
The fact that I'm taking so long on Tomb Raider is very disappointing to me. Like, I understand it's my fault, trust me, I know that I'm the reason Tomb Raider is taking so long. This is not the game's fault that I'm getting frustrated... mostly. It does not change, however, how much I find my endurance running out for this game. Like if I didn't know I was basically at the end, I would probably stop now, give Tomb Raider the 7/10 I'm probably going to give it and then move on to my next project. Again, no matter what I say or how frustrated I'm getting with this game, I do like it. I like Tomb Raider 1 and I'm glad to have played it. It's just of the games I've played this year, Tomb Raider is the one that's taking the most out of me. I rarely get this way about games too, like, I don't often get frustrated by having hit a wall in games. A difficult game is meant to be difficult, it'd be weird to criticize said game for doing what it advertises. But something about this game in particular has just been making me have way more moments of getting kind of frustrated and defeated.
11/15/25
That is a wrap on Tomb Raider. Gotta say, actually delving into Atlantis was very cool. I think it kind of redeemed the game near the end. This series' incarnation of Atlantis is super unique, actually. As I've previously stated, one of the Atlantean Kings from thousands of years ago was doing horrible genetic experiments, creating these absolute nightmare creatures. But it was not just the creatures themselves that this Atlantean king was creating. Our view of the lost civilization of Atlantis is through the pyramid of the sealed king, the place where they conducted their horrible genetic experiments. And, in a disturbing turn, this high tech Atlantean stronghold is organic. Most of the pyramid is made not of stone or metal, but of flesh, a giant interwoven network of musculature that pulses and writhes as you walk through. It's not just gross and disturbing, but it's also very unique, like I said I've never seen Atlantis be depicted in anything like it is in the original Tomb Raider. What a cool area.
I'm surprised this game had a twist I was not expecting. I figured I had a pretty good sense of what the plot actually was up until now, a billionaire CEO discovers evidence of the lost city of Atlantis and sends treasure hunters out to find a way in by discovering the lost treasures of the civilization hidden across the world. Not that they did a good job hiding said treasures, two of the three of them were apparently on the Mediterranean within sailing distance of the island where the lost king's pyramid was. But when Lara finally touches the completed Scion, she gets a vision of the trial of the lost King, the point where the other two kings of Atlantis decided to seal away their comrade. And the king who was sealed away was, in fact, billionaire CEO Jacqueline Natla, the person who originally hired Lara to go on this quest and the main antagonist of the game.
Jacqueline Natla, then only known as Natla, believed strongly that humanity was already tumbling towards their own extinction. Even with the advanced technology of Atlantis at their disposal, Natla was convinced that humanity's extinction was looming, and so she took it upon herself to rectify this. She built her pyramid on a volcanic island, conducting horrible genetic experiments in hopes that she could force humanity to evolve, become something that could survive in this world. Every horrible monstrosity we've battled was Natla's attempt at perfection. A goal she sincerely believed she is achieving. The other two kings obviously would not stand for this abuse of their technology, and so sealed Natla away, cryogenically freezing her forever. Or, at least, until someone or something woke her from her slumber. Global warming awoke Natla, that's my headcanon.
I just want to once again establish how cool classic Lara Croft is. Like, she's one of those smarmy British protags who always has a quip for everything and is totally unfazed by how insane the world around her is. Natla is literally explaining this absolutely insane plan to her and Lara is just stone faced, making fun of Natla in real time for her insane plan, so cool. Like, I love the character work done for Lara in the Survivor games, don't get me wrong, I know that's probably controversial among classic fans because I've come to realize that they really despise the Survivor trilogy. Check a Reddit thread on Tomb Raider rankings and usually the opinion is "Tomb Raider 2013 was alright but every game after that is bottom of the list". But I think that version of Lara is more well rounded overall, she's more passionate about her craft, more empathetic, more measured. But I do think she could serve to have more of classic Lara's effortless cool in her as well.
I actually really loved the Atlantean stages. I talked a lot about why I enjoyed the first stage, I love stages where your resources are taken from you and you have to earn them back bit by bit. But even after that stage, the level design in the Atlantean stages is killer. The second level of Atlantis takes you inside the pyramid, a massive fortress that goes up for several stories. The level is built in a very satisfying way where there's this central structure, a giant towering room, that you keep revisiting across the level. You basically get to the towering room and platform from where you are to where you're going, then go off on these side hallways to solve puzzles, fight enemies, and do platforming until you return to the central structure, now higher up. Something I've generally really liked about Tomb Raider is how logical the level design is, how often it feed back into itself, so it's so perfect to have a final area really go all out on this.
This area is also a real showcase for the player. Like, you really need to understand the platforming and combat to proceed through this area at a good pace. It kind of says to the player "hey, you should know how this works by now, do it". You have all your basic, methodical movement like how to position yourself for running jumps, when to stand jump vs. a running jump, which platforms you can vault on and which you have to jump up on. But it also expects you to know stuff like how Lara interacts with slopes, how the dropping down mechanic actually works, the nuances of running jumps so you can keep moving while you're jumping. And combat too, it expects you to know how not to die. It puts you in tiny room after tiny room with some of the roughest enemies in the game, enemies that can easily chase you down and eviscerate your health. You need to know how to move in combat, how to deal with enemies that are good in multiple ranges, enemies who are constantly changing ranges. It's rough for me, a person who is always bad at combat, but it's real good to play still. It also does help that I could go guns blazing in the finale because I had been so conservative on ammo usage before this.
The doppelganger room, however, is obviously the highlight of the area and, honestly, the entire game. I'm surprised this doesn't get spoken of with the same fervor as the T-Rex, though I have to assume way more people got to the T-Rex than the doppelganger. So, one of the final rooms of the game is a puzzle room where a fleshy, mutant version of Lara resides. This Lara is not an enemy. If you do not attack her, she will not attack you. Moreover, she's nigh invincible, so if you do attack her, she will just destroy your health while taking no damage. She is instead there to mirror you. She copies your movements to a T. And the room is a point reflection symmetry. What you have to do is go hit the switch on one side of the room and then climb over to the other side to lead the doppelganger into a pit of lava, killing her and opening the door. It's not the most complicated puzzle in the world, it's very intuitive, but it's so impressive. I can't imagine getting this to work in 1996, basically one year into the PS1/Saturn/N64 era. She moves completely in 3D, she copies Lara's movements perfectly. Crazy.
The actual final level is also great. It's kind of that classic Metroid set up of "getting the big thing at the end and having to run out of the area in a hurry", though thankfully Atlantis is in no danger of sinking again until Lara is done with her run. It not only takes you back through many of the areas you've seen already, but it's also a very effective obstacle course. I'm not sure how much sense it makes, mind, but as you escape from the pyramid, you will face a gauntlet of traps. Spike pits, boulders, lava, booby trapped arrows, everything you've seen so far in the game, it's there. On the one hand, I'm grateful that there's not really any time limit here but on the other hand, I kind of crave the stress. I feel like it'd be fun to see how fast I could do the entire run in one go, really test to see how well I know the nuances of Tomb Raider's platforming. I kind of wish I had setup a save right at the beginning of the run, tbh. Alas, if I ever play through this again, I guess (I won't).
As mentioned before, I just went guns blazing. I was overly cautious with ammo throughout the game, I realize that now. I legitimately only had Uzis equipped the entire remainder of the game, once I got them back from a skateboarding henchman Natla hired who speaks in pop culture references. What a wild character to just randomly drop on us in the final stretch. I guess I just kind of assumed the Uzis would burn through ammo really quickly so I'd have to be kind of stingy and use them in the right circumstances. From the moment I got the Uzis back to the end game, I had a net positive of over 2000 bullets. They really wanted you to go hard in this last bit and honestly, fair. The enemies are rough and you're kind of expected to do things at a nice clip. It makes sense they'd just go all in for it.
I think the most disappointing thing about not only the final area but the game in general is that the bosses are just bad. I think Tomb Raider would've benefitted from more puzzle designs for its bosses, things that require the player to dodge, wait for openings, complete puzzles, stuff like that. I guess the template for 3D action-adventure boss design had not yet arose, Ocarina of Time was still in development when I think this entire trilogy. But, it doesn't take long for you to realize that the game is designed in such a way where you can stand completely still in a big open part of the boss arena, hold down the fire button, heal when you need to and just cheese bosses like that. Lord knows they give you enough healing items, I healed constantly because I'm bad at the game and I still had 11 full heals left in my pack. I know I know, this is me optimizing the fun out of the game, it's not really the game's fault I solved the puzzle. But still, boss design tends not to be very interesting, the most interesting one in the entire game that wasn't just a T-rex before the final level was Pierre DuPont, the boss of the Greek area, and he was mostly interesting because he kept showing up throughout the area.
The final boss though was actually pretty cool. At least for the first phase, the second phase was just like every other boss in this game, just a person who follows Lara around and shoots her. But the first part of the confrontation with Jacqueline Natla sees her in a mutated form, having grown a pair of bat wing like many of the mutants. Natla will then fly around the area, shooting fireballs at Lara who must obviously dodge them. It's not the most groundbreaking idea for a boss but it IS at least different. But, what actually makes it kind of cool is the geography of the arena you fight Natla in. The place is adorned with stone pillars in random placements, meaning you will likely struggle to get a clear line of sight on Natla as she flies around. As well, she will swoop down on you randomly, throwing out triple fireballs that are much harder to dodge when she's on the ground. This unique geography actually makes a boss fight that's compelling and makes the player think about things. At least, while it lasts. Unfortunately, her health gets drained pretty quickly and you get to the way less interesting second phase.
I enjoyed the first Tomb Raider quite a bit. I think it's definitely stronger in the early game than it is later on, it feels like the early levels got a lot of care and attention and were designed to show off this massive technological leap better and then the middle game is just kind of whatever sometimes. When this game is good, it's very good, it's a hard but fun very precise platformer. And when it's not good, I felt kind of miserable about it. I'll fully admit, as I have, a lot of the reasons why I didn't have as much fun as I probably could've were on me. I should've saved more often so I didn't have to redo as many sections, I should've been more observant, clearly I should've used my ammo more, oops. My score matters very little, personal enjoyment does weigh too much into it and as such, these scores are effectively useless. Objectively, this is probably an 8-8.5/10. I am giving it a 7.4/10. A game I like, I want to play more Tomb Raiders, I love this franchise, but I didn't love it and am glad to be done with it.
