Poll: Lara Croft / Tomb Raider is 21 years old

[BFG10K]

So I just finished replaying Tomb Raider Legend and found all of the relics, including Croft Manor's. The game runs nicely at 4K:

Spoiler

Of course the original release is now 21 years old.

The first Tomb Raider I played was Anniversary and it’s also one of my favorite games of all time. Virtually the entire game was a perfect sequence of acrobatics, exploration and puzzles. The only gripe I have is some of the jumping puzzles right at the very end were a bit unfair, and the bugged Croft Manor save system on the PC.

Speaking of which, Croft Manor in Legend and Anniversary are the best tutorial levels I've ever played in any game and they're just as fun as playing the main game.

From the installments I've played I'd rank them as follows: Anniversary > 2013 > Legend = Underworld. I might take a look at some of the older titles at some stage, specifically 2-4. Lara Croft Go also looks like a nice casual game to play in between other games.

Note: I had to bundle 1-3 as one choice due to forum limitations.

 

[Oyeve]

NudeRaider was awesome for the time.

 

[BFG10K]

Not many Tomb Raider fans on this forum?

 

[MistaFreeze]

I am a huge Tomb Raider fan. Started playing on PS1 up to the newest installments. The newest ones are gorgeous and implement all sorts of cool ways to maneuver areas. Tomb Raider 1-3 were amazing at the time to me so nothings really replaced those feels except the remake which is Anniversary. Give Tomb Raider 2 a shot. It's not as overkill as 3 in terms of difficulty and cheapness factor while still having great levels. Keep in mind that if your eyes hurt looking at older games then 1-Chronicles will probably be tough to play through.

 

[Andro Boy]

I've only completed the 2013 reboot, unfortunately. However, I picked up the entire TR catalog during a Steam sale with the exception of Rise, so I'm trying to work my way through it.

 

[BFG10K]

Square Enix sale on Steam. which includes all Tomb Raider games.

 

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[Hinda65]

I just finished Rise of the Tomb raider and that got my vote. mainly because it's been so long since I played underworld and its predecessors, I can't remember anything about them.. I'm gonna check out the expedition mode/croft manor tonight so hopefully that will add a little more gameplay. I will say I must give a honorable mention to the guardian of light and temple of osirus...I really liked the different direction they took those games...was a nice change.

 

[mikeymikec]

IMO:

Putting TR 1 - 3 into the same slot throws it for me. Unless I play TR1 with a load of add-ons to provide proper 3D, high-res textures etc, I'd find it painful to look at now. TR2 is enjoyable. TR3 I disliked, there just seemed to be a lot of filler in it. My natural choice would have been TR2 or 4, so I went for 4. TR5 (chronicles) could have been my favourite if it wasn't for the dreaded final level which is so horrendously buggy.

AoD I don't think I've completed after the first time; horrible controls, horrible 'romance' between the two playable characters, jelly boobs. Urgh.

Legend was terrible (control system mainly, though having to repeat boss encounters and hearing the same stupid lines repeated endlessly really grated with me), again only completed once and attempted less times than AoD I didn't bother with Underworld, it looked like more of the same (Legend).

2013 wasn't Tomb Raider any more, it was somewhere between the Batman Arkham games and an FPS in terms of gameplay; maybe two puzzles in it at most? Don't get me started on interactive cut scenes (were there some in Legend as well?), without those I could put up with it being an playable game in its own right and ignore the "Tomb Raider" branding. Unless they go back to TR's gameplay roots (or something entirely new and interesting), I can't see me keeping up with the series any more.

I've been playing TR2 again recently, and looking at it years after its time makes it show its age in one serious respect - you can go for hours without any kind of addition to the plot. I class this as "showing its age" because I think there was an era when movie-style cut scenes were to be avoided, probably because they cost more to make. Its age shows in other respects, but I can put up with 2D objects (like pickups that rotate with the camera position ) I've been playing it on and off as it doesn't hold my attention like it used to.

 

[moonbogg]

I just bought the 20th anniversary edition for $25 on steam. Will be my first tomb raider game.

 

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[BFG10K]

Re: Underworld.
I definitely agree the graphics hold up really well for a nine year old game.

Re: 1-3 poll option.
Due to forum limits I had to combine poll options. This is what it should’ve looked like: https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1372429

 

[mikeymikec]

Did you do all the optional tombs? The puzzle stuff was shifted into optional side-quest tombs, and this is actually a smart compromise when you think about it. It lets today's ADD generation of players blow through the game, and the rest can take their time. That said, even with the optional tombs there was still less of that stuff than I remember from the other games.

I probably did, I can't remember. In any case, "Tomb Raider" with "puzzles are optional" is not "Tomb Raider". If you tried to avoid the puzzles in the original TR games, you wouldn't have been able to progress through the game.

With the Internet at one's fingertips, if a player really gets stuck on a puzzle, they can consult a walkthrough. Don't dumb it down for everyone. I'm not a habitual cheater, but if it's a choice between quitting a game permanently and cheating to progress past something I couldn't figure out and continuing to enjoy a game, the sensible choice is obvious.

I think the change is more about "that AAA title over there earnt lots of money, let's be more like that".

 

[moonbogg]

This game is on sale and its the complete edition. I've been playing and I am very impressed with the state of the game. Early on there was some performance issues and SLI didn't work, but I can say that in DX11 SLI scaling is way up there. The in game benchmark didn't show a significant improvement with SLI, so I was discouraged. But when actually playing, I went from 45-50 to 85-90 at 3440x1440 in the same spot I tested. It works amazing. Game is fun so far as well. Hell of a deal.

 

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[Ackmed]

I prefer the newest version of Lara actually. Pretty sure I have played them all, the original was awesome for its time. Even have the phone game now, pretty fun.

 

[mikeymikec]

I don't know man, I think their solution was more elegant. Like you say, the internet is at everyone's fingertips, so the puzzles still are "optional" no matter what they do. They're not dumbing it down for everyone because it's a choice and not everyone has to skip the puzzles.

That argument smells just a little bit like the one I often hear against manual saving ("everyone should be denied quicksaving just because I lack the self control to not use/abuse it"), one which I vehemently reject.

In both cases it's easy enough to not take the easy way.

Yes, I'm sure they were chasing a broader demographic, but forked puzzle tombs are a relatively innocuous manifestation of that. It certainly seems trivial compared to the other types of dumbing-down they inflicted on the gameplay. You know you've taken the QTEs too far when the final boss battle is a bloody QTE.

IMO it's more like taking say a famous flight simulator series and turning it into an arcade-style shoot-em-up: It's a complete genre change. I don't see anything elegant in that. If they had changed the starring character and name of TR2013 and put it immediately after TR5 (or any of its predecessors), I bet that no-one would have said, "hey, that's just like Tomb Raider!".

It's like looking forward to the Secret of Monkey Island 2013 which has no humour or puzzles in, the main character has chiseled abs and likes to shoot stuff.

 

[BFG10K]

Classic Tomb Raider titles are now on sale at gog.com.

 

[Zenoth]

Visually and atmosphere-wise, the 2013 reboot is my favorite so far. I haven't played Rise yet (but I intend to, one day).

My favorite 'older' Tomb Raider will probably always remain TR2, mostly due to nostalgia (loved it back then). However, still when it comes to the old ones if I look at it perhaps more objectively I'd say that I think I actually preferred The Last Revelation over TR2 for the game-play itself (although from what I can remember the level design in TR2 was virtually perfect, at least at the time for that genre). For the more 'recent' ones I liked Guardian of Light and Legend too. I haven't finished either of those two, but I really liked Guardian of Light.

To come back to 2013's reboot... it was a fantastic setting, in my opinion. The animations were awesome, the atmosphere was heavy, and was very immersive (at least for me). However, there WAS one excessively stupid game-play mechanic, and that was the 'survival' / instinct mode. Tired of searching on your own, tired of using your brain? Press one button and every interactive surfaces glow around you. I HATE it when developers basically spoon feed their own puzzles with the press of a button like that, or when they make objects glow to "help" you not "miss" it. Oh, look, that door knob is glowing, it probably means that if I press A on that door it will actually open in order for me to proceed to the next room... HOLY shit I never thought of doing that! Good thing the door knob was glowing or I would have totally missed it! Man those devs are GENIUSES! ... -_- ... but that was probably one of my only 'complaint' for that game. The rest was genuinely very good.

Generally speaking though I think that Tomb Raider really is a very good franchise, even though some of its games missed the mark here and there (but almost all long-lasting franchises suffer from some bad titles). And, for this thread on a side note I voted for the 2013 reboot, I think it does deserve the recognition of simply being a very good game, in general.

 

[Omar F1]

I missed the chance to run original TR, the i486/SX was incapable, and the demo I tried ran by 0.5 FPS, still enjoyed it though.
TR III was the benchmark, a beautiful and a diverse levels to explore with tough tricks and many frustrating moments. I'd Chronicles as underrated.
Revelation was so long that I got enough of it and started skipping through the levels to see its end, which was quite a shock for me back then.
Legends was a fresh start with a new and beautiful engine/graphics , easy to walk through and barely got stuck in the whole gameplay.

 

[BFG10K]

I tried Tomb Raider 2 but couldn’t get past the clunky controls. Without mouse look and auto-grab it makes even basic jumps a chore to perform.

So I decided to replay Tomb Raider Underworld:

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[BFG10K]

I finished replaying Underworld. It was generally a fun experience though I did experience some frustration in the last level. I also found all six relics and discovered each one permanently raises Lara's health.

Of course every good Tomb Raider needs dual-pistols, an assault rifle and...Thor's Hammer:

Spoiler

I've queued up Anniversary and 2013 to replay at some point in the near future.

 

[AdamK47]

I can't vote in the poll. 1, 2, and 3 are lumped together. They are very different games in terms of quality.

I'd vote for 1 since that was one of the first fully 3D accelerated games I've played. It was on a Rendition Verite V1000. This was even before the 3Dfx version came out.

 

[NTMBK]

Wow, early polygon graphics are rough.

 

[BFG10K]

Wow, early polygon graphics are rough.

Nah, you're just looking at the 8-bit software renderer. It can also run under 3D acceleration at 1080p:

Spoiler

If you apply the widescreen patch and SSAA it'll look even better.

Those retro graphics are fine for a 21 year old game with stock assets. Imagine in 1996 comparing it to games made in 1975. There's just no contest in terms of relative difference.

But there's really no reason to play the first one given Anniversary is a modern remake:

Spoiler

I was keen to play 2-3 (which have better graphics than 1, especially Lara herself. The problem was the awful controls.