GamesRadar - Lara Croft appeared on Sega Saturn in 1996, and blew everyone away. The technology powering her first adventure is painfully primitive by today's standards. Famously, outside of the pre-rendered cutscenes, her hair is short because her long, braided ponytail proved too much for the game to render properly. Nonetheless, her first outing captured gamers' imaginations, and so there was a sequel. And another. And another.
We've gone on many adventures with Lara Croft. With another reboot in the making, Wealth of Geeks felt it was a good time to go down the nostalgia rabbit hole and remember the best of those tomb-raiding thrills.
I do agree that Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness was the worse one 😂 I remember playing some of it and I took it back. That game was just awful in every way. I bought it used at gamestop and glad they had that 7 day return policy for used games 😂
Simple. He's been hating on the Tomb Raider reboots for years. I can't imagine seeing them at the top of a best TR game list let alone being on the list in general sitting well with him because of it.
Zeek
“Hating”
No no, just pointing out how TR mutated into a generic action adventure game losing the appeal of what it once was when it was more about puzzles and platforming over going Rambo, slaughtering waves of enemies
But hey, continue being a dick and speaking about me like I’m not going to see the comment.
Foxtrot, I'm curious if you have played the most recent games. Sure the 2013 reboot was hugely focused on combat, but each follow up became less and less about combat to the point where outside of a few large scale story missions I don't even remember combat being a part of shadow of the tomb raider. Shadow was so puzzle focused it actually was a bit much for me and I love the TR puzzles.
I still feel like Rise was the best of the series and I was a huge fan of the originals. To me it struck the perfect balance of exploration, platforming, puzzles, and combat. Not saying your opinion is wrong I'm just curious what you think they should have done different. Games do need to evolve somewhat to stay relevant. Would you prefer small linear jumping platform levels like the original?
I think Shadow wasn't even develop by crystal dynamics. I thought it was the worse in the new trilogy
That's right. Shadow was developed by Eidos Montreal who who went and made Marvels Guardians of the Galaxy next. (Great game)
Meanwhile after Rise of the Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics made Marvels Avengers. (bad game)
For me, Legend should be alot higher (along with the other two ). Shadow, I enjoyed it, but has too much has fluff, as modern games tend to do. Playing the remastered series, and apart from the controls, is very good.
I really enjoyed the first 2 games, Legend and the first of the reboots and the rest I didn’t get into so I never finished.
Completely subjective list. I really liked Underworld, I preferred Lara's design. That said I loved the horror/uncharted feel of the reboot. I think all the TR games have strengths and weaknesses. None are objectively better in every way.
Crystal Dynamics' daring reboot of Tomb Raider brought Lara Croft back into the spotlight.
An attempt at a reboot with no momentum for continuance. Just a torture-porn trilogy about a poor rich girl with daddy issues reluctantly being pulling into a world of violence, versus say the adventures of a quipping Brit treasure hunter who solves ancient puzzles while gunning down rare and extinct animals that it originally was?
Honestly, don't have all that killing. If the devs had been truly clever, not focused on mangling a message about the senselessness of killing which was seemingly and quickly forgotten, they could have worked, if not bloodlessly then not directly by Laura's hand, dealing with enemies as part of the puzzle solving - they didn't have in the game in the first place...
"Revived a '90s Gaming Icon"
LOL
the only thing similar between the 2 is the name of the protagonist. if they would have given the game a different name, NONE would even think that it was somehow a resurrected Tomb Raider IP. the last game with the real Tomb Raider DNA was TR Underworld.
The Survivor Trilogy was a drastic reimagining of Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, and it provokes changes for the character that are truly fantastic.
Deserves less IMO, i think the 1st in the new trilogy was a perfect 1st step for the new direction. The next 2 games were half steps at best. Not only that, every character in the series including Lara is just annoying and doesn't make sense in terms of motive, like yes they have a motive, but none of it seems proportional to the lengths they are willing to go through for it. The most annoying thing is every one of the games say "become the Tomb Raider" yet 3 games later and we're still not there? No thanks. Then there's the mess of the 3rd game, massive skill tree that serves almost no purpose as there's literally only like 3-4 short encounters in the whole game, and they took till the 3rd game to finally manage some decent puzzles even remotely close to previous games in the series. Nah, the trilogy infuriated me to no end as a long time fan of the series, i hope we get better going forward cause that crap sucked.
The first in the trilogy was my favorite. I thought they were going into the right direction with that one until the second one came out and seemed like a graphical downgrade but the gameplay was okay. As for the Third, Graphics were really nice but it was kinda boring me to death with its non-stop platforming and exploring with not enough action! Well, for me anyway...
Graphics on the 3rd one were abysmal. It’s more colorful and has more variety, but everything else was a noticeable downgrade.
The more open world with NPC quests was also handled very poorly, to the point I missed Angel of Darkness.
I know it is your opinion, but she did progress as a character in each game, she even got more muscular and seasoned.
That is the thing, people first complained that there was not enough platforming and actual tomb raiding in the first and second games. Shadow remedied that and kept the combat elements.
3-4 encounters? huh? did we play the same game? there was plenty of combat and, the skill tree did matter, like being able to hang enemies from trees, set explosives traps on bodies, being able to counter, and that are just a few of the combat skills. The skill tree also had things like being able to hold your breath underwater longer, crafting upgrades, zipline upgrade, and climbing upgrades that all changed how you can approach situations.
Not knocking your opinion, but we definitely had different experiences. I had 98% completion on the shadow.
Sorry but i'm with him about the low number of encounters, the game throws loads of weapons and skills you're way with a comparatively low amount of places to actually use them, so they felt under utilised.
Yeah...no
It was awful, for THREE GAMES it was "become the Tomb Raider" where she went back to square one after each game. Not to mention after a huge reaction of killing someone for the first time she then becomes Rambo straight after and goes on a slaughter spree without a single other reaction. Her development was all over the place.
She was whiney, weak and in later game a little arrogant and selfish
Oh and the voice actress compared to the previous ones was not as good
Lara Croft deserved better and while they are decent games as they are, we deserved actual Tomb Raider games, we could have had better survival games if they just stuck with the original Lara Crofts origin about her plane going down. Surviving 2 weeks in the Himalayas...I'd have liked to seen that, who knows what mystical threat she could have faced in the mountains or underground some secret concealed cave.
I thought Shadow of the Tomb Raider had better gameplay than Rise, but it annoyed me the most of the trilogy when I stopped to think about the story.
It's like they deliberately decided to make her unlikeable and did nothing to make the character you're playing as likeable or have even one sign of humility.
2013 I thought was a fine entry, but Rise and especially Shadow were painfully mediocre follow ups imo, I really didn't like how selfish and angry her character was in those two.
First one was decent, played through it twice.
Second one was okay, played through it once.
Third one was really bad, tried twice a year apart, still can't get through the first two hours, it is just really bad.
Honest question, what did you find bad about it? the opening 2 hrs of Shadow were fantastic imo.
The opening was very similar to the first 2, what did you find really bad?
Not looking for an argument, just an honest question.
3rd one just didn't feel like a tomb raider game. Possibly because the development was passed to another development team. Big mistake! Microsoft killed tomb raider making the first game a timed exclusive. Never recovered after that.
The original was hard, made you think, had real puzzles, real challenges, you really had to concentrate and think about what you were doing. From this difficulty, and lack of immediate backstory there was an atmosphere surrounded in mystery. It's amazing how a game could improve so much cosmetically yet lose so much in terms of challenge. The recent installment "Tomb Raider" was just like pretty much any story driven game these days, it played itself, sure there were a few tricky bits along the way, but it really didn't want you to get stuck at any point otherwise you might stop playing. I must be in the minority, but getting stuck in a game is a challenge and that is what keeps me interested.
There's more than one tomb raider game?
my favorite in order tr 3-2-1-underworld-4.. Worst i played legend. anniversary and i guess you can add the fake tr 2013. last have never played tr5 or angel of darkness
The worst one is the one I can't play because of a stupid exclusivity clause. -_-
LOL...the Reboot is first are you kidding me
It's a good game on it's own but best TOMB RAIDER game...no, just no. There's hardly anything in the game which makes you think "Gee this is a great TOMB RAIDER game" as it lacks most things which made up past TR games.
"What a game. What an utterly sensational game. Easily in the same league as Uncharted 2"
Not even close.
Really can't believe the first three TR games aren't in the top three. Legends, Anniversary, Underworld, Temple or Osiris and Guardian of Light before them (sigh)