Posted on: December 24, 2022
Hanglyman
Verified ownerGames: 444 Reviews: 141
A Classic Trilogy
The Tomb Raider games are very much of their time- the graphics are jagged and grainy Playstation-era primitiveness, Lara Croft is thoughtlessly sexualized and kind of a terrible person who guns down endangered species and anyone who gets between her and her goal, even innocent security guards, the constant globe-trotting in the series has a very 90s Carmen Sandiego feel, and of course the aged controls involve slowly rotating Lara as though driving a tank and making leaps of faith because the bad camera angles prevent you from seeing what's immediately in front of or below you. But once you adjust to the controls, it's easy to get immersed in the games all the same, because they were and are just plain fun despite all their foibles. It's still thrilling to explore abandoned tombs and temples (or, later in the series, more diverse locations like sunken ships, secret government labs and the London underground), and the graphics are still good enough to evoke a sense of mystery, awe and intrigue as you navigate larger-than-life archaeological wonders, evading deadly traps and always on the watch for an attack from a vicious snake or supernatural guardian. Lara's extreme peril, where a single slip of the thumb or miscalculated jump angle means instant death, is a lot less frustrating on this PC version, where you can save at any time rather than only at fixed checkpoints, leaving you free to seek out secret areas without losing all your progress. There are a few bugs I ran into- sometimes the game would just randomly skip a cutscene, leading to the next level where, say, Lara is imprisoned in a cell with no indication of how it happened, and sometimes the graphics in a level would be all muddy and black, forcing a reload to correct them. I'd also highly recommend using an app called Tomb Raider Mouse Helper, which lets you use the mouse to look around and vastly improves the experience. But don't write these games off just because of their age, they still hold up!
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