Tomb Raider: Now Finished Business!

The original Tomb Raider came out in 1996 on the Playstation and after watching it at a friends house I had to have it, little did 10 yearold Paul know how tough Tomb Raider would be. Restrictive save points, complex level design with multiple traps and difficult jumps that can result in instant death meant Tomb Raider was a particularly tough cookie to crack. I never finished it, the first Tomb Raider I finished was Tomb Raider 2 and I'm pretty sure I level skipped a couple of levels back then as well...

But this has all changed! I have now as of October 2019, finished Tomb Raider 1... on PC! 
It had to be PC, I haven't got the motivation or disposable time to play the original PSX version and deal with the save points. Being able to save whenever I wanted kept the games pace up and allowed me to just enjoy it and not be frustrated by every death and also allowed me to be more experimental. For me, it's the definitive Tomb Raider experience; once you install Glidos and AntiMicro so the game doesn't look like a blur and you can use a controller instead of developing Carpul Tunnel syndrome with the keyboard.

I'm always filled with a ridiculous amount of blissful nostalgia during the first area (caves). The music, the snow, the T Rex! All the familiar beats remind me of one true fact of the first Tomb Raider: it had top production values. You may say it's aged badly but I disagree. Sure, the graphics are blocky but with the aid of Glidos all the textures were sharp and the low draw distance actually helps build atmosphere and tension as buildings and sculptures emerge from the blackness with theatrical gravitas. 
Each area is so distinct in it's presentation. The colour palette that evolves from the grey caves, to golden Greece to sandy Egypt and then most otherworldly of all, Atlantis with it's pulsating walls of sinew. This is a game well designed and it's no wonder people were so amazed by it's graphics oh so long ago. 

Gameplay is simplistic in Tomb Raider, super-focused. Three elements encompass the entire game; exploration, puzzles and combat, the latter is actually the less prominent feature it really serves to break up the pace of the game and to also add in a scare factor, especially towards the end. Though simple the combat may be, it is fiddly and at times frustrating. Enemies charge at you and relentless attack and are often faster than Lara. So you're left jumping about almost haphazardly just to minimise time on the ground. Then worst of all, if you manage to find a place to cheese an enemy, they always back off out of attack range, proving that the developers were definitely aware of the AI shortcomings and took steps to force you into direct engagement with the enemies.

Exploration and puzzle solving are obviously intertwined, the levels themselves are on big puzzle. Things start fairly linearly, but once you get to Greece it suddenly takes longer than twenty minutes to finish a level. The puzzles are all pretty much well conceived, there were only I think two occasions where I thought that wasn't obvious, but fortunately those moments are very few and far between. Generally speaking, the solutions are organic and sensible. I think the two trickiest levels are The Cistern and Natla's mines. I further confused myself in Natla's mines because in my panic I fled from the cowboy but jumped down the lava pit, caught a ledge and just kept on going. Then I got a tad lost why I hadn't found my pistols yet and doubled back only to find a piece of the level glitched right out! 

I'm glad I've finally finished Tomb Raider and played in my opinion it's most definitive version and that's a statement I've written after playing Tomb Raider Anniversary, which I really didn't enjoy. The level design in the remake is in my opinion, uninspired which makes no sense as it should be inspired by the original. The levels are dummed down to tedium and the already weak combat element is made doubly worse with horrendous AI, poor QTE mechanics and just a general lack of pace and purpose.

But I won't drone on about that, I'm here to say Tomb Raider Gold is awesome, I love it and it's a game I will urge my kids to play and I'm sure I will replay again in future.