Tomb Raider is a 1996 action-adventure video game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. It was first released on the Sega Saturn, followed shortly by versions for MS-DOS and the PlayStation. Later releases came for Mac OS (1999), Pocket PC (2002), N-Gage (2003), iOS (2013) and Android (2015). Tomb Raider Game of the Year Edition. Tomb Raider is a critically acclaimed action adventure that explores the intense and gritty origin story of Lara Croft and her ascent from a young woman to a hardened survivor. Tomb Raider is huge. They could've released it with half the number of levels and it would still be a great game. A single level will often require hours of play. Everything's finely tuned so that, just as you're getting frustrated, you manage to solve the problem that was vexing you and move on, with mounting enthusiasm.
The soft reset of the Tomb Raider franchise in 2013 was a decision that fueled a beloved franchise of the past decade. Tomb Raider is a game that retells Lara Croft’s story from her humble beginnings as a clueless 21-year-old in a shipwreck.
The game shows you the grueling details of her struggle against the native Solarii brotherhood on the island of Yamatai. In the early hours of the game, those guys aren’t your biggest concern as nature itself is out to get you. In a turn of events, Lara has to make the most primal decision of her life: fight or flight? The decision to fight sends you into a sequence of a game that shines with a gripping tale of survival.
The game’s success was followed by the release of Rise of the Tomb Raider, in 2015, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, in 2018. A few hours before the Square Enix event, the three games of the. The Tomb Raider series went on to completely redefine the standard for 3D adventure games, thus making Lara one of the most recognizable video game icons of all time. Along with being responsible for pioneering a mainstream female video game protagonist in a predominately male led video gaming era, the Tomb Raider series has sold over 58.
Survival
Unlike previous Tomb Raider games, you aren’t an untouchable badass at the start. If you do everything right, you get to watch Lara barely survive the ordeals she has to face on Yamatai. However, if you fail at any point, Lara will go through some tough struggles for the sake of her own survival. Watching a wolf tear and claw through an innocent girl is not a nice sight to behold. Freezing to death, stepping into traps, falling from heights and starving are a few other ways to see your journey cut short.
Eventually though, the game begins to offer ways to fight back. The evolution of Lara Croft doesn’t suddenly happen like a gift from the gods. You’ll have to craft items, weapons and upgrade your skills. Once you begin to get the hang of it, that’s when the game begins to feel less immersive.
Handholding
After you’ve survived the tumultuous opening hours of Tomb Raider, things just don’t feel intuitive anymore. The game doesn’t really encourage instinctive choices from the player. Instead, you are riddled with a series of quicktime events that feel like a scripted movie. Press X to do this, hold Y to do that.
These forced interactions don’t really offer that “Tomb Raider” experience the name suggests. In addition to the flaws of quicktime, regular interactions with the world aren’t much better with telling you what to do. Obvious item textures indicate your need for a zipline, others indicate a flammable area and yet, exploring other parts of an area just doesn’t provide enough surprises. It feels like playing a movie, which is good depending on who you are, but a video game is supposed to be an experience for the player. With this game, you can easily watch the story YouTube without feeling like you missed out on much.
Story
Tomb Raider has a generic cast of characters for you to meet and interact with. From your shipwreck, there’s a nerdy guy who seems afraid of everything in the world around him, a spiritual dude that has some mystical explanation for everything and a tough black woman.
The villains are the run-off-the-mill bad guys who want to protect the island by killing stranded survivors. However, its main bad guy, even with his little screen time fails to make an impression during the final hours of the game.
Comparisons
Uncharted and Tomb Raider go hand in hand, and this game doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it sets up a good storyline for its much better sequels.
Pros
- Great graphics
- Nice voice acting
- Interesting world
Cons
- Handholding gameplay
- Excessive quicktime events
Tomb Raider manages to provide a great linear experience at the cost of true video game exploration. Regardless, it is fun to play.
Tomb Raider Timeline from Crystal Dynamics. (click to enlarge) See Game Chronology below for details.
February 14, 1968 – Lara Croft born Parkside Hospital, Wimbledon, London (original biography)[1]
– OR –
? 1992 - Lara Croft born. Location unknown. (Crystal 2013 Reboot)[1]
Ages 3-11 – Lara received instruction from a private tutor. (Core)[2]
Ages 3-6 – Lara attended Abbingdon Girls School (Crystal)[3]
Age 9 – Lara and her mother, Amelia, were involved in a plane crash in the Himalayas, after which Lara's mother vanished under mysterious circumstances. (Crystal)[3]
Ages 10-15 – Lara accompanied her father on various expeditions. (Crystal)[3]
Age 11 – Lara explored a haunted island off the coast of Ireland. (Black Isle levels TRC)[4]
Age 15 – Lara's father disappeared in Cambodia. (Crystal)[3]
Ages 11-16 – Lara attended Wimbledon High School for Girls. (Core)[2]
Age 16 – Lara accompanied Werner Von Croy to Angkor Wat, Cambodia, to retrieve the Iris. (TRLR)[2]
Age 16? – Lara infiltrated a Russian military base attempting to retrieve an artifact called the Spear of Destiny. (TRC)[5]
Ages 16-18 – Lara attended Gordonstoun Boarding School in Scotland.
Ages 18-21 – Lara attended an exclusive Swiss finishing school. (Core)[2]
Age 21 – On the way home from a skiing trip, Lara's chartered plane crashed in the Himalayas, leaving her the only survivor. After a 2-week trek through the wilderness, she returned to civilization a deeply changed person. She has since devoted her life to solitary exploration and adventure. (Core)[2]
Age 21? – Lara visited Rome in search of the Philosopher's Stone. (TRC)[6]
– OR –
Ages 18-21 – Lara attended college, where she became friends with Amanda Evert. During this time, Amanda was trapped at an archaeological dig site in Peru. Although her remains were never recovered, she was presumed dead. (TRL)[3]
– OR –
Age 21 – While searching for a legendary lost island off the coast of Japan, the vessel on which Lara is traveling is destroyed, leaving her shipwrecked. The young relic hunter becomes the hunted as she struggles to survive. (Crystal 2013 Reboot)[7]
Age 22 – Presumably the following year, Lara traveled to Syria and Siberia in search of the lost city of Kitezh and the Divine Source. (Crystal Reboot: Rise of the Tomb Raider)
Age 23 – The next year, Lara traveled to Mexico and stole an ancient dagger, triggering a series of cataclysmic events. She then continued to Peru to find another hidden city and the artifact needed to save the world from herself. (Crystal Reboot: Shadow of the Tomb Raider)
? – After being disowned by her family, Lara inherited a mansion in Surrey from a great aunt. (Core)[8]
?? – Since Lara's father's body was never recovered, a family feud over the Croft title and lands ensued. Lara eventually won the legal battle but as a result is now estranged from her relatives. (Crystal)[9]
Tomb Raider Games In Order Ps4
? – Lara's first globe-spanning adventure involved the search for a mysterious artifact called the Scion. (TR1/TRA) [6]
? – Lara returned to Egypt and Atlantis. (TRUB)
? – Lara hunted for the fabled Dagger of Xian. (TR2)
? – Lara visited Alaska to find the Mask of Tornarsuk. (TRGM)
? – Lara traveled the world in search of four artifacts forged from an ancient meteorite. (TR3)
Tomb Raider Game List
? – After learning of the existence of a fifth meteorite artifact, Lara set out to recover it. (TRLA)
27 – Lara sneaked into Von Croy Industry headquarters to steal the Iris artifact from her old mentor. (TRC)[10]
31 – On another visit to Egypt, Lara accidentally released the entombed spirit of the evil god, Set, and had to re-imprison him in order to avert a worldwide cataclysm. At the end of this adventure, Lara was trapped in a collapsed temple and presumed dead. (TRLR)[11]
31 – Lara's friends gathered at Croft Manor to mourn her loss. Meanwhile, in Egypt, Werner Von Croy attempted to find Lara, dead or alive. (TRC)[5]
? – Werner Von Croy was murdered and Lara became a suspect. In order to clear her name, Lara sought to discover the real killer. In the process, she came up against a sinister cabal and joined forces with another young adventurer, Kurtis Trent, to foil the cabal's evil plot. (TRAOD)
?? – Lara searched for the fragments of a sword rumored to be King Arthur's weapon, Excalibur, in the hope that it would help her locate her mother, who disappeared when Lara was a child. Amanda Evert, an acquaintance from Lara's college days, who had also vanished under mysterious circumstances, reappeared. She was also searching for this legendary weapon, though for different reasons. (TRL)
?? – Lara continued to pursue the truth behind her mother's disappearance. Following leads left by her father, she sought a set of artifacts—the gauntlets, belt, and hammer belonging to the Norse god Thor—which Lara hoped would enable her to gain entrance to a mystical underworld where she believed her mother was imprisoned. (TRU)
Tomb Raider Game Walkthrough
?? – Lara returned to the ruins of Croft Manor (destroyed in TRU) to locate a powerful artifact her father had hidden there. She encountered the doppelgänger created by Natla (in TR1/TRA) and enlisted her to help finish Natla once and for all...perhaps. (BTA/LS)