Tomb Raider (Series)

[Ayen]

In case you couldn't tell by now I happen to be a fan of Tomb Raider, so I thought I'd make a discussion thread for it. Since this will be talking about the old series as well as the reboot I thought I'd put it here instead of General Square Enix.

Tomb Raider was one of three games my brother brought home to play on his new Sony PlayStation, the other two being Tekken 2 and Resident Evil. I watched him play all three and remembered how awesome they were. Eventually I wanted to play Tomb Raider too and I sucked at it so hard. I still fairly suck at it, but that never stopped me from liking a series before (otherwise I'd hate so many games).

I have the first three Tomb Raider games for PlayStation (my personal favorites) and Tomb Raider Anniversary for the Xbox 360. Only other one I played that I never owned was Tomb Raider the Last Revelation. Still haven't played the reboot or any of the other games outside of the ones I listed.

Discuss.

[Bubba]

I owned all three of the Tomb Raider games for my original PS1 and thought they were all particularly awesome. The first one is still my favourite due to how different it was for the time.

I remember when I first got it and one of my friends watched me play it and was being really dismissive. He was saying how Doom for the PC was much superior as you constantly encountered enemies. Eventually though we both realised that not encountering too many enemies made the atmosphere a lot more tense. Then we both proceeded to crap ourselves when I fell off a ledge on the first level and got jumped from behind by that bear!

[LunarWeaver]

Loved the shit out of these as a kid. I remember being so impressed with hair braid in the second :jess: They did suffer a decline in quality entry after entry, though. Then Angel of Darkness happened. Oh, sad times.

But then the reboot happened! That game was very good. Some cliche supporting characters and the general mythology was off, but I felt Lara Croft's story arc was successful. It had some truly thrilling gaming moments. I never imagined I'd describe a Tomb Raider game as Uncharted + Arkham City + the movie The Descent, but thank God it happened.

I'm very excited to see the sequel. I'm ready for her to return to a wise cracking badass again. The game sold really well, then Square called it a failure anyway. I never really got that. They expected the game to sell like a Grand Theft Auto title or something. Some crack was smoked when those projections were made.

[Shaibana]

my dad 'introduced' me to tomb raider. we had them all for the pc but now most of the disc's are too damaged to run (ooh well, piratebay).

My dad would always play these games and i would sit next to him and watch. he could never get further without my hints :3
i was always scared to play these games, becaus enemy's would just jump out of bushes with a sudden scary music.
i really hated it when in Angel of Darkness you didnt have the unlimited ammo for your primary guns

i just restarted playing Tomb raider (from SE) :) though i dont know if i will finish it xD

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

Unfortunately growing up I only played 2 Tomb Raider games, which were Tomb Raider II for the PS and The Angel of Darkness for PC. They were both fantastic games. I spent most of my younger years on RPG's so a series like Tomb Raider just happened to be pushed to the wayside, despite the fact that I really enjoyed them.

I saw the trailers and all the hype Locky gave the new Tomb Raider for PS3/360 and decided I wanted to get back in to those games. It was a great decision, because it was one of my favorite 360 games of 2013. I bought a version of the game that came with "Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light" as a bonus, so I played that game around the same time as well.

I've shared a PS3 with my brothers for years, and I just recently decided to go ahead and buy my own. I went online and got one of the limited edition azure blue PS3's. I recently bought the Tomb Raider HD trilogy collection for PS3 in anticipation of the new system I knew I was going to buy. I can't wait to dig in to those 3 games!

[Ayen]

I owned all three of the Tomb Raider games for my original PS1 and thought they were all particularly awesome. The first one is still my favourite due to how different it was for the time.

I remember when I first got it and one of my friends watched me play it and was being really dismissive. He was saying how Doom for the PC was much superior as you constantly encountered enemies. Eventually though we both realised that not encountering too many enemies made the atmosphere a lot more tense. Then we both proceeded to crap ourselves when I fell off a ledge on the first level and got jumped from behind by that bear!

I like how people complained that the first game didn't have enough enemy encounters and then when the second game fixes that it's too violent.


the general mythology was off

That seems to be a thing. "Hello, Greece. What the smurf, Thor? What are you doing here?"
"Does anyone know the way back to Asgard?"


i was always scared to play these games, becaus enemy's would just jump out of bushes with a sudden scary music.

I know what you mean. I was saying 'oh trout!' so many times during my playthrough of the first Tomb Raider this past week it wasn't even funny.

[Bubba]

The encounter with the T-Rex will always be one of my favourite computer game moments.

"Hmm... that bridge is broken way up there. I wonder what could have been big enough to destr... HOLY SMURF!!!"

Brilliant stuff.

[Shaibana]

Beside the whole 'Jurasic park' chapter, Venice has always stayed in my mind. i loved that part

[Shorty]

I loved these games. Loved loved loved them. Tomb Raider was one of the first "feature length" games I played outside the realm of DOS and I was just mesmerized by it. It fed into my infatuation of one day being an archaeologist like Indiana Jones, and I was all over these games.

Games I-III are classics. I don't know which I like more. Tomb Raider II might take the cake for me, if I had to pick. I love figuring out the puzzles and being surprised by smurfING DINOSAURS. Tomb Raider II had some of the only puzzles that drove me absolutely insane, though. Maneuvering through Bartoli's Hideout in Venice on your litle smurfing speedboat trying to get through the gate before it closed, and the Opera House with the keys and the elevators. I loved the settings so much, though. Awesome stuff.

I got Last Revelation one year for Christmas after I had so desperately been pining for it. I never got to finish it because our PS busted, but I remember not loving it. I don't love the physical changes Lara Croft has gone through. Obviously she couldn't just stay pixelated with cylindrical knockers throughout the existence of time, but I feel like she doesn't even look like the original Lara Croft. This disappoints me.

I haven't played anything at all since Last Revelation, but I recently acquired a Tomb Raider game that came free with XBox Gold (I don't remember which one it was, but I think it may have just been the reboot). I'll give it a shot, and I'd like to go back and give Last Revelation and the others a shot as well.

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

I think it was Guardian of Light that came with the Gold membership :)

It's a fantastic platform/action game.

For Legacy of Kain fans, there's really cool DLC for this game that actually lets you play as Kain & Raziel. Here's a trailer with a little story as well as gameplay.

tNpUW8zMmPU

[Ayen]

Venice is awesome! I love the level where the monks are fighting... I forget what they were, but they were fighting someone and they'd help you fight provided you didn't accidentally shoot at them. If you did those monks will rip out your mother smurfing heart!

@Shorty, I know what you mean about the design changes. I actually like her redesign for the reboot okay. Personally, I think they took the sexist criticisms about her original design too much to heart and been trying to appease those critics for years. I never thought the way she looked was sexist.

I have no idea what most of the reboot game is about, but if the new series doesn't eventually give her the trademark twin pistols and has some tomb raiding for ancient artifacts going on heads will roll!

[Shorty]

Oh man, I forgot about the monks!

I didn't consider the sexist claims about her appearance. My main problem is just that they changed her face too much.

Let's talk weapons. I love my uzis.

[Ayen]

Lone Wolf, that video is showing me a white screen. Never mind turned out to be a problem on my end. I got it sorted.

Uzis is also my favorite. Anything with fully automatic fire in general, really. Trying to remember if I ever used the shotgun.

[Shorty]

I've used the shotgun on raptors. I dislike how slow it is, though.

[Bubba]

Uzi's are the only choice. Shotgun would definitely be my second choice but yeah, it's slow as hell.

If we're talking about the reboot though then it has to be the bow and arrow. I can't get enough of it. It was the same in The Last of Us.

[Shorty]

Oh, I like the M16 as well!

Worst weapon: the harpoon. :colbert:

[Shauna]

TR1 I played to death with my Dad, although we never actually finished it, we poured hours into that damn game on the PC. Pressing 6 keys to do a running jump forward with a grab at the end. Good times. I actually only finished this game recently, but it was still great.

TR2 was a different story. Now, I am not great at these games, I will be the first to admit this, but damn this game was brutal. I never had any medipacks, and I was always at like 1/4 HP - so I save spammed the hell out of this game. I never had this issue with TR1 and I certainly am not having that issue with TR3, so I don't know.

Currently getting through TR3 - just finishing up Nevada, I think. On to the rest of the levels!

The Last Revelation and Chronicles will be soon to be played. They're up after TR3, imagine that.

Angel of Darkness was, uh. Yeah. Not great. I FEEL STRONGER NOW. stfu woman and just climb or kick that door down. No need to power up your kick by kicking some other door, or holding on to some other ledge for 30 seconds. Ugh. Ugh. So buggy too. I was glad to see the back of this one, I got so mad so many times at various aspects of this game.

Legend was fun. This was the first one I completed and I don't remember having too many issues with it. The sword at the end was brutally OP though. Ah, great times. I watched my friend play through this recently, and I just remembered having a great time with this one.

Underworld is probably sitting just above AoD in terms of my Tomb Raider rankings. This was... not fun. Endlessly buggy (for me, at least - one example would be when I failed to get through a maze on the motorbike in enough time, and the game just decided that it would let me be trapped forever. I couldn't progress. I couldn't go back. I had to reload my game which took me ages back. I suppose one merit point is that it gave me the achievement for getting through the maze in record time despite not getting through the maze at all, although that's just another level to the bugs) and I couldn't find anything about it engaging. The only thing it had above AoD was that it didn't make me entirely rage out.

TR 2013 I was a bit wary of, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and played it over the course of a few weekends. People claimed that it didn't feel like a Tomb Raider game, but I found that it had puzzles (although yes, on a smaller scale, which was disappointing), it had exploration, it had platforming, it had some really really stupid plot full of nonsense and mythology and nonsense. Which sounds like a TR game to me. xD I'm looking forward to where they take this from here.

Guardian of Light is something I keep meaning to get round to. Might convince my friend or even Matt to coop it with me.

Oh, yeah. I have Anniversary too. On the Wii. I was disappointed that the big T-Rex battle was QTEs instead of hide in an alcove and shoot as it runs past.

[Ayen]

I had a hard enough time with the jumping on a controller, I don't want to imagine how ridiculous it would have been with a keyboard.

The T-Rex fight is a QTE? Lame!

I second harpoon as worst Tomb Raider weapon.

[Shaibana]

my nr.1 favorite weapon of Tomb Raider is the Dessert Eagle
after that comes the m16 or the shotgun

that reminds me.. i bought Tomb Raider 3 for the ps1 (to play on the ps3) a view years ago :D
maybe i should pick it up again.

last time i got horribly lost (or becaus of glitches) in the first level(s) and forced me to cheat my way to the next level..
but there i couldnt get any further becaus i needed an item to get through, that i couldnt get in the previous level :l
since then i have always played this game with a walkthrough >.<

[magemasher]

I could never get into the ps1 games, I was young and died all the time lol. I liked the recent ones though especially the latest one looking forward to a sequal. Oh but I liked the angel of darkness:shifty: