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What is the *best* Tomb Raider game(s)? And why?


perki

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I'll answer this one more specifically later. However, I'm a bigger fan of the earlier Tomb Raider games by Core Design. I love Nathan McCree's work in TR1-3. Overall, it's tough for me to choose my favorite, but I'd probably have to pick from 1 or 2. I think I might go w/ Tomb Raider II. I'll get into the details later. Personally, I can't stand the CrystalD games. These just aren't the same and I am so over reboot Lara/ Tomb Raider. The first reboot game was alright then I completely lost interest after Rise. I still haven't purchased or played Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The week it came out I was having too much fun replaying TR1-3. The new games just aren't the same.

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I played all Tomb Raider Games from 1 to Anniversary (which I didn't finish, twice) and for me it is Tomb Raider 3 closely followed by Angel of Darkness (which would be clear #1 if it didn't get rushed). Reasons for that: Variety of locations to visit, challenge to play it, nice soundtrack, and many other things. Overall, the first 4 games are very close in terms of quality/fun and it is up to personal preference, which one you might prefer. 5 brought the great level editor, but was released unfinished like 6 and the Crystal Dynamics games are just QTEs to the max and I just can't get myself to finish all of them. For me, this series main strengths used to be its level design and the different kinds of puzzles you had to finish. The levels were built for gameplay and not for visuals and logic. None of the modern games seem to mirror these aspects, sadly.

Edited by Cookie
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Yeah, I prefer TR1-6 over the CrystalD games any day. Personally, I think the 4th entry, The Last Revelation, was the peak of the franchise. Part 5/ Chronicles was really just a quick cash-in to tie in w/ the 2001 film, but the PC version was definitely worth it for the Level Editor alone. I thought Angel of Darkness had good things going for it, but like you said it all fell short due to getting rushed. However, I think AOD is one of the worst of the CoreDesign era. Even if it had been complete it is all very non-Tomb Raider.

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It is true that it broke with many things of the first five games, but in its heart, it intended to keep their strengths (failed to do so with the release) and things like atmosphere/soundtrack were greatly improved. If you think about it, there are not many big games that go for such a dark atmosphere in a sequel (parts of Thief: Deadly Shadows and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided excluded) and it has its merits.

Edited by Cookie
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For me, Tomb Raider Underworld. Simply because it mixes the well known formula with a nice game world, and sort of perfectioned the gameplay. Legend and Anniversary were great too, though. The worst for me are the last 3 reboots, which totally change the gameplay into something action orientated, casual, which is so frequently done these days.

 

I used to play Tomb Raider 1 and 2 on the PS One, but... i can't really play them anymore nowadays. The control is quite cumbersome, and Crystal Dynamics improved the games in literally any way thinkable, so... parts 7 to 9 are by far the best for me.

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I'll go with TR 2, 3 and 4 as the most fun gaming and mind expanding I had in my youth. Something was surely lost in the reboot even if they got better looking and less pixelated over time. I agree they are hard to get the same enjoyment out of them today with similar games a.k.a. Farcry Primal, but those early TR game memories and locations I still play in and still live thru my mind now and then.

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My favorite was and still is the one that got me into the series, TR2.

There was something crystallized about the gameplay that the CD versions lost touch with maybe.

TR3 had the same kind of great gameplay, but didn't have the same charm, and TR1 hasn't aged all that well.

TR2 had already won me over by Venice; what a great level.

 

I should also add that with TR4 there was a thriving fan mission scene (there are fan missions for others, but the scene was dominated by TR4), and some of the fan missions were pretty good. There was a window there around 2001 where I might have debated which fan mission scene to get into, TR4 or Thief 2, but very quickly Thief 2 won of course... A major reason is that Thief 2 had a unified system to run fan missions through DarkLoader. You couldn't do that with TR4. Different missions installed differently and you had to keep track of stuff. It was annoying. Also the gameplay doesn't lend itself to storytelling like Thief FMs (and our FMs) do. So while the fan missions bumped TR4 up a few places maybe, TR2 is still my golden standard.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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that dagger of xian demo is extremely hard and unforgiving, you die a lot more than if it was a real tomb raider game, I couldn't get past the small spiders in the tower on the wall, cos they took away 50 percent of your health per spider, and you get attacked by lots of them at a time, so its spiders spawning on you, ugh, 2 seconds later you die.

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TR3 had the same kind of great gameplay, but didn't have the same charm,

 

I think this is largely due to the fact that CoreD had new level designers that worked on Tomb3. The majority of designers for Tomb1&2 worked on Project Eden (Heather, Neal) while the others (Toby Gard and Paul Douglas ) left CoreD to develop Galleon. In many ways, I feel as though both Project Eden and Galleon are each spiritual successors to the old-TR formula. The level design in Project Eden was great. I've never played Galleon, but always have wanted to. Toby Gard said Galleon is what Tomb Raider should of been.

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I've never played Galleon, but always have wanted to. Toby Gard said Galleon is what Tomb Raider should of been.

 

Unfortunately, there is only a XBox version available.

 

I can confirm that Galleon plays and feels like a sucessor to the original Tomb Raider and I really enjoyed it. I think I will have a re-run after I have finished my replay of Darksiders 1. :)

 

Galleon was poorly received. I anticipate that most critics were shocked by the spartan graphics as the game was originally developed for SEGA's Dreamcast and did not receive a visual uplift once it was transferred (or whatever you call that) to the original XBox hardware.

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Just gave Rise of the Tomb Raider a spin again, because i have it in my Steam library. Still don't like it.Feels like playing a movie, without any challenge. Dozens of cutscenes, and "Press E at the right moment" actions, and a 100 action highlights a minute. And whenever there is a moment where there is a slight sparkle of a puzzle, Lara reveals the solution after 5 seconds of standing still... seriously, the reboots are more like a casual James Bond action film, than really in the vein of what the series always represented.

 

Oh, and the graphics, animations, and facial expressions are absolutely great, state of the art. Yeah, right, as if that was the main ingredient for a good game. The reboots kind of exemplary represent what's wrong with games these days.

Edited by chakkman
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Oh, and the graphics, animations, and facial expressions are absolutely great, state of the art. Yeah, right, as if that was the main ingredient for a good game. The reboots kind of exemplary represent what's wrong with games these days.

 

Truer words have never been spoken.

 

It is so depressing.

 

:( :( :(

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Wow, so much negativity towards the TR reboots! I have played (and finished) almost all Tomb Raider games and found them good, each in their own way. Granted, the newest reboots are not as old-school and challenging anymore, but they are very good in the same way the Uncharted Series is very good: The excellent story telling, atmosphere and general cinematography! I for one loved the intro to Tomb Raider (2013), it got me hooked right away.

 

Also, try playing the first TR games nowadays and don't just rely on your fond memories. I bet you will quickly dismiss them again because of those horrible controlls. The introduction of proper camera controls in the 2006 to 2008 Reboots beginning with "Legend" were a total game changer. It actually made TR enjoyable again!

 

So, from today's stand point, I gotta say that Anniversary is my favorite because it somehow maintains a little of the old-schoolness of the Franchise while giving the player proper controls. As far as story is concerned, Tomb Raider (2013) is the clear winner.

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Wow, so much negativity towards the TR reboots!

 

Take all this with a pinch of salt, as i have the tendency to put things a bit more drastic than they are. ;)

 

Actually, i'm re-installing Rise of the Tomb Raider ATM, simply because i want to give it another go, after having nothing to play at the moment… wouldn't be the first game which i dismissed, re-approached, and found not bad at all. Even though i definitely have the impression that nowadays games are tailored to a different crowd than they were tailored to 15 years ago. Especially the amount of action highlights makes me wish they'd do a whole lot of "less is more". You know how many action highlights Tomb Raider legend has in the intro sequence? 1 maybe. In the same time, the reboots have 50.

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The best Tomb Raider game is of course... Indiana Jones and The Infernal Machine :)GOG has released it recently. I played the demo almost 20 years ago and remembered that I liked it so I bought it and I'm currently in third map. Naturally, It's very primitive by today's standards. Controls can be unresponsive. Shooting is clunky, and there's a lot of it. But it's not too difficult. The default control scheme is terrible, and game crashes when I try to make a new one. So I ended up editing one of the existing in a text editor. Somebody said in the reviews that GOG version has a bug that prevents game to be finished after certain level, haven't got there yet. You can set your resolution to HD. Maps are pleasant to look at and there's enough variety so far.

 

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It's only a model...

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Funny, because i just bought that one in the GOG sale. Got a bit annoyed with the woody controls though (it's really frustrating at times), and then decided to rather play Tomb Raider 2. The Indiana Jones games are good games, but.... IMO, Tomb Raider is the better Indiana Jones.

 

Doesn't beat the typical Indiana Jones humour and style though. ;)

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Tomb Raider 1-4 made jumping across a simple pit into an actual effort, something I don't think we've really since seen.

You would wind up counting the amount of steps you made leading into a jump so you'd know how far you would go, lining up the jump before you made it.

 

By contrast the new games just feel like solid but unoriginal derivatives of other third person games with narratives that feel derivative of Spec Ops: The Line.

I like to record difficult stealth games, and right now you wonderful people are the only ones delivering on that front.

Click here for the crappy channel where that happens.

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The dexterity parts in the early Tomb Raiders surely were very hard (especially as Lara sometimes didn't jump when you pressed the jump button…). Crystal Dynamics IMO did a great job of smoothing the controls out. For me, parts 7-9 had almost perfect controls. The controls are also great in the reboots, even though you don't really benefit from that, as there's so few parts where you actually need precise, good controls.

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Funny, because i just bought that one in the GOG sale. Got a bit annoyed with the woody controls though (it's really frustrating at times), and then decided to rather play Tomb Raider 2. The Indiana Jones games are good games, but.... IMO, Tomb Raider is the better Indiana Jones.

 

Back in the day, Eidos USA promoted the release of TR 1 (or was it TR2 or TR3?) with the slogan "Go back to Indiana, Mr. Jones!". :)

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