Retrospective: Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation

By John Walker Published 1 August, 2010

Death becomes her.

Why Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation? Tomb Raider I is loved with nostalgia, Tomb Raider II is the best in the first run of the series, Tomb Raider VI (The Angel of Darkness) has the novelty value of being awful beyond explanation, and VII, VIII and IX have all been absolutely superb. So why IV?

Because it has the dumbest ending of any game I've encountered.

Clearly games have worse endings. Some games grind meaninglessly to a halt. Others suddenly declare themselves "to be continued". Many endings are incoherent nonsense that fails to pull together the various threads. But Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation's is the dumbest.

Astute readers will have detected the possibility that this piece may contain the odd spoiler. For instance, Lara dies at the end. Eleven years ago. She's doing well for it.

The Last Revelation is interesting for another reason: it's pretty good. It's easy to forget that. It reviewed reasonably well too, but it was certainly the start of Lara Fatigue, a syndrome entirely the fault of Eidos' over-zealous marketing.

(It was also successful marketing, you can argue. The game went to No. 1 all over the world, and by 1999 everyone in the universe had heard of Lara Croft, even though it was still two years until Angelina Jolie would don the shorts, and waste the second half of the film searching for the second half of an object that must never be united, rather than just smashing the first half and going home for tea.)

1

This is about seventeen kinds of wrong.

Having permeated into the mainstream, you could credit Ms. Croft with an awful lot of the transition of console gaming from niche pursuit to commonplace television company. But of course being popular is a curse, and most people were becoming sick of her. This wouldn't affect reception until the perfectly good fifth game, Tomb Raider Chronicles, which was poorly received simply because it was the fifth game. "Too many," people cried. "Stop releasing these solid, fun games!"

I think The Last Revelation might actually be to blame, as it happens. After Tomb Raider III placed Lara in some modern-world settings, in cities far from any tombs, then-developer Core Design took the series back to Egypt for part four. And in Egypt it stays, Lara's traditional globe-trotting abandoned for a distinctly sandy vacation.

It's Tomb Raider squared, heavily focusing on what she was originally all about, and so, aesthetically at least, a step backward. When Chronicles appeared, everyone had spent as much time robbing yellow tombs as they could face, and despite the fifth game featuring levels in modern office blocks and the like, everyone was exhausted. Exhausted, I contend, by IV.

By this point Core was sticking to its established formula - something Angel of Darkness proved it should have always done. Because when your established formula is huge, fascinating levels, packed with secret tunnels, elaborate puzzles, and enormous multi-threaded tasks, it's something you should be proud to repeat.

2

The tumbling is still superb.

Of course, this also meant sticking with controls that led to PC versions of the series always being something of a jumble. Wholly designed for a gamepad, and refusing to accommodate the mouse (since you couldn't turn the camera, a mouse would have been of limited use anyway), it was always a muddled keyboard affair.

However, my first attempt to replay this game was on the Dreamcast, thinking that a more interesting approach. It was certainly interesting. After struggling painfully for over an hour I'd still not cleared the tutorial, so horrendous were the d-pad or analogue controls.

Lara steers like a wayward shopping trolley desperate for a river to die in, determinedly veering off any ledge she can find. Short of installing Samaritans hotlines on every platform, nothing was going to keep her alive. And so to the PC I switched. Where the 360 pad was no better.

And then I remembered! My patented Tomb Raider control method, which had done me proud throughout the nineties. I've described it to people before, and they've always thought me mad. But once again it proved to be the only reasonable way to play.

Because Tomb Raider assumes it's being played on a gamepad, the nature of jumping, rolling, crouching and firing is designed around a collection of buttons. But since Lara can't make a slight turn without launching herself onto the nearest spikes, the ambiguity of both an analogue stick or d-pad is useless. So it's left hand on the keyboard to steer, right hand on the right half of the gamepad.

And it works. Suddenly the game is under my control. Or as much control as the games offered. For Lara cannot run to her left or right - something we're so used to in games now that its absence feels like a missing limb. She's steered from behind, a sort of rear-wheel drive human. It takes a lot of getting re-used to.

The game opens with a tutorial featuring what appears to be an early-teen Lara, already troublingly endowed. With her hair in pigtails, her voice an annoying yip, it's more than slightly disturbing that she should be exploring tombs with creepy Austrian Werner Von Croy.

This of course sets up his return later, where he's possessed by Egyptian god Set, chasing Lara about the country as she struggles to reincarnate his rival Horus (the endless bear).

But of course this possession is entirely Lara's fault. Lara is, let's not forget, a truly dreadful person. Much has already been written about how she's a grave-robbing thief, uncaring about either history or wildlife. And despite her having encountered dinosaurs, dragons and giant killer statues, she's utterly blase about ignoring ancient texts warning of terrible plagues being unleashed upon the Earth if she takes one trinket or another. Screw Earth! She wants the shiny thing!

3

Yeah, just steal it Lara. No one minds if you KILL EVERYONE ON EARTH.

But of course Von Croy is the baddy, because he tried to do the world and its history a favour by killing her when she was a squawky teenager.

So once the controls are under control, Tomb Raider IV is once again a ludicrous pleasure to leap about. Those special moves, turning mid-backflip, swan-diving into water, the elegant handstand pull-up - mastering this feels remarkable. It's still wonky, and her idiotic desire to sprint off any ledge is maddening, but when it works it feels fluid and splendid.

The big trouble here, though, is having the faintest idea where you should be going. To both its credit and its failing, TLR has enormous, sprawling levels, requiring you to collect objects far and wide, trying to remember/guess what goes where, and where it opens up next. In lengthy yellow/brown chambers, remembering which of the sixteen thousand doors was closed before is a little much. It's so easy to find yourself charging around in complex circles, searching for whichever passage now lets you go left as well as right.

Which brings us to its ending.

So here's the thing about Tomb Raider: you die a lot. Whether because Lara bellyflops into the nearest pit, because you screw up a difficult jump, because scarabs eat your feet to death, because you run out of oxygen when swimming through underground tunnels, because she gets shot at by enemies, bitten by dogs, poisoned by scorpions, because she's crushed by a descending ceiling or rising floor, wedged on spikes, set on fire, run over, stabbed, sliced, or because you deliberately plunge her into a hole because she's just so rude, you die a lot.

4

The ancient Egyptians were rubbish at chess.

So having an ending in which she's crushed by a temple is perhaps as dumb a decision as anyone could make.

It's like an FPS ending with your character being shot by an enemy. Or a strategy game ending with your troops being overwhelmed by a more capricious army. What do you do when you die in a game? You press the quickload button. You do that a great deal in Tomb Raider, in the precise circumstances in which Lara loses her faculties in the closing cut-scene. But quickload only takes you back to the moment before the game forcibly kills you.

It's argued by some that she doesn't die. I'd argue that a temple falling on your head can often prove fatal. The next game takes place at her funeral and wake, associates recalling past adventures we've not previously experienced.

That Angel of Darkness forgets this, and seemingly revives her without explanation, is the least of its problems. (I think this is the case. I haven't the strength to try playing it again to be sure.)

This ending makes all your efforts futile. The entire game is about keeping her alive despite enormous odds. For the game to then eradicate all this hard work by filling her with bricks is a slap in the face. It is, I contend, the dumbest ending ever.

Comments (67) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • khaz #1 2 years ago

    Weirdest retrospective ever. The Tomb Raider games always did irritate me back then. Turn, turn, turn a bit more, ok i'm the edge now, damn missed the jump, reload, turn, turn, turn, back half a step, forward a quarter step, scoot along the edge, belly flop into a pit! Damn. Repeat ad nausem.

    And if I play another series of games where I shoot as many baddies while hopping backwards i'll be forced to go pit falling myself. ;/

    Thank god the latest Lara games are smoothly controlled and wonderful gaming affairs. Anniversary is just pure win.
    Edited by khaz at 01/08/10 @ 09:50

  • bell_801 #2 2 years ago

    I wish the controls went to a more precise jumping like the first, and easy to navigate like the latter ones. I just hate this casual push a button to do gymnastics that it his now... you almost figure the front, A, Left, B pattern to climb all the way up till you miss a button. it's like Prince of Persia 2008... too much casual gameplay. For sissys and fans on uncharted: Tomb Raider-lite.

  • KujiGhost #3 2 years ago

    "Lara steers like a wayward shopping trolley desperate for a river to die in..."

    Bravo sir, bravo!

  • Obiwanshinobi #4 2 years ago

    Now, now, Anniversary isn't half as pussyfied as Uncharted. Makes about twice as much frames per second (at least on my pretty old PC), like every platformer worth its salt should do, and the controls aren't a rubber band joke (provided you have disabled the auto-grabbing).

  • OrgasmicMutton #5 2 years ago

    Horace the endless bear! Nice one John.

    That aside my main Tomb Raider nostalgia is all linked up with the second game. I then missed out on the rest of the series until I got Angel of Darkness free with a graphics card. Fortunately it froze at some point making me lose an hour of progress and finally encouraging me to do the right thing and abandon it rather than struggle on through the sheer awefullness of the thing like I deserved some sort of punishment for an unacknowledged crime. As such i assumed that the other earlier games in the series would be a bt of a let down.

    Anniversasy on the other hand probably makes me remember the first two games more fondly as I assume they weren't the quickload frenzy that khaz described in the first comment.

  • Jackface #6 2 years ago

    Isn't slagging off this ending much like slagging off a movie in which the protagonist dies at the end? Or one where they show the ending first? The point of the game was to save the world. That achieved, Lara dies. Doesn't seem *that* stupid.

    Odd, negged for having the same opinion as most people in this thread. LOL you comments twats :D
    Edited by Jackface at 02/08/10 @ 07:58

  • RedPanda #7 2 years ago

    Post deleted at 14:31:59 28-01-2012

  • Rens11 #8 2 years ago

    Used to love the tomb raiders as a kid thinkin of goin back and playin en today tho scares me having often spent a couple minutes lining up the perfect jump you pull yourself up think u can relax only to have a boulder crush u or axes flying at ya or a hidden spike pit adventure games are so much more forgiven nowadays usually for the better but you can't beat perfecting a scene from the old tomb raiders!
    Edited by Rens11 at 01/08/10 @ 10:50

  • Shadman #9 2 years ago

    The end of V sort of fixes her death at the end of IV. The closing cut scene of V shows some guy (I forget who, it was years ago) digging in the desert, finding something (I forget what) and saying "She's alive!" At which point, it faded to black and the whole debacle is never mentioned again.

  • Tomo #10 2 years ago

    Great piece! Don't normally read these.

  • Darren #11 2 years ago

    @chimneyleaf - That's what happens although he just says they've found her and shows you Lara's backpack, he doesn't say whether she is alive or not. Here's a video of the ending of TR5 on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzrLmtK7FVQ

  • PodlingJuice #12 2 years ago

    I remember restarting this game two or three times at various points in my gaming career and I never got to the end.

    I always got lost. :(

  • Retroid #13 2 years ago

    Never liked the PS1-era Tomb Raider games much beyond the demo of the first game.

    Thing I liked:

    Because it was 3D Indiana Jones / Prince of Persia

    Thing I didn't like:

    The controls which made her seem drunk. Quite like in GTA4 when you've been out boozing.

    As a result I didn't both with the latter episodes, other than giving them quick plays on friend's PS1s and PCs.

    But theb.... I gave Legend a go and was pleasantly surprised by it, and have since picked up Underworld which is pretty good. They both seem a little "poor-man's Uncharted" nowadays since they seem like they're trying to recapture the 'spark' rather than create their own.

    edit: I is fick wid werdz
    Edited by Retroid at 01/08/10 @ 18:41

  • tomjoadsghost #14 2 years ago

    angel of darkness was supposed to resolve the ending of this but whole swathes of the story were abandoned when eidos decided to stop throwing money at it.

    Which is a shame really as the game actually displayed a lot more invention than "legend" and received (supposedly) markedly less funding.

    obviously the AOD which was actually released was a complete disaster but if you can limp through the thing (saving every step of the way) theres actually some damn good stuff there.

    Im not like suggesting that anyone should attempt it now, in all honesty given that its now got age going against it as well as everything else its a waste of life, but i still kind of wish that eidos had stuck with it rather than pushing it out half done and farming out the franchise to the crystal dynamics.

  • TheApologist #15 2 years ago

    John was feeling contendy this week.

    I have only played the most recent games since Anniversary, and I think they're great. But they frustrated me enough - without the nostalgia factor any of the first 5 would, I suspect, drive me mental in about three seconds.
    Edited by TheApologist at 01/08/10 @ 11:31

  • HermitArcader #16 2 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • darkphoenix #17 2 years ago

    Absolutely disagree with this article.

    Tomb Raider IV has one of the best endings of all time, and it's the best game on the series so far, together with the original/anniversary.
    In Last Revelation, Lara accidentally releases a powerful Egyptian evil, she ends having to sacrifice her own life in order to stop it and save the world.
    Shows guts and respect for the character, something not usually found in videogames, plaqued by sequelitis.

    Tomb Raider should have ended there, Lara should have never returned.
    It would have been a magnificent ending, to a great series.

  • HermitArcader #18 2 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • N.A.T.O #19 2 years ago

    I have to confess, I found this game nigh on unplayable on the DC. Possibly the worst controls EVER. I thought the first Tomb Raider on the Saturn was much easier to control. Perhaps I should go back and try again.

  • androidave #20 2 years ago

    Are they ever going to do a remake of tomb raider 2? that was always my fav, the level in a sunken ship was awesome, and Venice of course, and the opera house level.. I had tomb raider 2 and final fantasy 7 to get me through a summer when I was around 15 and I still remember it now, both truely awesome games :)

  • photoboy #21 2 years ago

    I agree with John that TR2 is the best of the originals (if only we could have had an Anniversary style remake instead of the disappointing Underworld)! I recently tried to replay TR2 on an emulator but the controls were so confusing, I couldn't even make the first jump on the assault course (which had something to do with jump being mapped to square in the old games and I was pressing the wrong button ;) ).

    Personally I don't think any game should end with the main character dying. The whole point of a videogame is to be interactive, and by that measure dying = failing. I think the player should always have the chance to control the outcome of the game.

  • darkphoenix #22 2 years ago

    @Vertical_Stand

    The ending stroke me like a lightning.
    I have always been very cautious about spoilers, so I had no idea of what would happen to Lara in the end of the game.
    It felt just plain right, poetic justice, stuff of legend.
    We should remember that TR was having a rough time, after a disapointing 3rd game.
    Even I, a fan of the franchise since the very beginning, was getting tired of the formula.
    What TR IV tried to do was end the franchise in the highest, most noble way possible.
    The best story, great and enormous levels with the best graphics, and a more serious approach to character development.

    TR:Chronicles was a betrayal to the greatest destiny of Lara, and every other TR game from there on just kept lowering the franchise to a point where nobody cares anymore about "the ridiculous jumping girl with big boobs".
    Shame on you, Eidos.

  • darkphoenix #23 2 years ago

    "Personally I don't think any game should end with the main character dying. The whole point of a videogame is to be interactive, and by that measure dying = failing. I think the player should always have the chance to control the outcome of the game."


    No, the whole point of TR IV was Lara repairing what she had caused herself, saving the world from her mistake.
    She succeeded greatly, battling through the biggest levels TR has seen so far.
    In the end, she died and got a tomb of her own, crushed and buried in a great Pyramid.
    An ending that humanizes her character, and elevates Lara Croft to the tragic heroes pantheon.

  • tomjoadsghost #24 2 years ago

    I think its worth remembering that the Lara death was never considered to be a cliffhanger in itself, instead the AOD trilogy and the demon hunter spin off were supposed to explore the reasons and circumstances surrounding Lara's resurrection and also her coming to terms with her second life, the teasers leading up to the release of the second game always spoke of her having changed fundamentally psychologically as a result of her experiences and having to overcome personal, inner obstacles as well as the more obvious physical ones.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #25 2 years ago

    Hang on. Didn't the World Sanity Council agree several years back that all Tomb Raider games are shit and always have been? You can't ALL have had the mumps that day, surely?

  • Shinetop #26 2 years ago

    For Lara cannot run to her left or right - something we're so used to in games now that its absence feels like a missing limb. She's steered from behind, a sort of rear-wheel drive human. It takes a lot of getting re-used to.


    That was the way you controlled things on PC, before crappy console ports introduced the other method, and it still feels like the only right way to me. If you want the character to move forward, you press the forward button. As simple as that. None of this "If you want the character to move forward you have to check where she is facing and then press one of the buttons that also face that way" nonsense. It's character-relative, as opposed to camera relative, which makes a lot less sense because you're not supposed to be playing as the camera; you're supposed to be playing as the character.

  • Shinetop #27 2 years ago

    Never liked the Tomb Raider games much beyond the demo of the first game, and that was

    1) Because it was 3D Indiana Jones / Prince of Persia

    Weird. The fact that it was 3D Indiana Jones/Prince of Persia was the entire reason I wanted to play the full game the moment I laid eyes on the demo.

  • Tetsuo_Shima #28 2 years ago

    darkphoenix says it all, Tomb Raider IV is undoubtedly my favourite of the series. Tomb Raider 2 was fantastic as well, 3 not so much, but I just couldn't get enough of the ancient Egyptian stuff in the fourth one. I guess it gained an extra level of enjoyment for me since it was one of the few games my dad decided to help my brother and I with, he really loved those puzzles. Rotating room puzzle blew my mind!

  • Jackface #29 2 years ago

    "Hang on. Didn't the World Sanity Council agree several years back that all Tomb Raider games are shit and always have been? You can't ALL have had the mumps that day, surely?"

    Well seeing as they aren't all shit, I doubt it.

  • polaris70 #30 2 years ago

    Tomb Raider 2 was the first video game I completed, loved it. My first experience of a 3D world. Tomb Raider 4 was a huge joy to play and still has the biggest, ingenious levels I've ever played in a video game - So Tomb Raider did influence the reason I love video games which is a pretty good compliment. Never played any other Tomb Raider games, might just get Underworld as it's cheap now.

  • RedSparrows #31 2 years ago

    'Shows guts and respect for the character, something not usually found in videogames, plaqued by sequelitis. '

    Have you played any other game? Almost every damn title has some form of sacrifice.
    Edited by RedSparrows at 01/08/10 @ 15:17

  • Zerobob #32 2 years ago

    Tomb Raider, to me, was like always making excuses for a naughty dog; you love what it does right, so much so that nothing negative really matters.

    I think the thing that impressed me most about the series was level 2 of the first Tomb Raider game. Starting off the level by acrobatically jumping around shooting wolves is pretty damn special.

    But I'll always remember jumping into those underground water-filled tunnels and thinking to myself "Wow". They somehow really captured something brilliantly atmospheric there, whether it be the sound effects or the dark, rippling underwater visual effect. These aspects make up for the fiddly unintuitive controls alone. Never mind the seemingly epic scale of the game and some of the levels being really breathtaking.

    I played TR: Anniversary recently on the PC with a X360 pad and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was a little disappointed by the T-Rex in Anniversary compared to the frankly more realistic one in the original TR, but apart from that it was great.

  • Shinetop #33 2 years ago

    Here's a question: why is Tomb Raider Anniversary for the 360 still so ridiculously expensive whereas it's dirt cheap for PC?

  • Kaminari #34 2 years ago

    "[...] it was always a muddled keyboard affair."

    And then there were the few smart of us with a SmartJoy adapter... But I admit that I first experienced the whole classic series on PS1, and the gameplay was clearly tailored for that system.

    Back to TR4, I loved it to bits -- except of course for the ending, which was not even a cliffhanger but an expedited way to tell the world that Core was fed up with Lara.

    As for the hate against the classic series, your clever analysis ("Stop releasing these solid, fun games!" ) pretty much sums up what I thought of the public backlash. From 1996 to 2000, I spent each and every year impatiently waiting for the new TR episode, like another season in a mighty fine series. If you had enjoyed it so far, you'd want more of the same, not radical changes because people asked for it -- Angel of Darkness anyone?

    I find amusing that most people criticizing the classic series actually never seriously played TR2, or for some strange reason were so put off by it right from the start that they decided the franchise was not interesting anymore. TR2 is Tomb Raider classic at its very best, and TR4 is not very far from it.

  • drumbaby #35 2 years ago

    The first two TR games were good...the rest sucked. End of.

  • Widge #36 2 years ago

    I never really liked Tomb Raider either, but absolutely loved Soul Reaver. Same teams wasn't it?

  • Retroid #37 2 years ago

    Shinetop

    "Weird. The fact that it was 3D Indiana Jones/Prince of Persia was the entire reason I wanted to play the full game the moment I laid eyes on the demo."

    Crap. I should never write comments without having at least one strong coffee, and definitely *not* when I'm in a hurry.

    I meant that was one of the things I *liked* about it.

    Argh.

  • lavalant #38 2 years ago

    These games are pretty unplayable now, but back when I played the first one I was in awe of the graphics, water, being able to swim and explore what at the time were fantastic environments. Tried to play the first one and got past the T-Rex, there's something about the flawed low polygon, pixely graphics that add to the immersion of these old games, new games tend to be a bit to clinical looking.

  • Retroid #39 2 years ago

    There. Edited.

    I seem to have left at least half of what I'd meant out of my original post and hopefully it now makes a bit more sense.

    I don't hatez Tomb Raider.

  • muttler #40 2 years ago

    I enjoyed reading this article and the comments here. For me TR1 and TLR are by far the best of the series. However I have to disagree with the controls being awkward, they just needed getting used to but they did eventually click and are actually quite straightforward eg. jumping gaps- some can be done from a standing jump and some need a run up. The platforming just requires the player to be very careful and not make unnecessary movements. The combat chafes slightly until you get the hang of tumbling in different directions instead of strafeing (which Lara couldn't do then), then it's good too (for the time).

  • Hughes. #41 2 years ago

    This was a better game than TR3, which was bloody dull, and glitchy as hell. Chronicles was mostly criticised because it was incredibly short compared to the rest of the games. It was forced annual updates that killed it. It simply wasn't enough time to create games that big and have them remain interesting. Chronicles, though short, had some genuine fun bits.

    As for controls, a circular D-pad is the only way to control it. It was unplayable on a standard 4-button Sony D-pad, suicidally useless with an analogue stick and too fiddly with a keyboard. An aftermarket digital pad with a disc D-pad meant you could always hit diagonals perfectly and made the games a breeze to control.

    I'm pretty sure the ending of Chronicles explained that Lara wasn't dead after all, I forget the details though.

  • Darkuss #42 2 years ago

    I'm overwhelmed by nostalgia, oh the memories!
    And you should have tried to play this on PSP. I dare you!

  • dagas #43 2 years ago

    The controls were always the biggest problem. It was like trying to stear a wild elephant using a stick. I could never finish a TR game before TR Legend.

  • Shinetop #44 2 years ago

    @Retroid: Gotcha. I knew there was something odd about someone mentioning 3D Indiana Jones/Prince of Persia as drawbacks. ;)

  • Stuz359 #45 2 years ago

    The controls were always awful and it mystified me why they were not even fixed in the old style of games. At around the same time remember, you had Super Mario 64 and Zelda proving how good controls in 3d games could work.

  • rickyhabana #46 2 years ago

    They (Crystal Dynamics) should collaborate with naughty dog and make an uncharted w/lara. Underworld, which I liked, had ledges which you apparently couldn't reach even though it was the same as the last jump you made, game-breaking bugs, big-ass spiders and just forced me to put the game down and never play it again without completion. Shame really, because when it worked it was fantastic.

  • 3william56 #47 2 years ago

    It is a very good point that pathos (big word for the day) in vid games is never really going to work, because your character (or NPCs if there are escort missions) have already died so many times. The point in Killzone 2 where whatsisname dies just seemed daft (even more so after you fire up the multiplayer and have a instant resurrection gun to hand). About the only really affecting vid game character death I can think of is in Beyond Good and Evil, and that was more because of the mad French clash of cartoony Ninty visuals and adult themes.

    This one might have worked if, as folks have said, she stayed dead. Cheap resurrection works once, but (hello Spock!) after that, it kills any tension as you always know the character hasn't sacrificed anything as they'll be back.

  • jaguarwong #48 2 years ago

    Just wanted to say, whilst maintaining the utmost respect for the author, that this piece lacks any of insight you would expect of a professionally written article.

    The opinion that a character dying in a narrative is daft when that charater dies as an indication of failure is material for a 30 second pub rant, not a two page article on one of the best games sites around.

  • smelly #49 2 years ago

    The ending may have been shit.. but then, no worse than red dead redemption... But unlike rdr.. at least the actual GAME here was fun.

  • smelly #50 2 years ago

    >one of the best games sites around.

    hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

  • Superduper_Mario #51 2 years ago

    The Last Revelation is interesting for another reason: it's pretty good. It's easy to forget that. It reviewed reasonably well too ...

    Surely if a game is good then it gets good reviews? But we all know this not to be true. So what? So do I just choose a reviewer who I like (read "has the same tastes as me";)? If not then what are the criteria for choosing a game reviewer?

  • Quak #52 2 years ago

    I thought the Last Revelation was #3, not number #4.

  • Quak #53 2 years ago

    > "Too many," people cried. "Stop releasing these solid, fun games!"

    I've seen such cries plenty of times in EG game reviews. Practice what you preach, eh?

  • bratmandu #54 2 years ago

    Loved TR 1,2,3 and this. Good articles - but only one of the 4 or 5 stages in TR3 was in a city - and I thought the London levels were pretty cool and creepy as hell.

    re. the controls - i think part of the scariness of TR is the fiddly controls - you panic when a skinless leopard or something leaps out of nowhere.

    I doubt it'll happen but I wish Crystal Dynamics would re-make 2 and 3 at least - if not also 4. The TR1 remake was fun if you were a TR fan.

    I'd like to see how they handle the oil rig, the wreck of the maria doria, the jungle in india and london.

    Was TR5 really that good? I never got a hold of it.

  • gelf #55 2 years ago

    I just couldn't get on with the controls in Tomb Raider, though I did try and play a good chunk of TR1 and 2 I always came to the point where I asked myself why am I putting myself through this torture.
    What's weird is I felt this way and yet had no problem and still defend Resident Evils own tank controls, maybe because you dont have to be quickly judging a million spike pit jumps in those.

  • irve77 #56 2 years ago

    You know i've got to stand up and say that Angel of Darkness is one of the better Tomb Raider games.

    Trouble is it was uncontrollable in a time where other games ( like legacy of kain ) were doing the third person adventure with prescise 3d control.

    Comparing like with like in a retrospective it is certainly a better game than 3,4, or 5

    But it is possibly the only game i've played where i've spent 30 minutes just dying repeatedly because the controlls were so inprecise

  • intpleeus #57 2 years ago

    I enjoyed The Last Revelation more than any Tomb Raider since the original. Core Design rediscovered the original's themes and atmosphere, and then it harnessed what genuine improvements had been made in the meantime. Lara's trigger finger was relaxed, and she returned to exploring sites that hadn't been seen or touched for thousands of years. However, the ending was stupid. I suspect it was Core Design getting revenge; they seemed to be suffering from Tomb Raider fatigue more than anyone else.

  • Feanor #58 2 years ago

    "Tomb Raider II is the best in the first run of the series."

    The original and TR3 were both much better games. What a poor, almost bizarre start to the article.

  • Feanor #59 2 years ago

    "To both its credit and its failing, TLR has enormous, sprawling levels, requiring you to collect objects far and wide, trying to remember/guess what goes where, and where it opens up next. In lengthy yellow/brown chambers, remembering which of the sixteen thousand doors was closed before is a little much. It's so easy to find yourself charging around in complex circles, searching for whichever passage now lets you go left as well as right."

    Article redeemed. TLR was easily the most frustrating game in the series for me.

  • intpleeus #60 2 years ago

    Feanor,

    I agree, regarding Tomb Raider II. It had more guns, vehicles, maneuvers, and action than the original, but little of its charm or mystery. Far too much time was spent filling mindless thugs with bullets. The combat was the worst aspect of Tomb Raider, and it could only be forgiven for its relative scarcity. For Tomb Raider II combat came to the fore. But human skins were merely slapped over animal AI, and the results were atrocious.

    And on the topic of stupid endings: the last couple of levels in Tomb Raider II were ridiculous. The original flirted with the supernatural, but tried to leave open naturalistic interpretations of events--Tomb Raider II just leaped into the supernatural headfirst without thought or class.
    Edited by intpleeus at 02/08/10 @ 13:43

  • Feanor #61 2 years ago

    Yes, TR II turned Lara into a mass murderer and the excessive focus on combat was definitely not an improvement.

  • Darren #62 2 years ago

    I still think the first Tomb Raider was, by far, the best game in the series as the recent Anniversary edition so capably proved. Remade with the Crystal Dynamic engine and proper analogue controls the game's level design and puzzles are allowed to shine. Lara also only shot those that attacked her and the gun fights were infrequent anyway with the emphasis on exploring, something the later games reduced in favour of more action.

    I watched a 10 minute YouTube video of someone playing the Dreamcast version of The Last Revelation and certainly remember the game well (it was the opening sequence with a young teenage Lara). What I'd forgotten though was how awful and clunky those controls really were, thanks to being digital (8-way only) and stuck in an engine that restricted exact movement. At no point did Lara's movement look anything like natural and having to fiddle around to line up exactly to a spot where you could pull a lever is something I recalled all too well. It's the kind of thing to give you nightmares about playing videogames IMO. Definitely could not play that game again in its original form, that is a fact!

  • bratmandu #63 2 years ago

    @PS_2010

    I'd start with Anniversary - going back to the ORIGINAL original might be too 90s for todays gamer.

    @ Feanor

    I enjoyed TR2 more than 1 for the most part (except the last Wall of China bits) Barkang Monastary and the icy mountain levels around it were fantastic! And Venice! And the massive wreck of the Maria Doria, and the scary as piss offshore rig!

    Sure the addition of humans was a let down - but back then AI was pretty bad across the board - and I guess would have been difficult to implement, especially in a game with such verticality and variety of scenery.

    The whole wildlife/mass murderer aspect of the TR games never bothered me. In my opinion, none/few of the games had that much combat. Yea the combat sucks a bit, I just saw it as hassle on my way to the next bit of ledge-ery. I mean I spent most of underworld kicking the shit out of priceless thousand year old vases. TR is about the puzzles and exploring - fuck animals and ancient shite.

  • King_of_Hyrule #64 2 years ago

    I don't understand why everyone keeps complaining about TR's controls. I played the first Tomb Raider on PSX over and over again. The trick is that you need to hold R1 (I think it was R1) to make Lara walk, and that way she CAN'T fall of ledges. Then you just walk to the end of the ledge (where she stops automatically) and hop back once to be in the perfect spot of a running jump. During the jump you press another button (was it X ?) to hold on to the ledge on the other side when you reach it. That way it's pretty much impossible to fall down.
    I recently played some TR on PSP and wished it had the old controls rather than the much less precise analog ones...

  • Feanor #65 2 years ago

    I rented TR and didn't have manual so it took me a few levels to work out that trick. But once I did, I had no problem with the controls.

  • MMAN #66 2 years ago

    Posted this on Rock Paper Shotgun but I guess it's more relevant here:

    I’d put the “dumbest ending” thing in a different way, in that my main problem with TR4 is that it goes massively downhill about 3/4 in when you reach Cairo (and one of the longest downhill spirals I’ve seen in a game). If it had kept up the quality of the earlier areas it would be one of my favorites, but it’s hard to ignore such a large chunk of the game being so much worse. You can spend hours in samey looking City environments, with near-identical lighting throughout and it’s all much more obtuse than anything earlier in the game. The final Valley of the Kings section is arguably better but it’s still much lesser than earlier and has some really bad stuff like the Mastabas level (pretty much just several flat mazes in a row). The ending is just a final kick in the balls.

    The thing about the controls is that once you get past the learning curve they are almost 100% consistent and skill-based (bar a couple of things in TR1 which were fixed for subsequent games), something I can’t say about all but one or two newer games (let alone the newer TR games, which have some major consistency issues and remove player skill as a factor in the platforming). The problem is that it’s one HELL of a learning curve, and as accessibility is so important I’d have to put newer schemes above it just for that. Since I’ve been past that curve for years though I end up getting more out of the older controls than a lot of newer ones, since I know everything I get wrong is my fault, compared to many newer games where there are moments like your character just not grabbing a ledge they should, essentially punishing you for playing correctly.

    Another part of that is that the original games are designed in a way where the only world limits are Lara’s limitations, and there are no invisible walls or similar things to get in the way (outside the end of the world and a few overdone mesh collisions that don’t really stop you getting anywhere); you can frequently reach areas not intended by the designers when you’ve mastered the limits, and there’s nothing artificially stopping you from doing so. A small but important thing that most newer action-adventures miss when they cloak everything not needed in arbitrary invisible walls and give no consistent limit to what you can do (and the newer TR’s are horrendous offenders in this regard).

    These things make me end up getting irritated about the reputation of the original controls (I should note this article was much better at it than most), because there’s a constant focus on what the older controls (are perceived to have) did wrong, rather than what they did right and that few other games have copied (on the other hand it’s hard to place blame when you need to get past that learning curve to “get” it). Which means I’m still waiting on a scheme and design that combines the accessibility of newer games with the consistency and freedom of the older TR’s. By far the closest I’ve seen is Mirrors Edge, which has a couple of consistency issues that makes me think it’s not quite there yet, but, in many ways is a spiritual successor to the original TR controls (the FPS controls stand in as an evolution of “tank” controls, there’s a quick-turn button, it’s heavily based on player skill and you are only limited by Faith’s ability and can frequently do things not intended when you know the limits).

    Bonus TL;DR version: the original controls are hard to learn but also hard to master, most newer control schemes are easy to learn but also easy to master. It about time more action-adventure control schemes focused on making the perfect combination of easy to learn and hard to master.
    Edited by MMAN at 02/08/10 @ 22:06

  • spyroware #67 2 years ago

    Oh the nostalgia.

    I remember playing TR4 with my best friend and his older sister over a summer. His sister was reading-translating a german walkthrough that had come into our hands (yeas physical, faq sites were none-existant or too niche back then) and me and my friend were the players. One rule: you die you hand over the controller. Needless to say that controller switched hands enough times to keep us both content and burned out after each evening.

    I loved TR4. I've been a huge fun TR since TR2, and I enjoyed AoD too, it was long and satisfying once you get past that it didn't really give any insight to Lara's survival from TR4. Yeah ok some sound bugs so what, the then reviewers made such a huge deal of it. Perhaps they had told their early selves that by the time TR gets a sixth installment they would have a girlfriend like Lara, and when it came out and they had failed they lashed all their spite on it, it was unreasonable really. Also now that I think of it, a runaway Lara in wet dark alleys, does this make AoD the first gritty reboot? :p

    I enjoyed the new games very much, and I'm glad they are doing well. I will always be there to support Eidos, Lara should never be let to die.

    PS, Dear Eidos, give us a new LoK installment. Please, I'll buy 5 of them for each platform :(
    Edited by spyroware at 03/08/10 @ 04:58