So, this is a write-up I've been sitting on for about a month now at this point. Partially because of the whole cold situation in December, but also because partly, I didn't actually know what I was going to say about Tomb Raider. Throughout my experience with 100%ing this remaster, I've done at least four different playthroughs, experienced the game more often than anyone should in a short burst, and I'd like to say I'm at least fairly expert enough after the whole affair to be able to give a good take on Tomb Raider's debut game.

As for me, is it weird to say I have and haven't had nostalgic experience with Tomb Raider at the same time? As a kid with a PS1, I knew of Tomb Raider. I live in the UK for goodness sake. Every single magazine and TV ad you could imagine was plastered with Lara's face and Lara Croft was in that upper tier of game characters that EVERYONE knew. Being the most recognisable character created in Britain and being big in four different UK countries tends to do that to you. But I never actually had the chance to play any of the main games. 

Yet I still considered myself a fan back then, all because of a little game on Sky Gamestar I used to play a ton back then, although it's lost to the sands of time now:

Released around the time as the infamous Angel of Darkness, the Gamestar game was a set-top box 2D platformer styled after the 2D Prince of Persia games, and that was my core experience to Tomb Raider. Literally that was it. I would later play and enjoy the 2013 reboot, but for the longest time, I never actually got around to giving it or the Legend trilogy a go, despite owning both on PS3. 

But when the remastered trilogy was announced? Sure, they've got redone controls, better visuals, the expansions, all that good stuff, so I decided to give it a go, and then waited months for patches because the modern controls were terrible out of the gate.

So, what's our story this time? Well, we're thrown into the thick of things without much of a intro. Lara Croft is a expert adventurer and thrill seeker who dedicated her life to solving mysteries for the thrill of the hunt. This makes her the leading candidate when the mysterious Natla hires her via her mooks to explore an ancient temple for her in order to find a old relic of a lost tribe of Atlanteans. With the promise of fun, Lara agrees and our adventure runs on from there.

For the time, the story is passable. Lara is a fun protagonist with a lot of wit, charm, and attitude. It's ironic because game Lara and the marketed Lara is so night and day, which normally I wouldn't get into, but given it's Lara Croft, it feels like it warrants a brief mention. Lara in the games is this respectable boss who confidently and slickly handles any situation thrown her way, and responds to most aggression with witty banter in return. She's not shaken by much, is extremely confident in her abilities, and there's a reason she became one of, if not the iconic video game heroine. She is a great character who at times - yes - can flaunt her sexuality a bit, but her other qualities are much more courageous, intelligent, strong, heroic, and witty as anyone looking for a female role model could ask for.

But on the marketing side, Edios just saw the fact that they could push Lara's sexuality for as much marketing and promotion as they could get, and it's absolutely insane how downright desperate it got as things went on, to the point Lara's original creator outright left after he was furious that his character got reduced to a sex object in marketing just to sell the games, which is a shame because promoting Lara like that truly undersells how good of a character she really was for the time.

The rest of the characters aren't that memorable, beyond the jokes you can make over the stilted deliveries and were lines from Natla's mooks, but for a 1996 game where Resident Evil was the other major story-driven game? Yeah, it's all pretty good. It's simple, sure - it's just explore three tombs and find this ancient lost colony, but there's some twists, there's some fun encounters, and again, Lara is genuinely a very cool protagonist for a 1996 game, it's not wonder she stuck around as so iconic.

The gameplay is what surprised me more. I always thought Tomb Raider was a much more action-driven series, and by the second game - it very much does become that, but the first game isn't that. For long periods of time, Lara might not encounter enemies at all. When you do, they're true threats unless you know how to deal with them. You really do feel like you're a Tomb Raider because that's exactly what you're doing through this game. The core gameplay loop is exploration, platforming (which is why the tank controls get away with so much, it's very much designed for it like Resi 1 was), there's a lot of neat tricks and speedrunning glitches you can pull off because of how the gameplay is designed.

I don't know, for the first few levels, it's a bit of a steep learning curve for sure, but I have to admit, when I did my second run of the game and I knew where everything was and had a idea about the traps and all that, I actually enjoyed it more. It feels like a obstacle course platformer where you need to avoid traps, pits, and explore around to find the right way forward, which again was not only pretty huge for the time but a great way to actually sell the atmosphere and world-building of the game. Getting to explore these locales in real time and uncover all of these mysteries as the story deepens is really cool for a 1996 game.

The gunplay is ironically the worst part and where the tank controls fail the most often. Especially by the time you do the last few Atlantean Levels and Unfinished Business, which are way more do or die based and fling combat scenarios at you left and right, feeling infinitely weaker as a result.

The graphics are also both pretty good, from a remastered viewpoint and the original. For 1996, there is some annoying setbacks like Lara's hair being in a net over a braid, due to hardware limitations that they couldn't work out in time, or some wonky graphics, and yeah - it's a early PlayStation and Saturn game, it's not gonna look pretty, and there isn't even skyboxes and draw distance is pathetic, but that doesn't change the fact that the game still looks really good for when it dropped. The amount of world-building conveyed through the ancient ruins you explore is diverse and really well done to the point it's unlikely you'd confuse one locale for another. There's always setpieces that make each level stand out, like the challenge rooms in St Francis' Folly, or the huge underwater pool leading into a garden and the Midas statue in the King Midas' Palace level.

But on remastered? Oh boy, I just need to gush because they nailed it. I was iffy on them watching the reveal trailer originally, but I have grown to love it so much, I love the idea of their remaster keeping the PS1 style in tact in some ways, and instead taking the creative direction of "What if the box art renders WAS how the game looked originally?". It gives the game so much distinct charm and hits that perfect middle-ground between the old and new. Also even cooler than when you finish the game, you also unlock the ability to use any Lara from the first three games as you please.

Also the music? Absolutely iconic. Cannot say anything else. Listen to some of these tracks and I guarantee you've at least heard the theme if not more of them, they're all great and all depict the atmosphere of the game perfectly:

It's really not all good though. In fact, there was two major issues with the original and the remaster that left me burnt out in particular, one in the original, one in the remaster.

The first is...bluntly, I could not click with tank controls at all. I really tried. I really, really did, and I did have to get used to them for some of the speedrun tricks like skipping Atlantis, but I just could not jive with them. It felt confusing every time I was controlling Lara, and while it feels like the game wasn't fully tweaked to accommodate for the modern controls, there's some instances where Lara's move speed is mismatched with the jumps because it expects tank controls - I still enjoyed using them more here. I don't know if I could've been able to finish the game without them, frankly. I did not like these at all.

But for the bigger issue, and why it took me a month to do this, I had to play the game at least 4 times. Could be more, frankly, I lost count. And it's all because of these:

https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/25881-tomb-raider-i/ryannumber3gamer

There is 100 trophies in Tomb Raider 1. If I was doing this, I wanted that platinum. While I did eventually pull it off, it required doing multiple runs of this game, from the regular, to completionist, to a speedrun, to a horribly balanced NG+ run that felt absolutely horrendous to play. I love it normally when a developer clearly has this level of love and reverence for a game. Like genuinely, I want to love this trophy list so much. Doing deep cuts like making the infamous corner bug medkit a trophy, or having trophies for doing silly shit like examining two time-related artifacts, or not killing the dinosaur boss that's iconic to the series? I live for those kind of inventive trophies.

But good god, this game is just not designed for this sheer level of challenging trophies that each require their own run through the game to get. Tomb Raider is a adventure puzzle platformer where you can whittle the time down by learning more about the game, yes. But it's still a pretty damn lengthy game for it's time, with 15 levels to do. Bluntly, by the time I was close to done, my patience was wearing extremely thin and I just wanted to be done.

But then, as if that wasn't bad enough, there was this at the end:

I'd always heard so much about how cool the Tomb Raider expansions were, so I went into this with fairly high hopes, and I became even more annoyed and burnt out here. Not only is there a whopping 29 trophies for a game that's four levels long here, but the levels themselves is almost all of Tomb Raider's most annoying problems compounded with each other. The first two levels take place in Atlantis, right after the initial game's ending, and it feels like an extreme tag-along that's badly designed, just filled with constant enemy encounters and a gigantic and huge maze to sort through. 

I used a 100% guide when doing it because I was so out of patience already and I am thankful I did because while I was able to do most of TR1 blind on my initial run, this was too far - there is no way I was figuring out this joke of a maze out by myself. 

The second level is more of the same. It takes until the 3rd level, and the return to Egypt to actually get more interesting and fun, with these levels taking place in a flooded and destroyed version of the Egypt you explored before, making it closer to the exploring puzzle roots that the initial game works so well from versus the action that the first two levels aimed to do.

The fourth level is a unique one and actually pretty good thankfully, a good way to end the pack, but it doesn't change the fact that half of the pack is just outright terrible IMO. Might be burnout, I don't know, but that's how I felt.

That's really where things lie for me at the moment. Great game, a true classic, absolutely. The remaster is also a fantastic way for newcomers to experience it with the ease of use, 60fps, low requirements, modern controls, and all the other improvements, but good god, they just did not know when to say enough was enough here. You could easily chop out at least the NG+ trophy and the speedrun trophy, and still have a sizeable trophy list that doesn't force you to replay the game over and over again from between 4-6 runs for the platinum.

Maybe it's self inflicted because I went for the platinum, maybe it's only meant for the hardcore of fans, but I am so burnt out now, and it's gonna be awhile before I go near Tomb Raider 2. Still, fantastic game, and one I'm happy to have experienced after all this time, just one I wish I felt more fondly of after everything is said and done.