Tomb Raider Review (PS1)
The start of one of the most famous video game heroine's grand tomb raiding adventures and my first impressions with it!
Developer: Core Design
Publisher: Eidos Interactive
Release Date: 22nd November 1996 (EU), 14th November 1996 (NA)
Platforms: PlayStation 1, Sega Saturn, PC, Mac, N-Gage, iOS, Android.
While the PlayStation was my second console and I primarily grew up playing that as a child, I never really got to play a Tomb Raider game properly outside of demos, not until I was an adult. Perhaps Tomb Raider’s lewd visually marketing and violence is what deterred my parents from picking up a Tomb Raider game (big boobs are scary to some after all), or perhaps of the demo that I played as a 7 year old and found its controls stiff and clunky, and a little too intimidating for me to play. But no matter, Tomb Raider’s existence was very well known to me and all of the games that followed. It was impossible not to, of course. Lara was marketed heavily and was everywhere. She was the most popular video game character of the late 90’s.
I don’t remember what demo disc it was that I first played the demo of Tomb Raider on, but I recognise it was partway through the City of Vilcabamba. You enter this wide cave where you have to shoot some wolves and at the end of this is a building with pools of water inside. I never got very far beyond running along the roof of the place because of it being a timed demo, but it was introduction enough to me into the world of Tomb Raider. You explore caves, you shoot wild animals, and you climb around the place finding items. That boiled Tomb Raider down to its barest to me and was a demo well presented. There was no music at all at this point, so the only sounds you heard were gunshots, wolf yelps, footsteps, and water splashes. It was so odd but also so very isolative. At this point I was already used to playing as characters like Spyro who were so fun and fluid to play as and run around with, so to come into this where Lara moves incredibly specifically and tank-like it threw me off. Swimming around was nice, though. But having to precisely measure your jumps and take your time was just something I wasn’t used to.
As the years went by I saw more of what occurred in later Tomb Raider games; like Lara driving around Venice in a boat, stealthing around in a catsuit in what seemed like a bank heist, trying to escape a submarine prison, or what seemed like one to me, and adventuring around as a child. My 8-9 year old mind seeing Lara in all of those situations was blown to see just where Lara would go and get up to. It seemed fun and thrilling, but beyond my gameplaying capabilities. So, it wasn’t until I was 21 that I finally got to play a full Tomb Raider game in Tomb Raider Legend and get into the series proper.
But! I HAD play this proper, too. December 30th of 2017. Steam winter sale. I snatched the classic Tomb Raider series up for pennies. 345 pennies to be exact. And I enjoyed it. For about 2 weeks and 2 hours and 40 minutes of gametime and I haven’t touched it since. But that is because as fun as it was to finally get to play it, it didn’t feel the same on PC. Something about the controls on the keyboard felt alien and unnatural to me and the graphics being too clean. It wasn’t as I remembered it or knew it to be. I needed to play it on PlayStation. To me, Lara was a PlayStation mascot next to Crash and Spyro. So, it felt only right. A year later I managed to pick up all 5 Tomb Raider games for additional pennies on the PlayStation, making my PlayStation game collection all the richer! Not monetarily speaking. I got Tomb Raider 1, 3 and The Last Revelation for £5 each, 2 for £4, and Chronicles for £3. That’s £22 for all of the Tomb Raider games on the PlayStation. That’s a damn steal. Apart from 2, I got all my Tomb Raider games from a nice little shop in Canterbury called Level Up Games. They have a black cat named Garrus.
Finally having it on the PlayStation and playing it on and off over the next 4 years, I finally completed it earlier this year. And I really enjoyed it and I’m so glad I put in the time to complete it.
The plot sees Lara Croft hired by Jacqueline Natla to find the Scion, a mysterious artefact that was divide into three parts with ties to Atlantean mythology. Your adventure sees you go all over the world from Peru to Greece, Egypt, and finally Atlantis itself. Naturally along the way she’s met with threachery and betrayal as Natla reveals she plans to use the Scion to evolve humanity further, not without turning herself into a demented, winged monster, of course. It’s not overly complicated but it’s certainly captivating enough to make for an exciting adventure to go globetrotting and save the world. It’s fun stuff and a great first run.
Firstly, the music by Nathan McCree. It comes in sparingly but when it chimes in, it is so pretty to listen to. Its themes match Lara beautifully, especially her main theme. The action themes are tense, when you enter a new and exciting area it comes in with a wonderously enchanting tune. Whenever you find a secret item you get a nice playful tune come in. It makes your tomb raiding and adventuring so romantic like a good adventure should, it’s so lovely. To compare her to her whip wielding counterpart, Indiana Jones has grand and loud and heroic themes with a brass orchestra. Lara’s match her more delicately and more refined, more ladylike with a lot of gentle strings. I say her theme has become so iconic and classic now that just hearing those opening notes you can’t help but swell with joy inside. There were a good few moments when after spending what seemed like hours on a level trying to figure out where to go or how to solve a puzzle, after progressing just a little bit further there’d be a gentle chime come in that would seem to wash away all stress that the game had invoked on me trying to figure out what to do. It’s so nice.
In that absence of music there’s some chilling atmospheric noises going on of wind blowing through caverns and water drops. It helps build the environment so well. In some parts it can be very quiet as well using it very effectively. Sometimes a moment of quiet makes the perfect space for you to be able to think about a puzzle or where to go. Every other little effect sounds good too, like Lara’s stomping boots around the place or her guns that sound very punchy. The creatures sound good too, if a little cartoony. That’s not so bad though.
The gameplay takes a little while to get used to. That’s what initially put me off in the first place with how archaic the controls are. There is a lot of charm in its controls and animation. You can roll, dodge, and jump around quite nicely in and out of combat, which the shooting is pretty fun and works well enough. Just have to be very careful to make the environment work for you to keep your distance from the perilous predators pursuing you. And of course when pulling yourself up a ledge you can do a very pretty flip, it’s a very nice little touch of flair and showing off Lara’s gymnastics, something that would return in suceeding games. The swimming works pretty good. You can swan dive gracefully and you move swiftly enough through the water. I never had any trouble finding my way about before I ran out of breath.
You can move around quite freely but your platforming is basically in a grided environment and the input of your controls are incredibly precise and deliberate. You have to take your time in measuring your jumps, which is put to the test at one part in St Francis Folly. Your climbing across ledges is laboured. There was a lengthy part in Palace Midas that I had to repeat at least half a dozen times because I kept messing up the platforming, I had to be very careful. It wasn’t until the City of Khamoon when I truly felt I had the hang of the platforming controld. But this was the first game of its kind to do such a thing with 3D platforming. You have to understand, this game came out at a time when roaming around in a 3D space wasn’t commonplace yet or fully utilised. Super Mario 64 had only just come out barely a month prior to this, Crash Bandicoot was just coming out too, and Ocarina of Time was 2 years away yet. Everyone was just figuring out at the same time how to move characters in a 3D environment. Core Design was only a very small company at the time as well where maybe 3 people were programming her moves. Though what an impressive job they did to pull it all off.
Those limitations aside, for a first go at this kind of platforming are pretty revolutionary. None of this had been done yet and it is a marvel that you could pull off any of this. It’s entirely commonplace these days, obviously, and you can do so, so much more. But at the time it was a huge deal. And I don’t think the controls have aged too badly. Once you get the hang of it and how Lara moves it becomes second nature. You can certainly run through it with ease and haste when you really get a hang of it, but for how laboured the pacing is with its controls it gives you chance to be able to think, to take in the environment, to enjoy yourself while you’re there. It especially gives you time to figure out how you’re going to get around certain death traps, of which there are plenty about and disastrous yet so fun to avoid. It feels very rewarding being able to avoid certain death. But there’s no rush to get things done. And just as well, too, because these levels get so tricky, and not just because of the controls but because of how sneaky these levels can be with enemies, platforms, and traps. And then there’s the bosses! Like I said earlier, there’s the T-Rex, but you also come across the treacherous mercs Larson and Pierre, a monstrous Atlantean centaur and mutants, a cowboy and a… skateboarder? Alright. And a perverse inside out mirror version of yourself which is a very clever boss fight. You can’t shoot her, she does everything that you do, so you have to platform around and trick her into falling into a put of lava. That’s a good boss fight.
You’re going to fail a lot in this game, but the more you mess up, the more you’re learning and the better you’ll get at it. Overall, I got over my initial bother with the controls, got the hang of them, and now I’m good with it. I think it presents a reasonable yet rewarding challenge.
On the PC version, you can save the game as and when you want. On the PlayStation version, in specific spots you get one time use save crystals. Going through it the first time I was begging for there to be more crystals available because there is so much you do in between save crystals that everytime I messed up I really didn’t want to have to redo every other thing I did beforehand just to get to where I messed up. But this was 1996 and level checkpoints were sporadic. You mess up, you better get better at the game. It makes for a harder challenge but of course, the more you’re playing this the better you get at the controls. So by the time you get to at least Egypt, you can handle some tougher challenges there. Luckily come Tomb Raider 2 you could save everywhere like the PC version, so this is the only Tomb Raider game to have save crystals.
I don’t think you can fault the graphics much. For what they had to work with at the time I think they visually created something spectacular. Lara looks great. The animals look like animals and fuzzy enough. The guns look moderately like guns. The water has its own reflective lighting and ripples. It’s good. The levels themselves though look absolutely stunning to look at and make you want to explore around. For everything built on cubes and panels in this game they made it all work to their advantage and makes it a joy to wander around these tombs. Atlantis looks downright nasty in the best of ways. You end up coming across monstrosities that are inside out that are so nicely designed and Atlantis itself looks like some Giger body horror stuff. Like the deeper you get, the floors are of flesh and the walls are of muscle. They start pulsating and you hear a beating heart. This place is alive. And it ain’t natural.
The graphics are smoother on the PC version than the PlayStation version, but I think the PlayStation version looks better because there’s more texture going on through its pixels. Makes things feel different and grittier. PC version has some nice detail as well though and I understand there are some HD mods you can use to improve things.
Pretty much all of the levels are based indoors, so everything feels closed in but there are some fantastic larger spaces around. As I said earlier how everything is in a grided environment, you can really see that in places. Which helps identify where you can and can’t jump, the measure of stairs in certain platforming areas, but also where there’s key points to interact with such as levers and doors. There’s a lot of block moving as well which helps identify further how grided the game is designed. Pushing around the blocks takes forever as well. But like I said, you’re in no rush in this game.
There is lots of secrets hidden around the game in nooks and crannies which will usually reward you with health items and ammo and in certain places new guns. I haven’t ever been able to find them all, not even in the Anniversary remake, I’m lucky enough if I find any of them, but for all the ones you miss it just beckons further playthroughs to get everything you can in the game. Luckily, come the end of the game, you should have all that you need to survive.
So you’ve made it to Atlantis. You’ve gotten all the pieces of the Scion. You’ve waded through what looks like literal hell and now you’re faced with the final boss. A demented half of a titan with 3 fingers that’s slapping you around on a platform. As far as final boss fights go, this is one of the more unique ones and certainly one I don’t think that’s expected in an adventure like this. I mean, sure, so far you’ve come across a centaur and a Midas statue where if you stand on it you’ll turn to gold and die. But this is just wild. I guess it make sense though with how they establish Atlantis and the whole advancing the human race thing. If you rush evolution it would get messy. But I think the final fight gets a little tedious. It goes on for so long even the music is like “Eh. This is taking longer than I thought and I’m outta notes. I’m out.” You just have to run and jump around and avoid it and fill it with all the lead that you have available. Everything you’ve been holding out on and storing? Now’s the time to use it all. Magnum bullets, uzis, shotgun, throw it all at this little freak. Eventually he’ll keel over and explode. You have one final run through chasms of death traps, collapsing floors, leaping over spewing lava, rampaging boulders, and blocks, much more blocks, until you come to where the Scion has been activated. Shoot it up, and the whole places comes crumbling down. Now it’s time for you to make like Samus Aran and get the hell out of there! Climbing perilously across lakes of lava, dodging swinging scythes, and wading through spikes. Which, interestingly, if you just castually walk through them you’re unharmed. Run recklessly or jump and you get skewered. Get past all of this and right at the end you have Natla to confront who has turned into a winged demon. Shoot her down and avoid her exploding blasts and eventually she’ll fall. A final climb out of the top of the pyramid and down a long schute and you’re sliding your way out to freedom.
It took me a little while on and off for a few years playing this for one reason or another, but at the beginning of this year I decided to stick to it and see it through to the end. And I’m very happy I did because I thoroughly enjoyed it. I love the design of this game and how the developers found ways to make it work, the levels, the graphics, the music, even the gameplay after learning how to work with it. While Indiana Jones is a rugged Nazi punching adventure uncovering the mythological, Tomb Raider is a much more delicately beautiful and romantic adventure uncovering other myths. With some incredible twists too. I mean coming across your first giant bear and then once you’ve gotten the hang of those you’re greeted by raptors and a giant T-REX?! It’s incredible! And then uncovering the myth of Atlantis and finding out that it isn’t anything like the underwater myths but something much more horrific. Tomb Raider is full of thrilling surprises at every turn making your adventuring so rewarding for all the time you spend digging and exploring around. I can only imagine the excitement coming across these surprises for the first time completely blind in ‘96. I did play Anniversary first before this, which itself was a fantastic remake, and coming across the twists and turns in that was thrilling. But it felt different experiencing it all here.
Tomb Raider was the first of its kind that would eventually be emulated in almost every major action adventure game. The most obvious copycat is Uncharted and for very good reason. Even Indiana Jones got a game inspired by Tomb Raider in Emperor’s Tomb and The Infernal Machine, a funny little turnaround that is. But Tomb Raider is a very good game and I very much enjoyed it. I think has aged pretty well 27 years later. We’re spoiled by today’s controls making this seem stiff and archaic, but they’re still plenty functional, playable and very enjoyable. If they weren’t playable in the first place, even in ‘96, Tomb Raider never would’ve been as much of a success as it was. And if you can’t get past the original and see it as dated there’s always the Anniversary remake. But this is still a special game and well worth a try. And you can get it for pennies these days so why not?
I love the Tomb Raider games and I love Lara. I’m very eager to see her grand return in a new game at some point. Even the anime I’m keen on. Hayley Atwell voicing Lara is perfect and I know she’ll do so well. But it is exciting to see something new coming from Tomb Raider again which I hope we hear something new about soon, and I hope it lives up to its legacy that was all started with this wonderful game.
Where to Purchase:
eBay: £3- £1,149 (now that’s silly.) $7-$17,000 (that’s even sillier!)
Steam: £5.99 $6.99
GoG: £6.99 $9.99 (1 + 2 + 3 triple pack bundle!)
CeX: £12.