Wow, apparently I haven’t posted anything about video games since I reviewed Chants of Sennaar back in May of 2024 . . . Yikes.

It’s probably because — I’ll admit — I haven’t been finishing many games recently, and the games I have finished are seemingly all installments of giant IPs with tons of previous games and history attached to the point where it seems impossible to talk about the newest one, without referencing the others, and pointless to reference the past games without linking to a review of an old game which at this point . . . (the review) doesn’t exist (yet?).

I’m not sure what type of neurological disorder to blame this incapacity on, but it’s completely killing the games section of this blog before it’s even had a chance to start. Boo this man!

Luckily, game companies have decided they’d rather re-release copies of old games than take risks on anything new, and so there seems to be a rash of “remastered editions” cropping up all over the place. And as much as I feel this is something of an artless grab for cash, it hasn’t stopped me from buying these editions up like hot cakes.

So, perhaps somewhat ironically, the first of these remasters I’ve been able to finish, was one I never played as a kid, Tomb Raider (1), which would have originally appeared on PlayStation (1) (though I’m playing it on PS5). This series is a cultural giant with (apparently) 31 games, 3 films, 2 (soon to be 3) TV shows, 6 novels and a few comics.

Despite the huge cultural significance of this series and Lara Croft as a character, my only real experience with the franchise was a five minute demo of Tomb Raider II which came with my original PlayStation, and the Angelina Jolie films in the early 2000s.

Needless to say, I was quite curious to play through the first game and see what all the fuss was about . . .

I was woefully disappointed. This game was Elden Ring levels of frustrating for me because of its unresponsive and needlessly complicated control schemes, a nearly useless tutorial, and a few seemingly irreversible predicaments — where if you save at the start of the mistake — you can’t get out of. But perhaps my biggest complaint and frustration was probably just the game menu UI. The option to load a saved game is the first thing available, before you toggle over to the save game option, or toggle over again to quit.

I cannot tell you how many times I was trying to save my progress after a difficult fight, or complicated series of traps, and accidently loaded my old game before I’d completed the progress I wanted to save. It was the most infuriating thing I’ve probably ever experienced (wow hyperbole much) and made me want to die nearly every time it sent me back (fun fact I apparently saved the game over 300 times while playing, imagine how many times I messed it up!).

This one difficulty alone made me realize just how far we’ve come with modern games, and I will never be more thankful for the auto-saving features inherent in the modern crop, than I was while playing this game. Now, some of this frustration may be unique to the remastered edition, as I’ve read that the original release had ‘save crystals’ instead. However, I can see how this may also have been a huge source of frustration if you could only save at the crystals, and they were not adequately frequent.

I’ve seen critiques that modern games are too ‘soft’, with too many helpful hints, and focus on story instead of gameplay, but if this original Tomb Raider is any judge, I’m quite happy with how modern games have evolved. There were many puzzles within this game which I had to look up how to solve, only to realize the solution was something I had tried multiple times already and just hadn’t had the luck (adequate control over the character?) to succeed.

Now I clearly must have still enjoyed the game in some capacity, otherwise I would not have struggled all the way to the end (or started the second one), so let’s go over what I did enjoy about my playthrough.

This game is kind of bonkers in just the right way. I can’t really think of another story in which you can shotgun a Tyrannosaurus Rex and some scant few hours later, explore the depths of an Ancient Egyptian tomb (almost could have been one of the influences for my book). It perfectly captures that jet-setting archeologist caricature, and then just continues to poor in fantasy after fantasy, whether it be motorcycles, uzis, zombies, or whatever else you might have dreamed of as a young boy (one enemy even shoots at you while riding a skateboard).

There’s a shoestring for a plot to tie all this together, and mostly it doesn’t make much sense, but somehow it feels right for the game and I mostly didn’t question it. The last stages take place in ‘Atlantis’ which in the Tomb Raider-verse is apparently some kind of bizarre living pyramid in which you run around fat and muscled corridors shooting up skinless horrors. It was the only point at which the “plot” felt like it took a left turn despite many other barely coherent scenes.

Of course we know that real tomb defenses are actually quite lame, but there is just something genuinely fun about putting yourself up against these more fantastical homages. A satisfaction in discovering a lever which opens a hidden door, or pushing a giant block (with hieroglyphs carved on all sides) into just the right place so that you can make an impossible leap to the nearest ledge, barely catch it with the tip of your fingers, and then pull yourself into a waiting treasure chamber. For most of us, this will likely be our only change to run from a giant boulder like Indiana Jones.

And though the City of Khamoon, and the pharaoh Tihocan are not real, it is still fun to try and pick out other little details like the Eye of Horus, or an homage to the Great Sphinx of Giza; the scarabs and ankhs which do reach back into real history.

(Note: there were no flesh eating scarabs to shoot at in this game, The Mummy (1999) is still 3 years away!)

Give Tomb Raider (1) a Play Through?

It’s tough to say. The game’s issues with intuitive, or even manageable controls, nowhere to turn for help, and frustratingly trapping mechanics are severe enough that I nearly gave up playing on several occasions. However, I ultimately pushed through because I enjoyed the sort of chaos present in both the plot and the many settings. Also, any story which takes me to Egypt in some (really any) fashion is going to get some extra effort (and points) from me.

That’s all I have this week. I’m curious about other people’s thoughts. Has anyone played through this one? Either back in the day, or more recently? What was your favorite part? Please leave your thoughts in the comments. I’m looking forward to talking about this one!