I remember climbing an anchor onto a huge freighter whose stacks of shipping containers reminded me, to my delight, that this was a platformer at heart rather than a shooter. I remember Croft Manor ablaze - a mark of how much these games mean to me that seeing a cherished location on fire was a surprisingly crushing experience. I remember dripping caverns with a brilliant - truly brilliant - roping puzzle. Underworld next in my out-of-order memory tour. Tomb Raider: Anniversary - back to where it all began The whole game is that thing which is so often promised but which so rarely turns up: a remake of a classic that genuinely feels like a thank-you to the people who loved it. And that assault course in Midas' palace which required perfect understanding of the Croft moveset. Casting around I remember a bear lunging at me as I explored an underground village, long forgotten and left to the elements. Night has fallen and there are tricks everywhere: a statue with missing pieces down in the garden, twin pistols hidden behind a moving bookcase in the library. From Anniversary, the middle game, I think of that wonderful puzzle-box version of Croft Manor. The first Crystal trilogy holds up extremely well in this regard. The buried Sphinx in Tomb Raider 1, the leap from the summit revealing its face. The bottom of the ocean in Tomb Raider 2, or the upside-down ship from the same game with tables and chairs bolted to the ceiling and a shark patrolling outside. Let's celebrate these wonderful games.įor me, the true measure of a Tomb Raider game is if it exists in the mind as a stark, almost isolated, memory of being in a space - often an audaciously crafted space.
For the reboot, yes, but also for that trilogy the studio completed just after it took over the franchise, back when Tomb Raider still belonged to Eidos. More than anything how enthused they seemed for what they were doing.īut then real-life memories gave way to game memories, and I realised how much more I had to thank Crystal Dynamics for.
At first I thought of an old press trip when I went to see Crystal, which was developing the reboot at the time: how lovely everyone was, how kind to me and my idiotic questions, despite the obvious exhaustion of working on a game like this. Watch on YouTubeĪnd I thought of them on Monday when I read the news that Square-Enix was selling off studios and licenses, including Crystal Dynamics and Tomb Raider in general.
#Tombraider trilogy series#
This was Crystal Dynamic's first outing with the series once they took it on: Tomb Raider: Legend, Tomb Raider: Anniversary (co-developed with Buzz Monkey Software), and Tomb Raider: Underworld. But in between both extremes - marquee, character-arc Lara Croft and crackling, mysterious, old-school Tomb Raider - we got another version too. I like these games a lot: I like their obvious production values and blockbuster sense of occasion, their sense of someone on their way to becoming the person they hope to be. A Lara who fills the screen, who reaches out a hand to steady herself when she makes her way through a flooding cave: such a lovely human detail. Over the last decade we've had rebooted Lara: close-up, crafting her own arrows, skinning wolves and falling on rusty spikes. The long wait for a proper gen-hopping follow-up took place when I shuffled through temp jobs, then the eventual release of The Angel of Darkness. The Core games took me through university - back when 3D itself felt weird and experimental and slightly (thrillingly!) unstable, with those jagged edges around the sides of the screen when Lara was exploring underground corridors. I am the right age to measure out a lot of my life in Tomb Raiders.
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