most of the game is pretty terrifying (esp. the gorillas climbing after you / the horrible centaur monsters bursting from statues / the giant holy shit monster in the last level) and this is one of the things that sticks out. tomb raider has a really stark atmosphere and a lot of the levels are really quiet so when something big and noisy jumps out at you, it's really jarring. it was a cool approach

it's something that was carried over to the second game (helpp tigers) but notably not the third of the subsequent games. those ones also aren't as good.......

but yeah thumbs up for being a tomb raider fan :)

i think also what makes it terrifying to the player is that lara is a danger to herself. she doesn't move too well. if you compare lara croft to, say, mario in mario 64, who is endlessly bouncing and running around, lara is inhibited by edges and careful turning and awkward acrobatics.

the levels in that game are wonderful and also claustrophobic at times and you're totally right in that that sense of mystery and urge to explore and try to reach places that weren't intended to be reached has been almost recklessly abandoned in modern games, where developers have become very wary of computational limits/glitches and bugs and so all of the space in those games seems fully intended, designed and realised. if a giant t-rex were to attack you, it would have a health bar and there would be indications as to methods to take it down. when i was first playing tomb raider, i wasn't even sure if you COULD kill that thing. it scared the shit out of me!!

im rambling sorry but uh yeah i really like tomb raider

tomb raider is great. no second- or third-gen game (idk if this is correct lingo) provides the same experience the early tomb raiders did back when they were released. today, they're still at the top of some sort of niche of gaming that I don't think has really been explored yet***

people are always a little hesitant to talk about the game, obviously because of the lara croft character and all the garbage that involves (though, as a tangent, it only enhances the early games: there's something quite different about exploring a frightening, cavernous,  and nondescript (yet occasionally grotesquely detailed) environment with a marketable, supposedly sexy low-poly humanoid figure, than exploring it with some macho male character or anything else). let's cut all that crud aside and acknowledge that, critically, the early tomb raiders are pretty remarkable games

the more recent PS2 tomb raiders are pretty good too, though they're much more your typical PS2-generation video game. the non-remake one in particular does some great stuff with exploration and mythology/archaeological fantasy, and the remake is worth playing if only to see a reinterpretation of the classic

with the prevalence of indie games and the technology and game making communities we have now, I'd really like to see someone attempt something in the same vein as the early tomb raiders. maybe it should be me, idk if anyone simultaneously knows more about pseudoarchaeology/mythology and 3d spacechat (not to boast......) contact me if you want consultation or to get involved. featuring ambient music by ragnar

***I just found out about this level editor that came with one of the games, apparently it has a strong community following http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raider_Chronicles#Tomb_Raider_Level_Editor and here's an engine being developed to make tomb raider-style games http://www.dxtre3d.com/
I really hope I have time to check out those custom levels http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHt09XFhN9g&feature=related unsettling dream-logic spaces, or is it tomb raider logic catamites...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEcA4QtDD0k holy shit


welcome to the dream fortress

I played Tomb Raider 1 and 2 when I was a little wiener, too.

I've only got one specific comment to make about it right now although I do understand where you all are coming from in what you've said, too.

You know when you pull a switch to open a door somewhere else in the level and it cuts away so you can see it happen. For some reason that slightly creeps me out and thrills me, but it doesn't necessarily do so in other games. I think it was just how I felt about it back then, and I'm feeling an echo of that now, but I think it has something to do with how silent the levels usually are and how they consist of these push-pull puzzles of moving parts...it just feels like there is some strange consciousness to the levels maybe? It is hard to put into words. I have become very bad at trying to put things into words.

I was just skipping through a few levels on youtube and was surprised at how much I remembered. These old feelings.

i spat on tomb raider...i couldn't care less of that pc-garbage epitomization... tits and cheap opengl gimmicks and 90's commercial game boredom... i had my n64... i couldn't care less... though i liked the intro of tomb raider 3 because of the bad lightning even at the time of it's release so the intro seemed like this strange perfect dark-cutscene with immovable low-quality faces mumbling something strange and moving in incoherent/non-sensible way + all this against this incomprehensible green pixel moss of a jungle and a camp especially due to bad lightning. and no subtitles and NO music at all. even the game show that played the intro of the game was good because it was always silent/without exciting music besides an middle-aged guy droning about games and then playing videos of them against silence.
all of sudden the mad guy lara apparently knows jumps into a crypt-hole with an unspirited/feeble madman laughter (?!? to which i thought that why didn't lara go in there first/why didn't she see it!! wats goin on...). so lara jumps after him... i really liked that how incomprehensible/starkly dark everything seemed and the whole relentless ear-drum beating CROAK CROAK CROAK CROAK CROAK CROAK in certain spots (jedi knight 2 nods approvingly) with chirp!!    chirp!!!!     chirp!!!  (THUNDER!!!    THUNDER!!!   THUNDER!!!) , against which we see as lara clumsily drop to her death all the time due to bad controls and bad level design.
sorry, this has nothing to do with tr1 (i really liked the ridicilous fuck you to anatomy - lara-acrobatics/the way lara could bend to all directions) but i needed to chime in to defend just a little for tr3... if you thought the intro of sonic 5 gb had strong, newfound storytelling then you're wrong, even 70's new wave/godard movies look astonished.


edit and this, gentlemen, is how it was with a pentium II trying to run lara croft 1 and hazy memories of tomb raider 3. just like the avatar: motionless, bonzi smiles slightly in a smug fashion. then he explodes and gibs fly everywhere. ¨:^B

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEcA4QtDD0k holy shit


welcome to the dream fortress

wow, look at that. look at that teal hellscape

really want to play tomb raider now! thanks...

Yeah, and that really worked well I think. This is also what makes Prince of Persia so nerve-wrecking. You don't KNOW if you're gonna make that jump. And if you don't you'll fall to a painful death.

absolutely, i think a lot of early 3d horror games (or rather games that are scary, whether intentional or not) all have slow/unintuitive/tank-like control over main character in common and it really does make things very scary

there was a jurassic park tech demo game (i cant find it) but it put you in control of a character in first person who moved very slowly and placed you in very confined corridors and no means to defend yourself against a velociraptor and it was one of the most terrifying things i've ever seen in games

sounds like jurassic park interactive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4AnmOcq1pI

warning: scary, dinosaurs

yeah thats the one! thanks

oh god helpp a bear



whats up pal

I actually have the Tomb Raider Trilogy on PS3 but I never got around to playing it. Maybe now I will!

agh lost my whole post fucking fuckers

anyway bonzi_buddy hell yeah about Tomb Raider III. I remember the London levels most fondly because normal Tomb Raider levels don't have to look much like a real place, but trying to represent London rooftops looks so bizarre. Also the subway station stuff was pretty nightmarish whahaha it just seems to go deeper and deeper and a bunch of torch-wielding weirdos are chasing you

but yeah also the lighting in Tomb Raider III was bizarre and never looked like sunlight or whatever it was supposed to represent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIJL3vf8mT8&feature=related but yeah check it out Tomb Raider III's version of reality!!

whoa, I didn't think I played much of tomb raider 3 but I remember that level pretty well. I like that you never really know which rooftops you can stand on and which will send you sliding to your death except by picking up on the slight difference in roof tile texture. was tomb raider 3 also the one that had the venice levels where you'd run into attack dogs locked upon tiny porches over the canals and eventually you'd pick up uzis or automatic pistols?

and which one had that long jungle slide in the first level, the one where you had to have played the game before or have bought the strategy guide in order to know that sliding into the grass near the bottom would kill you (razor grass)

edit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIJL3vf8mT8&feature=related but yeah check it out Tomb Raider III's version of reality!!

whoa is that butler a fucking alien or what

whoa, I didn't think I played much of tomb raider 3 but I remember that level pretty well. I like that you never really know which rooftops you can stand on and which will send you sliding to your death except by picking up on the slight difference in roof tile texture. was tomb raider 3 also the one that had the venice levels where you'd run into attack dogs locked upon tiny porches over the canals and eventually you'd pick up uzis or automatic pistols?

and which one had that long jungle slide in the first level, the one where you had to have played the game before or have bought the strategy guide in order to know that sliding into the grass near the bottom would kill you (razor grass)

edit: whoa is that butler a fucking alien or what

venice was tomb raider ii, tomb raider iii had the jungle slide. Yeah that was such a horrible way to begin the game. At least Tomb Raider II started you off in that boring cave where you couldn't really die until you got the hang of things