Hey all. Thanks to everyone who's watched and made their points in the comments. It's been great seeing the discussion on the aspects of these beloved games, from different perspectives, in preparation for the remasters. Just one thing to mention for further discussion: be sure not to include the disparagement of others, or insults to people's intelligence in your disagreements. It's understood that the games are beloved to many as it was a common childhood staple, but the points in the video can be disagreed and debated with, without personal attacks on potential new players, other commenters, or especially the content creators featured. In the video I stated that the TR fandom is a wonderful community, and out of all the points in the video, that's the one point that I don't want to be called a liar for.
Totally agree. It's easy to forget just how well tutorialised modern games are, as well as how well established and standardised certain mechanics and control schemes have become. 3D game design circa the 1990's was like the wild west. Very exciting period to be playing but also very frustrating at times too. The fact that these games were so ground-breakingly immersive made up for the frustration, I think. Thanks for including the clips of the streamers. Makes you realise how much games have changed in 25 years.
@@Alonzorion Thanks! Negative comments are natural, it's just that for such a community-centric discussion I'd rather not have the love for the classic series represented by stray insults. But I'm still thrilled that so many have their own perspective on things and decided to share. And thank you for the offer to contact. That means a lot coming from one of the first players I ever watched tackle these games on youtube!
@@thorin4406 The Wild West indeed! It was actually a joy to go back through various streamers and creators and remember the kinds of struggles they had that many of us could relate to. You're right, the immersion definitely made up for any frustration. It goes to show not only how games have changed, but also the difference in how kids absorb the world compared to adults. As a kid I was amazed and curious about the smallest things in these games, that I almost didn't mind being stuck on a level for days.
Love the video, it's spot on but I'm afraid I have to go language nerd on you. Precedence is when one thing is more important than another, "My work takes precedence over your event." Precedent is establishing a case for future cases to follow, "Breaking that sales record then set a precedent for our success now." You keep saying one, when you clearly mean the other. The plural of precedents does sound the exact same as precedence, which is why no one ever uses it as a plural.
This. And areas with many sloped surfaces that look too steep to climb on, but actually aren't. I recall getting stuck in 40 Fathoms in those rooms just filled with samey colour rock / dirt because I didn't realise just one of the many sloped squares was actually just below the threshold of Lara sliding on it, whereas the rest she would slip down.
For real. Classic Tomb Raider games are trials by fire, designed with little desire to follow clear game design methods... yet manage to be utter fun to keep coming back to despite of the amount of pain hammers they throw at you.
I'll wait to see if they'll feature the black Pacific Islander cannibals in TR3. Or if Lara shoots that un-armed helicopter pilot in the face in Antarctica in TR3.
@@AsakuraYukiko They are not going to change anything with the games, just the graphics and add new features like modern controls and stuff and trophy support of course [ all 200 of them ]. They are polynesians actually like The Rock for example.
What’s annoying is they actually DO show you in rare cases, usually at beginning levels. And when they do show you it’s done in a very efficient way and you can even input moves while it shows you
The joy of playing games in that era was the fact that you could be stuck for a week at some point then finally figuring it out either by accident, a friend who was stuck at the same place or by trying literally everything. It was great. Unless you actually played games like that in that time, you wouldn't understand.
Had the same experience back then. I kinda hate in when you are stuck nowadays the game starts helping you. In uncharted a sound and button prompt showed up where you needed to go. Tomb raider reboot you could push a button and showed all interactable items showed up. Give us at least a option to turn it on or off
@@MrRobin1991 you can turn it off in Shadow of the Tomb Raider I think... that game is kinda meh tho. Looks great, is kinda fun until you realize there's hardly any enemies.
The coin and booth both have 1D on it. All the others have 2D on it so it will take the coin because it's waiting for a second coin like it would in real life. That's the most real thing about these games. The London underground and ticket prices.
I remember playing tomb raider 3 as a kid and NEVER even getting to see combat. Because no one in my family could figure out how to progress in level 1. Can't wait to revisit it this Valentine's day
I firmly believe that the majority of Tomb Raider players from the previous generation would not have finished these games were it not for Stella. I remember my dad literally printing out Stella's old text walkthroughs way back in the day just so he could reference them while playing TR1 and 2.
she's a great sport! if you ask her something or just make a comment about the game she will answer almost immediately, she really loves what she does!
i think the things that may frustrate most newcomers in the classic CoreDesign TR games, are the same ones that make us love them. the sense of achievement you get everytime you discover a new area, opening, secret etc. is something i honestly never expierenced in other games. being able to solve a puzzle, get a key, pull a certain jump is what makes TR 1,2,3,4 and chronicles enjoyable
Old silent hill riddles would like to have a talk with you. Not platforming riddles but damn hard ones sometimes. Ok sh3 had a few riddles that were annoying cause you couldn't solve them without obscure outside game knowledge. For example the Tarot card riddle, or the old books riddle.
While these flaws appear to be many (enough to fill a half-hour long video), they were spread across 5 different games. I too was frustrated with some of those things back in the day, but people's tolerance to inconsistencies was a bit higher than today. 3D game development was pretty much new, and robust physics, mechanics, collision-detection and best-practices on a 3D world were yet to be discovered. Today they may feel as cheap tricks to make the games more challenging, but it was mostly limitations of the tech and a very small team forced to putting out a new game every year :)
That was how I discovered the purpose of the hand of Midas when I played TR1 as a kid lol I got frustrated because I couldn't figure out how to progress so I just started jumping Lara all over the place hoping something would happen and oh boy, did it lol
My favourite "why did nobody explain this beforehand?!!?" Moment is not even in the video... i am talking about the draggable corpse in TR IV's City of the Dead.... Honestly.... WE HAVE ALL BEEN STUCK THERE ONCE O.O
I feel like this video is exactly what my life has been building up to, I spent nearly a decade Let's Playing that series without a guide (and for some reason attempting to play it on a dance pad), it's been over and done with for a few years now, yet I still wake up in cold sweats thinking about windows, ropes, slingshots, and Werner not telling me how to get through life. 😿 Came here because I got a notification over being credited, was very confused, but stuck around because this is an absolutely excellent video (and nearly had a heartattack when I heard my own voice from nearly a decade and a half ago), you hit the nail on the "how was I supposed to know that" head, such an incredibly fun but frustrating series. x3 Thank you for making this!
Personally, while they ARE frustrating, I love the fact it doesn't elude to interactive objects in your inventory because it makes you think outside the box and really makes you feel as though you're involved. It really adds to the immersion as opposed to how most games tell you to use "item X" or highlight things you can interact with. It makes things harder but adds an element of realism to it.
I don't disagree with your general point, but some of the examples in this video are clearly just bad level design. Take, for instance, the inability to grab a ledge, or the Dragon being in the wrong place so the action-button doesn't work anymore. That doesn't add immersion or realism in my opinion, it feels 'unfair' and can be quite frustrating. That's what most of the examples in this video show
Honestly I absolutely hate it when games have button prompts. It really takes away from the immersion and dumbs things down so much. All games should come with an option to drop button prompts.
@@PikaLink91I feel like BioShock (the original game at least) and Journey to the Savage Planet does this well enough, as interactable objects are often clearly represented with shine.
Wow! TH-cam didn’t notify me of the tag for some reason, so imagine my surprise when I was watching through this video and saw my channel featured! Thank you so so much! 🥰❤️❤️❤️ It is an honour to be included among these other awesome Tomb Raider creators 😍 I completely agree with this video. I love games that are difficult and challenging and don’t hold your hand, however, there is a huge difference between that and bad game design or being deliberately difficult for the sake of it. For a puzzle game to be rewarding, there has to be some hint given to the player of what to do, and some of these Tomb Raider puzzles were too obscure or just plain mean. Some of them you could only discover by complete accident 😂 But of course, I love the games anyway and have many fond memories of playing this with my family as a kid as we all ran around for hours without a clue what to do 😂 I am so excited for the remasters and am curious if some of these issues will be fixed with the better graphics 🤔 As for the negative comments I’ve seen here, just ignore them ❤️ This was a great video and you really explained well some of the issues with the games. And all of the creators featured are awesome 😍 Some people choose to create positive content to keep this community alive, not leave random mean comments insulting someone’s intelligence, and they are the true raiders and heart of this community 🥰❤️❤️❤️
Thanks for drawing me here Suzanne ... two inclusions eh! Now I see you are not alone, but part of a wider community of frustrated raiders, however you are my favourite and unique ... 'Stop it Lara' 😅💙
So true. I remembering being stuck in Venice for WEEKS because I thought I could hear enemy footsteps which meant there MUST have been more to explore. Turns out what I was hearing was just the sound effect of the water sloshing the boats back and forth. But MY GOD, I spent so long in that level trying every conceivable thing to find where Bartoli's non-existent henchmen were.
Reminds me of those point and click games where you would try every item in the inventory with everything else. Games were just more difficult back then, or at least they required more thought.
lol i remember getting stuck at the opera house for soo long, and i was stuck inside where all the fans are. I didnt know i had to backflip inorder to go on the shelf, yet i just had to mess up with the buttons until i surprisingly made it @@ArdinVincent
My favourite memory as a kid was 6 year old me trying to do the first running jump in TR1 with a pit and a bear. My mom said: why don't you try taking a step back and run to see if she jumps further? It worked. After being stuck for half an hour, that changed my perspective regarding puzzles. My mom saw logic where I was used to think in practical gaming mechanics, press X key to jump in a certain way, action complete. Fell in love with Tomb Raider ever since.
They explain running jumps in Lara's Home, it's one of the things they do right... everything else tho? Well, climbing and shimmying too. But nothing else.
I didn't speak english back then or my parents. Videogames helped me. I just clicked every option until I started the game and I didn't play Croft Manor much because it didn't give me story progression and that's all I wanted, FMV's to at least give me context. Even to this day I started to play old games to get jokes that I missed because my english skills were very poor.
Im surprised 40 Fathom was not mentioned. The level just starts with you in the middle of the deep sea expecting you to find the entrance to Maria Doria. When I was 12 playing the game, I used the cheat code to get hundreds of med pack and swim all around and spamming med pack until I found the entrance. The joy and happiness I had was indescribable!
There is a trail of stuff on the floor that takes you to the wreck. I say this with an air of superiority... knowing that I did the exact same as you when I first played it
The photo mode on the remastered version let's you basically explore the entire level, at least up to any closed doors or unbroken crumbling floor panels since it's not exactly noclip, which unexpectedly helps a lot in letting you scope out where some pickups are as well as traps and enemies. I'm not sure if that use was intended, usually photo mode is restricted to a certain radius though TR has some beautiful locales that you may want to snap pics of without Lara so it is useful that way as well
Keep in mind in the original Tomb Raider era, games still came with physical manuals and booklets explaining things that are not explained in game. Also, there weren't as many games and we were supposed to last longer, so you'd have some rough puzzles that you'd be stuck on for weeks and you would either figure it out, have a friend that figured it out, see it on a magazine or just give up and move on. People give up in minutes today, because there's always a gigantic backlog of awesome games waiting). That said, I did hate some of the things mentioned here, even back then.
This! I actually only progressed by pushing my way through the blades in the water and taking a few medipacks to survive, lol. I didn't find out about the required swan dive till after I finished the game 🙈
Really cool you added examples of people being confused by the new mechanics! Absolutely loved the show of how these mechanics were confusing rather than just stating that they were.
In TR Angel of Darkness there is a boss that you need to switch targets to kill it but you don't need to do that anywhere else and I didn't even know it could be done.That was the only situation in TR that I needed to use a guide.
Additional uncomfortable fact : (happens in TR2 and TR3 occasionally) everytime you ride a quadbike or a snowmobile, the rerrain gives the vehicle so much randomness of the direction and the velocity that make you very difficult to control. Whenever you are on the top of the hill, even though its height is very small, you gotta be careful because we never know it might me bounced off to nowhere.
I knew that game developers back in the day used to intentionally make things obscure in their games to make them appear longer than they actually are but i never realized TR did it to this level. I guess i just played that much of them back in the day that none of this seems obscure to me anymore lol.
It’s such a new and fresh perspective for me. Im 23 now and have been playing classics since I was five also played many customs. I’ve never given a thought about all of that stuff (mechanics, controls, etc.) because everything is literally encoded in my by now.
I replayed The Last Revelation again a while ago and I was appalled by the ammount of obscure, borderline undiscoverable backtracking you'd have to do to get past the Alexandria section. Then I remembered why sometimes I'd get stuck for months in these games.
Love TLR but it had some of the worst places to be stuck in. Cairo with the bike and having to pick an absolutely random pipe to combine it and then add it to bike with hit detection as bad as on the dragon, so even if you GUESS right you might still miss it. So many steps to do that one thing across three levels! Also Senet was confusing and we got stuck with ropes too.
I feel very vindicated by this list lol. Very on-point with the mentions, though I'm personally surprised that the "Taking damage from a gun turret to then enter a room to then move a corpse to open a hatch to climb into a vent she could easily step into" section from Cairo wasn't mentioned. That whole level for me is the worst for these types of practices. Well done on the video mate!
Dang it, I knew there were a couple more crazy things in TR4 that I wasn't remembering! Though honestly, I think I subconsciously block some of those out of my memory. Trust the experts to remember them though. Thanks Steve.
Honestly, TLR positively impressed me (to my surprise) up until the Cairo section. Both artistically and puzzle wise, I thought the game took a huge plunge (into obtuseness in the case of the puzzles) from that point on.
@@alexsm3882 While I love the games, they started going downhill with the last revelation. Hopefully they can go back to her roots. I heard they MIGHT be doing just that, although it's all hearsay right now.
In TR4 what really stumped me was The Great Hypostyle Hall and shooting the red-brown-ish ball off a column to break the floor and unlock hidden chamber with passage back to the Secret Lake. You go through the 3 chambers climbing, using monkey bars, flipping switches and the top platform is essentially a dead end. In modern games you'd probably get a hint/notebook/drawing/schematics/narration to tell you that you have to break the floor "somehow", but TR4, right at the top o the Great Hypostyle Hall, that stopped me in my tracks for weeks. No internet, no PSX Magazine, none of my peers playing TR4. They say modern games overdo the yellow "this way" paint and hints, but that TR4 was something else.
Awesome video! These games were ruthless 🤣 so excited for the remasters though 😁 will be interesting to see how they deal with the obscure moments as you mentioned! At least us classic players will know what we’re doing - I think….. (hope😂) Thanks so much for the feature too ☺️
This counterintuitiveness and inconsistency have always let me down about this series and are the reason why I only dared finishing one of the games. Thanks for making a video about it.
The library of Alexandria. Theres some "scrape" marks on the ground that indicate a block is supposed to be pulled out the wall to let you continue. But they're not very oblivious.
exactly, I loved TR and have so memories of it.. but ppl act insane if you mention it had some flaws, even for an old-style game.. they'll act as it's a sacred thing and accuse you of not being TR fan. 😅
Great video! It was interesting to see players struggling with things in the first two games; as someone who has played them dozens of times I've never thought till now about how are you meant to know things like removing the dagger! I think what got me the most with the fourth game is that Von Croy meticulously explains how to do everything, but when you get the the rope - the ONE new thing to the series - he doesn't think to explain how to swing on it!
Awesome video. You really hit every point perfectly. It was funny to hear you explain the unclear nature of these design choices and me remembering my frustration during some of those moments. The TR3 London levels, Last Revelation levels after you get to Alexandria, and the stealth kill with the crowbar were the highlights for me. Those were the parts where I have vivid memories of being lost and frustrated. Then, depending on my mood, I would feel accomplished if I finally found progress or I would curse at the TV for what it put me through.
Thank you! It's really nice to hear about other people's similar relatable experiences. These levels really are a mixed bag of awful frustrations and satisfying accomplishments. I think the crowbar stealth kill took me multiple play sessions to figure out back then. And it took a good few years before I actually completed TR3's Lud's Gate without doin' a cheeky level skip.
I appreciate how the remaster gives you an exclamation point when you're next to an object you can interact with. It's a slight QoL, but it still doesn't change how some of the interactions in Tomb Raider are obscure AF. Not to mention climbable walls and ceilings that don't look at all like climbable walls and ceilings.
Agree on all fronts. The TR4 Coastal Ruins section is just a mess and I think whilst very cool also has a high concentration of poor design decisions: - Gates that look the same, but some are openable by the crowbar and others are not...except they are from the opposite side later! - Things that the crowbar can be used on don't trigger Lara to use the crowbar when pressing the Use key, you have to select the crowbar from the inventory. - The damn flip openable trapdoors that give no hint they can be opened from the top, but they do have a chain underneath. - The clue for the planetarium puzzle cannot be seen without knowing that the binoculars have a flashlight function. - The serpent statue fire puzzle in The Lost Library where the scroll explaining how to solve it cannot be picked up until you reach the puzzle and have to backtrack to get the scroll. - It isn't obvious that you are doing damage to the bronze soldiers which can only be hit from the front. I was trying to hit them with scoped crossbow, but apparently shotgun with wideshot is best. - The optional exits/re-entry gates from levels hanging off the Coastal Ruins that dump you back into the Coastal Ruins before you finished what you needed to do in those levels forcing you to go back around the levels or backtrack though those same gates.
I remember playing the classic games a year ago and noticed some of the difficulty coming from the obscure things in the games and sometimes I had to come on TH-cam to find the answers to some of them! Thanks for pointing out some of these!
In all fairness to grabbing the knife, it's very explicit if you watch the opening cutscene to the game that you need to grab the knife to kill the dragon. So much so that on the same blind playthrough I had to google to get past the windows and the midair roll, I instantly knew what my job was when the dragon fell over.
A lot of these older 3D games need walkthroughs to get through them in any reasonable amount of time. Not sure how anyone could get all the masks in Majora without some guide
@@charliemartin-k7mAnd that's why they're considered favorites. Tomb Raider 3 and the last revelation were too challenging if you tried to finish them without any kind of guide for support.
@@RitualBlood TLR is kinda easier because it had limitless saves like TR2, the puzzles were obscure but combat, ammo and medkit check wasn't as bad as 3... except for enemies that need aimed shots or explosions, that is.))) Then it became Resident Evil.
"Thank you Stella" has become the prayer of all new TR players over the years haha Thank you for your video, you did a great deal of research and it shows! It was also a bit of an eye-opener, i realize now there are so many clanky mecanics in these games I had never thought twice about because I was told about them as a kid 😅
Fantastic video! Really encapsulates a lot of frustration that the original series had (nice to see other players struggling at the same parts!) Still I wouldn't change majority of it, because the game always makes you learn and adapt. With that you feel a real sense of pride when you finally beat the game! Again though, amazing video enjoyed the watch!
Those of us who were born without a manual in an age of internet guides had a little thing called physical media, the games came in discs, and within those boxes that contained the discs also had a little book pamphlet on which they'd explain characters, controls, guides, and even have extra pages to write your own notes, which nobody ever used except for writing cheat codes. Eternal ring won't explain players how to create rings, and it's not because "fromsoft trusts their players" but because they explained it in that pamphlet on physical media, which is no longer available. Also, nothing I find more hilarious than people complaining about yellow paint in remakes, saying they didn't need it back in the old days, and now they can't figure out how to play tomb raider without a guide lmao.
I hated the yellow paint in Legend but Anniversary had a good balance between obscurity and guiding (it had lightened ledges or pointed to them by level design). Original games did that to SOME extent too, but not much.
Locking the butler in the fridge is canon btw. In Lara's nightmare im rise of tr you can find a diary entry saying she locked him in because he creeped her out for following her everywhere 😂
I’m so glad this video exisits, growing up as a kid playing tomb raider 1,2,3 I don’t know why we played them. Looking back these are awful games, so much time wasted going from one place to another and another, painful! Tomb raider 4 had some redemption but these games don’t want me to go back and play them
Liked before it even began because I love videos like this. There are soooo many "wtf?! I wouldn't have ever guessed that" moments in the Classics...chef is one of the best
There wa defo a lack of hand holding with these games back in the day! I do think some of these things can be figured out with intuition - you probably wouldve used the jump twist WAY before XIan in TR2, and the Dagger is pulled out of the dragon in the intro! Still sometimes it really felt like the solution was kinda obscure sometimes!
I think the most obnoxious design sin that I've encountered yet in my re-play of TR2 (I'm currently in Tibet) is that bit on the sunken ship, near the inverted swimming pool, where you push a switch that opens some double-doors. It's not obvious that when those doors are in the open position they actually seal off _another path_ that you'll need later, creating a dead-end that - when you come to it - just looks like any other dead-end ... so you think that's all it is, backtrack, thinking nothing of it, then end up lost with nowhere to go and no idea what the problem is. Nowhere else in the TR games (iirc) is there a bit where you need to _close a door again_ once you've opened it because the door being open blocks a later path. So it's not only unclear what the problem even is when you run into it but it's also deeply anti-intuitive because it goes against the whole design ethos of the rest of the game where opening things up is always 100% a good thing for progress.
Them levels were made by a different pesron, it was Neal Boyd (who was notorious for messing with players). Levels that were made by Heather Gibson was so much more smooth. Boyd is one of the worst game designer you can find. Repetitive levels with almost constant backtracking, instatraps - sometimes on time limit - etc etc. And with those ugly tricks like when you HAVE to read guide inless you'll be trapped forever. To me, Boyd levels in the middle of the game was absolutely unnececcary and killed all the buzz. They feel more suitable for DLC, not the main game. When you move to Tibet\Temple, it's already too late and you are completely burnt out. It was like that back in 1997, and it still like that in 2024.
I was watching one of my friend whos been a gamer for 20 years struggle for over 2 hours on the fist mission of Tomb Raider 2 and after about 3 levels he dubbed it more challenging that Dark Souls which I find hard to disagree with
This is one of the things that you experience throught your whole childhood and don't know how to communicate and then whoop, there's a video that perfectly explains it in to words. Tomb raider is my favourite series ever, but there sure were a lot of obscure questionnable designs. These design flaws in tomb raider became even more apparent after I played Zelda which was much more intuitive
16:24 I feel so VALIDATED knowing I'm not only one struggled with this ledge in the Temple of Xian! 😭 Also good to know everyone struggled with the ledge over the acid at 16:16.
Replaying it right now, and acid I did the late grab and it worked, but damaged her... which until that point is a sign I did something wrong, figures, you need to land on feet.
I wasn't a kid, but I spent a lot of time there too LOL. That rope swing thing was a new mechanic added to TR4 (it wasn't present in TR3 which I was familiar with) and it took me a while to discover it
Core Design are going to be trolling from beyond the grave with the release of the remastered classic TR games. I had the Prima official guides back in the day, thankfully. I'm not sure what I would have done without them!
This video was great! Finding and compiling those bits from other creators must have been time-consuming. I found the deep dive into the game design fascinating. Also I think some of the more negative comments here may have missed the point of this video and taken it as an attack on their favorite games. But if anything, this video felt like a huge love letter to the classic Tomb Raider games!
This was a fun watch. I was little little when tomb raider came out and I remember my dad buying TR II when we first got our PlayStation. Very nostalgic for me. I ended up buying the remastered version on the switch the day that it dropped, and my god. There were so many instances in the first game that about drove me up the wall. I don’t know how they expected you to know what to do. Thank god for guides. Lol.
I exceptionally like the obscurity for the Dagger of Xian boss, though. In my opinion, it can be seen as an extremely rewarding experience if the player is immersed in the game. During the opening cutscene of Tomb Raider 2, it shows the battle between the monks and the dragon. As they fought, the dragon was finally defeated when a downed monk pulled the dagger from the dragon's belly. This should have been a huge hint to the player during the fight. I know not everyone would have the foresight to remember a detail like that, but I personally think the developers did a good job, as the clue was in the very beginning all along. Tomb Raider 2 is my most favourite classic. A fellow NLNMASPO player!
Maaaaan I would kill for tomb raider 4 remastered. I love ancient Egypt and learning about it, but also fighting their gods and kicking ass. Please let this new remastered series be the catalyst that finally brings TLR back 🙏
"What you actually need to do is use the night vision mode on Lara's binoculars to find the secret button combinations in the dark..." ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?! I was never able to beat The Last Revelation because THIS was the puzzle that stumped me. I spent hours trying various combinations to absolutely no avail and just chalked it up to potentially missing the solution being present in the level prior. The issue is, once you get to this point by traversing a pyramid, it's almost impossible to go back anywhere, so I just sorta left it alone and never got back to it for a variety of reasons (other stuff came along, hard drive became corrupted, lost the save files, etc.) I can't believe something so arbitrarily stupid was the solution all along. Throughout this video I didn't really find issue with most stuff because you could figure it out through experimentation, but holy fuck, this was literally built into starting equipment and there was absolutely ZERO indication it was there!
I think a lot of these instances are simply limitations or the time as well. There wasn’t as much memory available to do full tutorials voiced once upon a time, so developers counted on players reading the included booklets which would fill in those gaps, typically. And in the case of the fall damage, I think people are too harsh on it. It’s the equivalent of the start of TR2013, she falls on a spike and is forced to walk slow as she is “injured”. Old developers in the 90s couldn’t create scripted events like today as easy. Granted, the limited medipacks can add difficulty, but it’s not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Awesome video though, really.
Thank you! In some ways I agree with you on fall damage, but it's just the fact that modern games are so controlled which really lets them get away with this stuff. Decent players with good resource management (and save management) shouldn't suffer from falling onto the lifeboat at all, it's true. But I know first-time players are fast-and-loose with meds so it's slightly worrying how they'll fare. I remember when I first played TR2 I fully ran out of meds in Barkhang (you can guess why) and it basically ended up soft-locking me in combat situations, so I had to revert to an older save, or use a cheat if I knew any. Worst case scenario, if someone arrives at the lifeboat with 0 meds and 70% health, they'll come away from it with a net negative of 0 meds and 10% health. If they're not good with combat, they're dead meat and should probably restart the level.
This. It's an old game and its 'faults' are largely typical or understandable for its time. I was surprised to learn that people have such an issue with that drop, it isn't something I ever gave much thought to. Come to think of it, there are drops in Demon's Souls that force the loss of health (probably other games too).
Excellent video! I especially appreciated the inclusion of the Ireland levels in Tomb Raider: Chronicles, which truly were showstoppers for child-me😭 I still remember it as if it was only yesterday. Finding & combining a rubber tube (which I initially could not get to either for quite a while, since I really thought you had to make it over the wooden barrier in the pond somehow) and a pitchfork to create a catapult that you have to use... somewhere? (in _Gallows Tree_ ), and knowing that you have to use the sprint key to make Lara swing (higher/further) on the rope, all while you're stressed because of the imps that are throwing rocks at you causing your health to gradually deplete (in _Old Mill_ ) [here I eventually just had to quit the game and give up] was just brutal. Once you know it's easy, but if you're (very) young and/or do not have access to help, it's very difficult to figure out by yourself (it's so obscure, wow).
i got through tr1 and 2 with no hints or walkhroughs at all, but tr3 was a nightmare, i couldnt finish it without cheats and walkthroughs and when i got to the end i never touched it again
I never finished TR3 but I'm planing to finally do it with the remastered version. I'm also looking forward to playing the DLCs which I never got to do before.
@@Emma-R i was screwed because i tackled area 51 last, every walkthrough said to take it on first because you lose your weapons, i didnt know that, that game was a mess and a slog, i finished it with cheats and walkthroughs, but tr1 and 2 were so well crafted, that you could finish them without any kind of help, it gave a great sense of accomplishment
13:52 I feel like this is one of the few good examples of introducing a new mechanic without telling the player directly. You start the level in a tiny little area with literally nothing else to do with the big thing that stands out, so you're likely to try shooting it sooner or later. Compare that to other levels where the map is bigger and more open, where your next objective to progress could be anywhere and there are more things to distract you, chances of you trying to shoot everything you see just to see if it works are much lower, lol. For all you know, maybe you just missed a key or something, but here the level has literally just started. Aaaaand then you have shooting a boulder to drop it on the floor to reveal a secret underground area (I lucked out a lot in 4 and I actually figured this one out very quickly but still, I feel for others 😆)
Excellent point actually! The bell clip is in the video, but I actually don't really think it's one of the problematic shootable objects in the series, for the reasons you've mentioned. The developers did well to set precedence at the start of the level right away, and consistently have the player make use of that precedent afterwards.
I had all the Prima strategy guides for these games because I used it as an excuse to my parents that I was “reading” and not just playing video games. The Last Revelation was my first experience doing a full playthrough on my own after only being able to get through The Great Wall in TR2 at a friend’s house. Everything in this video is 100% accurate, and I kinda envy not being able to “eff around and find out more” like so many have. But after conquering TLR (with SO much help) I then was able to get the previous three and experience them. Been a huge fan ever since. The Remastered with new graphics and tank controls has been a pleasure these last few weeks and I’ve done 1 and 2 on my own or based on memory with some help from Stella along the way. I’m starting TR3 in a few minutes, actually.
This is why i encourage people to use guides and walkthroughs for the Core Tomb Raider games. Some stuff is just obscure and if you don't have some heads up and forewarning about what's to come and how get past it you're gonna have a bad time.
The Obscurity you're not told about is using your guns on the boat during the Venice stage. I only recently learning about this early this year and wish I knew about this
Well that's the thing; it was not an intended feature, and I believe it's unique to the remaster. But because some of the game mechanics tend to be so hidden and obscure, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's part of Lara's skillset and something that you're meant to do. Many people would argue that you just need to try everything and you would have figured that out on your own. But I think unintentional things like these are part of the reason why that's not the best expectation to put on players.
@@charliemartin-k7m yeah but back in the 90s games main story were long and fun. Nowadays few games babysit you and give you a short campaign or main story to focus on multiplayer online.
Your videos are always a like :). Great to see so many other TR enthusiasts' youtube channels featured here too. ❤❤❤ Happy Valentine's Day everybody. Hsppy Birthday Lara!
I always liked the level designs of TR games. Yeah these games are far from perfect and have a lot of bugs, but what most people call flaws It's just challenges, part of the fun of these games is to figure it out what to do.
Perhaps one of the most frustrating "logic" things in the first Tomb Raider, is that if Lara could just reach through the bars at the beginning of the level to grab the scarab, you could bybass the majority of the Sanctuary of the Scion level lol. That, and the fuse on the conveyor belt in Natla's Mines.
A few years ago, I did a playthrough of the first three titles and without a doubt, you can certainly tell that whoever was developing these games wanted to keep adding new things every time to make it feel "fresh." By the time I got to the fourth title, I couldn't really stomach it anymore. The puzzles became increasingly vague and nonsensical, the knuckle gymnastics needed in some situations to keep from dying were more than frustrating.. but the classic Tomb Raider games are still some of my all-time favorites after 20+ years of gaming. Good video here.
Only the floor that can be opened was very cryptic. The other examples was just logical thinking. Its obvious for shooting the glass, because lara is a badass :-) Its obvious to jump with the torch in Laras hands because the rope is above her and to burn it she must jump. Sure the swinging the rope can be a little difficult.. but it is not that hard. Its just put the keys and memorise it. When I first play the game and get to my first swinging rope experience I quickly learned: it is the / or ? key to swing. Andddd go! To all the new players who complain about this: you don't have any frustration tolerance!
Shooting glass as a mechanic isn't really consistent, the games in general are not necessarily logical/rely on common sense. In fact, part of the charm is learning about these specific games' quirks and what you can and can't do. So for instance, expecting you to be able to light up a rope just by approaching it doesn't sound like anything you'd seen in TR up to that point, everything was usually precise and methodical, etc. Don't get me wrong, I really like these games despite me only really getting into them in recent years, and I beat most of TR4 without any kind of help, but I think it's fine to admit some things just weren't designed or telegraphed very well. There were even times where I had the right idea but due to a somewhat poor implementation of a mechanic or inconsistency, I was lead to believe that just wasn't what I was supposed to do
I think getting stuck is part of the charm of these games. Then when you finally figure out how to progress it's such a rush. Back when we played them for the first time, we didn't even have internet access, at most a guide in a video game magazine -- those often had errors too. Nostalgia
I agree with most of what you said. Mainly I disagree about the vehicle stuff because using Square to move the UPV in Lud's Gate makes sense because Square = swim, jumping out of the Venice boat seemed intrinsic to me and action makes sense for propelling most vehicles. With the rope swing, do people not just press every button to see what works in the moment? I think optional (but recommended by the game) tutorial text boxes and button icons for interactive stuff would be a big plus. Great video man 😊
This is the things that makes old games better then new games also so satisfying when you figure out stuff instead of getting told how to do it, i mean i beat the first 3 tomb raider games on ps1 before I was even a teenager but people nowadays need long tutorials and someone holding their hands
@@pitchdark2024 It's not great game design when it leaves people frustrated, running all over the level 10 times and not finding what they need to proceed.
@@coladictmaybe you are just easely frustrated , my daughter is the same , attention span like 5 min , and when she doesn’t find it , she quits , gives up and doesn’t touch the game anymore … then she plays with me together , and she asks : daddy why do you always find solutions and I can’t , I say persistence darling …
It is one thing to not have constant prompts telling you what to do, but GOOD game design is to reasonably lead the player towards the correct solution without straight up giving the solution away. These games don't.
@@PikaLink91Ofcourse a person with an Animepicture would say that. These Games do, it is just not eyecatching tho. Thats why you need to "USE" your "BRAIN" .. if there is still such a thing left in most of your heads tho!
@@VVfanXXLx3 For one thing, it's not an anime, it's a video game. Second I may be a degenerate weeb with only two brain cells, but those two are enough that I know not to bother with the likes of you. Have a nice weekend, friend :P
@@VVfanXXLx3it’s funny that a grown adult on an internet is judging someone based on their pfp. Instead of calling out someone’s pfp as an insult, how about you actually come up with a good argument, or even better, just respectfully disagree without the need to insult others?
Honestly I was surprised at how straightforwarly solvable TR1 was when I just recently played it with the remaster - I was always so used to stuff like the windows (which incidentally, I only found out that they could be shot out this week, and I've owned a copy of 2 literally my entire life) that I didn't think TR1 would be much different in its obscurity. Pleasantly surprised to find at least the first game is mostly bad design free. I even had a blast with the Unfinished Business levels.
There are a couple of places where Bartoli's goons shoot the windows out, so the clues are there. But, yeah, it's not like a modern game where they'd have Lara say "Those windows look fragile..." every 5 seconds and not shut up until you shot one.
@@blatherskite3009 specifically, devs included attract mode demos. If you don't press anything in main menu, there are three short clips where they play as Lara, and they picked parts they figured veterans of 1 could be stuck with: shooting diver with harpoon gun, getting onto snowmobile, and lighting a flare, shooting out the window and dodge-roll fighting a gun mobster.
I loved this games but the amount of frustration playing this before internet was just too much sometimes 😂 TR1 was perfect but after that they started to break the rules of what was interactive and play us (troll us). I think the games sold less and less partially because of this. TR3 and 4 throw so much crap at you sometimes that I understand most people would just give up. Not me because I was obsessive 😅
Tomb Raider 3 drove me over the edge. I physically hate that game. A controversial opinion maybe, but the 1st and 2nd game had their moments with difficulty for sure, but the 3rd game was a joke. To this day it is the only Tomb Raider game I have never beaten. It has sat on my shelf untouched since the late 1990s. I do play the other games regularly, but not the 3rd. No way.
I don't agree with you. Always complaining about the controls. I do hate the controls of the new one. Because of these controls, people do still play this game. And the excellent levels and saving.
The remasters apparently will let you choose between classic and Anniversary control schemes. I am OK with the tank controls, but a modern audience won't put up with them.
Positive opinions on the classic controls are valid, yes. I'm fine with the tank controls too. Personally, I just want Lara (Or Werner) to let us know about all the buttons that will be necessary on our journey.
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Hey all. Thanks to everyone who's watched and made their points in the comments. It's been great seeing the discussion on the aspects of these beloved games, from different perspectives, in preparation for the remasters.
Just one thing to mention for further discussion: be sure not to include the disparagement of others, or insults to people's intelligence in your disagreements. It's understood that the games are beloved to many as it was a common childhood staple, but the points in the video can be disagreed and debated with, without personal attacks on potential new players, other commenters, or especially the content creators featured.
In the video I stated that the TR fandom is a wonderful community, and out of all the points in the video, that's the one point that I don't want to be called a liar for.
Totally agree. It's easy to forget just how well tutorialised modern games are, as well as how well established and standardised certain mechanics and control schemes have become.
3D game design circa the 1990's was like the wild west. Very exciting period to be playing but also very frustrating at times too. The fact that these games were so ground-breakingly immersive made up for the frustration, I think.
Thanks for including the clips of the streamers. Makes you realise how much games have changed in 25 years.
@@Alonzorion Thanks! Negative comments are natural, it's just that for such a community-centric discussion I'd rather not have the love for the classic series represented by stray insults. But I'm still thrilled that so many have their own perspective on things and decided to share.
And thank you for the offer to contact. That means a lot coming from one of the first players I ever watched tackle these games on youtube!
@@thorin4406 The Wild West indeed!
It was actually a joy to go back through various streamers and creators and remember the kinds of struggles they had that many of us could relate to.
You're right, the immersion definitely made up for any frustration. It goes to show not only how games have changed, but also the difference in how kids absorb the world compared to adults. As a kid I was amazed and curious about the smallest things in these games, that I almost didn't mind being stuck on a level for days.
Love the video, it's spot on but I'm afraid I have to go language nerd on you. Precedence is when one thing is more important than another, "My work takes precedence over your event." Precedent is establishing a case for future cases to follow, "Breaking that sales record then set a precedent for our success now." You keep saying one, when you clearly mean the other. The plural of precedents does sound the exact same as precedence, which is why no one ever uses it as a plural.
@@fusionspace175 Woah. Well you learn something new everyday. Words that have multiple nouns associated with them are the other bane of my existence.
Another honorable mention imo: climbing walls that don't look like climbing walls.
This. And areas with many sloped surfaces that look too steep to climb on, but actually aren't. I recall getting stuck in 40 Fathoms in those rooms just filled with samey colour rock / dirt because I didn't realise just one of the many sloped squares was actually just below the threshold of Lara sliding on it, whereas the rest she would slip down.
For real. Classic Tomb Raider games are trials by fire, designed with little desire to follow clear game design methods... yet manage to be utter fun to keep coming back to despite of the amount of pain hammers they throw at you.
Dear gosh, Kayzaac, that name brings back memories
@@Alonzorion You're still around! I thought you disappeared! Glad to see you well :)
TR2 Gold had molten gold acting as lava ... except for one secret in which you could walk on specific tiles of molten gold to pick it up.
Can’t wait to experience all this chaos again in remastered graphics in a few weeks!
Same lol... I can't wait.
@torontoclarinetist: Same here, although I know TR3 will be difficult.
I'll wait to see if they'll feature the black Pacific Islander cannibals in TR3.
Or if Lara shoots that un-armed helicopter pilot in the face in Antarctica in TR3.
@@AsakuraYukiko They are not going to change anything with the games, just the graphics and add new features like modern controls and stuff and trophy support of course [ all 200 of them ]. They are polynesians actually like The Rock for example.
I've been mentally preparing myself for experiencing these games for the first time after only playing the Survivor trilogy beforehand
"Not showing what door a lever opens". OMG that drove me absolutely insane.
Facts
Meanwhile every JRPG and Zelda game needs a 40 second cutscene showing you exactly what door a lever opens in excruciating detail.
@@vcdonovan5943 there is a happy medium but both are not ideal
@@vcdonovan5943 I mean yeah Zelda could speed things up a bit
What’s annoying is they actually DO show you in rare cases, usually at beginning levels. And when they do show you it’s done in a very efficient way and you can even input moves while it shows you
some of these are so obscure
yet amazingly, every single one of us knew we could lock the butler in the fridge :D
The joy of playing games in that era was the fact that you could be stuck for a week at some point then finally figuring it out either by accident, a friend who was stuck at the same place or by trying literally everything. It was great. Unless you actually played games like that in that time, you wouldn't understand.
Had the same experience back then. I kinda hate in when you are stuck nowadays the game starts helping you. In uncharted a sound and button prompt showed up where you needed to go. Tomb raider reboot you could push a button and showed all interactable items showed up. Give us at least a option to turn it on or off
@@MrRobin1991 you can turn it off in Shadow of the Tomb Raider I think... that game is kinda meh tho. Looks great, is kinda fun until you realize there's hardly any enemies.
Yeah, back then i played ocarina of time, i was 7 or 8. They released majoras mask before i got through Oot lol
That one ticket booth in Aldwych that works and the others that don't.
Fuck that one booth in particular 😂
That level in general is confusing af, even if you know roughly what you’re doing 😬🥴
i didn't even know they were supposed to be ticket booths 😭
@@scytheslashme neither
The coin and booth both have 1D on it. All the others have 2D on it so it will take the coin because it's waiting for a second coin like it would in real life.
That's the most real thing about these games. The London underground and ticket prices.
I remember playing tomb raider 3 as a kid and NEVER even getting to see combat. Because no one in my family could figure out how to progress in level 1. Can't wait to revisit it this Valentine's day
I at least saw some combat in that first area. The game starts out so deadpan.
Lmao!
I expect your family enjoyed exploring Lara's home, at least!
@@Joe_334The game starts with you sliding down a slop with a spike pit. Tomb Raider 3 is some BS.
@@TenshiCat That's mostly all we did, It was blast honestly, and it was a blast to revisit all these years later
The Stella fairy always came to our aid when we needed her 😂
I firmly believe that the majority of Tomb Raider players from the previous generation would not have finished these games were it not for Stella. I remember my dad literally printing out Stella's old text walkthroughs way back in the day just so he could reference them while playing TR1 and 2.
She's a bloody legend
She still does walkthroughs too! If I need a hint, she's my go-to!
she's a great sport!
if you ask her something or just make a comment about the game she will answer almost immediately, she really loves what she does!
@@MastaGambit Stella is still at it too! she must really love all the attention now that the remaster is out!
i think the things that may frustrate most newcomers in the classic CoreDesign TR games, are the same ones that make us love them. the sense of achievement you get everytime you discover a new area, opening, secret etc. is something i honestly never expierenced in other games. being able to solve a puzzle, get a key, pull a certain jump is what makes TR 1,2,3,4 and chronicles enjoyable
Old silent hill riddles would like to have a talk with you. Not platforming riddles but damn hard ones sometimes. Ok sh3 had a few riddles that were annoying cause you couldn't solve them without obscure outside game knowledge. For example the Tarot card riddle, or the old books riddle.
And Angel of Darkness, which I personally enjoyed exactly as much, if not more, than the others.
While these flaws appear to be many (enough to fill a half-hour long video), they were spread across 5 different games. I too was frustrated with some of those things back in the day, but people's tolerance to inconsistencies was a bit higher than today. 3D game development was pretty much new, and robust physics, mechanics, collision-detection and best-practices on a 3D world were yet to be discovered. Today they may feel as cheap tricks to make the games more challenging, but it was mostly limitations of the tech and a very small team forced to putting out a new game every year :)
“New players of classic Tomb Raider games are always expected to fuck around and find out.” 😂
That was how I discovered the purpose of the hand of Midas when I played TR1 as a kid lol I got frustrated because I couldn't figure out how to progress so I just started jumping Lara all over the place hoping something would happen and oh boy, did it lol
This actually helps it quite a bit. That you know these games throw this type of shit at you. You know to expect the unexpected and try stuff out.
I would not mind doing that with Lara, in bed. 😎
why you didnt try pressing interact with every single block in the level, put in some effort
@@Obelion_right? That's normal
My favourite "why did nobody explain this beforehand?!!?" Moment is not even in the video... i am talking about the draggable corpse in TR IV's City of the Dead.... Honestly.... WE HAVE ALL BEEN STUCK THERE ONCE O.O
Absolutely! I was stuck there for a week. And those turrets certainly didn't help
That game broke me 🤦💀
This was an awesome video, I really enjoyed it! Thank you so much for mentioning me 😎😃
I feel like this video is exactly what my life has been building up to, I spent nearly a decade Let's Playing that series without a guide (and for some reason attempting to play it on a dance pad), it's been over and done with for a few years now, yet I still wake up in cold sweats thinking about windows, ropes, slingshots, and Werner not telling me how to get through life. 😿 Came here because I got a notification over being credited, was very confused, but stuck around because this is an absolutely excellent video (and nearly had a heartattack when I heard my own voice from nearly a decade and a half ago), you hit the nail on the "how was I supposed to know that" head, such an incredibly fun but frustrating series. x3 Thank you for making this!
ALONZO MENTIONED!!!!!
@@chungiemusic Hello there nwn
@@Alonzorion I hope you know your TR series is a definitive part of TH-cam. It’s so iconic 🥹
@@chungiemusic Thanks, I often struggle to fathom why anyone would watch them, that means a lot 😻
Alonzo!!!
Personally, while they ARE frustrating, I love the fact it doesn't elude to interactive objects in your inventory because it makes you think outside the box and really makes you feel as though you're involved. It really adds to the immersion as opposed to how most games tell you to use "item X" or highlight things you can interact with.
It makes things harder but adds an element of realism to it.
I have to agree with you here. It was all part of the process and of course older games are harder as they don't hold your hand like most games now.
I don't disagree with your general point, but some of the examples in this video are clearly just bad level design. Take, for instance, the inability to grab a ledge, or the Dragon being in the wrong place so the action-button doesn't work anymore. That doesn't add immersion or realism in my opinion, it feels 'unfair' and can be quite frustrating. That's what most of the examples in this video show
Honestly I absolutely hate it when games have button prompts. It really takes away from the immersion and dumbs things down so much. All games should come with an option to drop button prompts.
@@deejmeht2338 If button prompts should be done away with, at least make it clear what can be interacted with.
@@PikaLink91I feel like BioShock (the original game at least) and Journey to the Savage Planet does this well enough, as interactable objects are often clearly represented with shine.
Wow! TH-cam didn’t notify me of the tag for some reason, so imagine my surprise when I was watching through this video and saw my channel featured! Thank you so so much! 🥰❤️❤️❤️ It is an honour to be included among these other awesome Tomb Raider creators 😍
I completely agree with this video. I love games that are difficult and challenging and don’t hold your hand, however, there is a huge difference between that and bad game design or being deliberately difficult for the sake of it. For a puzzle game to be rewarding, there has to be some hint given to the player of what to do, and some of these Tomb Raider puzzles were too obscure or just plain mean. Some of them you could only discover by complete accident 😂 But of course, I love the games anyway and have many fond memories of playing this with my family as a kid as we all ran around for hours without a clue what to do 😂 I am so excited for the remasters and am curious if some of these issues will be fixed with the better graphics 🤔 As for the negative comments I’ve seen here, just ignore them ❤️ This was a great video and you really explained well some of the issues with the games. And all of the creators featured are awesome 😍 Some people choose to create positive content to keep this community alive, not leave random mean comments insulting someone’s intelligence, and they are the true raiders and heart of this community 🥰❤️❤️❤️
Thanks for drawing me here Suzanne ... two inclusions eh!
Now I see you are not alone, but part of a wider community of frustrated raiders, however you are my favourite and unique ... 'Stop it Lara' 😅💙
Some of my favorite Tomb Raider puzzles I only figured out by accident😅
Very well said. Thanks for the wonderful comment! And it was my pleasure to feature you and everyone else.
This is why I loved it - we tried anything on everything lol
So true. I remembering being stuck in Venice for WEEKS because I thought I could hear enemy footsteps which meant there MUST have been more to explore. Turns out what I was hearing was just the sound effect of the water sloshing the boats back and forth. But MY GOD, I spent so long in that level trying every conceivable thing to find where Bartoli's non-existent henchmen were.
@@ArdinVincent yep!
Reminds me of those point and click games where you would try every item in the inventory with everything else. Games were just more difficult back then, or at least they required more thought.
Exactly! I wish every game would be like this. I get so sick of getting hints shoved in my face all the time.
lol i remember getting stuck at the opera house for soo long, and i was stuck inside where all the fans are. I didnt know i had to backflip inorder to go on the shelf, yet i just had to mess up with the buttons until i surprisingly made it
@@ArdinVincent
My favourite memory as a kid was 6 year old me trying to do the first running jump in TR1 with a pit and a bear. My mom said: why don't you try taking a step back and run to see if she jumps further? It worked. After being stuck for half an hour, that changed my perspective regarding puzzles. My mom saw logic where I was used to think in practical gaming mechanics, press X key to jump in a certain way, action complete. Fell in love with Tomb Raider ever since.
They explain running jumps in Lara's Home, it's one of the things they do right... everything else tho? Well, climbing and shimmying too. But nothing else.
I didn't speak english back then or my parents. Videogames helped me. I just clicked every option until I started the game and I didn't play Croft Manor much because it didn't give me story progression and that's all I wanted, FMV's to at least give me context. Even to this day I started to play old games to get jokes that I missed because my english skills were very poor.
Im surprised 40 Fathom was not mentioned. The level just starts with you in the middle of the deep sea expecting you to find the entrance to Maria Doria. When I was 12 playing the game, I used the cheat code to get hundreds of med pack and swim all around and spamming med pack until I found the entrance. The joy and happiness I had was indescribable!
There is a trail of stuff on the floor that takes you to the wreck.
I say this with an air of superiority... knowing that I did the exact same as you when I first played it
The photo mode on the remastered version let's you basically explore the entire level, at least up to any closed doors or unbroken crumbling floor panels since it's not exactly noclip, which unexpectedly helps a lot in letting you scope out where some pickups are as well as traps and enemies. I'm not sure if that use was intended, usually photo mode is restricted to a certain radius though TR has some beautiful locales that you may want to snap pics of without Lara so it is useful that way as well
You are describing my childhood 😂
@@XalmusterThat's an awesome tip, thanks for the heads up!
does not help that the harpoongun is a bit rubbish and you have no time to kill sharks
Keep in mind in the original Tomb Raider era, games still came with physical manuals and booklets explaining things that are not explained in game. Also, there weren't as many games and we were supposed to last longer, so you'd have some rough puzzles that you'd be stuck on for weeks and you would either figure it out, have a friend that figured it out, see it on a magazine or just give up and move on.
People give up in minutes today, because there's always a gigantic backlog of awesome games waiting).
That said, I did hate some of the things mentioned here, even back then.
TR2 also had the unfair moment in Floating Islands where you HAD TO do a swan dive without the game ever hinting about it
“Unfair” lol are you two years old? It’s not the game.
That level still freaks me out today the background music in that level is just creepy.
That was a bit of a cuntish design choice, granted 😂
This! I actually only progressed by pushing my way through the blades in the water and taking a few medipacks to survive, lol. I didn't find out about the required swan dive till after I finished the game 🙈
@@matthewwilliams3827 you can't even express yourself clearly and you choose to insult me, boy... sit down
Really cool you added examples of people being confused by the new mechanics! Absolutely loved the show of how these mechanics were confusing rather than just stating that they were.
As I've played the old Tomb Raider games, Stella has been helping me greatly. Because I usually get stuck, a lot.
In TR Angel of Darkness there is a boss that you need to switch targets to kill it but you don't need to do that anywhere else and I didn't even know it could be done.That was the only situation in TR that I needed to use a guide.
...or the boss fight where you have to capture a painting that vanishes if you come close?
LOL & that you could avoid one of his attacks just by getting on hands & knees...like he can't just see you there down on all fours.
To be fair, Angel of Darkness isn't even remotely a finished videogame despite being sold as one lol
That one pissed me off so much 😅
yes that is tuff...like the "twins" in games..you're forced to make a choice...*opps* i just shot the good twin,not the evil one..
Additional uncomfortable fact : (happens in TR2 and TR3 occasionally) everytime you ride a quadbike or a snowmobile, the rerrain gives the vehicle so much randomness of the direction and the velocity that make you very difficult to control. Whenever you are on the top of the hill, even though its height is very small, you gotta be careful because we never know it might me bounced off to nowhere.
The Quadbike can also flip over on you and kill you. Which is rare but it can happen.
so many pitfalls
Yep. blow Lara to pieces, (Literally if the fall is high enough)
I knew that game developers back in the day used to intentionally make things obscure in their games to make them appear longer than they actually are but i never realized TR did it to this level. I guess i just played that much of them back in the day that none of this seems obscure to me anymore lol.
It’s such a new and fresh perspective for me. Im 23 now and have been playing classics since I was five also played many customs. I’ve never given a thought about all of that stuff (mechanics, controls, etc.) because everything is literally encoded in my by now.
I replayed The Last Revelation again a while ago and I was appalled by the ammount of obscure, borderline undiscoverable backtracking you'd have to do to get past the Alexandria section. Then I remembered why sometimes I'd get stuck for months in these games.
Yes ... I've not played it for years but I remember the fondness I have for the game and is my favourite, perhaps because of the 'difficulty'.
I actually thought TLR held up surprisingly well last time I played it some 5 months ago. The backtracking in Aldwych annoyed me so much more.
I think this is one of the main reasons I really don’t like the forth game. The vibe was just totally off for me
Love TLR but it had some of the worst places to be stuck in. Cairo with the bike and having to pick an absolutely random pipe to combine it and then add it to bike with hit detection as bad as on the dragon, so even if you GUESS right you might still miss it. So many steps to do that one thing across three levels! Also Senet was confusing and we got stuck with ropes too.
I feel very vindicated by this list lol. Very on-point with the mentions, though I'm personally surprised that the "Taking damage from a gun turret to then enter a room to then move a corpse to open a hatch to climb into a vent she could easily step into" section from Cairo wasn't mentioned.
That whole level for me is the worst for these types of practices.
Well done on the video mate!
Dang it, I knew there were a couple more crazy things in TR4 that I wasn't remembering! Though honestly, I think I subconsciously block some of those out of my memory.
Trust the experts to remember them though. Thanks Steve.
Honestly, TLR positively impressed me (to my surprise) up until the Cairo section. Both artistically and puzzle wise, I thought the game took a huge plunge (into obtuseness in the case of the puzzles) from that point on.
@@alexsm3882 While I love the games, they started going downhill with the last revelation. Hopefully they can go back to her roots. I heard they MIGHT be doing just that, although it's all hearsay right now.
In TR4 what really stumped me was The Great Hypostyle Hall and shooting the red-brown-ish ball off a column to break the floor and unlock hidden chamber with passage back to the Secret Lake. You go through the 3 chambers climbing, using monkey bars, flipping switches and the top platform is essentially a dead end. In modern games you'd probably get a hint/notebook/drawing/schematics/narration to tell you that you have to break the floor "somehow", but TR4, right at the top o the Great Hypostyle Hall, that stopped me in my tracks for weeks. No internet, no PSX Magazine, none of my peers playing TR4. They say modern games overdo the yellow "this way" paint and hints, but that TR4 was something else.
@@mac1991sethsame lol. after that I got stuck in Coastal Ruins not knowing what to do next lmao
Awesome video! These games were ruthless 🤣 so excited for the remasters though 😁 will be interesting to see how they deal with the obscure moments as you mentioned! At least us classic players will know what we’re doing - I think….. (hope😂)
Thanks so much for the feature too ☺️
Worse was the Save crystal positioning in TR1.
This counterintuitiveness and inconsistency have always let me down about this series and are the reason why I only dared finishing one of the games. Thanks for making a video about it.
The library of Alexandria. Theres some "scrape" marks on the ground that indicate a block is supposed to be pulled out the wall to let you continue. But they're not very oblivious.
*obvious
Thanks for telling the truth about weakness of this legendry game. I saw a lot of people that cannot accept there are errors on this game.
exactly, I loved TR and have so memories of it.. but ppl act insane if you mention it had some flaws, even for an old-style game.. they'll act as it's a sacred thing and accuse you of not being TR fan. 😅
I played all of these, and I never had an issue with vehicles. You can look up the controls in the in the pause menu.
Great video! It was interesting to see players struggling with things in the first two games; as someone who has played them dozens of times I've never thought till now about how are you meant to know things like removing the dagger!
I think what got me the most with the fourth game is that Von Croy meticulously explains how to do everything, but when you get the the rope - the ONE new thing to the series - he doesn't think to explain how to swing on it!
Awesome video. You really hit every point perfectly. It was funny to hear you explain the unclear nature of these design choices and me remembering my frustration during some of those moments. The TR3 London levels, Last Revelation levels after you get to Alexandria, and the stealth kill with the crowbar were the highlights for me. Those were the parts where I have vivid memories of being lost and frustrated. Then, depending on my mood, I would feel accomplished if I finally found progress or I would curse at the TV for what it put me through.
Thank you! It's really nice to hear about other people's similar relatable experiences.
These levels really are a mixed bag of awful frustrations and satisfying accomplishments. I think the crowbar stealth kill took me multiple play sessions to figure out back then. And it took a good few years before I actually completed TR3's Lud's Gate without doin' a cheeky level skip.
@vindifference Lud's gate was a weird level. My trouble at that level was the alligators in the water. They really creeped me out.
Wow these all are really bringing back those core memories of being stuck and realizing how dumb we all felt
I appreciate how the remaster gives you an exclamation point when you're next to an object you can interact with. It's a slight QoL, but it still doesn't change how some of the interactions in Tomb Raider are obscure AF. Not to mention climbable walls and ceilings that don't look at all like climbable walls and ceilings.
Agree on all fronts. The TR4 Coastal Ruins section is just a mess and I think whilst very cool also has a high concentration of poor design decisions:
- Gates that look the same, but some are openable by the crowbar and others are not...except they are from the opposite side later!
- Things that the crowbar can be used on don't trigger Lara to use the crowbar when pressing the Use key, you have to select the crowbar from the inventory.
- The damn flip openable trapdoors that give no hint they can be opened from the top, but they do have a chain underneath.
- The clue for the planetarium puzzle cannot be seen without knowing that the binoculars have a flashlight function.
- The serpent statue fire puzzle in The Lost Library where the scroll explaining how to solve it cannot be picked up until you reach the puzzle and have to backtrack to get the scroll.
- It isn't obvious that you are doing damage to the bronze soldiers which can only be hit from the front. I was trying to hit them with scoped crossbow, but apparently shotgun with wideshot is best.
- The optional exits/re-entry gates from levels hanging off the Coastal Ruins that dump you back into the Coastal Ruins before you finished what you needed to do in those levels forcing you to go back around the levels or backtrack though those same gates.
It’s not poor design, you’re just complaining about the game being too difficult. That’s all.
@@matthewwilliams3827it is poor level design
@@matthewwilliams3827It is.
I remember playing the classic games a year ago and noticed some of the difficulty coming from the obscure things in the games and sometimes I had to come on TH-cam to find the answers to some of them!
Thanks for pointing out some of these!
Adored this video! The final levels of Chronicles still haunt me to this day 😂
Thanks for the inclusion! Would love to see more TR content! 😍
In all fairness to grabbing the knife, it's very explicit if you watch the opening cutscene to the game that you need to grab the knife to kill the dragon. So much so that on the same blind playthrough I had to google to get past the windows and the midair roll, I instantly knew what my job was when the dragon fell over.
A lot of these older 3D games need walkthroughs to get through them in any reasonable amount of time. Not sure how anyone could get all the masks in Majora without some guide
Tomb Raider 1 & 2 are the only ones I can beat without a guide but I played them so much as a kid I learned them.
@@charliemartin-k7mAnd that's why they're considered favorites. Tomb Raider 3 and the last revelation were too challenging if you tried to finish them without any kind of guide for support.
@@RitualBlood TLR is kinda easier because it had limitless saves like TR2, the puzzles were obscure but combat, ammo and medkit check wasn't as bad as 3... except for enemies that need aimed shots or explosions, that is.))) Then it became Resident Evil.
As a kid who didn't have the patience to figure out these puzzles, I loved watching my big brother play Tomb Raider
I've come from the future to report: They did not curb the difficulty of the obscure in the remasters. :(
"Thank you Stella" has become the prayer of all new TR players over the years haha
Thank you for your video, you did a great deal of research and it shows! It was also a bit of an eye-opener, i realize now there are so many clanky mecanics in these games I had never thought twice about because I was told about them as a kid 😅
I was 10 when I played this game and figured out the mid air roll lol
Fantastic video! Really encapsulates a lot of frustration that the original series had (nice to see other players struggling at the same parts!)
Still I wouldn't change majority of it, because the game always makes you learn and adapt. With that you feel a real sense of pride when you finally beat the game!
Again though, amazing video enjoyed the watch!
Those of us who were born without a manual in an age of internet guides had a little thing called physical media, the games came in discs, and within those boxes that contained the discs also had a little book pamphlet on which they'd explain characters, controls, guides, and even have extra pages to write your own notes, which nobody ever used except for writing cheat codes.
Eternal ring won't explain players how to create rings, and it's not because "fromsoft trusts their players" but because they explained it in that pamphlet on physical media, which is no longer available.
Also, nothing I find more hilarious than people complaining about yellow paint in remakes, saying they didn't need it back in the old days, and now they can't figure out how to play tomb raider without a guide lmao.
I hated the yellow paint in Legend but Anniversary had a good balance between obscurity and guiding (it had lightened ledges or pointed to them by level design). Original games did that to SOME extent too, but not much.
Locking the butler in the fridge is canon btw. In Lara's nightmare im rise of tr you can find a diary entry saying she locked him in because he creeped her out for following her everywhere 😂
in my childhood my videocard doesnt show me any cutscene of the game so i didnt know the dagger-dragon-trick from the intro
I’m so glad this video exisits, growing up as a kid playing tomb raider 1,2,3 I don’t know why we played them. Looking back these are awful games, so much time wasted going from one place to another and another, painful!
Tomb raider 4 had some redemption but these games don’t want me to go back and play them
Liked before it even began because I love videos like this. There are soooo many "wtf?! I wouldn't have ever guessed that" moments in the Classics...chef is one of the best
There wa defo a lack of hand holding with these games back in the day! I do think some of these things can be figured out with intuition - you probably wouldve used the jump twist WAY before XIan in TR2, and the Dagger is pulled out of the dragon in the intro! Still sometimes it really felt like the solution was kinda obscure sometimes!
You literally compiled all my original tomb raider problems in one video😂 cheers mate I didn't know I wasn't the only one who has those issues 😂😂
There are 2 types of gamers: those who finished Tomb Raider games on PS1 back in the day, and the others who didn't.
I think the most obnoxious design sin that I've encountered yet in my re-play of TR2 (I'm currently in Tibet) is that bit on the sunken ship, near the inverted swimming pool, where you push a switch that opens some double-doors. It's not obvious that when those doors are in the open position they actually seal off _another path_ that you'll need later, creating a dead-end that - when you come to it - just looks like any other dead-end ... so you think that's all it is, backtrack, thinking nothing of it, then end up lost with nowhere to go and no idea what the problem is.
Nowhere else in the TR games (iirc) is there a bit where you need to _close a door again_ once you've opened it because the door being open blocks a later path. So it's not only unclear what the problem even is when you run into it but it's also deeply anti-intuitive because it goes against the whole design ethos of the rest of the game where opening things up is always 100% a good thing for progress.
Them levels were made by a different pesron, it was Neal Boyd (who was notorious for messing with players). Levels that were made by Heather Gibson was so much more smooth. Boyd is one of the worst game designer you can find. Repetitive levels with almost constant backtracking, instatraps - sometimes on time limit - etc etc. And with those ugly tricks like when you HAVE to read guide inless you'll be trapped forever. To me, Boyd levels in the middle of the game was absolutely unnececcary and killed all the buzz. They feel more suitable for DLC, not the main game. When you move to Tibet\Temple, it's already too late and you are completely burnt out. It was like that back in 1997, and it still like that in 2024.
I was watching one of my friend whos been a gamer for 20 years struggle for over 2 hours on the fist mission of Tomb Raider 2 and after about 3 levels he dubbed it more challenging that Dark Souls which I find hard to disagree with
13:15 that "thank you, Stella" is all of us. We'd be lost without her!
As a kid, I used to experiment with the controls besides reading the manual. I figured out the mid air roll on the TR1 tutorial.
Tomb raider 1 doesn’t have a mid air roll.
@@XgamerdaveX I'm playing Tomb Raider 1 at the moment and, yes, it does. You have to time it correctly.
@@jamiewatts333No, it doesn't. May be the remastered version has it but the original one doesn't. I remember testing it.
This is one of the things that you experience throught your whole childhood and don't know how to communicate and then whoop, there's a video that perfectly explains it in to words. Tomb raider is my favourite series ever, but there sure were a lot of obscure questionnable designs.
These design flaws in tomb raider became even more apparent after I played Zelda which was much more intuitive
16:24 I feel so VALIDATED knowing I'm not only one struggled with this ledge in the Temple of Xian! 😭
Also good to know everyone struggled with the ledge over the acid at 16:16.
The acid one I figured out using swan dive and it worked all well for me haha
Replaying it right now, and acid I did the late grab and it worked, but damaged her... which until that point is a sign I did something wrong, figures, you need to land on feet.
When I was a kid I spent SO long in that first rope room in TR4 before getting it.
I wasn't a kid, but I spent a lot of time there too LOL. That rope swing thing was a new mechanic added to TR4 (it wasn't present in TR3 which I was familiar with) and it took me a while to discover it
This video sums up why I haven't replayed TR in 30 years. At the time, these things seemed 'normal', but now, they are stupidly ridiculous.
Core Design are going to be trolling from beyond the grave with the release of the remastered classic TR games.
I had the Prima official guides back in the day, thankfully. I'm not sure what I would have done without them!
I'm 38. I really enjoyed all TR classic games. Never ever complained about anything.
Different era and different mentality i guess.
This video was great! Finding and compiling those bits from other creators must have been time-consuming. I found the deep dive into the game design fascinating. Also I think some of the more negative comments here may have missed the point of this video and taken it as an attack on their favorite games. But if anything, this video felt like a huge love letter to the classic Tomb Raider games!
This was a fun watch. I was little little when tomb raider came out and I remember my dad buying TR II when we first got our PlayStation. Very nostalgic for me. I ended up buying the remastered version on the switch the day that it dropped, and my god. There were so many instances in the first game that about drove me up the wall. I don’t know how they expected you to know what to do. Thank god for guides. Lol.
I exceptionally like the obscurity for the Dagger of Xian boss, though. In my opinion, it can be seen as an extremely rewarding experience if the player is immersed in the game.
During the opening cutscene of Tomb Raider 2, it shows the battle between the monks and the dragon. As they fought, the dragon was finally defeated when a downed monk pulled the dagger from the dragon's belly. This should have been a huge hint to the player during the fight. I know not everyone would have the foresight to remember a detail like that, but I personally think the developers did a good job, as the clue was in the very beginning all along.
Tomb Raider 2 is my most favourite classic. A fellow NLNMASPO player!
Maaaaan I would kill for tomb raider 4 remastered. I love ancient Egypt and learning about it, but also fighting their gods and kicking ass. Please let this new remastered series be the catalyst that finally brings TLR back 🙏
"What you actually need to do is use the night vision mode on Lara's binoculars to find the secret button combinations in the dark..."
ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?!
I was never able to beat The Last Revelation because THIS was the puzzle that stumped me. I spent hours trying various combinations to absolutely no avail and just chalked it up to potentially missing the solution being present in the level prior. The issue is, once you get to this point by traversing a pyramid, it's almost impossible to go back anywhere, so I just sorta left it alone and never got back to it for a variety of reasons (other stuff came along, hard drive became corrupted, lost the save files, etc.) I can't believe something so arbitrarily stupid was the solution all along. Throughout this video I didn't really find issue with most stuff because you could figure it out through experimentation, but holy fuck, this was literally built into starting equipment and there was absolutely ZERO indication it was there!
LOL,Welcome to the OG Tomb Raider. Good Luck. (Cheers) Playing remastered now, It's excellent. (Tank Controls must have)
I think a lot of these instances are simply limitations or the time as well. There wasn’t as much memory available to do full tutorials voiced once upon a time, so developers counted on players reading the included booklets which would fill in those gaps, typically. And in the case of the fall damage, I think people are too harsh on it. It’s the equivalent of the start of TR2013, she falls on a spike and is forced to walk slow as she is “injured”. Old developers in the 90s couldn’t create scripted events like today as easy. Granted, the limited medipacks can add difficulty, but it’s not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Awesome video though, really.
Thank you!
In some ways I agree with you on fall damage, but it's just the fact that modern games are so controlled which really lets them get away with this stuff.
Decent players with good resource management (and save management) shouldn't suffer from falling onto the lifeboat at all, it's true. But I know first-time players are fast-and-loose with meds so it's slightly worrying how they'll fare.
I remember when I first played TR2 I fully ran out of meds in Barkhang (you can guess why) and it basically ended up soft-locking me in combat situations, so I had to revert to an older save, or use a cheat if I knew any.
Worst case scenario, if someone arrives at the lifeboat with 0 meds and 70% health, they'll come away from it with a net negative of 0 meds and 10% health. If they're not good with combat, they're dead meat and should probably restart the level.
This. It's an old game and its 'faults' are largely typical or understandable for its time. I was surprised to learn that people have such an issue with that drop, it isn't something I ever gave much thought to. Come to think of it, there are drops in Demon's Souls that force the loss of health (probably other games too).
Excellent video! I especially appreciated the inclusion of the Ireland levels in Tomb Raider: Chronicles, which truly were showstoppers for child-me😭 I still remember it as if it was only yesterday. Finding & combining a rubber tube (which I initially could not get to either for quite a while, since I really thought you had to make it over the wooden barrier in the pond somehow) and a pitchfork to create a catapult that you have to use... somewhere? (in _Gallows Tree_ ), and knowing that you have to use the sprint key to make Lara swing (higher/further) on the rope, all while you're stressed because of the imps that are throwing rocks at you causing your health to gradually deplete (in _Old Mill_ ) [here I eventually just had to quit the game and give up] was just brutal. Once you know it's easy, but if you're (very) young and/or do not have access to help, it's very difficult to figure out by yourself (it's so obscure, wow).
i got through tr1 and 2 with no hints or walkhroughs at all, but tr3 was a nightmare, i couldnt finish it without cheats and walkthroughs and when i got to the end i never touched it again
I never finished TR3 but I'm planing to finally do it with the remastered version. I'm also looking forward to playing the DLCs which I never got to do before.
@@hagron5702 the DLCs yes, i forgot about those, thats a nice little bonus
I quit playing TR3 so quickly. First or second level. I was so disappointed after the majestic 1 and 2.
@@Emma-R i was screwed because i tackled area 51 last, every walkthrough said to take it on first because you lose your weapons, i didnt know that, that game was a mess and a slog, i finished it with cheats and walkthroughs, but tr1 and 2 were so well crafted, that you could finish them without any kind of help, it gave a great sense of accomplishment
My fumbling Blind LP's made some clips! Excellent video, I remember each of these pain points vividly!
13:52 I feel like this is one of the few good examples of introducing a new mechanic without telling the player directly. You start the level in a tiny little area with literally nothing else to do with the big thing that stands out, so you're likely to try shooting it sooner or later.
Compare that to other levels where the map is bigger and more open, where your next objective to progress could be anywhere and there are more things to distract you, chances of you trying to shoot everything you see just to see if it works are much lower, lol. For all you know, maybe you just missed a key or something, but here the level has literally just started.
Aaaaand then you have shooting a boulder to drop it on the floor to reveal a secret underground area (I lucked out a lot in 4 and I actually figured this one out very quickly but still, I feel for others 😆)
Excellent point actually!
The bell clip is in the video, but I actually don't really think it's one of the problematic shootable objects in the series, for the reasons you've mentioned. The developers did well to set precedence at the start of the level right away, and consistently have the player make use of that precedent afterwards.
I had all the Prima strategy guides for these games because I used it as an excuse to my parents that I was “reading” and not just playing video games. The Last Revelation was my first experience doing a full playthrough on my own after only being able to get through The Great Wall in TR2 at a friend’s house. Everything in this video is 100% accurate, and I kinda envy not being able to “eff around and find out more” like so many have. But after conquering TLR (with SO much help) I then was able to get the previous three and experience them. Been a huge fan ever since. The Remastered with new graphics and tank controls has been a pleasure these last few weeks and I’ve done 1 and 2 on my own or based on memory with some help from Stella along the way. I’m starting TR3 in a few minutes, actually.
This is why i encourage people to use guides and walkthroughs for the Core Tomb Raider games. Some stuff is just obscure and if you don't have some heads up and forewarning about what's to come and how get past it you're gonna have a bad time.
The Obscurity you're not told about is using your guns on the boat during the Venice stage. I only recently learning about this early this year and wish I knew about this
Well that's the thing; it was not an intended feature, and I believe it's unique to the remaster. But because some of the game mechanics tend to be so hidden and obscure, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's part of Lara's skillset and something that you're meant to do. Many people would argue that you just need to try everything and you would have figured that out on your own. But I think unintentional things like these are part of the reason why that's not the best expectation to put on players.
Thats why this series was great. Many folks are crybabies when playing games.
These Games where the few Games that it was better to play them in order to learn them.
@@charliemartin-k7m yeah but back in the 90s games main story were long and fun. Nowadays few games babysit you and give you a short campaign or main story to focus on multiplayer online.
@@southsidecompton9668What an out of touch statement. That was a trend from a decade ago.
@@RootVegetabIe why?
Your videos are always a like :). Great to see so many other TR enthusiasts' youtube channels featured here too. ❤❤❤ Happy Valentine's Day everybody. Hsppy Birthday Lara!
I always liked the level designs of TR games. Yeah these games are far from perfect and have a lot of bugs, but what most people call flaws It's just challenges, part of the fun of these games is to figure it out what to do.
Perhaps one of the most frustrating "logic" things in the first Tomb Raider, is that if Lara could just reach through the bars at the beginning of the level to grab the scarab, you could bybass the majority of the Sanctuary of the Scion level lol. That, and the fuse on the conveyor belt in Natla's Mines.
A few years ago, I did a playthrough of the first three titles and without a doubt, you can certainly tell that whoever was developing these games wanted to keep adding new things every time to make it feel "fresh." By the time I got to the fourth title, I couldn't really stomach it anymore. The puzzles became increasingly vague and nonsensical, the knuckle gymnastics needed in some situations to keep from dying were more than frustrating.. but the classic Tomb Raider games are still some of my all-time favorites after 20+ years of gaming. Good video here.
This looks like a necessary guide for the up coming remaster.
Only the floor that can be opened was very cryptic. The other examples was just logical thinking.
Its obvious for shooting the glass, because lara is a badass :-)
Its obvious to jump with the torch in Laras hands because the rope is above her and to burn it she must jump.
Sure the swinging the rope can be a little difficult.. but it is not that hard. Its just put the keys and memorise it.
When I first play the game and get to my first swinging rope experience I quickly learned: it is the / or ? key to swing. Andddd go!
To all the new players who complain about this: you don't have any frustration tolerance!
Shooting glass as a mechanic isn't really consistent, the games in general are not necessarily logical/rely on common sense. In fact, part of the charm is learning about these specific games' quirks and what you can and can't do.
So for instance, expecting you to be able to light up a rope just by approaching it doesn't sound like anything you'd seen in TR up to that point, everything was usually precise and methodical, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I really like these games despite me only really getting into them in recent years, and I beat most of TR4 without any kind of help, but I think it's fine to admit some things just weren't designed or telegraphed very well.
There were even times where I had the right idea but due to a somewhat poor implementation of a mechanic or inconsistency, I was lead to believe that just wasn't what I was supposed to do
I think getting stuck is part of the charm of these games. Then when you finally figure out how to progress it's such a rush. Back when we played them for the first time, we didn't even have internet access, at most a guide in a video game magazine -- those often had errors too. Nostalgia
I agree with most of what you said. Mainly I disagree about the vehicle stuff because using Square to move the UPV in Lud's Gate makes sense because Square = swim, jumping out of the Venice boat seemed intrinsic to me and action makes sense for propelling most vehicles. With the rope swing, do people not just press every button to see what works in the moment? I think optional (but recommended by the game) tutorial text boxes and button icons for interactive stuff would be a big plus. Great video man 😊
At least button icons for interactive stuff are confirmed for the remastered
@@joaomilao4230 are they? I know there's a "walk to action" option and boss health bars but I didn't know about interaction icons
@SethMcKenzieTV on the same GIF where you see "Walk to Action," there's also an option called "Action Indicators"
This is the things that makes old games better then new games also so satisfying when you figure out stuff instead of getting told how to do it, i mean i beat the first 3 tomb raider games on ps1 before I was even a teenager but people nowadays need long tutorials and someone holding their hands
It stems from an age gamers had to think on their feet to solve something ….. I loved it …
It stems from an age of limited CD-ROM space.
Yeah developers had to make great game design to make up for the lack of of graphics and textures 👍@@coladict
@@pitchdark2024 It's not great game design when it leaves people frustrated, running all over the level 10 times and not finding what they need to proceed.
I completed all 3 games by the time i was 11.. and that was days without the internet lol.@@coladict
@@coladictmaybe you are just easely frustrated , my daughter is the same , attention span like 5 min , and when she doesn’t find it , she quits , gives up and doesn’t touch the game anymore … then she plays with me together , and she asks : daddy why do you always find solutions and I can’t , I say persistence darling …
So much better than the new tomb raiders it made to make you think.
Back in thye days where games required you to figure things out for yourself.
It is one thing to not have constant prompts telling you what to do, but GOOD game design is to reasonably lead the player towards the correct solution without straight up giving the solution away. These games don't.
@@PikaLink91Ofcourse a person with an Animepicture would say that. These Games do, it is just not eyecatching tho. Thats why you need to "USE" your "BRAIN" .. if there is still such a thing left in most of your heads tho!
@@VVfanXXLx3 For one thing, it's not an anime, it's a video game. Second I may be a degenerate weeb with only two brain cells, but those two are enough that I know not to bother with the likes of you. Have a nice weekend, friend :P
@@VVfanXXLx3it’s funny that a grown adult on an internet is judging someone based on their pfp. Instead of calling out someone’s pfp as an insult, how about you actually come up with a good argument, or even better, just respectfully disagree without the need to insult others?
Outer Wilds
Honestly I was surprised at how straightforwarly solvable TR1 was when I just recently played it with the remaster - I was always so used to stuff like the windows (which incidentally, I only found out that they could be shot out this week, and I've owned a copy of 2 literally my entire life) that I didn't think TR1 would be much different in its obscurity. Pleasantly surprised to find at least the first game is mostly bad design free. I even had a blast with the Unfinished Business levels.
There are a couple of places where Bartoli's goons shoot the windows out, so the clues are there. But, yeah, it's not like a modern game where they'd have Lara say "Those windows look fragile..." every 5 seconds and not shut up until you shot one.
@@blatherskite3009 specifically, devs included attract mode demos. If you don't press anything in main menu, there are three short clips where they play as Lara, and they picked parts they figured veterans of 1 could be stuck with: shooting diver with harpoon gun, getting onto snowmobile, and lighting a flare, shooting out the window and dodge-roll fighting a gun mobster.
I loved this games but the amount of frustration playing this before internet was just too much sometimes 😂 TR1 was perfect but after that they started to break the rules of what was interactive and play us (troll us). I think the games sold less and less partially because of this. TR3 and 4 throw so much crap at you sometimes that I understand most people would just give up. Not me because I was obsessive 😅
At the same time THE LACK OF GUIDANCE makes this games very special and sometimes the reward from completing a level is just uncomparable
In 1999, I went to a library (!) to read gaming magazines. The knowledge that you can safely walk through spikes broke me
Tomb Raider 3 drove me over the edge. I physically hate that game. A controversial opinion maybe, but the 1st and 2nd game had their moments with difficulty for sure, but the 3rd game was a joke. To this day it is the only Tomb Raider game I have never beaten. It has sat on my shelf untouched since the late 1990s. I do play the other games regularly, but not the 3rd. No way.
Considering all the level design and general game design shortcomings, it's incredible that the early tomb raider games were so popular.
To be fair, it were the 90s.
Even tomb raider 3 was not that complex compared to other games.
I don't agree with you. Always complaining about the controls. I do hate the controls of the new one. Because of these controls, people do still play this game. And the excellent levels and saving.
I love the tank controls from the classics too. The level design was made around it.
The remasters apparently will let you choose between classic and Anniversary control schemes. I am OK with the tank controls, but a modern audience won't put up with them.
@@soulsphere9242 I do understand that. I think it's a generation thing. I am a 90s kid. The atmosphere and controls are typical from the area.
@@ppgranja3 I do agree with you.
Positive opinions on the classic controls are valid, yes. I'm fine with the tank controls too.
Personally, I just want Lara (Or Werner) to let us know about all the buttons that will be necessary on our journey.