Was it Good? - Tomb Raider 1
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
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Join me as we go back to 1996 and replay the first legendary outing of socialite treasure hunter Lara Croft, in Tomb Raider 1.
Released for the Playstation 1, PC and Sega Saturn, the fantastical platformer set the foundation for one of the most successful video game franchises of all time.
Why was the square grid layout so great?
Why didn't you see environments moving?
What even is the plot?
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Feel like the reason no one remembers all the crazy horror aspect is because none of us got that far 😂 this game was SO HARD. This video was fantastic. Thank you so much for taking me down memory lane! Loved it
exactly my thought.
No it wasn't.
I smashed it and it was awesome
@@ashleynills7507 How old were you when you played it? I never finished Ocarina of Time when I was younger because I had no idea what I needed to do after certain points. I finished it when I got older, but that shit seemed impossible when I was younger. That was the case with a lot of older games and by the time you got old enough to be good enough to beat them or understand some complex mechanic, the system was outdated so it was no point in going back to an older system when you have a newer one just to finish a game you couldn't beat when you were younger.
@@pavmx703 I was probably older than you guys (a teenager), so I guess I had the advantage of that.
One of my fondest memories is me and my siblings huddled around the television while my mom read the strategy guide and my dad played. I miss those nights so much.
Oh my gosh, I had totally forgotten that they used those before we had Google. A strategy guide!!! Geez! 😂
Same! We'd sit there watching dad playing and my mom would point out every time he missed something, much to his annoyance haha. And then when they got bored I'd just explore the mansion.
I don't remember writing this nostalgia
Same i was too young to really play, used to watch my dad on this and goldeneye for n64 on 007 agent, best memories.
@@MorningGloryDancer My younger brother and I are 2 years apart. My older brother and I are 11 years apart.
When Tomb Raider came out my younger brother and I were kids, 11 and 13. It was my older brother that turned us on to the Play Station as we would all play Nintendo together as young, young kids.
My older brother always called the strategy guide "cheating".
But yes, many fond memories of my younger brother, mom, and I all sitting together. Mom would figure out the puzzles, and my brother and I would man the controller. Mom says she stopped liking the controllers after Nintendo. "Too many buttons".
I’ll never forget my dad waking me up in the middle of the night to excitedly share that he had beat natla.. we had been stuck at that point for some time, and my dad who normally never played video games had taken tomb raider as a personal challenge. It’s one of my favorite memories as a child. Just bonding playing this game with him.
Same!!
Haha, that's typical dad behaviour! Why wait till morning, too excited to share!😂
@@djapathy8967😊😊
Now that is a dad and son moment to remember.
Mine too. I remember him constantly raving… “I’m pushing the button and she’s just standing there picking her ass!”
"the game starts off so grounded" sir the first boss was a t-rex
I remember playing this with my daughter (4year old)back in the day when I still had hair. She spectated and directed me obviously. One night after she had gone to bed I fought my way down a waterfall then climbed a wall and found the valley of the dinosaurs. I was so excited about it I got her up out of bed ( it was around midnight) just so she could see a T-Rex chase after her dad.
She is now grown up and we both look back on Tomb Raider with great fondness. I played every game of TR and loved them all until the open world ones which never did anything for me. Long live Lara.
Imagine going back to sleep after seeing that T-rex as a 4 year old :D
I was watching my older brother play it. It was so scary and I was around 8 I believe
Nice story! My son is 4 now, so this is relatable with feeling
I have these exact same memories with my dad when I was a small child (now in my 20s). Every saturday night we would sit down in front of the family PC and play through all of the different Tomb Raider games together, my personal favourite being Tomb Raider 4 but my dad loved Tomb Raider 3 The Lost Artifact since he is Scottish, whilst my mum and sister watched TV. Those were some of the best times of my life and I'm sure your daughter feels the same way. Be proud that you gave her memories she will cherish for the rest of her life
@@fuzzyktulu3148 Fuzzy I am Scottish as well. Im from Dundee. Funny how tomb raider has affected so many people.
@@deceptor99 I owe my health to Lara Croft. I enrolled in a sports club after I played TR4, and while I dropped out eventually, I kept up the good eating habits, jogging and exercising. She was an idol to me.
There's something so funny to me about Lara getting obliterated by the giant hammer trap. Like some ancient architect predicted that grave robbers would be too preoccupied wondering about what this strange pressure plate does to notice the colossal mallet looming above them.
Between that and the Midas death, yeah. There's no question that the two last leaders of Atlantis and their descendants said, "Nattla's too lazy to come on her own, and the only reason anyone would be here is the Scion - if they don't possess the wisdom to use it rightly, let's kill 'em."
GAMERS NEVER LOOK UP. It's an inherent design flaw most of us have. You have to be very mindful of your camera when you play.
Oh my god. I remember playing this on PS1 and I was so hyped. I remember my dad coming to my room and watching me play. He even went to the store late in the evening to buy me a memory card cause I didn't have one so I could save my progress. Amazing
Cool Dad
that was a wholesome read! Treasure you parents people ❤️
Did you leave your PS1 on for weeks I remember doing that :D
Did he ask if you was winning?
@@Hiihtopipa muistan jättäneeni sen ainaki päälle ku pelasin spider-mania ja crashiä 🤣
This man completes all the games i couldnt as a kid makes me so happy to finnaly see the credits to some of these games.
My guy he's bringing together parts of the story in this game that I never knew shit about because I only use the level skip cheats
With the new remakes available now it’s worth going back
The soundtrack didn't kick in much during gameplay anyway. That's what makes the game so atmospheric. You genuinely feel like you're alone in these places. Great game that brings back so many amazing memories.
and if you buy the PC version today, the music is gone. recommend using the fan made update which improves the game. it puts everything back including the music.
just a quick note. this game plays with keyboard and mouse. using steam big picture works with a controller. you can select from various list depending on which controller your using.
there was a reason I was scared to play this game
@@destronger5313 The reason for that is the music was on the game CD, which could be played on any standard CD player.
@@destronger5313 Music was always gone in the PC version, the PSX version was superior in that regard the updates restore the PSX audio which was higher quality than PC which had nasty, crackly voice audio
I disagree with you about the soundtrack being lack. I think it was perfect for the game
It wasn't just good, it pretty much defined an entire Genre of games. A milestone in video game history.
What I was going to say. There are a few handful of games that spawn an entire new genre, Tomb Raider was one of them. It cannot be overstated how groundbreaking this game was at the time. Sure, it was not perfect, but it was legendary😃
meh
The best part about Tomb Raider is the protagonist, Lara Croft. Everything else about the series is completely forgettable, low quality crap
@@tynao2029 I doubt you played it when it came out, otherwise I cannot imagine you would make that claim, especially regarding TR1. But everybody is entitled to their opinion, of course.
@@tynao2029 honestly, that's not true. So many of the levels are amazing and iconic, especially in the original game. I do agree that, mostly, the stories are pretty B-movie quality, but that kinda adds to the charm. It's not worried about telling an emotional, character driven drama tale. It's worried about putting you in the shoes of a badass woman who loves to explore lost environments.
Never played this game, but when you jumped on King Midas's hand that was such an amazing death animation my jaw dropped, so cool for 1996
It was really ahead of it's time as far as animations and level design went.
38:05
@@no_nameyouknow Really mediocre thing to say and not true at all, gradient texture changes were around a lot longer than tomb raider.
It actually shocked me the first time I saw it. Didn't expect that at all lol.
@@p.e.m.4691 thank you
I was 42 years old playing this game when it came out recovering from a hernia operation and divorce.
It is the only game I have ever completed.
It was immersive and amazing.
It took lots of retries and needed a save.
I sold the PS1 to buy an IBM PCand had hundreds of calls for weeks after sale.
The internet was tiny then .
You must be well into your 50s now then, still gaming? My dad was a gamer back in the late 70s and 80s. He loves the Ultima series on the old floppy disks, when he showed them to me i remember loving the RPG aspect and i still love it to this day. RPGs were my favourite genre from then on.
Today they are retro but there there was one retro game in the 80s that blew away the rest - Elite. The sheer scale of that game for a PC was nothing short of phenominal.
@@Whoami691 Im 70. I played games on an Amiga 500 and Mario on Nintendo. Then PS1 and PCs. Love the immersion.
Later first playing Doom online was insane.
I find games now have great graphics but often the same format of shoot the NPC who stand around as targets. Whereas in real combat you cannot see anyone most the time.
Also not fan of cutscenes.
Last games were Red Dead and GTA games though i gave up eventually on the plot and just drove down pavements like a psycho.
@@buddhastaxi666 not a fan of cutscenes ey? Them I'm guessing you were never a fan of the Metal Gear Solid games 😋 those cutscenes are some of my favorite memories as a kid, like a movie but longer and better, with brilliant gameplay to compliment
@@Big.Joe.Grizzly I came into games at the age of 28, because they were just invented and computers were expensive. They were found in Malls, Space Invaders. Few years earlier was Pong. I bought a Nintendo for my kids , maybe in 1978?....and played Mario on that. Then an Amiga 500. With 1 mb of memory. I wanted to play a game not watch a movie, thats why i dont like cutscenes. Also the graphics used to better in a cutscene than during the play, due to processing time. Memory was limited 30 ,40 years ago. The first craft on the moon in 1968 had 174kb in its computer.
A cutscene had longer rendering period. so there was a stromg contrast between gameplay and scene.
But each to their own , we all have our favourites. I JUST REALLY LOVED Tomb Raider. So immersive and stimulating.
@@buddhastaxi666 nice response. That would probably have been 1985 for the Nintendo and also metal gear solids cutscenes were actually using the games engine instead of pre rendered cutscenes, so gameplay and cutscenes looked identical 😋 to each their own I understand how you feel and I respect your opinion but I feel like it is a bit of a shame if you completely shunned certain games just because they were cutscene heavy. Genuinely some of the best games ever made have long cutscenes, if you never actually saw or played metal gear for ps1 I suggest you either pick it up and play for yourself or atleast try watching a full gameplay. You never know, you might really enjoy it
There is something special about the pleasurable feeling of "loneliness" these older titles give you that is hard to describe in words. I wish we would see more of it in modern games.
I'm glad you bring that up in the review.
And then they made Project Eden, which gave us most of what Tomb Raider was famed for, but now in a cyberpunk world and without the loneliness. Now you had a team of 4 to switch between at will, each with a different specialisation. You could stay together, split into 2 groups of 2, or have each member in totally different parts of the levels depending on what problems & puzzles you ran into. Switch between 3rd & 1st person (true 1st person too). Playing each level as part of a team made it all feel so exciting. Theres all kinds of cool dynamics that come into play when you just add 3 more people. I can't believe CORE only made 1 Project Eden (20+ years later and theres nothing else like it) but something like 7 Tomb Raiders...
Yeah I understand where you are coming from. Because the older 3D games could not render textures which were far away is one of the reasons I think. Resident Evil and Silent Hill for example or less well known games like; Excalibur, Arx Fatalis, Medieval and especially King's quest: Mask Of Eternity and Fade To Black.
Absolutely. I have never been able to explain the feeling and atmosphere of this generation. Even the tomb raider music just fills me with that feeling.
@@ihurtmyarm Yea the music was more simplistic back then. Now, Tomb Raider games etc. have a whole orchestra but I still prefer the original music. Perhaps it's just nostalgia.
Like a liminal space
The one thing I remember about this game was my friends telling me their game glitched because they got a dead end in a room with no way of progressing. It was the Midas room. They'd spent 2 hours killing everything in sight and trying everything on the locks and doors. When I figured out they had to turn the bricks to gold you'd have thought they in the presence of the smartest person in earth. My friends never respected me more than they did that day.
Yeah that was a great moment. It wasn't as cool as getting turned into gold yourself when you jumped in the hand. My 13 year old mind was blown at the time. In truth it was getting killed that way that helped me figure out the gold puzzle.
@@timothynelissen948 Classic "unexpected consequences" moment lol.
"I'll just climb up onto this stone hand. Why not? Whats the worst that could happen? Nothing, thats what. " - Us Kids
"I see you ain't familiar with the legend of the Midas touch... *evil laugh with echo* " - Them Adults
@Version 0.111 Your strory reminded me a sad truth. You can say all you want, but kids these days will never expierience the same way we felt when solving a puzzle. We were stuck on riddles for months if we were unfortune. Scrambling with classmates what we could do to progress...nowadays you can just google the answer or watch a video guide.
@@thelastguardian579 Or getting lucky with a walkthrough or secrets in a magazine :D Good times!
@@thelastguardian579 True, true. Now the answer to every question and the solution to every puzzle is just a quick search away. Why "think" anymore when Google can be our brain instead? It is a kind of sad truth, I agree.
When I first played this game back as a teenager, I did not expect the fleshy walls level. It's a tone shift that reminds me of Earthbound's end. Just suddenly full on horror. Love it.
As a teen i was like, wtf....
I remember everything except the skateboarder (probably because I was a kid and I thought it was cool) and the top half of a torso demon...yeah I don't remember that AT ALL.
The biggest thing I remember from this game is the smell of the T-rex. My cat at the time was in my lap and farted just as it appeared so those two things are indelibly linked together for me.
As a Teenager, probably alot of guys bought it for a different reason than the plot. I would quote John Carmack here, but I'll leave that to you. (:
@@techno-dg8oh hahah I got halfway through your comment and was thinking “what the fu€k is this guy saying?” .. and then I finished reading it 😂 that is so funny man. It’s interesting how we associate certain scents with childhood memories. You will forever think about the Tomb Raider T. rex every time your cat farts. Well, not to be insensitive but, I’m assuming that particular cat is no longer with us. R.I.P. legend. I hope all of your future cats will carry the torch and keep the tradition alive by farting near you to keep that beautiful memory alive
I was born 1996. My dad played all the Tomb Raider games - and I remember almost all of them. Not the crazy stuff - but the T-Rex for example. And I LOVED the Midas death! I still remember that! My dad told me a little about it and went out of his way to show me the sequence of Lara turning into gold. I really got into mythology later :'D
Dont lie! You couldnt of been born in 1996 thats when i was born
I'm afraid to tell you, but we're getting old @@jonpendragon2066 ^^'
It blows my mind to see that her weapons were shown on her body back then when more than 20 years later most games still lack that detail
I remember wondering how the extra pistols would work, and being sad they just replaced the basic ones when equipped. She still fit everything into the world's smallest backpack though!
6:30
Animations are hand crafted.
Lara has around 150 Animations (which includes transitions into other animations) in the game's files, everyone of it is keyframed by hand.
Even Cutscene animations are handcrafted.
Damn that’s impressive, I can’t imagine how much time it must have been to handmade all those cutscenes and animations.
yeah I immediately went into comments to look if someone pointed it out
Yep! This game was made long before the invention of (usable) motion capture.
For anybody who is interested, here's more info on this from an interview with an unspecified member of the dev team, from Prima's official guide:
Q: "Was Lara based on any women you know? How did you make her animations so realistic without using motion capture?"
A: "No. Motion capture is a bit of a non-starter for a game like this. The problem is that in order to make something move smoothly, the various animations have to link at the cross-over point. If you use motion capture, you just can't get a person to move into exactly the same position time and time again. If you look at motion capture stuff the feet tend to jiggle around like anything. To avoid that sort of thing you would have to spend so much time cleaning it up, you might as well have key framed it the first place."
"We also have direct control over each animation, for instance how fast Lara runs, how quickly she can come to a stop, how far she can jump. These aspects directly influence how the game plays and needs to be tweaked during the game's development."
Wow...
That game was hardcore to try to complete. I remember getting stuck on nearly every level. They was exciting times for the gaming world. Playstations 3D graphics was mindblowing. Everybody wanted a playstation once you seen a snipit of a game in action.
This game truly holds a special place in my heart. My mom, though not a huge gamer, has loved Tomb Raider since I was a kid. And we would play this game a lot growing up. Over the years, I've tried getting her into the modern ones, but she's so used to tanky controls and the classics.
awww, that's adorable!
I had a neighbour who was around my Mum's age and she LOVED Tomb Raider. Obsessed. Any time I'd see her, she talk to me about it: how to beat certain enemies, best strategies for bosses, favourite levels.. etc. She was a Tomb Raider nut. She actually got me into the series, despite having already played a little bit of the first 2 games on demo discs. I think she passed away, but she and Tomb Raider have a very special place in my heart. RIP, my friend.
You’ve inspired me to fire up my 1999 Mac G3, and play every single Tomb Raider in order. I just finished the first 4 levels of Tomb Raider 1, and I cannot believe how good the level design is, even today. Great series you have going here.
WTF C-Milk here? I love you, hope you and your family are staying awesome.
@Don Bastardo users'*
I'm playing Tomb Raider for the first time and I'm at Francis Folly with all the doors.
I've gone back recently (after loading my CFW with ps1 games).
And yes, harder to look at today...controls are clunky...but level design is good and reminds me why it was such a special game..
Even to the point of being stuck looking for a way out after killing rex..
Most of modern going industry is owed to tomb raider a originality back then.
Interesting to bump into you here
I remember sitting in the room with my brother while he hogged the ps1 and he played Tomb Raider when it first released, we were in absolute shock at how incredibly they created a game, and he was the puzzle guy in our family so watching him explore and uncover secrets in the game was entertainment enough. I'll never get an experience like that again in my life but honestly watching this video and watching you progress through the game has left me with a feeling of happiness and nostalgia. Thanks Josh.
You're not alone man, I too was that younger brother.
Same for me bro. Except it was my Dad hogging the PS1, I was so young, I sucked at the game and used to get scared when I played lol.
@@rickybindahoose6193 Well in your defense that was a scary ass game.
After playing all of the remasters, i must say TR1 is still my favourite due to the locations and atmosphere.
When the reboot came out and everyone was like "These Lara Croft death animations are too brutal", I was just like: So you never played the original... they have always been really cruel to Lara.
The Atlantian boss death was especially brutal, with him just repeatedly bashing her against the floor until she's a ragdoll. Getting turned to gold by standing on the hand of Midas was really something too.
Reminds me of this (not the most brutal): th-cam.com/video/IXj9muy2gM4/w-d-xo.html
theres a stark difference from "ragdoll physics" death (TR1) to "This wouldnt look out of place in Eric Chahi's Heart of Darkness" (CD TR reboot). thats all i would say.
@@lordxmugen and I would say you're wrong. There's no difference at all.
"Death can be brutal. Don't like it? Don't die. It's on you. Lolol"
You have to consider how amazing this was at the time of its release. The original Tomb Raider was one of the most important advances in gaming history. Also it was amazingly atmospheric.
Remember the TRex in the lost valley? That was a defining moment in gaming history
Atmosphere. Yes. Yes. YES! It's often one of the things that is vastly overlooked and underestimated in most modern games. especially the soul-less reboots of this series. In fact, most reboots lack the atmospheres of the originals. The modern TR reboot went for a female Rambo action shooter, and disregarded the claustrophobic, tense, quite and lonely isolation of the original that made it drip with atmosphere. When you discovered ancient Egyptian ruins in the dark recesses of an underground cave, you felt like you were there with Lara discovering them for the first time. The modern games don't let you breath to take that in. It just wants you to shoot everything living.
It was! The atmospheric feel when entering a new secret location or something was tenfold the atmospheric feel from the modern games.
@@steve_ire321 hi, talking about reboots. You are right, but did you ever play TR anniversary? I just do and it‘s beautiful in 2K and as near at the original as possible. I also played this original on a Win 10 64 pc in DOS emulation with modded textures, that have much smaller pixels 🤭.
The „reboots“ starting 2013 (TR, Rise otTR, Shadow ofTR) are not bad games, they are actually quite entertaining and stunningly beautiful in their settings, but they are different games of course. Action adventure/shooter type and less Indiana Jones. But we should not forget, that there were more games around 1996 that would change computer gaming completely to real 3D gaming without pre rendered sequences as there were: Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Supermario 64,….
But, playing TR 1997 for the first time, its musical cues burnt themselves into my brain and even being long grown up at this time, it haunted me and was the first stress test for my marriage playing days over Christmas… 😅
I remember playing it on a SEGA console and when TR2 came out exclusively for PS1 I bought the PS just for this game! Says about everything I guess.
@@steve_ire321 I don't think this is totally fair :-) Of course, OG Tomb Raider is special on its own and some of the sequels fell flat. But Underworld for example had great atmospheric locations and at least similar platforming and riddles. It was not the same feeling as the first 5 games, but I dont think you can make countless games out of the original formula. The latest games, the survivor trilogy, has not a lot in common with classic tomb raider. I actually like those games as well, but they cant be compared to the old ones, because they are too different.
It’s insane how deeply you dive into the design of the game at each area. Very mind expanding
Josh Strife videos and mushrooms, you say? Very interesting...
You should check out Steve of Warr's retrospectives
@@4589dude great rec! Currently enjoying it
For anyone who saw Oppenheimer this year, the explosion from the intro at 3:00 is actually the very same bomb test at Los Alamos from the film. Tomb Raider plotlines have been driven by real world events a few times but in very background sort of ways, like the shipwreck of the Maria Doria in Tomb Raider 2 imagined as a sister ship to the real world SS Andrea Doria, which also sank.
What about tr3 with bob lazzars element 115 being present before it was on the periodic table.
That's an extremely iconic video of a nuclear test
City of vilcamamba [2nd level] was actually theorised to exist prior to the game release, it was later discovered in 2000 I think
Also in tr4 (last revelation) KV5 Is a huge Egypt tomb that was later discovered in real life containing a secret chamber with many treasures just like in the game
Tomb raider is like the Simpson of the Real world lol
In my opinion, the original Tomb Raider is one of the greatest games ever made, such fond memories of being sucked into the world and atmosphere and the jaw dropping spectacle that had never been done in a game before.
This and resident evil 1 blew me away.
I'll bet that Uncharted took a page from this game in terms of enemies. Both went from humans to demons.
i was really disapointed with the modern tomb raider games lacking of puzzles because thats like 70% the nostalgia i have for the game. they really dont make these kinda games no more atleast to my knowledge
I was in awe when this game came out but for me Metal Gear Solid on the PS1 was the game that made me realize games can be cinematic like movies and one of my favorite PS1 games.
So true. Sometimes you've really got to remind yourself that in the early years of the 32bit consoles, some of the longest running and most loved franchises were born, some that even continue today - resident evil and metal gear solid spring to mind.
And let's not forget that up until this point in gaming there had NEVER quite been anything like Tomb Raider before - the 3d world, the action, the puzzles it was like playing a proper indianna jones game - it was truly a spectacle of gaming at that point in gaming history.
Yes. Absolutely yes! Easy to look back at this as a dated mess but in its time, wowzers! So much fun!!
Easy? it never was and never will be a mess, the whole idea of *how well did the game age* is moronic , it was amazing and always will be
amazing because it was a large 3D open world but it was awful to play
@@koffing2073 and yet here i am in 2022 playin this game on my ps1, and i love it still, just like i did then, idk what awfulness youre talking about
Still amazing and fun to play to this day! Controls are very good and intuitive if You actually take time to learn them and the game has a great difficulty curve.
@@koffing2073 It was 100 times more fun playing TR1 than any shit that was released last 10 years .. primarily BECAUSE it was challenging, and there's no reward without a challenge. They have taken all the fun out of games, by replacing hard platforming sequences by stupid quick-time bullshit, and they have taken all exploration out of the games, by replacing really great level design by stupid hoses. How could this be better?
I always knew the tomb raider universe had a "these myths are real" thing going on. What I never knew is how completely off the rails the first game was willing to go.
In retrospect I wish the reboot went full crazy like this. I had a Nintendo 64 as a kid so I missed out on this, and not a single video I've seen about it, mentions these things. Would love fighting a trex with updated controls
@@nottoday9182 You want Tomb Raider Anniversary. With the exception of the dumb QTEs it's an amazingly good and faithful adaption of the first game. I'm a huge and longtime Lara fan; the reboot trilogy is awful imo.
@@KryptKicker5 what platforms is that on? Unfortunately I only have a ps4. I'd love to play that but I've never seen or heard of it
@@KryptKicker5 with reboot trilogy do you mean the 3 newest games?
@@peddasoost1556 Yes, the ones where they turned Lara into a boring version of Katniss from the Hunger Games. As opposed to the "Legend Trilogy", which is how I view it in my mind; includes Anniversary, Underworld and Legend.
My older brother and I were stuck on the Midas puzzle for like 2 months when we were kids. I bought a PC magazine "Svet Kompjutera" where the "Tips & Tricks" section gave the solution, making us the envy of our peer circle (this was in 1998, before widespread internet connections or wikis for every game).
I'm pretty sure everyone who made it that far jumped on that hand at least once.
2 months?
You have lead blocks. You need gold blocks. That hand turns you into gold.
2 months?
@@corona6381 we were kids, man.
@@LegendaryDarkKnight602 I never did as a kid do I didn't know the hand had magical powers so that was actually the last level I reached as a kid.
As an adult I came back and I actually got to the next level where I left the game since the bad parts of it started outweighing the good parts for me
@@TLuigi003 I caught hell just finding the bricks alone, it took me a few days.
I remember the amount of times I would pause or completely quit the game because I heard the noise of an unknown enemy. It was always a «what was that ?» very quickly followed by an uncontrollable terror. As progress went by, these noises became more and more disturbing. This game was AMAZING at scaring you. Even if the «danger/enemy» music was not playing, I was constantly looking in every corner and going forward very carefully because I was genuinely terrified of what would come next. The silence, the fact that most of the time you could only hear your footsteps worked incredibly well. They unintentionally made an amazing horror game. I’ve actually never finished Tomb Raider because I was genuinely scared of playing more. I stopped playing the first time I heard one of those weird fleshy monsters. I was very young but, I have to be honest, this game still scares me which I think is so cool. I still have this same feeling whenever I go back to it. One day, I will complete it. Even if I’ve experienced finishing it, Tomb Raider will always have a very special place in my heart.
I was a little kid and all five PS1 Tomb Raiders scared me more than actual horror games like Resident Evil! XD
word
Seriously 👀
Ya know...I see where you stand from. I never finished this game as a kid either. BUT....I did not become a whore afterwords 🙂
this is literally how I feel about the classic tomb raider games! I can't actually play them because I'm too scared.. I have repetitive nightmares about being in the game and the enemies come.
One of the things I love most about this game is the gradual drift from your regular ancient ruins into an otherworldly parallel filled with horrific guardians and mysterious evil creatures.
The second game also had this, whereas starting from the third game it was all very intermixed from the beginning.
It happens in both Uncharted and Indiana Jones, so it is kind of expected.
@@a.b.3455 I don't recall Uncharted having any "flesh rooms."
Something you could expect in Silent Hill or even Resident Evil maybe, but definitely not Tomb Raider. Especially if you look at the later games and then backwards.
@@jakelee7083 it does not, but it does feature a gradual drift into something more other worldly and mysterious then expected.
@@jakelee7083 Tomb Raider 2013 literally has Lara fall into a pool of blood with body parts all around... it's the first reboot series that was more cartoonish and less gritty even then Undeground was dark. Tomb Raider Chronicles takes the fantasy cake, because running away from dark knight only to be dragged by ugly fleshy mermaid to an underwater death wasn't topped the even by guy stabbing himself to become a dragon or guy feeding himself to a huge snow spider as part of a weird cult.
The unexpected horror frightened me so much as a little kid that my mind blocked a lot of it for years. It was only when I revisited the game as an adult that it all came back.
I still had all the good feelings you describe about this game, even though I was pushing 30 when I first played it! Yes, it was new at the time. Anyway, it's nice to know that once in a while, 20-somethings and 50-somethings can feel nostalgia for the same stuff.
Lol likewise, the sprite driven, 2d games of the 80's were totally left behind with the 3d solid model gfx of TR I remember being absolutely amazed and unlike the reviewer I loved the platform-puzzle element of it still one of my fave games ever
20 year somethings today cannot even tell what gender they are despite having the ability to look down their own pants.
@@veevendetta3448 but we could beat the original ps1 Tomb Raider Saga as kids and still to this day appreciate this gem of a game despite all the limitations it had when compared to modern developing capabilities, so I guess that breaks even
I brought it for my Saturn last week lol !
I never played the first Tomb Raider, so this was a hyper condensed Lets Play that finally let me get to see it all. I know that's not the intent behind the structure but it sure was fulfilling in that regard. Keep em coming please!
Thanks for the memories, mate. I'm 42, I played this when i was young. Never finished it, to this day, but I do remember the T-Rex level very fondly and by that I mean I pissed myself, turned around and tried to hightail it up the climb. Failed miserably, obviously... 😄
would say that's probably the main reason why almost nobody remembers the last level with the skinless monsters and the level which consists of organs.
Nobody got that far. at least the most players don't. If they do, then they've cheated their way through. The few who did it probably had PTSD and repressed it^^
I finished it, but only with the nude patch.. and heavy cheating
You know, I was thinking of how Subnautica is a modern example of how to use limited visibility to make areas seem bigger than they really are and provide a real sense of 'the unknown'.
And at 55:34, I realized that Josh absolutely must play it if he has not. No, he cannot look up a leviathan map.
I was thinking the same thing. Never did I have a fear of underwater until Subnautica. I would love to see Josh play it.
Me too , i'd love to see him review it sometime , what a game it was.
Subnautica ingrains Thalassophobia into unsuspecting gamers.
This takes me back...dont know if it was better, but it all was so new, every story, puzzle and cut scenes. Josh please for the the love of baby jesus give me part 2 of this.
I remember when I first saw a demo of this game. I was blown away when Lara climbed a ledge, then looked around and the camera zoomed all around where she looked. I'd never seen anything like that before. Mind-blowing stuff. ❤🤯
Having endured those brutal, brutal PS1 TR games in the first place and having watched more TR stuff on TH-cam than I care to admit, I found this retrospective to be the most hilarious contribution to the mountain of TR content I've found as of yet. I sure hope you'll do the same for the rest of the original series. Kudos, good sir!
Thank you so much.
I feel justified in hearing someone else say this game is horrifying. I played it a bit too young and it was too scary and too hard to finish.
One of the big things was I didn’t expect it to be so scary going in. I loved resident evil and thought the monsters were Awsome because I knew it would be a horror game. With tomb raider I was expecting this fun pulpy Indiana Jones type world. Instead I got darkness, monsters and lots of dead Laura.
Something about the black fog that's always in front of you is what did it for me. I never played the full game, but I had the playable demo on a demo disc and I knew it wasn't for me.
I finished the new trilogy and my gosh shadow felt like a horror game every time I went in a tomb or cave, especially in the jungle. The next game for sure is going to bring back more horror lol
TBF Indiana Jones can get pretty scary at times. Remember the opening of The Ark of the Covenant?
Lara*
RE got good jump scares but atmosphere was more of a badass comic book, RE2 was least scary with only three jumps, though 3 kept suspense with Nemesis... Tomb Raider had the unsettling monsters, human sacrifice cults, creepy tombs and ALSO jumpscares.
Damn it's hard to express how amazing this game was at the moment. The 3D was like basically brand new....the graphics were mindblowing and the game was fun.
It's still fun though. In the modern age there's nothing like it. While some of the mechanics are dated, the exploration combined with precision platforming are still top-notch game design even today. While the new trilogy is pretty fun overal, they don't quite offer the same kind of experience. It's also a very different Lara. Also worth mentioning are the isometric Guardian of Light and Temple of Osiris. I think those 2 games are the best games of its type because they combine platforming and puzzling so well. Other isometric action games are either looter RPG's or just shooters. Exploration, puzzling, platforming... not quite on the same level as in these games.
Once you've beaten it. Tomb Raider Anniversary on PSP.
@@pgtmr2713 Anniversary also has a PC port on Steam.
Most games were sprite based at the time, so seeing fully 3D exotic locations and characters was breathtaking. I think the only other 3D game I'd played around then was MDK (which was also really atmospheric). I remember being impressed by the animation. When Lara is pushing blocks around it really looks like an effort.
@@Gloops01 what about team fortress?..not that team fortress...yeah that team fortress!
I’m here in 2024 playing the remastered games. It’s still as fun as it was when I was ten years old
I made it to the T-rex when i was about.. 10-11 years old. I was so scared I had to turn the game off haha
Same here but I was 32 at the time
for some reason I was terrified of thor's hammer so I hid around the other side of the tv with the controller while my sister guided me into the room
So did my Dad and he was in his 30's.
Same but with TR3 and the tiger. Holy fucking shit the tiger.
I encountered a little glitch at there. I had already killed the T-rex, but then missed the jump over the bridge, and then the music started again, making me panic because I thought the T-Rex had respawned. This gave so much adrenaline that I had to close the game for my own safety.
What I loved about the classic Tomb Raider games is that they didn’t babysit you. You were thrown into the level and had to find out for yourself what to do. By exploring the level you found secrets and seemingly unreachable places that, after some exploration, you found a way to get there. And the games were unfair, trying to kill you all the time. But that also made you even more motivated to beat it.
Nowadays games give you objectives written on the screen, a map, an indicator that shows you where to go and how far you away from it and also highlighting the person/switch/door/etc. you need to find. It’s boring and too easy.
Biggest contrast is comparing original Tomb Raider with Anniversary remaking EXACT same levels while _highlighting all ledges you need to climb_ and having hintbook in your inventory just to make sure you don't get lost.
@@KasumiRINA I like to use the term "spoon-fed"
Nowadays there's Dark Souls.
Yep and believe me when they give us an old school Tomb Raider with an cool written story and good level design with the survival Gameplay and a cool settings with horror elemts (a little bit like the souls Games) and that with actual Graphics! It would be a bestseller. imagine a game that takes weeks to crack, with todays community. Everyone would be a part of this adventure.
@@Bibbes95 This is what I would love to see from the next Tomb raider but it seems that under the control of Amazon and its bizarre cultural standpoint and the inability to recognize well written story's I think Tomb raider is lost for the foreseeable future.
Way back when google search wasn't an option, I spent around 2 weeks (playing like 1 hour after school) in Palace Midas searching for a way to progress. It ended up being something silly and obvious like an edge I had to jump on, but I didn't see for two weeks. As a gamer, I've never been so lost and frustrated, but kept playing. This game was just mesmerizing.
I know exactly what u mean!! I spent 2 days in one room & I eventually found I had to push a block to get out haha so frustrating now days Internet show the way for all games!!
This happened to me in the T-Rex level; I couldn't find one of the cogs and spent months trying everything I could. My dad came back from a trip with a strategy guide for the first two games and when I cracked it open to find out where it was, I was mortified to find out it was in a spot that didn't even look climbable. Some weird waterfall textures in a corner of the T-Rex pit itself, if I'm remembering right.
@Nikola Stanković yeah we had those magazines too but it didn’t have all the walkthroughs for Tomb Raider…
i had put away for a few years before i played again and got past a bottleneck only to get stuk further in he game and never finishing it
hitting the r1 and l1 at the exact right time when climbing up resulted in a really elegant animation of Lara getting up. also hitting the same buttons while jumping of a cliff resulted in a cool head dive. funnier when you knew there was a solid ground below :D
I learnt early on in TR that when sliding, always jump towards the end, so that you can usually avoid the death traps hidden. Great upload. Brought back some nice memories, ohhh and that musical soundtrack!
Yes, that's one of the practices that made me feel skilled at the game. Especially when that jump takes you to another slide, it adds a real thrill to the game to try to react in real time. Basically everything that kills you, like the third boulder, is a chance for you to anticipate and feel clever if you avoid it the first time.
My favorite game. The atmosphere, the puzzles, all about it was AMAZING.
To everything you asked at the start of the video; yes. Yes I do. Whenever anyone wonders what elements make up Tomb Raider, people usually forget horror. I don't mean the Indiana Jones style end of the story horror event. I mean a feeling of dread that permeates the entire thing, like you are disturbing something that should remain hidden.
Ey thats well said! i like it.
So true! Actually there's some really good jump scares on these levels, specially the Atlantis ones
In classics TR games, there was a small design detail: the colour and texture of the keys usually match the locks.
Yes - he complains about the keys as a poor design choice several different times.
In reality, the keys and locks are all color coded, and if you pay even a little bit of attention, this becomes the single least valid thing to complain about in this game.
@@dananderson6697in the remastered the key that’s designed for the door appears once you hit the lock. So they made it even easier.
41:45 You may have already been told this but the trick for navigating jump sequences like this is to hold the jump button until she reaches the ledge rather than taping it when you want to jump. When you hold it she'll almost always jump as she hits the edge of the ledge, think of it as an inversion of holding walk to not fall off.
exactly, basically, it looks like a game of impossible jumps but actually, I really like how the developers master the jumps for the player
I didn't even think some people would think they have to press the jump button at the very point, isn't this explained in the Manor training?
@@neillaw of course it does
Nooo! You need to do the swan dive in Thor’s room to avoid the lightning
I remember playing this and being genuinely scared when being attacked by wolves for the first time or listening to the T-Rex stomping around outside the cave entrance and knowing I would have to battle it at some point. This was milestone in PC gaming at the time.
Same. As a kid I'd always start playing and five minutes in ask my dad to take over cause I was scared of what could happen.
This has quickly become one of my favorite late night channels. Thanks for your hard work on this stuff. :D
I replay all the TombRaiders every so often. It has a lot of replay value. Similar to Metroid. Always find myself going back to them.
I enjoy games that don't hold your hand and full of ambiance. The last revelation is probably my favorite installment. It was also amazing playing as an adventure woman when most video game characters were mainly male. It immersed me more.
The feeling of flooding a room that you died from falling in so many times, to jump into the room without a care in the world... thank you for reminding me of that!!
that is so true!
Played this in my 20's. It was absolutely revolutionary. There was no internet to tell you what to do or where to go. You had to legit figure it out for yourself. I sat with my girlfriend for nights on end playing this and figuring things out. Such an awesome game.
I'm sure there were PC and gaming magazines with tips and tricks for exorbitant prices. Legit hard game without any clues.
Me and a buddy played it every night for months. When we found the lost city, it was amazing feeling. Nostalgia man
I had the strategy guide, remember those?
There were strategy guides (expensive).
@@Tool0GT92 Still got it. Had FFVII guide and TR in the same edition
The tomb raider music score is sublime & iconic even to this day.
Outstanding retrospective. I get to relive all the great moments of the game without having to play through it all again. I played through the game in 1996 and then again about 20 years later. Might be another 20 before I play through it a third time but this video was great.
I’m old enough to remember playing this when it first came out and being blown away by the graphics. How times have changed 😂
I wasn't blown away by the graphics but it was such an atmospheric game, sometimes even scary.
My first "blown away by graphics" game was Doom 3. Which was frankly hilarious considering my father's first version of that was classic Doom.
He showed me an article about it in an old magazine from the time asking "Have video game visuals gotten too realistic?" They were suggesting that people could go insane because games were getting so realistic that people might forget they're not real. These days, you're more likely to find someone who can't get past the graphics lol
@@ledumpsterfire6474 Doom is so modable these days that you can fix the graphics however you want, like with the Beautiful Doom mod.
Same. Well tomb raider 2 for me really. Mad looking back now.
Tbh, its not an ugly game, especially for a saturn/ps1 game. Even the lack of zbuffering of the ps1 isnt all that annoying (yes this is emulation in the video, but ive seen worse then this game on the ps1 (way worse))
Not only do I remember it, I know this game like the back of my hand "Stand still and shoot is the most effective way to deal with packs of enemies"
While I know that PS1 TR's combat is pretty bad, this is actually very bad advice and is just flat-out wrong. This is simply what the average gamer does when they first play Tomb Raider, because it's far less mentally stressful to just rely on your Medipacks than it is to learn how different enemies require different types of maneuvering for Lara to avoid lots of dmg from them. Obviously there ARE SOME badly-placed enemies in the game that you prob wont be able to avoid taking a lot of damage from, but for most enemies, you can either tumble beside them or jump around to circle them and prevent them from ever catching up to you. You just have to learn the rhythm for each enemy.
Leaning on your medipacks for too many enemies WILL PUNISH YOU by the tail-end of the game, especially if you don't know where any of the Secrets pickups are, because you find much less of them the further in the game you progress. Your predicament at 29:10 sort of proves my point; of course you're gonna die if you just stand there. You could also just jump up onto those ledges on the sides of the entrance and the lions won't even be able to touch you. Of course, they'll also start to run away as a result, which means you kinda have to dance back and forth with them to get them within shooting range, should you decide to use that tactic.
I am very much a proponent of the idea that it is *Not Hard* to get good at PS1 TR's combat, especially in the first game. It just takes a small bit of practice, and requires you to essentially be fearless with how you decide to maneuver around melee-based enemies. You should also consider the fact that, if you shotrgun an enemy at close-quarters, they will most likely die in 1 hit. Definitely use close-up shotgun blasts on the Apes inside of that small room at 29:22 .
> There is actually 1 instance of a moving piece of terrain: in the CIty(?) of Khamoon, you flip a switch that causes a long block to slide out of the wall, and you watch it happening. It's kinda cool, and a little jarring since its the only case of that ever happening in the game.
I feel like I remember this too, but I cannot find it. It doesn't happen for example in this PS1 PSX playthrough: th-cam.com/video/5Xh9QcNcZEw/w-d-xo.html. It also doesn't happen when I play on PC, and there isn't a camera trigger to show it when I'm looking at the (PC) level file.
@@Rapora9 if it wasn't in City of Khamoon, then it was in Obelisk of Khamoon. I can't remember exactly which level it was in.
And no, there isnt any camera trigger associated with it.
@@MastaGambit From the same video, do you mean this golden block that comes out of the wall? (th-cam.com/video/5Xh9QcNcZEw/w-d-xo.html)
I checked both of the Khamun levels and did not find anything else. There is one similar block in Obelisk, but it doesn't change at all.
I also checked the object files of these two levels and did not see any block that could move in and out. Without an object, it's not possible for something like that to happen. This was for PC levels though and they're not 100% same, for example in that very room my link shows, there is a mummy in ps1 version but not on pc version. Still, the levels are like 99% the same and I doubt any whole object would be missing from PC.
I don't know if you're aware, but the way changing geometry works in TR is that there are 2 rooms (normal and flipped/changed), and the game shows you one or the other room based on certain conditions. So there isn't any actual movement happening, just a change in which room the game shows.
And now that I think of it, there is at least one room that you can see to change. Once again it's in City of Khamun and it's shown in this video of Josh: the trap where stairs turn into a slope that leads you to the spikes.
@@Rapora9 Yes, I believe it's that block. Or a block like it. I know how the game actually handles changes in terrain geometry. I was simply using Josh's logic on "moving terrain" to explain the idea.
Yes, I remember rationing shotgun cartridges for close combat ambushes was a key aspect of ammo management.
33:44 although I agree to the "the keys aren't put in automatically to pad game time", I kinda have to defend the game by saying that the keys always matched the locks in color and/or style.
But yeah, TR1 was one of my first ever experience with video games, my dad showed it to me when I was around 4. Like you mentioned, I was so afraid to let her die because of these gruesome death animation.
The game still holds a special place in my heart, even though my favorite of the old ones was TR3. Thank you for this awesomely narrated and structured video! Nostalgia goggles can make it hard to look past our bias sometimes, so I would like to add that your critiques were not only justified, but you made the pill less hard to swallow. Cheers!
Yes, the keys aren't put in automatically because figuring out the order the keys should go in is a mini puzzle. The punishment if you fail *is* having to try all the keys by hand.
I’ve watched this episode 20 times. Picked this up as a kid and mostly played the tutorial as I couldn’t figure out a damn thing to do in the game. I LOVE the sound of your voice anyway. Please do more classic games man.
What you said about "level designer vs player" hits the nail on the head.
I've loved classical Tomb Raider for basically all my life (first played at age of 5, so fan for 23 years now). About 15 years ago I started on building levels by myself with the level editor (which Core Design provided in 2000). As a quite young kid I always had the "fear" of my levels to be too simple and people finishing it in just a couple of minutes after working weeks or months on it.
Which then ended up in building a path but putting more and more obstacles and puzzles within it to hinder the player from reaching the finish line. My levels were because of that even classified as medium-hard difficulty which was quite an achievement for me. (Luckily back then already I sensed the difference between challenging gameplay and gametime stretching)
It's the point of gameplay design, I see that but in classic Tomb Raider it is on a certain different level because of what you described. And it's funny how you sort of exposed the level designers' intentions (at least mine back then :D) by just playing.
When recently playing TR2 as a player it felt this way constantly. It was sometimes even suprising when I progressed without encountering a further obstacle and the level was finished.
Great video, I love your content, Josh, keep it up. Best wishes from Germany :)
Those keys in St Francis Foley were color coded, key was the same as the keyhole but I get the point, not all door had that. It's also crazy how much issues are solved on pc with the unlimited save option!
That was a fantastic video and I'm glad I stumbled upon it!
Almost all locked doors have color coded locks if there are multiple keys and the non key shaped keys are usually pretty easy to make out in the relief as well. If you can't find a keyhole it's usually a lever.
the keys are also in the same order in your inventory as the equivalent keyhole if you use them from left to right so it's a bit of a weak criticism really. you can enter every key with zero inventory scrolling.
Many of his criticisms are totally irellevant if you use your brain and or played it on the pc
guys... you just hit the action button on the lock and the game auto-selects the right inventory item for you... either that or I got VERY lucky with item placement
I don't know if anyone else said this, but all the animations in the classic TRs, were hand made, no mocap was used at the time, which makes all of this even more amazing.
Which is especially impressive with the reverse climb maneuver she can do.
Toby Gard did all the animations by hand, including that one, in a time 3d gaming wasn’t a thing. I might be old, but to me, videogames don’t cary this magic anymore
@@tenjenk what is "reverse climb maneuver"? I can't recall this one.
@@wojtek3010 The one where if you hold the walk, Action and Up button while hanging off a ledge, she'll reverse lift her lower body into a handstand and curve around again backwards to place her feet on the end of the ledge, then pull her upper body into a standing position. Very extra in the best way.
@@tenjenkI forgot that you could do that lol
im currently marathoning this series of videos you've done, and i greatly enjoy these looks into games and how you structed them. the first time player perspective, with anecdotes about previous playthroughs (if you have played it before), mixed with realistic and blunt reviews of certain mechanics or elements.
there's a lot of games in this era ive never even seen screenshots of, let alone played. *and* i really love hearing exactly what made them good, the community or the hype or the mechanics, etc.
i'm originally a viewer who started watching your 'worst mmo ever' series, and i'm always happy to see a new one of those videos uploaded! but now i'm real excited to wait for more from this series as well :3
i know this probably won't get noticed, but i wanted to go ahead and try recommending you do a 'was it good?' review of quake. i recently played it for the first time and it's now one of my favorite games. i'd absolutely love to see you struggle with and roast it though, since i know it's probably far from perfect
but regardless, thank you so much for making videos like these! they're really soothing to turn on and interesting to watch
the grid/movement/jumping of tomb raider was so amazing. at the time so many gamers were missing the absolute precision you could attain in 2D games that had disappeared in early 3D stuff that all felt really wooly and vague in comparison, tomb raider found a way to bring it back
This. A billion times this. I don't really understand how so many people in recent years have spoken so adamantly against the movement of the first TR games. I tried them both on PS1 and PC, and they worked really fucking fine, I was always precise as fuck. You moved perfectly in those "big squares", you just had to understand that the movement was actually founded around those very "big squares". That's why I started to like the other newer TR games lesser and lesser, everything I had learned after years and after 5 games went completely "SPOOF!" ... Not to mention, IIRC the games from 6 to 9 were ABSOLUTELY terrible when it came to movements and actions. 6th one in particular.
@@gypruzzcaccamo6586 I play TR1 almost every day and still love the movement. It's actually one of the things that make TR1-5 so great for me. I don't understand people who say the controls are "outdated". It's not outdated. It's just different. The new games focus on fluid and easy movement, while older TRs have precise movement as one of the main challenges. I prefer the latter. I'll even go as far as claiming that the "delayed jump" of TR1 should not have gone away. It's an amazing feeling to control Lara so that you can perform a series of jumps without stopping, and without having the instant jump available.
@@Rapora9 Precisely. In the first 5 games, it would take me just a gaze, just a brief look to understand if a certain jump was doable or not, if I had to jump without running, if and when I had to press "action" to grab, or if I had to perform a sideway jump. I played perfectly even if it was my very first playthrough. And it wasn't like it was a hard game, or hard to understand, hell, I was an early teenager back then, nothing impossible to pull off. Compared to TR 6 to 9 it was like comparing heaven to hell.
This is THE game, the game that made me fall in love with games, I tried if for the first time in 1998 (a bit late) and while it looks of its time now, it is still so much fun :3
Me too, though rewatching this review I wonder how 10 year old me even beat the game. I remember having my mind blown with the doppleganger fight after dying like 10 times to a shootout with it.
Visiting my parents this christmas i dug out my old ps1 and some of the games. I am currently looking at the PS1 game on my shelf right now, while watching this video! This game was so much fun. Seeing through walls by looking into angles in corners of rooms were hilarious and let child-me plan my routes a bit better
I never understood how to play the game when I was a kid and I would just watch in awe wondering how my mum knew where to go and what to do.
The manor house with the maze and outdoor training area was elite though. This game will forever have a place in my heart.
"No one expects the third boulder." *Flashbacks intensify.*
This game was a masterpiece at the time was released. and still is a pretty good challenging game.
Watching this vid just makes me wanna play it again haha.
Nice vid, perfect ending lmao
I watched my uncle play this game as a kid. Incredibly nostalgic.
The old Tombraiders might be outdatet when it comes to controlls and grafics, but for me the gamplay still works. There ist really an specific atmosphere which give you the felling, beeing alone in an ancient tomb never entered for hundreds of years. Exploring, getting lost and finally find the solution to continue in the level define, what Tombraider is all about. It has much more charme then modern "Call of Tomb" which ist ist nothing more than fastfood for people with few patience.
I don't think it's anything like CoD if that was the joke, reminded me more of The Last of Us. I recently played the first of the modern ones for the first time. It was TLOU combat/crafting with exploration.
You won't get as lost in the modern one as you do the originals unfortunately.
@@PopADoseYo good
the controls had a bit of a learning curve but once you got used to them, this was a REALLY fun game.
It takes a bit of patience at first, but the game feels very satisfying and fun to master.
The Damocles sword room was one of the most memorable moments for me that’s still burned in my brain. Those hanging swords were so damn frightening!
I walked through the room and the swords always dropped close enough to kill you.
Me and my sister grew up playing this masterpiece as kids on our parent's old Windows 95 PC. Some aspects don't hold up well, but this game had a similar ripple effect to Super Mario 64 that is still felt today. It's one of those games where you had to play it in 1996 to appreciate how great it was. Impeccable atmosphere mixed with exploration, puzzles and horror, it really was something special. Too bad the combat sucked but when the other parts are so good, when taken as a whole, it almost didn't matter.
L
When I played Tomb Raider on the PC back in the day, I never realized how weak the T-Rex actually was I guess, as shown in this video. Was it stronger on PC? I didn't jump back when firing to beat it, I found a passage to the side I could go to if I was quick, and ended up in a giant cat and mouse game with it as I was climbing and exploring the side passages and caves and looked for positions to shoot at it. One of my most memorable moments in the game, maybe I just got lucky via my own ineptitude lol.
ah yes. I never found the shotgun in my first playthrough so I hid in the furthest chamber and shot 2 pistol shots at him whenever he deigned to walk past lol it took like 20 mins to kill him XD
I recently killed it on PC and it died pretty easily.
@@DGneoseeker1 sure, these days I'd waltz in there with the shotgun and I think three or four shots does it, but I think the ledge I chose to hide was just a little out of reach from T's path, so I barely ever hit it :)
@@AerisShenlin That sounds likely because the pistols worked fine for me. Just took a bit of time in which I got headbutted a couple of times...
I had the same experience as a kid. Cat and mouse style. But having recently replayed, I was able to pistol it down standing my ground while barely even bothering to dodge its attacks. I think it was more intimidating back then due to shock factor.
I remember me, my brother and my dad spent many a Sunday playing this game together. One of the only games my dad played with us. Happy to say we beat it. Man this takes me back. Thanks!
This was very entertaining. I would love if he did all of the Tomb Raiders. I legitimately had fun watching this all the way through
I completely agree. I’d love to see one for the others.
Yeah I felt so nostalgic watching this. Brought back good memories.
"The T rex. The moment everyone panicked, ran away and didn't go back."
Bruh as a kid I could never move past the very first set of tigers because I was actually terrified of them 😅
Me too! I played this game as a kid but was too afraid to play the first level, so I only played the tutorial haha. It was enough to satisfy my growing brain.
If you think the final level is bad, imagine playing it on the Sega Saturn where the framerate is god awful. It's soooo infuriating.
I played this on saturn as well and the back tracking killed me, never finished it.
It's weird but as a kid I never noticed the bad framerate on Saturn, but compared to the PS1 version there's a clear difference.
The Saturn version didn’t have the extra save points of the PlayStation version, though, so is clearly the most hardcore version. As befits the greatest console ever made. :)
@@hobartpaving8986 oh yeah! It saved at checkpoints didn't it?
The golden years of gaming. I feel lucky to have lived through it.
I've always said the PSone - PS2 era was the golden age of gaming. I feel so lucky as well that I was just the right age to experience it.
When True 3D was in its infancy but considered a novelty back then.
Ehh. Infinitely better to have lived th 60s for the music, or the 70s for the cinema.
@@brunoactis1104 cope
It definitely was. Back when games were hard and games had genres and intended audiences and if it was too hard for you or didn't appeal to you it was tough fucking luck and you could bugger off and play something else. Not like today where everything has to be accessible to everyone.
The worst part honestly is how in the remake they looked at this and thought the combat was the thing to focus on, and not the exploration of ruins and tombs
Editing to make clear I mean the rebook not anniversary edition.
best memories was getting lost and having no idea what to do.
@@brianlawl I totally agree.
tomb raiders are truly serial killers and psycopaths
@@Kabodanki Lara Croft easily falls into the "serial killer" category. She even killed the cameraman at the end of Tomb Raider 2.
Perhaps she also collects body parts... She clearly has the ability and the resources for it.
Yeah they went the Sony route as well and made half the game walking sections and cutscenes
I could never complete this game from both difficulty and fear. I am grateful for how in-depth this retrospective/review was. Your hard work is much appreciated!
Love the review, couple things though. Almost all the keys are color coded, even the named keys, so it's not trial and error to see what key fits in what slot. Gold colored key fits in gold lock, silver colored key fits in silver lock, etc...
There is a delay in Laura's jump that spans throughout the entire series, and it's more of a realistic delay. In a running jump Laura will always finish her step before she jumps. This spans throughout ALL of the games.
Lastly, a lot of those insta kill mechanics you complained about not seeing you do see before it kills you, it's all about reaction time, not about acting on past knowledge. You get short glimpses of what might kill you and if you react fast enough you can live. Big example are those backwards slides into spike pits, the camera will pan on them a few seconds before you die, giving you time to jump. Also there are others where you can see the entire room ahead of time, meaning you'd have knowledge of those traps.
As for the combat, I remember it being a lot less clunky, but I also remember cheering about 90% of the fights by standing on a platform and just shooting everything that moved from the safety of higher ground.
Same with the camera angles, I don't remember them being that bad, but again that might be nostalgia getting in the way.
Don't worry though, we all hate boulders.
There's a part where he complains that a trap is trial and error, but 30 seconds before that he's stood in a position in which he can see the trap and should have known he'd need to jump backwards to avoid it.
I get the feeling that the console version and the PC version had some differences. I remember the T-Rex taking a lot more bullets than what is shown and having to find a small niche in the wall to shoot it safely from. I also remember those swords not being as homing as what is seen. They swayed a little to get you but not that much.
It also helped that you could save anywhere which would help in tricky jumps and trial and error.
And cheesing the fights with the high ground was a way of life for most of the Core games.
Loved the no hand holding exploration feel of the old Tomb Raider games.
@@Fickji Between the two ports, the only differences were the save functions. Guns did the same damage, enemies had the same health pool, and the swords worked the same way. That being said, playing this on PSX was indeed the harder way to play. And harder than that would be the Sega Saturn port probably.
Is funny how in retrospective, some gameplay choices can feel frustrating or dated, but at the time, mechanics like stopping pressing the shoot button to change enemies even after killing them felt so organic and nbew and fresh cause it kind of made sense on a brain also new to 3d gameplays. Like we accepted that as a byproduct of having the chance to have fun going through that grid and solving shit before gameplays on magazines were published and brag tf with friends at school.
Always considered Tomb Raider to be a puzzle platformer and that was it's strength, combat was secondary. As the series progressed and combat came to the fore while the puzzle aspect became almost non existent the games lost their appeal for me.
nah cmon. The challenge tombs in SotTR are some of the best puzzles the series has ever provided.
TR4 had insane puzzles tbf
@Berbadetta von Varley 😂
Modern tomb raider is violence galore. Lara is a serial killer now.
Yeah, I mean the modern TR games are good, but the classics will never be beaten
I was looking for a documentary to fall asleep to. Instead I found this; watched the whole of this and then was too rattled with nostalgia and joy to go to sleep. Keep up the great work :)
Old games made me forever scared of water in games. Back in the day water killed you or was used as something that is supposed to stop you. No on stopped to ask if hiding unimaginable horrors underwater is a good design for your people. Even years later games made me be careful when dealing with water, Spore straight up makes a leviathan out of nowhere kill you if you swim too far, Valheim has sea serpents etc. I'm constantly anxious when dealing with water in games.
TR2's tiger sharks were terrifying to me as a kid
I still remember the shark sound in Jak and daxter
Underwater horrors? Remember TR2 there was a mission where you started in the bottom of the ocean. Not sure how she could survive that alone but you had to put swim two great whites to get to a sunken ship. Nightmare fuel.
Half Life put that fear into people
Not only in games but in real life as well
I was traumatized by unexpected shark in TR2
I turned the game off and never touched it again lol
I love that you mentioned the epic feeling of getting the guns to fire out of sync, childhood badass moment right there.
3rd video i've watched of yours, the style of this is so well done, i'll be watching the one of the games I've never played too.
I'll always remember my brother in law showing me this on his computer when I was a kid. I was blown away, it was so much fun and those Lara Croft polygons made me feel kinda funny.
" Lara Croft polygons made me feel kinda funny." You should keep that information to yourself ha ha.
@@anthonyg4671 hey man, everyone has that moment lol
Revolutionary game, one of the best of its era. I played it when in the first week it released, feels so long ago. I'm glad TR focused on exploration with outstanding level design which still holds up. Getting slightly lost before finding your way can be better than linear games that rush you straight to the next gunfight. And yes the gunplay was a little clunky, but comparing it to modern gamepley is a bit unfair. It received 8s and 9s deservedly.
it was mostly 9s and 10s i believe, it was that good at release. 2 whole years before Thief.
I'd love for the Anniversary version of this game get it's well deserved credit as well. I think it's one of the best re-makes of a game ever. The visuals and the level design are so incredible
I played TR as a kid, but I fell in love with it after Anniversary. What a gem!
just replayed anniversary and it was SO GOOD
Replaying it now yeah it's really good, shooting sucks and lack of lightning, but then can improve it today easily.
Anniversary was great, but the original was definitely more atmospheric and rewarding. The QTE in Anniversary didn't really do anything for me either. Both should be played though. Both really good games and have different perks/cons.
oh yeah
My buddy and I actually got legit mad at how dumb this game gets towards the end. It starts out full of mystery as you explore these spooky, forgotten places and ends with you fighting a zombie shooting lava missiles. Just a real letdown to an iconic game.
St Francis' folly level is Greek themed, not Egyptian, although the distinction on PS1/Saturn hardware is admittedly difficult
That's why I never got the appeal of the PS1 as a kid. My first experience with it was tomb raider running in a store. I already had the PC version at home..
also I savescummed every single hard jump; not possible with the PS1 checkpoint system.
Yes, and the 4 keys are color coded. No need to try all on one lock until you get the right one. (Though Thor being a bit of a weird choice here... I think it's Hephaistos in the remake ?)
@@ph8enix it was originally supposed to be hephaestus in the game but the developer in charge of the naming of the room got confused by the hammer and electricity and named it thor.
the misconception is that the room is about thors hammer, but it's actually in reference to the god of blacksmithing, because the hammer is meant for the smithing of the greek statues of hephaestus. this is why it is correctly named in anniversary.
Could be ptolomeic
@@lunakoala5053 The PS1 is great
Great re-visit. I remember when Tomb Raider came out on Playstation. I saw the screenshots, but when I played and found out the camera wasn't static like on Resident Evil, it blew my mind. Such a landmark moment for gaming. It looked great, but when I got the Mac version on 3DFX it went up a notch or three. The exploration was wonderful in the early stages and this is what really made the game for me- platforming, beautiful wonder-inspiring levels and finding your way around them and the puzzles. The sense of space, scale and vertigo in places was palpable. Combat was never a good bit of these games in my opinion. I certainly remember the big torso fight near the end! The anniversary version captured some of this, but added the awful quicktime events that plagued later TR games (not to mention the appalling vehicle bits). The music was so beautiful and inspiring on Tomb Raider (the Beautiful And Mysterious track in particular). I feel Tomb Raider II really took it up a level and things like not shooting the monks and getting their help was a nice touch (and some of the jumping puzzles on this were great!). Cheers for the nostalgia trip! Are you gonna do TR2?
Miss when games didn't hold your hand and encouraged you to get good, explore, remember. What a blast this game was, watching this made my tummy go funny, lovely work sir
This one was hard. I there wasn't TH-cam available to see a walkthrough...I'm playing Rise of Tomb raider right now and it's like you said : game hold your hands. There's all sorts of hints, clues, Survival Instint at a push of a button and Lara speaks to itself when you seem stuck at some place
It's such a shame, Rise and Shadow are garbage, very pretty but garbage.
@@scottneil1187 Yes after Crystal Dynamics took over the franchise they lost me
Yes I played it so much back in the day I knew every mechanic, jump, movement, everything. Tried it again recently and its all gone can't remember any of the controls, muscle memory amnesia
I actually didn't find it that hard to move around during combat - typically I would jump to the left or right and back, jump back, or run and "tumble" to face the opposite direction, etc. I found it an effective combat strategy.
Yeah I agree it was one thing I disagreed with about this video, I don't remember 'just standing there tanking damage' being the best strategy at all! Like u said the combination of different jump directions and the roll/tumble and locking on to enemies, in my opinion made decent and strategic combat. Most of the stronger animals if u just stood there killed u very fast as far as I remember 🤔
Little bit confused about this analysis 😂
@@bruceMooseman yeah some of it is very colored from the ps version also greek not egyptian sigh ol