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Previous rants:

Piracy (Part 2)
Piracy (Part 1)
E3 2010 (Part 2)
E3 2010 (Part 1)
Pokémon (Part 4)
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This is going to be more of a retrospective than a rant but there's enough content to consider this a rant. This is one of my favourite game franchises from my childhood and the series overall has its ups and downs. Yes, I did play these games when I was only a kid but chances are, YOU played Grand Theft Auto 10 years younger than its age rating so we're even.

Tomb Raider begun development in mid 90s and the first game was actually set for release in 1995. However, the publisher felt the original final product wasn't good enough and wanted Core Design to revise the game and so they did. One of the changes they actually made was the main character. Before Lara Croft, they had a male character who was pretty much an Indiana Jones clone so to those who don't like Lara Croft, be grateful they came up with a more interesting idea for the protagonist of Tomb Raider and even gave a lot of light to video game heroines. Before Tomb Raider, you could only name Terra Branford and Samus Aran and now we have more of them.

After the revisions for the video game, it was approved by the publisher and became a groundbreaking video game of the mid-90s. Sure, this game may not be as popular as Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog or Final Fantasy VII and it may have not aged as well as them but Tomb Raider is still a milestone in action-adventure and platforming games. It has a strong nostalgic value to me and remains as one of my favourite games along with Crash Bandicoot and Metal Gear Solid.

The first Tomb Raider game is one of my all-time favourites. The soundtrack was limited but great, the 3D environments were fantastic (and still have a charm for me) and the game gave you several epic battles such as fighting mutant centuars, a giant mutant with a huge torso and arms to rely on and a motherfucking T-Rex! There is no other game that lets you fight all these monsters in a single game! The only real downside to this game is the controls which haven't aged well. Although I can tolerate them, others aren't likely to manage them, especially newer gamers.

Tomb Raider II wasn't as good as the first game IMO but it was still a great follow-up. The plot wasn't as great as the first game and neither were the settings but putting them aside, it was still an enjoyable experience for me. As for Tomb Raider III, it too was fun but maybe it was too difficult at some points. It didn't have a great learning curve as even the first level was hard! Putting that aside, it was a good game but not as good as the first two. Still, it's light years ahead of the following games by Core Design which was when Tomb Raider went downhill.

Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation was announced and with the exception of the first two levels, the whole game took place in Egypt and for a game based on tomb raiding, you'd think this was the best idea for Tomb Raider yet! Sadly, it was a poor game. This didn't provide a great variety of settings as its predecessors did and the gameplay wasn't straight-forward. Some levels where going straight to point B while some had several levels to look around in and that didn't make the game consistent. Not only that, the game felt like it was dragging on and on and I can never bring myself to beat this game thoroughly.

The one thing I actually hated about The Last Revelation the most was the save system on the Playstation version. The first three games had a very convenient save system where if you wanted to play a previous level or felt you needed to start the level over again, you could. This game on the other hand completely fucked it up and even still to this day I shake my fist at Core for changing something that wasn't broken in the first place. There was no going back to previous levels, no level restarting, you could only go to where you last saved and this was troublesome as I once experienced a fatal glitch where the only way to advance would be to go BACK TO SQUARE FUCKING ZERO! It may not be too bad on PC as you can make several save files and have the console command as a backup (if that game even had one) but consoles had none of that back then and game files were very limited as well.

The sad thing about the save system was that Core actually kept that one and not the convenient one from the first three games and this really harmed my enjoyment with Chronicles and Angels of Darkness as they too had fatal glitches where you'd have to restart the fucking game if the game experienced such problems.

It wasn't just the save system that made me dislike these two games, Chronicles was a bad cash-in attempt from Core Design as they knew people still wanted more Tomb Raider, even if The Last Revelation suggested the end of the series. Hell, seeing Lara getting trapped in the collapsing pyramid should have been enough to tell the gamers "SHE'S FUCKING DEAD, MOVE ON!" but no, they had to bring her back and claim she actually escaped and how you may ask? Well, they never explained that. Chronicles did show a dig searching in that pyramid and Von Croy finding Lara's backpack but we never saw Lara there and that ending wasn't even related to the levels you were playing in the slightest.

You had four different stories taking place in different times. One of them was before the events of the first game in Rome but uh oh, plothole alert! She meets Larson and Pierre and in the first game, none of them recall the events in Rome. Lara was meant to meet these two for the first time when searching for the pieces of Scion, NOT when she was at Rome searching for the Philosopher's Stone. As for the other three, one taking place in Russia, one in Ireland and the last one at Von Croy's headquarters. These stories were all pointless and added absolutely nothing to the series whatsoever.

After Chronicles came the horrendous Angel of Darkness. Core wanted to make a "next generation of Tomb Raider" here but utterly failed at delivering a good game. Although they took longer than usual to make this game and had to delay it several times, the game was still a broken piece of shit! The physics were horrible, the game was glitchy (some were fatal too) and the story had potential but contained several plotholes. Also, who the fuck is Kurtis Trent again? So much for making a whole new playable character in Tomb Raider when we've been used to Lara all this time.

The story for Angel of Darkness was meant to continue in another game or two but after the backlash from reviewers, Core Design were no longer making Tomb Raider games and thus came to an end or an era. Eidos would then hand over the rights to Crystal Dynamics and give Tomb Raider a fresh start. We'll talk about the Crystal Dynamics era in the second part.