The dialogue was cheesy, the villains ridiculous, and the voice acting questionable at best, but Tomb Raider 3 was one of the first games that gave players the sense that they were acting out a movie (albeit a pretty bad movie, with giant spiders and terrible acting).Ģ001 brought about the first appearance of Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider movie.
#Cold tomb raider movie series#
3D action platformers had been evolving alongside the Tomb Raider series for the past two years, and Tomb Raider 3's graphics and control system compared unfavorably to many of them.ĭespite its aging technology, Tomb Raider 3 continued to up the ante in terms of cinematic gameplay. The two-year-old game engine was beginning to show its age, as was the tried-and-true Tomb Raider gameplay formula. However, reviewers of the game at the time started to see a pattern emerging. New backdrops such as Area 51, London, and India as well as powerful new weapons and a bikini-clad Lara could only sweeten the deal. It's difficult to fault a developer for sticking to what they know is successful, and that's exactly what Core did with its third Tomb Raider game, offering gamers a steaming bowl of the same Tomb Raider experience they knew and loved. And with this snowballing success came increased sales and more sequels. Though some fans of the series bemoaned Tomb Raider 2's shift from puzzle-solving and exploration, there's no doubt that this change helped the series obtain more mainstream success. Tomb Raider 2 saw Lara visit Venice, China, and the ruins of a sunken cruise ship in a more action-focused adventure. A bigger budget made for a longer game, more eye candy, and a more diverse range of environments, along with new gameplay devices like vehicles and underwater combat. In the run up to the release of Tomb Raider 2, Lara Croft was already a household name, and the next game in the series was highly anticipated, even making national news in the UK. Knowing that many gamers didn't make it to the end of Lara's first adventure, Core Design sought to make Tomb Raider more accessible in the inevitable sequel. The game was puzzle-heavy, its combat and platforming extremely unforgiving, and most of its massive levels contained just one save point. What many people forget about the first Tomb Raider is that it was brutally difficult. It was the right game at the right time, and became a critical and commercial hit, selling over seven million copies. The original Tomb Raider saw Lara Croft pillaging priceless artifacts and endangering local wildlife from Peru to Atlantis in search of the mystical "Scion" artifact. 3D gaming had just hit the mainstream with the recent launch of the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation, and Tomb Raider offered a potent combination of original gameplay ideas, gorgeous graphics, and polygonal breasts. On November 25 1996, Core Design and Eidos Interactive unleashed the original Tomb Raider on an unsuspecting world. As Tomb Raider approaches its fifteenth birthday, we look back on the life and times of Lara Croft. Yet despite its universal success, Tomb Raider has struggled throughout its history to maintain the high level of quality set by the earlier titles in the series. It's spawned ten games and two films, and it's made a cultural icon of heroine Lara Croft. Without her, would we have had games like Perfect Dark, Bayonetta, or Horizon: Zero Dawn? Perhaps we’ll never know definitively, but Tomb Raider certainly helped to give strong female lead characters legitimacy, in a world where gaming was overwhelmingly masculine.Tomb Raider is one of the biggest gaming franchises in existence. She made it acceptable for a main character to be a woman, rather than a plumber, Hedgehog or a Bandicoot. You can sense how Lara may have paved the way for later female protagonists in games. And compared to other games in 1996, it’s pretty easy to see why this has endured.
Enormous, labyrinthine levels to explore. I could probably explain in an entire podcast series on the myriad ways I have killed Lara Croft by mistake.īut as annoying as it has been, I am still impressed by what this game has to offer. Or a massive hole in the ground that you didn’t see. Every time you think you’ve negotiated the dangerous bit, there are more spikes, or boulders, or Wolves, Bears, Tigers, or Tyrannosaurs. I cannot think of another game that has made me want to rage quit this much. I’d consider myself a reasonably competent gamer. A lot.Įven the first level is a challenge. Sometimes the corner itself is dangerous. Possibly in the form of a T-Rex, because of course there’s a T-Rex. Composed by Nathan McCree, it just sits in the background, then rises to a crescendo, giving you just enough time to prepare for impending strife. (Image credit: CORE Design / Crystal Dynamics) Of course there’s a T-Rex
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