![]() ![]() To maximize the use of Lara’s move set effectively, the developers based all of the game environments on a 3D grid system. As Stefan Fouracre-Smith wrote in a 2021 retrospective : It’s a remake of the original Tomb Raider, which historically remains a vitally important work, but in the present plays a lot like a 3D action adventure game with some of the more annoying aspects of 1996 contained within. Tomb Raider Anniversary came out the next year, in 2007, and was built using Legend’s gameplay and engine. It helps, too, that they were able to look around at what else was going on in games at the time, like with Ubisoft’s heralded Prince of Persia reboot series: controlling Lara was a lot more fun in Legend than it had been in some time, because she had all kinds of things she could do now, and you could do them more easily than before. When you consider that Legend scored 8/10 and B grades all over just a few years later then, it says something about how much Crystal Dynamics had managed to clean up said well. Whether that’s entirely the heart of the matter is up for debate, of course, but it couldn’t have helped: it at least had helped poison the well. Metacritic scores aren’t everything, of course, but Angel of Darkness scored a 52 out of 100 on PS2 and a 49 on PC in 2003, and was so panned that Paramount blamed it for the poorer than expected domestic box office for the second Tomb Raider film that starred Angelina Jolie. Legend modernized the design of Lara Croft a bit, as well as the gameplay, and everything was just implemented in a much more enjoyable fashion across the board. They began their run with a reboot of the entire series titled Tomb Raider: Legend, which released in 2006. What helped save it - in addition to stopping the production of these games for a few years so the stink of The Angel of Darkness could float away and be forgotten - is that development duties were handed over from Core Design to Crystal Dynamics. Those initial Core Design games - of which there were at least one of them released every year from 1996 through 2003 - went from astounding in their ambition and gameplay to a mess that nearly killed the franchise entirely. ![]() The first adventure of Lara Croft eluded me for years, however - growing up as an N64 kid instead of a Playstation one had a lot to do with that, especially since Tomb Raider had lost much of its cool factor through overexposure and underdeveloped sequels by the time I had a Playstation 2. Tomb Raider isn’t new to me, by any means. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link. Apparently this version of TR: 10th Anniversary Edition was in the process of being converted to an Indiana Jones (?) game, hence the weird animations, the torch and all that.This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before - of which there are still many despite my habits - and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. You can find the public release here: Obviously it isn't perfect - one of the problems is that this build of the game was actually from a point in time at which Core knew Eidos had pulled the rug out from under them. However, an alpha build of the game was acquired by fans in the past year and several levels hammered into a workable state: Now, a lot of this information didn't come out until many years later of course, via leaked trailers and interviews with ex-Core staff. In any case, Tomb Raider 10th Anniversary Edition was cancelled, but elements of it would go into Core's final title, Free Running There's a lot of interesting titbits behind the development of this reboot, including allegations that Eidos had been falsely dangling the possibility of giving TR back to Core if they proved themselves, or that Toby Gard collaborated with Crystal Dynamics to fuck Core Design over. It was meant to be a 50/50 remaster/remake of the first game, with different controls and acrobatic abilities, as well as a multiplayer mode where one character controlled Lara's cousin, Melissa. A bit less well known is that even after Tomb Raider: Legend's release in 2006, Core Design were working on a new Tomb Raider title for the PSP. As most of you already know, after Angel of Darkness flopped, Eidos took Core Design off the the series and handed it over to Crystal Dynamics. This isn't totally fresh but I didn't see a thread on it. ![]()
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