Of course, this also meant sticking with controls that led to PC versions of the series always being something of a jumble. Because when your established formula is huge, fascinating levels, packed with secret tunnels, elaborate puzzles, and enormous multi-threaded tasks, it's something you should be proud to repeat. Exhausted, I contend, by IV.īy this point Core was sticking to its established formula - something Angel of Darkness proved it should have always done. When Chronicles appeared, everyone had spent as much time robbing yellow tombs as they could face, and despite the fifth game featuring levels in modern office blocks and the like, everyone was exhausted. It's Tomb Raider squared, heavily focusing on what she was originally all about, and so, aesthetically at least, a step backward. And in Egypt it stays, Lara's traditional globe-trotting abandoned for a distinctly sandy vacation. After Tomb Raider III placed Lara in some modern-world settings, in cities far from any tombs, then-developer Core Design took the series back to Egypt for part four.

I think The Last Revelation might actually be to blame, as it happens. This wouldn't affect reception until the perfectly good fifth game, Tomb Raider Chronicles, which was poorly received simply because it was the fifth game. But of course being popular is a curse, and most people were becoming sick of her. Croft with an awful lot of the transition of console gaming from niche pursuit to commonplace television company. Having permeated into the mainstream, you could credit Ms. 1 all over the world, and by 1999 everyone in the universe had heard of Lara Croft, even though it was still two years until Angelina Jolie would don the shorts, and waste the second half of the film searching for the second half of an object that must never be united, rather than just smashing the first half and going home for tea.)

(It was also successful marketing, you can argue. It reviewed reasonably well too, but it was certainly the start of Lara Fatigue, a syndrome entirely the fault of Eidos' over-zealous marketing. The Last Revelation is interesting for another reason: it's pretty good. But Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation's is the dumbest.Īstute readers will have detected the possibility that this piece may contain the odd spoiler. Many endings are incoherent nonsense that fails to pull together the various threads.

Others suddenly declare themselves 'to be continued'. Some games grind meaninglessly to a halt. So why IV?īecause it has the dumbest ending of any game I've encountered.Ĭlearly games have worse endings. Why Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation? Tomb Raider I is loved with nostalgia, Tomb Raider II is the best in the first run of the series, Tomb Raider VI (The Angel of Darkness) has the novelty value of being awful beyond explanation, and VII, VIII and IX have all been absolutely superb.

Tomb raider the last revelation