Tomb Raider I (1996) (2012)

There will never be anything like this game. Tomb Raider is an all time classic that will never get old so long as there are people out there who still enjoy art and exploration. This game was a masterclass of 3D exploration combined with Nathan McCree, one of the greatest composers in the industry. Tomb Raider starts with our adventurer-explorer Lara Croft, who gets approached by a mercenary known as Larson to find the Scion artefact buried in the tomb of Qualopec. The one who actually hires Lara for this job is the businesswoman Jacqueline Natla. Lara will travel through Vilcabamba, Greece and Egypt to find all three pieces of the Scion while fighting against Larson and Pierre DuPont. Near the very end, when we find ourselves in Egypt, Lara is ambushed by Natla and her henchmen. We find out that Natla is actually the traitor from the long lost Atlantis, her objective is to create a breed of monsters to push human evolution, as she believes both Atlantis and humans to be "too soft" to handle what's coming. Lara ends up destroying the Scion, causing the pyramid to crumble apart, and successfully kills Natla. Forgive me if I don't remember a lot of the details, it's been a very l…

RECOMMENDED Long before waypoints, auto-grabbing ledges, and cinematic hand-holding defined the genre, the original Tomb Raider (1996) treated space itself as a lethal puzzle. Decades later, Lara Croft’s inaugural outing remains a masterclass in level design and deliberate platforming. Precision Movement: The movement runs on an invisible grid. Once you learn that a single backstep gives you the exact runway for a long jump, the tank controls shift from clunky to pixel-perfect. Masterful Isolation: You are dropped into suffocating, ancient ruins with zero guidance. The atmosphere relies on eerie silence, brilliant environmental storytelling, and sparse, iconic musical stings. Brilliant Level Layouts: From the sprawling verticality of St. Francis Folly to the shock of entering the Lost Valley, the levels reward observation over mindless sprinting. The Catch: The camera can get choked in tight corridors, combat is a simple matter of lock-on side-flipping, and unlearning modern platforming muscle memory takes patience. Tomb Raider isn't a brainless shooter—it's a slow-burn exploratory puzzle game disguised as an action title. A timeless classic well worth playing. …

Unless you just love old games and nostalgia, I'd recommend the remaster. That being said, I played this game all the way through and the lore, atmosphere, and something about those blocky 3D ledges just really do it for me. Haunting, intriguing, and frustrating. Definitely recommend.

Classic Just install and play

Always enjoyed playing this game as a little kid (It was "The Lara game" then) on the PS1 even though I had no idea what was going on other than running around the caves shooting vicious animals and opening doors and had no idea why Lara was there. Glad to see I can get on steam and play the OG version of the game even before the remaster came out.

this game is fantastic. yes it's old, yes it's 'clunky' but it is really worth playing. there is just something about playing the original version of a game that gives you such a unique feeling and experience. graphically, this was what? a PS1 game? it is a little blocky, it has some visual glitches like objects being seen through walls, but that kind of is just how the technology was limited back then. you can say that older games aren't as cool because they are modern looking, but it is easy to overlook how unique the art style was for each developer when they made their own things by their own hands. the story is kind of starting out as just finding an artefact and ending up having visions of a race that made this strange object, which leads you around the world completing puzzles and fighting villains who wish to use that object for their own gain. gameplay is super interesting. you could say it is clunky because of it's tank controls, but it also has side stepping and walking and jumping and everything is it's own weird thing. i play this with a controller, and for the most unique experience, i looked up the original guide to see the original button mapping. it might …