When people recall their favorite Tomb Raider games, it’s often focused on which was their first. For me, that was Tomb Raider II, and as such, it remains very special. For others, it’s the wonderful opener to Crystal Dynamics’ era of the franchise, Tomb Raider Legends. And for many more, it’ll be one of the more recent entries, like 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider. But for all the reminiscing and celebrating, there’s one entry that seems to get little love, despite being one of my absolute favorites at the time, and to replay today: Tomb Raider: Chronicles. It turns 25 years old today.
There is a perennial issue for both games and movies, which I call Critic Fatigue. It doesn’t matter how good a series may be, nor how increasingly popular it might be among audiences: at a certain point, critics seem to believe it’s their role to be sick of something. “Uh, another Avengers movie? I hate it just for existing!” “More Assassin’s Creed?! It’s time for it to be taken down a peg or two!” It’s like it’s their collective job to punish a franchise for having too many entries. That happened astoundingly harshly to Tomb Raider at the turn of the century.
Business is boobing
Obviously, the first three Tomb Raider games were a phenomenon. From 1996 to 1998, the original trilogy received international hype that today is hard to even conceive. It was a messy combination of a worthwhile celebration of three genuinely fantastic video games and the lecherous misogyny of the late-90s era. The reason an entire generation bought 3DFX cards, Lara Croft championed and emboldened the third-person action genre, and had rather large boobies. So yes, there was a lot to be frustrated by, especially in Lara’s home country of the UK, where “lad mags” ruled supreme with their soft-porn photography and lifestyle articles. This aspect was so blatantly exploited by publisher Eidos that there was always an “official” Lara Croft model, despite these people never appearing in movies, TV shows, or any other actually extant tie-in media. Instead, the likes of Rhona Mitra, Ellen Rocche, and Nell McAndrew would show up on the covers of those lad mags with multi-page photo shoots within, and on cardboard cut-outs in every gaming store. (And on the covers of many a gaming magazine.) It’s pretty embarrassing to look back on, not least remembering how Nell McAndrew was hypocritically fired from the role after posing for Playboy.
But for all the squirm-inducing marketing, the games remained fantastic. They still are. Then, in 1999, came Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, and the tide started to turn. Critic Fatigue was due to kick in, and you could smell the backlash coming. The Last Revelation was more of the same, and for some reason, more of something we previously loved stops being good enough after a while, and scores came in lower. It wasn’t helped by a crappy Dreamcast port, but there was still enough residual love for the franchise that The Last Revelation escaped the brunt of the kickback. That was reserved for—in my opinion—a better game.
Putting the fun in funeral
The Last Revelation’s ending deserved far more criticism. The game, during which you watched Lara Croft die some 40 billion times, ended with a cutscene in which Lara Croft died. A pyramid falls on top of her. “Reload then!” I remember saying to the screen at this ridiculous forced ending, reloading to see if I’d made a mistake. But nope, she was dead. It was extremely silly, but it happened for a reason. Core, the developers of the games, were sick of making Tomb Raider games. It was hoped that by killing her, the developers would be free to make something else. It didn’t work, and Eidos demanded more.
However, it also set up a superb conceit for the fifth game, Tomb Raider: Chronicles. Rather than beginning with Lara in the middle of some improbable heist, then bringing us back to her manor to start a new series of international adventures, Chronicles began with Croft’s funeral. That’s something, right! And of course, everyone was expecting the immediate reveal, that having the Pyramid of Giza squish her flat turned out not to be so serious, and reports of her death were greatly exaggerated. Except that’s not what happened at all. Instead, post-funeral, Lara’s butler Wilson invites two of her close compatriots back to the manor for a drink. Together, the three begin to reminisce about their friend, recalling adventures that had yet to be seen in the games. And that’s what you play! Four stories, in completely unique settings, at different stages in Lara’s life—including as a teenager.
The result was almost all great! Each of the four chapters was a distinct game, with enormous variety in setting, from haunted islands to modern, high-tech skyscrapers, via an abandoned submarine, delivering the intricate puzzles and acrobatic antics we’d come to expect from developers Core. That no one involved in the game apparently wanted to make it really didn’t come through, perhaps via some sort of involuntary competence, or as a result of breaking it into small chunks that felt less oppressive to create. I can imagine if someone had just played the first four games through in a row and then instantly started on this fifth, they could be thoroughly sick and tired of Lara and her formula. But giventhat a year went by between each entry, I really want to push back against this “fatigue” argument.
Backlashing out
No matter Chronicles‘ merits, they wouldn’t matter. The backlash was due, many critics were ready to put Lara in her place for having the temerity to keep returning. Scores came in hard and harsh, with even IGN almost hitting its lowest possible score of 6. EDGE dished out a mauling 4, while the usually supplicant Official PlayStation Magazine joined in with a 5. But as you read through those reviews (or the residual summaries remaining on the internet), they all praise the game, celebrate its great level design, recognize it as a good example of a Tomb Raider game, but then penalize it for…existing? That OPM review, that 2.5 star score, described the game as “the best sequel in the series thus far,” albeit then claiming that all the other games “downright sucked.” The same magazine gave TR II a 9, then the third game 7. The fourth game, that one got a 10.
IGN‘s review couldn’t make my argument any better. The 25-year-old article had the strapline, “Lara Croft’s last adventure on PlayStation is also her very best. Still, it’s just more of the same.” There it is! The whole point, perfectly encapsulated! How dare this game be the best example of a thing?
The review goes on to say that the matter of annual releases “turned what could have been one of gaming’s most cherished franchises into one of the most reviled.” Most reviled! For the crime of carrying on being good too often. The article also praises the game for its four distinct chapters, offering “the greatest amount of diversity in play style and atmosphere,” then calls the fourth story “one of the best Tomb Raider levels ever.”
A huge part of this reaction, as indeed is the case in most other examples, is leveling complaints at the latter entry that should have been raised from the start. So Chronicles was repeatedly berated across reviews for its control issues, and indeed the games’ silly combat, even though these aspects were almost always overlooked in the rush of excitement for, er, the first three games. The best example of the series so far, having the same faults as the poorer examples in the past, makes the most recent game the worst? That seems to be the rule.
And yes, of course, I’m not naive. Having the same control issues five games in is crappy and should be dealt with. But given they were given a critical pass the first four times, and the games sold eighty million-billion-squillion copies despite them, there’s not a great deal of incentive being put before the developers to prioritize them. It is, in a large part, a failure of criticism.
It’s the same reason Bethesda gets to release half-finished games with barely functioning UIs, because why would the developer bother to do otherwise? It knows it’ll get a round of 9s and 10s from every outlet despite it, and given the company releases new games every decade rather than every year, these consistent issues don’t seem to amount to “fatigue.” It took an actively boring game, Starfield, for any hint of that backlash to appear.
The fallen angel
I’m here to say that I loved Tomb Raider: Chronicles, despite the litany of flaws that haunted the entire franchise up until that point. I played Tomb Raider games on PC, with one hand on a game controller and the other on my keyboard, because this was the only way the crummy control issues were overcome. That worked for Chronicles as well as it worked for Tomb Raider II, and if anything, I was used to it by then. It was a splendid game, despite the malaise behind its creation, because—as so many identified at the time—it featured some of the best levels in the series!
The irony that it was Chronicles that received the backlash when the borderline unplayable Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness was just three years away isn’t lost on me either. Both games were developed simultaneously, the former a reluctant sop to the publisher, the latter a whole fresh start for Core. But after years of delays and brutal development issues, Angel of Darkness was atrocious. Lara was close to uncontrollable, the enemy AI was abysmal, and the game quickly became a laughing stock. And it reviewed the same as Chronicles, because it was new! It was fresh! So it had to be interesting. This time, reviews went, “While the game is so broken as to be functionally useless, it has new graphics!” (To be abundantly fair to IGN, after just picking on them, the site gave it a good kicking with a score lower than some thought it could reach: 5.3.)
Chronicles is included in Aspyr’s recent remake, Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered, although given my experience with the gruesome mess of the first three, I’m not convinced it’d be the best way to play—definitely stick to the original graphics and controls. You can also pick it up paired with The Last Revelation from GOG for under $9, and then go crazy on PCGamingWiki, getting it all patched up for modern machines.
I say it’s worth it! Ignore those fatigue-ridden naysayers. It’s OK for something to be good five times in a row.