13 hours and 28 minutes... and my mommy is Lara Croft. NO! This took 19 hours and 14 minutes from my manual tracking.
YOU HAD ONE JOB LAST REVELATION!!! To be the 2nd best Tomb Raider and you FAILED!!! But it was still mostly excellent.
After playing 30 hours of classic Tomb Raider across the brutality that is TR3, then the fun extra levels in the PC Gold expansions for TR1 and TR2, I was still asking for more pain and back to back tomb raiding. For the most part, it worked out. TR4 had a lot of work done to the engine from top to bottom. It is by far the best looking and controlling Tomb Raider has even been up to this point. The extra maneuvers from TR3 have carried over. What is most fascinating early on with TR4 is that the levels and structure of the game finally feels very different in layout and flow. Not quite Metroidvania but in a few portions of the game you come across hub like areas, that connect to other "levels" via loading spots. It's hard to even label them as levels now, more like zones/maps. For better and worse, you will have to traverse through some areas a few times over and the loading can make placing yourself and backtracking even more confusing in a way. But the level design is really impressive and more different than most may think from a glance. Much of TR4 I honestly think could get a 6th or even 7th gen facelift, while retaining most of the level design here, and it'd still feel fairly modern in some ways. The levels don't feel much like jungle gym obstacle courses of the first three games. This is probably due to not needing to edit levels purely on boxy squared graphics now according to some history around its development and the engine upgrades. Naturally, TR4 has a few more legit "puzzles" and it certainly isn't the most intuitive at times but when it works, it's pretty cool. Long story short, jumping into TR4 after having played the first three, the game felt more unique than I expected it would and I very much appreciated that. Not an issue of deju vu here.
I even noted some real standout cool new ideas and such along the way:
- An awesome moving train level that looked and felt great
- One temple had a switch that "rotated" the room entirely. Who did it first again... Tomb Raider or Zelda? hah.
- Another cool temple area (pictured below actually), has some key items eventually turning water into solid-walkable flooring. That was so dang cool.
- Faux-physics, one elevator moved around, until you find some tunnels to get underneath it and move a pillar to stop the elevator from sinking down.
- One of the weirdest devices Lara gets is some robotic beetle device for some level, used to spring up death spike traps.
On top of this, it's the most serious Tomb Raider has ever been too. TR4 feels like a more full blown "TR2" in these ways, you could tell Core Design really wanted to do big things with this one and move the story forward. Though they were getting tired of Lara too, they wanted to kill her off. The ending was pretty ambiguous but this doesn't seem like a big deal of a spoiler now, more of a fascinating foot note on the franchises history now... because we've gotten a dozen more games after this one. Back to the tone though, this one has the best and most elaborate CGI cutscens and story. The only downside is that this new voice actress for Lara is a little soft. She doesn't have the British sass that the first games had, so I missed that. But she was still a badass here. Of course the story is still nothing to really focus too much on, but it was nice that finally for the earlier games, this one felt like a serious effort on that front and wasn't some joke throwaway material.
John Williams worshiping composer Nathan McCree has left by now and was replaced by Peter Connelly who scored this and the next two games. I think his spin on the music was also what made this one feel more menacing and darker in a nice way. Absolutely loved the ambience throughout this game. On top of the incredible graphics, really pushing the PSX to the limits. Some of the atmosphere truly reminded me of the Thief games and that's a high compliment.
Beautiful. TR4 was peaking 50-80% into the game. I thought this was it, the best thing since TR1. It was "Ooops all dungeons" yet again and then...
THE CAIRO ARC...
What doesn't feel great about TR4's new hub/fragmented level style, is when they become tiny and so messily thrown together. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. What was an issue with TR2, magnified by 10 in TR3... returns with a vengeance here. NIGHT LEVELS! Oh do I love night levels, even in late 90's stuff before real lighting tech was a thing with bright maps, etc whatever. But exclusive to the PSX, seems to be some SEVERE issues with gamma/brightness balancing on TR3 and these last chunk of levels in TR4. My patience was at an end here and so as I did with TR3, I bumped up the gamma. Thankfully it actually still kind of looked "correct" and didn't destroy the colors. Oh and these levels had an annoying motorcycle you had to babysit.
After that, it's back to some more pyramids and what a slide down to disappointment. I was thrilled to reach the end of TR1-3, even getting up to it I could feel the anticipation... I knew the omega gauntlets were ahead. A monster, labyrinthine fortress of traps, enemies, everything you had just went through in these tough games will be tested to the fullest in their final hour. And then there's TR4's final stretch. Obnoxious platforming jumping around the outside of a pyramid, then another one! This one section that was like going through some war torn trenches, repeated numerous times over. It didn't feel like the budget was slipping, but developer interest and creativity had completely evaporated. And a ridiculously weird water jar puzzle, again, repeated several times throughout. These were some of the most boring uninspired final levels of a TR game out there and on top of Cairo, it really is a big chunk of average to lame stuff. Erasing all of these and having just one big alternate level, this still would be a nice 12-15 hour game perhaps and with nothing but gold for the most part. But Core wanted to go big with TR4... and unfortunately it doesn't stick the landing.
It's a similar story at this point!
- TR2 was a nice uptick on difficulty and some new ideas, with the BEST final stretch of levels to me so far. But all the enemy fodder and some boring arc environments makes it slip up a bit...
- TR3 is freaking amazing when it's peaking, but for every awesome arc, there's a stinker level along the way, some bad vehicle sections, the brightness issue, and one of the worst final bosses in gaming history
- TR4 is so freaking good for hours and hours... then just completely tanks
GAH! If I just had the power to take TR2, 3, and 4, put all the absolute best parts of them into the ultimate Tomb Raider... there would be a 10/10 game right there. Ah well...
I'll go with an 8/10 for now still, all things considered. And I'll probably look back on it mostly fondly as I do TR2-TR3 despite their warts too. I really do love these old TR's for the most part all around. But they definitely have a few rough edges and some WHAT WERE THEY THINKING moments as AVGN likes to yell.
Two more left... Chronicles and Angel of Darkness. Then I have beaten every single main line Tomb Raider game.
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- Tomb Raider (1996) - 9.5
- Tomb Raider II - 9
- Tomb Raider III - 8
- Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation - 8
- Tomb Raider: Legend - 6
- Tomb Raider: Anniversary - 9
- Tomb Raider: Underworld - 3
- Tomb Raider (2013) - 7
- Rise of the Tomb Raider - 9
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider - 8