Tomb Raider was a PS1 game for me (pre-analog), post-SM64 though and way post-PoP (which I was somewhat familiar with having given my copy of Rebel Assault to a friend in exchange for it (it was a little too difficult and “old” for me to fully get into at the time)) and it really is a kind of PoP in 3D from the grisly death animations to, most crucially, the character movement (and as someone who beat it twice in the late 90s and then hadn’t touched it since, there was still some getting used to!)
Everything is measured out in blocks/units of movement, both the construction of the environments and Lara’s actions (which are executed with some intentional input delay) and locking into the interaction between the two is for me the great appeal (well, plus the vibes, the sparse melancholy soundtrack, the shimmery polygonal spaces barely held together at their seams, the Murder Apes and Hate Wolves that rush braindead and bloodthirsty from the black fog of things forgotten).
It’s chess on a jungle gym (pretend I said checkers if that seems like hyperbole). If SM64 is pulling off a bank heist with nothing but a Swiss army knife, TR is like pulling off a bank heist with the world’s rustiest Swiss army knife. Important games for me and (Jumping Flash! is quite different but) the early like tentpole 3D character action games, when they were really trying to grapple with the How of character movement, have a special clunk/weight/friction that ̶g̶r̶i̶n̶d̶s̶ grounds things ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶h̶a̶l̶t̶ and idk…it wasn’t too long before that slightly unwieldy pose-the-action-figure quality got smoothed away and something imo was lost. Aside from the cameras (can’t pretend they aren’t a bit crap but if you’re the type that’s grabbed by these games that aspect just becomes another “limb” to flex and finesse round the playground) I don’t think these games control “badly” rather they insist on an intended, even rigid approach and that’s an acquired taste and really tasty imo but also totally understandable that it might have limited appeal in this day and age.
It ain’t prefect of course. It’s a little buggy, got stuck in geometry a few times. Maybe some levels get too big and twisty…they do lean on the hub and spoke setup a but much (large open space with locks, the keys are found in the series of dense branching paths (but this does of course have its merits re: spatial familiarity and sense of direction (still there are some dense configurations of geometry (especially secrets) that feel very PC/British in their obscurantism in a way you’d never see in say a Nintendo game). Save points are sometimes placed in a way that gradually encouraged me to not use them immediately, like they’re placed in an area where you should Do A Thing and saving after you Do A Thing feels better on the accomplishment scale but that’s a little game of risk/reward if you die before you Do A Thing and save it and while it screwed me up in St. Francis’ Folly at first, maddeningly so, once I became more deliberate about their use, save points were very fair I thought.
I guess this might serve as my wrap up post about the game lol though I’ve only just got to the last location (Atlantis).
ANYWAY I recommend this making-of. Already loved this game but the archaic ingenuity of the team endeared it to me even more. Mentions that Saturn was the target platform because it was the least powerful between PC and PS1 which kinda hamstrung the other versions etc.