So... it turns out Tomb Raider 3 is basically Dark Souls.

I played this game over and over as a kid by using cheats so I never really got the full TR3 experience, but I've gotten about half way through the game on an honest run now and I'm shocked that no one has ever talked about how fucked this game is.

In the first level alone I was run over by 8 boulders, 3 spike walls, 2 spiked ceilings, fire, piranhas, spike pits, tigers, and some sort of combination of all the above.

Now a game can be cheap and screw you over with boulders from behind and spiked ceiling you need to climb towards to escape them, that's fine but MAN do they up the fuckedness with the save system!

To save you need to pick up blue gems hidden around the world, now you can save anywhere in the game but the gems are USABLE ITEMS, so if you're not paying attention to your gems you can actually run out of saves before you find another gem. You only get 2 per level by going on the critical path, which makes you really consider when and where to save which combined with the boobie traps makes for a lot of thrown controllers.

I'm not complaining as much as I'm just expressing how amazed I am at how rough this game is, and recommending it to anyone who is a masochist gamer. I've played all the ps1 Tomb Raiders without cheating, and if you want to play a Tomb Raider that is basically the red dragon on the bridge from Dark Souls level of fucked the whole way through, this is your game.

I remember playing this game as a kid and i could not complete the first level. I managed to complete Tomb Raider 1 and 2 but had to cheat my way through to the end. Since you brought it up, i might find my copy and give it another shot.

A lot of older games are "basically Dark Souls". I think that's what a lot of people like about Dark Souls.

I played the Tomb Raider games back in the day I remember 3 being pretty fucked too. Same with Revelations as well. Pretty much everything post-Tomb Raider 2 (and even the later portions of TR2) in the PS1 era was ridiculously hard. At some point I guess that the devs just thought "screw it, if you're still playing these you know what you're getting into".

Aside from the TR2013 reboot, my favorite game in the series is Tomb Raider Anniversary which is a PS3-era remake of the first game. That game is what I remember the original Tomb Raider game being back when I played it on the PS1. Today those old PS1-era game are damn near unplayable.

@sinusoidal: I think Dark Souls is like a lot of older games in that if you respect the game, and pay attention you'll be fine. Dark souls also has parts where you'll die because there is no way you could of seen something coming, TR3 are those parts for an entire game.

@stonyman65: I love Tomb Raider 1, I play through the whole thing at least once a year. I get why people wouldn't like it today, and a lot of it is nostalgia, but I'll never grow tired of playing it.

@belowstupid: i think the point of thosse bits is where the online comes in and you ahve to read thosse messages that tell you about traps and secret pathways

Yeah the game is pretty fucking hard. I remember it being much rougher than Tomb Raider 2 (which is an amazing game). I still really liked it back in the day, the series didn't start to go downhill before Tomb Raider 4, IMO.

@dragon_puncher: The only thing I disliked about 2 was there were too many people you fought. The combat is fine against animals, but it's too clunky for a shootout, I could never get through one without having to use a medipack.

The thing about those older games is that you are not expected to win your first time through. That's kind of the point.

That "fucked" concept you are talking about is just challenge. It used to be the reason that games existed.

Tomb Raider was supposed to be brutal. It's part of what sold the "dangerous tomb" concept.

Personally, I miss those games. Modern games will spend thousands of dollars and tens of minutes of gameplay to try to craft the perfect moment where you feel that Lara is in danger. Older games managed to get that feeling x10 by ACTUALLY having YOU as Lara be in danger.

I love TR3 but some of it was insane. There's a platfroming section in the London level, where you had to do a back flip into a leap of faith fall a was almost deadly ( in the guide, I remember, they told you to judge the distance using her scream: a scream from her was a bad sign, but only a drop the length of a full scream would kill her.) totally nuts.

I remember it being the most difficult in the series by a considerable margin.

The opening stages were a major ball ache.

@bananasfoster: The biggest difference for me between TR1 and TR3 is the save system. In TR1 you'd save at specific gems that you couldn't pickup, either you used them, or they stayed there. So when you'd see one you'd say to yourself, "Ok this means something is coming up" TR3's system gives you the room to really screw yourself, and lose a ton of progress.

I couldn't agree with you more on the danger concept, I can't stand risk free climbing. It's just such a waste of time, I can't play Uncharted, or the new Tomb Raiders because of it.

Honestly, Tomb Raider 3 is pretty bad. It pulls a lot of bullshit, and is just pretty poorly designed. For the most part, it's not tough-but-fair difficulty. Out of those first 3 games, 2 is really the sweet spot.

Totally. I still remember watching my brother playing as he encountered the T-Rex. He was flipping out and running around with no idea what to do. It was the level of sheer panic that would REALLY occur is something unexpected and dangerous happens. It's not an emotion that you can craft with expensive cutscenes and quicktime events.

The one huge part in DS I always had issue with was the "mimic moment" in Sens Fortress. If you play offline, like me, there is no sign of the horror waiting for you under that chest lid (unless you'd been paying special attention to chests' chains). Considering the way TR3 manages its save system, it sounds like it has the potential for multiple mimic moments.

I guess you're still having fun, though? Sounds like it definitely takes a certain type of player.

@poobumbutt: I'm having fun for a few specific reasons, I like the old Tomb Raiders, the sheer absurdity of the game design, and I'm playing with my older brother when he's around. He doesn't play games anymore, but I got into video games watching my him play all the Tomb Raiders as a kid, so it's been fun to play together and reminisce.

I didn't play TR3 but I played TR2 and I remember it being relly hard, mostly because the controls where shit. I didn't actually manage to finish a TR until Legends which modernized the controls.

I guess I was in my mid 20s when this game came out. I don't recall it being more tough then #2. I just watched a Lets Play of it and it just made me nostalgic for Lara Croft games that had more 'tombs' then guerrilla bases full of humans you had to shoot with arrows.

I think the thing with early TR games is that they were made in an era when games were abusively hard ON PURPOSE. No saving anywhere...save crystals. No, more than a flashing pixel worth of indication of a trap...you either were careful or you got murdered. As gamers we accepted that, not that that was the right or only way to make a game; BUT that is what games were expected to be. I prefer games that way they are made today, because I play them today. Today, the accepted practice is a level of fairness that was alien 20 years ago and maybe that is actually a good thing.

Twenty years ago getting crushed by boulders and impaled on invisible spikes merely made me say, "Oh, you sly dogs! Yup, you guys really 'got me' on that one!"

I'd just like to point out how terrific a typo this is.

@vierastalo I aim to please. Phonics be damned.

@monkeyking1969: Pretty much what you said, with addition of that games really did not explain anything. It was up to the player figure things out, no matter how unintuitive things were.

I can't remember which one it was, but one of the early Tomb Raider games got in a point where I was in a Tyrannosaurus Rex fight without the bullets necessary to kill it. I also remember that there was some bullshit reason I couldn't easily go back and get useful ammo so I just quit (could have just been the save system in TR3 as you describe it).

That was the first Tomb Raider, you didn't need to kill it, but you could with the default guns. You didn't get better weapons at that point.

This thread just reminds me of how much I loved the first three Tomb Raider games.

@jakob187: I'd love the exact same games with a new coat of paint.

Say what you will about early Lara Croft...

• Say the polygonal modeling is sexist.
• Say it there just to invoke the male gaze
• Say, "...[it is] treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry." {Spinal Tap}

You could say all that, and be correct. But there is something totemistic or spiritual about her shape. The model is iconographic in form and function. As abstract and unrealistic as she is in form, she is someone (as a fictional character) that totally can be understood as powerful & female at a glance.

I love TR3 it took me years to beat it the first time, now I've gone through it three times over the years, the early game is indeed a little fucked, but on PC you can save anywhere so doesn't quite kick your ass as hard as the version your describing.

Props for making it as far as you currently have!

When they were current, I played Tomb Raider 1 and 2 and skipped all the rest of the Core Design developed ones.

I had fond memories of Tomb Raider 2 and tried replaying it after completing Tomb Raider: Anniversary (which is excellent BTW). That was 8 years ago (holy crap I can't believe it's been that long). After playing two of the Crystal Dynamics games with modern, camera relative controls, I simply could not stomach going back to character relative (aka "tank") controls. I didn't even get past the first level in TR2, before I said "Nope, can't deal with this control scheme anymore."

@evilsbane: I don't think I described the save system as accurately as is should have. You pick up the crystals and they are usable items. So you can save anywhere but you can literally run out of saves until you find another crystal lol.

Tomb Raider 3 is the first one I didn't own, so never got a chance to dig into it like the first two.

But Last Revelation's multi-level puzzles make Dark Souls look like Skylanders.

I went back and tried out some of the old Tomb Raiders and they're pretty ridiculous all things considered, I didn't realize there was a save function mid level so just kept replaying the same ones over and over. Of course at the time they weren't even considered difficult games, but that was then. I don't recall having much trouble back in the day but definitely had issues now, controls are hard to go back to and the traps blindside you constantly.

@fredchuckdave: Tomb Raider was the first PS1 game we got, and I had no concept of a memory card. Took me weeks of replaying Peru to finally beat the game. And wait, no, there's a whole separate area. So as much nostalgia as I have for TR1, basically 90% of it is the first four levels (and alligator terror).