Have you already… played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. Several times a week, all year long, maybe forever.
Last month I asked you if you Tomb Raider 2 have already played. But I was shy. What I really wanted to know is if you Chronicles have played.
I love that Tomb Raider Chronicles: Lara is dead the entire game. Oh, and it has some great level design, shows the original series at its best, and there’s an entire chapter on a submarine.
At the end of the rather weak Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation Lara dies. People didn’t seem to notice at the time. In the end, a temple collapses on top of her and buries her. It’s the strangest of all possible ways for a game to end with the player doing everything they can to keep Lara from being buried by temples – at least the fact that it happens in a cinematic scene is very strange. It was hard to think anything other than “reload immediately.”
But Chronicles stays true to this decision, because this game is told through the memories of a few elderly gentlemen sitting around the warming fire after the heroine’s funeral. Each section is an old adventure recalled, making it possible to show something completely different and not directly related. And that really helps the game and makes it feel like a “best of” even though it was a brand new title. It’s great fun, but it was underappreciated at the time, which was more because many people were tired of the series, rather than because this game was weak. It’s definitely worth going back to him.