Why is she so perfect, /vr/?

First game's better.

Meh, Catya Sassoon would have made a much better Lara Croft than Angelina Jolie. RIP.
>>3471124
LOL no.

>>3470860
>light effects
>real 3D everywhere
>tank controls that don't suck and take full advantage of the game world
>real sense of exploration
>those underwater levels

>>3471145

>Catya Sassoon

As far as women with stapled-on tits go, sure.

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>>3471124
They were just getting their feet wet with the first one, so the levels are a lot plainer, pick-up items like medpacks and keys were 2-D sprites, and Lara's a lot plainer with no ponytail flopping around.

>>3472549
>real sense of exploration

This. It's the main reason why I like the PS1-era TRs. You had to really explore to figure out each level, and that's what made them so great.

>>3470860
Because Lara is (or rather WAS) a man in a woman's body. So all the fun shit you can do with your bros outdoors, witty banter, smart as heck about history and she's got a killer body.

But I forgot feminism, so she's nothing more than a fighting fuck toy. Now Reboot Lara? Oh my god man, talk about an empowered woman!

>>3470860
a better question would be why does every game after 4 suck?

>>3473829
>pick-up items like medpacks and keys were 2-D sprites,

It's been a while since I played it but I'm pretty sure that they were polygonal.

>>3474019
She was actually considered feminist in the 90's for having a more curvy body than bone-thin Barbie, being athletic as hell, and being intelligent and skilled.


It wasn't until the millenial-wave SJW no-tits fridge-body Anita Sarkeesian feminists moved in and took over gaming where such things suddenly became a negative

>>3474043
All item pickups in first game are sprites.

>>3474030
Chronicles is ok.

I like the way they condensed an entire arsenal down to making due with one rifle. And it was a good way to send off the PS1 era TR's

But from AOD on up it's all been shit. People praise the hell out of the Crystal Dynamics-era stuff but I find them to be simple and straight-forward, devoid of any real exploration as you have where to go next right in front of you (often following the only fucking tunnel with only one entrance and exit)

And the Squeenix shit is even worst. That's not Lara. That's some Uncharted clone

>>3474043

13:45

The plants on the ground and the medpack are 2-D sprites that turn with the camera.

>>3474492
Shit forgot vid link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF2BS3OBBDM

13:45

>>3474043
>>3474480
Pickups are sprites in the second game, too. The polygonal items didn't start until the 3rd game and I think it was for the worse since they don't stand out as well (TR3 looks messy and cluttered overall). TR3 also annoyingly did not give you the little icon popup in the corner when you picked something up, so if the camera didn't give you a good view it was hard to tell what you were even collecting sometimes.

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>>3470860

First game has a better sense of isolation and exploration since you spend roughly 100% of the game in abandoned ruins/tombs with very little combat. You could go for extremely long stretches of time without finding any enemies, just looking around the level and making sure not to run into traps or trying to figure out how to climb to a specific part.

Second game has better mechanics and some of the additions (dynamic lighting/flares) were a nice way to bump up the atmosphere, even though darkness was totally abused in some levels.

The biggest downside to the second game is that the devs realized that you could cheese your way through most of the combat in TR1 by standing on top of something and just peppering whatever animals were nearby with infinite pistol shots, so they decided to add a shitton of bullet sponge human enemies with ranged weapons to the sequel. TR2 was a great game but it seriously went overboard with the combat.

The huge levels (without automaps or objective markers) and long puzzle segments in the early Tomb Raider games were great, you actually had to explore the areas you were in instead of just relying on a linear "as long as I kill enough enemies and keep moving forward the game will funnel me into the next setpiece" like the modern Tomb Raiders do. I wish we'd get a classic Tomb Raider style game, but it will never happen. Even Anniversary had to throw in a bunch of dumb shit like wallrunning and the "adrenaline system" that turned the most memorable fights of the game into QTE battles.

>>3474781

> That T-Rex easter egg in TR2

>>3474781
How does TR3 compare? I liked TR1 and disliked TR2 for the exact reasons you listed.

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>>3475054
TR3 is a mess. The level design turns into instant death traps from boulders or spike pits and the visuals turn plain ugly by presenting more man-made locations and more enviornmental detail without significantly upgrading the engine. It gets points for being scary at times. Unfortunately TR is pretty much downhill from there. TR1 Unfinished Business is decent if short. Legend was okay and I actually enjoy the reboot series, but they don't have any of the magic that TR1 had.

>>3474781
It sounds weird, but IMO the best TR game in forever is Lara Croft GO on smartphones. The visuals and atmosphere are very reminiscent of TR1 (Core said they were going for a comic-book look for TR so cel-shading makes for a good modern interpretation) and there are no human opponents, just platforming and puzzles.

The Last Revelation was pretty good. Felt more like TR1 than any of the other games did.

Chronicles was pretty hit or miss depending on which chapter of the game you were on.

>>3475142
>TR3 is a mess
That about says it all. They tried to cram in more features and ended up botching the execution.

>>3475159
>The Last Revelation
TLR has some of the best puzzles and traps in the series, but there are so many damn levels it tends to drag on and feel like a boring slog. You could trim that game down 50% and it'd be amazing. I was so sick of orange-tinted Egypt maps by the end, still pretty good overall despite that complaint though.

>>3470860
>Why is that ugly bitch so perfect, /vr/?

I can't believe it but I actually miss block puzzles

I never thought devs' solution to block puzzles would be to remove puzzles entirely from games

>>3473829

Honestly, the reason I like the first one more, is the atmosphere and sense of loneliness. It feels like you're in the void the entire game because of the short draw distance that fades to black, and having virtually no human enemies makes the game more unsettling than its sequels. The first game, I consider a borderline horror game.

What do u guys think of Iv? Was it what the series needed? People seem to either love it or hate it

>>3475903

The Last Revelation?

It was basically a return to form for Tomb Raider games, Lara actually spent the game raiding tombs and ancient ruins in Egypt instead of opera houses in Venice or Area 51.

Dreamcast version is best version, by the way.

>>3475463
Regarding TLR, that is what I thought as well. Previousgameshad more varied map-themes, even though TR3 had barely any tombs at all.
It probably could have been best in the series if it mixed up things.

>>3475915
>>3475959
>>3475463
I really enjoyed the features for Revelation, totally agree with what everyone said. I always have trouble finishing this game, the look of the game, how it looked samey, was a huge turn off for me. Don't suppose theres like a mod or something that makes this better?

I don't mind the modern levels when they're done well, like with some levels of London in TR3. and I don't mind spending the whole game in tombs either. As long as its got the isolated feel, I'm pretty happy.

>>3470860
the hardware limitations made these games feel too gloomy for my kid self that I considered them to be scary games but somehow I breezed through Resident Evil and Nightmare Creatures.

>>3470860
hot, giant tits on petite athletic body, sexy british accent, amoral

>>3471145
I think elizabeth hurley would have been perfect

>>3474781
>they decided to add a shitton of bullet sponge human enemies with ranged weapons to the sequel
I don't mind them as they add more variety and tension to the combat. TR1 is a cakewalk to go through without using medikits, but TR2 retains a lot of it's challenge.
Rather than playing keep-away with 90% of enemies in TR1, you need to ambush gunwielders on corners, or get in close and outmaneuver them while they try to aim at you, and there's still plenty of animals and meleedudes to stay away from. I only see them as a negative when they're in bullshit places and get cheap hits on you, like in Venice with the guys on balconies, or those that spawn on land when you're in the water and you've got to climb out to get them.

One stupid fetish for is in TR:LR with getting the scope and shooting the heads off of the skeletons to see them run around headless.


>>3475142
I disagree about TR3, and think it's well-done and really pushes the need to explore to advance.

Plus it had probably the largest selection of environments in a TR.

>>3476138
Plus it made sense to add them because instead of randomly finding ammo and medpacks out in the middle of nowhere visited by no one in 2000 years suddenly you aquired them from goons.

Plus they made convenient means of aquiring keys to advance.

>>3476251
TR3 was definitely the hardest of the first four for me
especially india

>>3476269
Yeah it was challenging, which is one of the reasons why I like it so much.

India's a bitch without a guide. We went from full squares to stand on to fractions of squares, which made you have to pay a lot more attention as to where you could jump or grab.

>>3476284
I remember getting stuck in the temple ruins for like a month
first time I dropped the game on the first level in antarctica

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>>3476251
>TR3
>really pushes the need to explore to advance
But they did shit in TR3 that's anti-exploration. Like, they attempted branching paths in some of the levels--moments where you can only choose Path A or Path B, but there's no way to know they're mutually exclusive beforehand. So you go through the level thinking "wait, wasn't there an area I didn't explore back at the start?" but you can't actually go back and check it. And sometimes you can only get certain secrets if you choose the correct path. TR3's levels did look more varied and realistic but that's another way I thought it was much harder to figure out what parts were accessible and make sure you've tried everything. The environments are just harder to "read".

I was also pissed off by blunders like how Area 51 takes away all your items. Hope you didn't pick that area last, because all those items you collected and found in secret areas? Fuck you, gone. Your reward for exploration is feeling like a dumbass.

And finally, TR3 is the start of "psychopath Lara" where she ruthlessly murders security guards and other guys that are doing their jobs in places she has no business being. But hey, gotta get them artifacts.

>>3474478
>She was actually considered feminist in the 90's for having a more curvy body than bone-thin Barbie, being athletic as hell, and being intelligent and skilled.
Exactly. It's still funny to go back and read/watch old reviews on TR games where the male writer/presenter ALWAYS bashes Lara for her big tits. White Knights in the pre-internet age were still playing the same pussy begging game.

We will never get a mainline TR game where the purpose of the game is pure exploration rather than murdering every human 'because they're there'.

It took me a decade to accept that despite the over-abundance of annoying human enemies in TR2, it did ultimately allow for a unique set of atmospheric locations. (Maria Doria FTW)

I like how TB1 and 2 never had background music except for some scenes, no fucking minimap, really made you feel like an explorer.

Tried it again on a saturn emulator did remind me as well the game run much faster on it.

>>3476640
Do remember that Lara Croft has re-extincted the dinosaurs, murdered numerous endangered species (including bigfoot), defiled numerous tombs and ruins for her amusement, and blew up Atlantis.

This is just the first game. She's always been someone who does not give a single fuck

>>3473829
The ponytail was removed for performance reasons. Tomb Raider 1 used "solid" polygons which require far more rendering power than the hollow ones seen in games that came out not even a year later.

>>3474030
As much as I hated The PS3 Tomb Raider, I will admit that it did control very well.

>>3479042
I recently bought a Saturn and found TR ran like shit. Very inconsistent framerate, despite looking a lot murkier than the PS/PC versions I'm used to.
Pleasantly surprised by how smooth and fast the menu items span around though.

>>3476640
What bothered me the most with TR3 were the glithes. It's been a long time but I remember them being plentiful, even making it possible to get stuck.

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>>3470860
Because she comes from a time when women could be tough and smart while having bodies that appeal to MEN. I hate to use the alpha/beta PUA shit, but most Western women in games today now pander to beta males, because they're not threatening and the whole manic pixie dream girl trope is still lurching on.

Lara Croft was a huge influence in my milf fetish.

>>3478571
>Maria Doria
Mah nigga

>>3478571
My favorite fan-theory is that she's basically a serial killer with an interest in archaeology. It's pretty convincing, too, desu.

>>3479065
>The ponytail was removed for performance reasons. Tomb Raider 1 used "solid" polygons which require far more rendering power than the hollow ones seen in games that came out not even a year later.

What is the difference between solid and hollow polygons?

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*tray rattles*

>>3479053
did anyone else figure the dinosaurs in the game were created by the atlanteans via genetic science?

>>3483294
into the fridge you go old man

>>3483232

'Solid' is probably referring to a lack of back-face culling which means the game says "I want to draw everything in a vaguely cone-shaped area that the player could see" without taking into account whether or not the polygon is facing away from the player and would be invisible.

It also doesn't help that each small map section is made of 16*16*6 polygons (at least at close range on the PS1 version) to avoid having the texture mapping warping too much, and each of these would have to be drawn unless the developers used back-face culling to quickly tell which could be ignored.