Having decried the lack of verticality in the Peruvian levels, St Francis’s Folly more than made amends. The main part of the level has you scaling up and down a central room, opening doors with levels and solving puzzles in rooms names after Greek mythology¹.

The permanence of enemy deaths is very noticeable here, where the bats you shoot at the top of the room can sometimes be found lying on the ground at the bottom; when using original graphics there was more than one occasion when I thought there was a medikit in the corner and then was disappointed to find a bat carcass. Theoretically, there doesn’t need to be much backtracking, either, since you could pull the switches to open the doors as you descended the central column, and then entered the rooms when returning to the top. In fact, however, the necessary exploration to find the switches meant that I descended and ascended at least five times before unlocking the exit.

The game has continued to throw new ideas and puzzles at me, of which I only vaguely remember some from the previous time I played. I remembered the Midas statue, and Lara’s unfortunate death when jumping on it; I didn’t remember that it actually had a use in terms of turning lead bars into gold. I remembered climbing the sphinx; I didn’t remember the need to climb the front and the back to put two different ankhs in place. I certainly didn’t remember the nightmarish mummies jumping at me from dark corners of a pyramid.

I’ve been progressing through rather slowly, trying to get the high ground to attack enemies (since, other than bats, they all seem incapable of jumping off the floor). The remaster’s addition of saving anywhere does rather diminish the peril that Lara might face – it’s all too tempting to save before flicking each switch – so I’ve tried to be conservative in my use of saving, only doing so after I’ve got past a section that has taken me a few attempts to clear, or saving when I have to get off the train, for example. I also discovered, accidentally, that the new photo mode can be used to explore with no danger, to an extent – you could theoretically go into photo mode before entering a room, fly the drone inside and see what awaits you, before entering properly. Again, I am resisting that temptation, even if it does mean I’m dying more often than I’d like.

It is interesting to compare this to modern, similar games – most recently, for me, Rise of the Tomb Raider. Beyond the obvious difference in controls and mechanics, there are many similarities – but the scale of what is expected is different. Rise is set over a much larger, contiguous world, but any puzzles or actions occur in smaller, defined areas. The separate levels of Tomb Raider (I, 1996) are at the same time smaller, but also more sparse and more involved. You frequently find yourself having to explore a previous section for the door that opened when you flicked a switch. Sometimes there’s a short cutscene to show the door opening, but you can’t always identify where that was.

Anyway, I have now slaughtered many more endangered animals, including many black panthers who seemed to be built from titanium given the number of bullets they could absorb, and have collected the scion pieces from all three locations. Chasing Pierre through multiple levels, with him running away each time, added a sense of purpose to progression. Some of the levels have been really cleverly designed, particularly the Cistern (altering water level is always fun) and the Coliseum (again, populist Greece is partially Roman), and others have felt like a never ending maze of corridors. Unfortunately, Natla’s turned up, stolen the artifacts, and Lara’s only just escaped by diving into a chasm, landing in the river below. We’re off to an island somewhere to stop her destroying the world.

1. Well, almost. The four rooms are named after Atlas, Neptune, Damocles, and Thor. Neptune is a Roman god, and it would have been better to use Poseidon instead; I’m guessing they went for brand recognition. Thor is a Norse god, and while you could argue that Zeus is a close comparator (lightning, ruling the skies), the main reason they chose Thor is because they wanted the puzzle room to contain a giant hammer. ︎

This is the 1996 game called Tomb Raider, as opposed to the 2013 game called Tomb Raider.  I completed the 2013 game called Tomb Raider back in 2014, and then I completed the sequel to that game (a 2015 game called Rise of the Tomb Raider) in 2024. I have previously completed the 1996 game called Tomb Raider, back in 1998, after I had completed the 1997 game called Tomb Raider II. I have also completed a 2006 game called Tomb Raider Legend and (I think) a 2007 game called Tomb Raider Anniversary which was a remake of the 1996 game called Tomb Raider but not the 2013 game called Tomb Raider. I have also played a 1998 game called Tomb Raider III and a 2008 game called Tomb Raider Underworld but have not completed those, and neither of those was a remake of the 1998 game called Tomb Raider.

In fact, this is only sort of the 1996 game called Tomb Raider. This is a game called Tomb Raider which was released in 2024 on a compilation of three games, which collectively were called Tomb Raider I-III Remastered. Within the game you can play a port of the original 1996 game called Tomb Raider, or a remastered version which updates graphics, allows you to use different controls, and changes saving mechanisms. This remastered version is much closer to the original 1996 game called Tomb Raider than the 2007 game called Tomb Raider Anniversary.

I hope that’s clear.

My intention with this was to try to complete Tomb Raider III, which still eludes me, but I have fond memories of the first and second games and I didn’t feel capable of just ignoring them. A refresh of story, controls, and mechanics was also useful. So, I’ve started at the start and have taken Lara through the caves of Peru, completing the first four levels of the game. There’s a lot of stuff here which I don’t think I’ve appreciated before, such as how combat and puzzles are largely kept separate, and (so far) there’s been no respawning enemies when you retrace your steps. This is something I was very glad of when I ran back past the (still warm) T-Rex corpse having collected three gears for the sluice gate machine in the third area. The camera is a bit frustrating, with little user control (especially when using original graphics) and sometimes it just won’t show you what’s ahead of Lara until you’ve nearly fallen off the ledge that’s around a corner. The modern graphics are, on the whole, a very welcome addition, other than the fact that they’re just so dark. I’ve found myself having to switch between the two just to see where the walls are, at times.

Some of the notes I made from the modern Tomb Raider games apply here as well. If you have your guns drawn, Lara will automatically aim at enemies, and this means you can sidestep across blind corners knowing that the game will tell you if there’s anything to be afraid of. Some of the game is more like a puzzle, identifying how to get somewhere, although this first game has less of the verticality that I know happens later in the series. You can easily see how the new games drew on the first for inspiration, but there are some aspects where game design has inevitably moved on.

In a surprise to nobody, having found the artifact I was charged to get, and while retracing my steps to leave the tombs, I was ambushed by my employer’s sidekick (Larson) who wanted the scion for himself. I jumped around and shot him multiple times, and then, crucially, didn’t kill him. This is the 1996 game called Tomb Raider, and while Lara’s happy to kill off a lost valley of dinosaurs, and wolves, and other wildlife, it was always made clear she wasn’t a murderer – not until the end of the game, at least. In Tomb Raider Anniversary, it is explicitly clear that she kills Larson, and that was the first time she killed a person.

So, i have the first piece of the puzzle, and have watched a (very dated) cutscene of Lara raiding the offices of her now-former employer. Off to find someone else now.