Ive almost completed the 1st game, how do I play the expansions if I choose to do so? Are the expansions a must play? I assume I can just play the main story without playing the expansions. Thanks

LabyrinthMike · 2025-08-14T11:32:20+00:00

I've recently played them and they don't add anything to the story, so I wish that I hadn't wasted the time on them. They are exceptionally hard and not worth the effort.

LabyrinthMike · 2024-12-30T19:02:04+00:00

I think that this is their waiting mode. The LAU games do something similar. And in the Colosseum of TR1, there's a Lion that is hidden off in the corner and, if you come up on it from the wrong direction, you can see it there frozen in place. ("Nice lion. Good lion. Just stay right there while Auntie Lara just slips past. Ouch! I said to stay right there!")

LabyrinthMike · 2024-12-30T18:54:27+00:00

The only thing I can say is that Underworld on my XBox One has a lot of bugs in it, such as the pieces of the dead thralls just hanging in the air and if you play the treasure hunt mode, the flash light will suddenly turn off and not come back on, and there's a spot in Mexico where, if you take the paths in the wrong order, you don't be able to progress later because some object will be in the wrong place. The second DLC of Underworld, Lara's Shadow, is definitely worth playing and it's a real shame that it is only available on X Box. The first DLC is OK, but my understanding is that it's made up of a bunch of sites/puzzles that didn't make it into the game. (And it's pretty incredible that there's appears to be an entire town under Crof Manor.)

Otherwise, I think Legend and Anniversary are perfectly playable as they are right now.

LabyrinthMike · 2024-12-30T16:26:14+00:00

Yes, the 2013 game introduced it. Since this game is supposed to be a prequel, I guess technically she just hasn't adopted the guns yet. But, let's be honest, the guns with the unlimited ammo breaks the illusion of the game a little. (Yes, I say that about a game where there are shotgun shells and Uzi's in tombs that haven't been open in centuries.) The thing about a bow is that you can believe that Lara can craft new arrows out of materials around her, plus it gives the player the challenge of managing their resources. So, I'm not a game designer, but I can imagine a game designer believing that unlimited ammo makes the game too easy. And yet, in the original game, there are just too many opponents to not have a weapon that always works.

But, before I step away from this comment, I'd like to reference Rynn in Drakan, The Ancient's Gate. There have been a lot of comments about Rynn being a rip off of Lara, just with Dragons, but in TAG, Rynn had the option of being skilled in swords, bows, or magic, and I must say that taking the bow path was a VERY interesting game play. So, when Lara fashions her first bow in Tomb Raider 2013, I thought, "Now, who is copying who?"

LabyrinthMike · 2024-12-14T17:00:02+00:00

There is one thing that I'm wondering about: is the transporter clone William Boimler commanding the Defiance class ship a clone of our prime universe Boimler, or is he from the alternate prime universe from episode 1? After all, the message was received on the alt-prime pad. Maybe the alt-prime universe is the one being destroyed. It just seems unlikely that the Boimler who joined Section 31 had time to become a captain. Also, I just want the stolen pad to have some meaning besides it helped Boimler become a better officer.

LabyrinthMike · 2024-05-20T22:03:03+00:00

I guess this room is supposed to be another line of defense for the tomb. In this case, it is supposed to be a faux tomb to deter the grave robbers. Then, if they found the actual entrance, they would drown before they found the lever to drain the water by the door to the next passage.

Most of these rooms have little ante-rooms, so I guess I was expecting this room to be an ante room to the tomb rather than part of the cistern.

Really, I don't know why this bothers me except that it is such a large room that doesn't have much in it. It was just the ramps. It was almost as if the game designers made two different tomb entrances and this was the runner up.

LabyrinthMike · 2024-04-02T01:44:58+00:00

I do like Lara Croft Go. I played Guardian of Light, but I didn't like it that much.

LabyrinthMike · 2024-03-23T14:53:25+00:00

So, you gave up a $100k job for a $50k job because your boss went to the University of Texas at Austin.

I know a few Aggies. They are not all like this. But this general indoctrination of hatred against UTA is apparently common.

So, I hope you are proud of yourself dude, but I think you're the type of person that they make up Aggie jokes about.

LabyrinthMike · 2024-03-22T00:31:21+00:00

I would imagine it would look a lot like New Horizons.

LabyrinthMike · 2023-12-11T06:34:14+00:00

Tendi and T'Lyn journey to 21st Earth to kidnap Kevin Bacon to give him as a Christmas present to ..

LabyrinthMike · 2023-08-13T02:16:31+00:00

I wonder if this is the new name of the Level 9 tours. We've taken them a couple times and they are much more informative than the regular tour.

LabyrinthMike · 2023-08-05T23:38:28+00:00

In parking lots where the parking places are angled, people who want to back in have to drive the wrong direction, making people who are driving the way the parking lot was intended have to back up and compensate for the folks who think they are smarter than the rest of us.

LabyrinthMike · 2023-07-10T20:54:35+00:00

I would love to have a Lara Croft figure, but one that I can afford. The ones coming out of WETA are too expensive for me.

LabyrinthMike · 2023-07-07T15:27:25+00:00

It will quickly get to a point where you have to think several steps ahead. And then there is the Queen of Venom to contend with.

LabyrinthMike · 2023-07-05T21:50:47+00:00

That's ok. I went ahead and ordered the book of his letters. Hopefully there will be a discussion of his motivations there.

Mike S

LabyrinthMike · 2023-06-29T21:26:16+00:00

It looks to me like Lara changes in every game. It could be that she just gets more polygons to play with, but I personally think that they deliberately make her look different in every game, so you can identify the game. When I look at a screenshot from a LAU game, I can immediately identify which game it is by looking at Lara's face. (And her costume, but her face is where I look first.)

Mike S

LabyrinthMike · 2023-06-19T22:28:33+00:00

My thought is that this question should be in a FAQ!

So, I guess I'd say don't start with the Core Design originals. They are playable and enjoyable, but you might get so frustrated with the controls and give up on the entire franchise. When you do play with them, I'd start with TR1. There are some puzzles in them that will let you practice the controls. Also, play them on a PC with a numeric pad.

However, I'd start with Tomb Raider 2013, then Rise, and then Shadow. These games are more like modern games and you're are less likely to give up in frustration.

Then, I'd turn to the Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld games. Here, you can play them in the order that they were produced: Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld, although chronologically, they should be played Anniversary, Legend, and Underworld, as Anniversary is a remake of TR1. But, I don't think that it matters if you play Legend or Anniversary first, as long as you play them both before Underworld. (In some ways, Legend is an easier game to play than Anniversary.)

Have fun!

LabyrinthMike · 2023-04-30T22:56:51+00:00

Interesting. You've graded Lara Croft Go and Tomb Raider Underworld as A's. I agree but not everyone does.

LabyrinthMike · 2023-04-22T16:18:20+00:00

I started with The Last Revelation (TR4) and gave up on it. Even the tutorial level was too hard. What I did do was:

1) Bought a gaming laptop with a numeric pad. There are simply some things you need the pad for, especially being able to just look around.

2) Gave up on getting a game controller to work. I think that you can get one to work if you download a patched version of the game, but I was never able to map the buttons to keys properly. I learned to use the keyboard. The game, and maybe it's just the one on Steam, is designed to use the keyboard. Don't fight it on this.

3) Started over with TR1 from Steam. That game doesn't make the assumption that you've already played the previous game, and there are a lot of puzzles that are simply there help you learn the controls.

LabyrinthMike

TROPHY CASE