Tomb Raider: Chronicles - Production Under Protest

I've been exploring the Tomb Raider series here on Vocal for a while now, and we've finally reached the fifth entry in the series - Tomb Raider: Chronicles. I'm going to say this now, so that nobody's surprised later on, I have VERY mixed feelings about this one.

When the Tomb Raider series' popularity skyrocketed, publisher Eidos quickly set up a yearly deadline for sequels. Unfortunately, that proved to be a double-edged sword of sorts. Yes, it provided gamers with regular new adventures, but it also exhausted the team at Core Design.

With Last Revelation's shocker of an ending, it seemed Lara Croft was gone for good. To say that Eidos was unhappy about that would be an understatement, everyone - with the exception of the team lead - knew about the plan to kill Lara off. Eidos didn't find out until after the game came out; talk about sneaky.

Unfortunately things didn't go the way Core Design wanted, and Eidos insisted they bring back Lara Croft. So, with great reluctance, the team began work on the next instalment.

Development through Fatigue

So, with the insistence of their publisher, Core Design went back to Lara Croft - much to their dismay, I'm sure. The company split into two teams, one would work on Chronicles and the other would work on Angel of Darkness - which was meant to be Lara's big break onto the then new PlayStation 2 platform. Of course, Angel of Darkness is a whole different can of worms so we'll leave that alone for now.

Chronicles was announced in August of 2000 and released for PlayStation, PC, and the Sega Dreamcast in October and November of 2000 with a Mac OS release in June of 2001.

Reception to the game was...mixed. Many faulted the game for being too derivative - i.e. no new ideas. The game only sold 1.5 million units, making it the worst selling game of the series so far.

The Highlight Reel of Lara Croft

As the world mourns the apparent death of Lara Croft, her faithful butler Winston meets with Father Patrick and Charles Kane - two of Lara's friends. The three men sit together sharing stories about Lara's adventures - that's the framing device.

Winston starts the discussion. The first adventure takes us to Rome where Lara is looking for the philosopher's stone. Of course, she's not the only one on the hunt, Larson Conway (dude in the red shirt from TR 1) and Pierre du Pont (Lara's rival) are also looking for the stone.

Told by Charles Kane, adventure 2 is set in Russia, with Lara on the hunt for an artefact called the Spear of Destiny.

Father Patrick chimes in with his own story from when Lara was a teenager. While staying with Winston in Ireland, Lara overhears the priest discussing paranormal activity on a nearby island. Of course, she sneaks aboard his boat and goes to the the island with him.

The last of the stories covers the source of the hostility between Lara and von Croy and how she swiped an artefact right out from under his nose.

What did I Like?

• The concept behind the game is great, the idea of Lara's friends getting together to remember her after her death is great.
• The different stories are also interesting.
• Some mechanics - like being able to roll forward out of a crawlspace - were very welcome.
• Jonell Elliot's voice performance as Lara is just perfect. She's so snarky, and I love it.

What Didn't I Like?

Okay, so what didn't I like?

• Visually, the game is...fine. Sometimes they're good, but there are several points where they look glitched.
• The music is somewhat random.
• The puzzles are still really obscure.
• Environments are narrow. As in, really narrow and the tight corners are very difficult to navigate. This is made worse in sections where your 'look' button doesn't work and you can't properly observe the area.

Loads of Missed Opportunities

So, like I said at the start, I have very mixed feelings about Chronicles. On one hand, I like the concept behind it, and the different stories are actually really interesting - all things considered. Unfortunately, there are so many missed opportunities here that it's just sad.

We got four stories in one and normally that wouldn't be a problem. In this case, and this is going to sound really cynical, it feels like the devs didn't know where to focus their attention or didn't care to focus at all and just wanted to get the job done.

The really sad thing is that this was a great demo for more games that could've been. We could've had dedicated games to Lara chasing the Philosopher's Stone or Spear of Destiny, maybe retrieving the Iris. A game featuring a teenage Lara in Ireland would've also been great. As much as the devs at Core wanted to get away from Lara and her antics, focusing on one or two specific segments would've made for a far more cohesive experience.

Overall, I think the game is fine for what it is, but it definitely could've been better. With the release of the remasters earlier this year, hopefully the kinks have been ironed out, but we haven't gotten there yet. We have one more entry in the classic series to get through, I'll see you next time for Angel of Darkness...yay.