Archaeologist adventurer Lara Croft’s journey started with a contract in 1996, and after two reboots and the recent announcement of Crystal Dynamics’ intentions to unify the timelines, the series is still going strong.
With the merging of the timelines approaching, here are the best games in the main series to get you caught up on all the lore:
1. Tomb Raider (1996) & Tomb Raider: Anniversary (2007) (PS2, PSP, PS3, PC, Xbox 360, Mac OS, Wii)
This primogenitor of the series, and the incredible sensation that Lara Croft became, was not the original concept for the series. Originally an Indiana Jones-y male lead, the project was then expanded to include a gender option for players, and then a subsequent time restraint slimmed it back down to one: Laura Cruz. With Eidos rejecting the name, a seemingly innocuous set of events led to the birth of one of the most powerful female protagonists in gaming history, the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft.
The birth of Tomb Raider introduced us to the wonderful and mystical adventures of Lara Croft, setting a strong tone for the valiant heroine to discover and, aptly, raid the tombs of ancients.
An important focus of this initial release was a cinematic experience in a 3D environment, and the release of Anniversary doubled down on that concept. Tomb Raider: Anniversary provides a beautiful, visual retelling of the first adventure in the Tomb Raider series, as we explore Lara’s delves into the tombs of ancient gods to retrieve pieces of the Scion.
You are invited to unfold the timeless mystery of Atlantis as you explore The Lost City of the Incas, Vilcabamba, in Peru, the depths of the catacombs below St Francis’ Folly in Greece, and The Lost City of Khamoon in Egypt. Along the way you quickly discover that Lara exists in a supernatural world, where demons, centaurs and gods still live hidden from the world.
Though combat is an essential part of Lara’s image, her Twin Pistols being iconic, we learn to understand that Tomb Raiding is a careful and thoughtful process. Ancient mysteries were locked up for a reason, and unlocking them requires an astute mind and the ingenious insights only Lara Croft and the player possess.
The Anniversary edition has replayability, with time trials and artefact collections, and a second runthrough of the game with the developer’s commentary unlocked makes for a very interesting storytime.
2. Tomb Raider II (Microsoft Windows, PlayStation, Mac OS, IOS, Android)
Lara’s conquest over long-lost secrets and modern villains continues with her introduction to the seedy underbelly of a contemporary world. Mafias and cults are no longer uncommon, distant happenings to be heard of in the news. They are now tangled up in prophetic designs and secretive plots. Lara, of course, injects herself into these mysteries and invariably becomes caught up in their wrong books.
In this sequel, Lara and her extended list of actions set out on a quest for the Dagger of Xian, an artefact reputed to possess incredible power. The player helps her connect the dots between a crazed cult and the mafia in Venice, Tibetan warrior monks and monasteries, an ancient Emperor of China, and sunken ships, all while visiting an opera house, fighting a dragon, and destroying the Great Wall of China with said dagger, as well as the fourth wall with a shotgun.
Though the plot thickens with every somersault Lara does, the core ideology of the game remains true to its predecessor: Find a key to unlock a door to find another key, while fending off bad guys and solving more puzzles in between.
What it does better than the primogenitor is producing a sense of urgency and acrobatic action. With timed traps forcing you to hijack speedboats, vault and jump and roll though labyrinthine corridors and avoid mortal traps, or figure out what you just unlocked, you are playing the part of an action heroine navigating a dangerous, exciting world.
3. Tomb Raider III (Microsoft Windows, PlayStation, Mac OS)
Returning to Croft Manor in this third monument of the series, you are greeted by a self-aware Lara: “Welcome to my humble abode. Feel free to look around.”
The Croft Manor contains all the utilities the player needs to get acquainted with Lara’s additional acrobatic repertoire (most notably, Lara has learned to crawl), and a shooting range for some target practice (Winston takes it like a champ). Once familiar with her expanded moveset, feel free, indeed, to look around and discover the mysteries hidden within the Croft Manor itself.
Once Lara sets off to find the Infada stone in an ancient Indian Hindu temple, the plot begins to develop, with RX Tech’s Dr Willard approaching Lara with knowledge of 4 artefacts scattered across the world.
Refusing to ignore the call to adventure, our valiant heroine visits the South Pacific, London, Nevada, and Antarctica, along the way fighting gods and casually discovering the existence of aliens, breaking out of a max-security prison and releasing numerous dangerous inmates into the world, and putting an end to the efforts for the discovery of immortality and eternal youth. Lara is the good guy, I swear.
Tomb Raider III brings with it a nonlinear storytelling element, giving you the option to explore exciting and vast vistas in the order that you choose, and when the adventure is over, remember to let Winston out of the freezer.
4. Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (PlayStation, Microsoft Windows, Dreamcast, Mac OS)
The first major arc in the Tomb Raider franchise is introduced in this game, with the explicit purpose of killing Lara Croft. As a consequence of unreasonable time-restraints imposed on the development team during the first three titles in the series, the last of which was being developed in parallel to The Last Revelation, and the pressing work environment that Eidos imposed, the Core Design team began plotting Lara’s ultimate demise.
This demise begins with Lara’s first adventures under the vigil of her mentor, Werner Von Croy, whom Lara abandons during their exploration in Angkor Wat after a particularly deadly trap is triggered. Without the mentorship of Von Croy, and following her exploits in previous titles, Lara returns to Egypt where she makes discoveries about its ancient gods, and as always, beats them into submission with the grip of her dual pistols.
Though this game only provides the most important vestiges of this arc’s key points, it does set itself up for the eventual sequel: The Angel of Darkness. Its immediate successor, Tomb Raider: Chronicles, is a collection of … recollections by fond colleagues and friends, its only contribution to this arc being Von Croy’s discovery that Lara, the god-defying adventurer, has in fact survived her perilous end.
No relief for the Core Design team in sight.
5. Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, Mac OS X)
Angel of Darkness takes much darker tone than its Tomb Raider counterparts. Lara appears, a spectre of her former self (i.e. without her signature pistols) in this Lovecraftian manifestation of the series.
At the behest of Von Croy, Lara meets him in his Parisian apartment, where a heated argument turns deadly. Lara develops a plot-convenient amnesiac barrier around the memory of the events which have unfolded in Von Croy’s abode (she felt a bit too free to look around, you see). With the police alerted, Lara is ousted into the back-alleys of a dark and grim Paris without means of fending for herself as a wanted criminal.
An interesting development with this particular title is the toll Lara’s death took on her: She now has a stamina bar, and can only shimmy along for so long before her arms get tired and she drops down to whatever terrors wait below her.
You must help Lara scavenge for supplies, enter homes without permission, and free herself from dark webs Von Croy has weaved, entangling the ill-fated heroine in the sombre machinations of a much more terrifying cult than any she's met before. Whilst becoming a wanted criminal, Lara continues her mentor’s final task, and comes to face the supernatural.
She’s seen worse though. She’s killed literal gods. No biggie for The Tomb Raider. And boy, are there tombs to raid in this game.
It is, unfortunately, the end of this iteration of Lara, where stealth and tactical play is combined with survival elements and puzzle-combat that is seminal to the series.
6. Tomb Raider: Legend (Game Boy Advance, GameCube, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox, Xbox 360)
Lara is rebooted into Bolivia, where she seeks deeper secrets concerning her (hitherto unmentioned) mother’s mysterious disappearance in the Arctic north. With a complete new redesign, Legend marks the misty-morning sunrise of our second arc: the afterlife.
After all, what is more apt for Lara Croft, who had fought and beaten gods, than fighting them in realms beyond our own? A trail of discoveries leads Lara to meet an old friend, who, much like herself, has died and returned to life, edgier than ever before.
Her penchant for not being able to let things go and digging up the past leads Lara across the globe, from Tokyo, to Cornwall, to Kazakhstan, Nepal and Peru, Ghana, and back to Bolivia, as she decrypts ancient legends and learns the truth of the Arthurian legends.
This game has beautiful vistas, and every location feels carefully designed for cinematic purposes. It is quite cinematic when Lara learns the truth of her mother’s disappearance.
7. Tomb Raider: Underworld (Microsoft Windows, N-Gage 2.0, Nintendo DS, OS X, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360)
With her mother transported to Avalon as a consequence of Lara’s folly, she is determined to get her back. The second in the afterlife arc has Lara exploring the myths of the afterlife from cultures surrounding the globe, and she must seek out the intricate secrets hidden in each and piece them together if she has any hope of manipulating the forces of life and death.
After all, Lara has never violently halted important research regarding immortality.
Covering both the mystery surrounding her mother as well as the last research that her father did before he died, Underworld starts as Lara explores coordinates that lead her to an ancient ruin on the Mediterranean Sea floor. As she investigates, she uncovers a rather surprising find: a site dedicated to both Norse mythology and evidence that indicates that Thor's hammer, the mythical weapon wielded by the God of Thunder, actually exists.
We are then introduced to the best Tomb Raider concept Crystal Dynamics could have brought forth: “What could Lara do?”. This rather existential question posits that if one expects Lara to be able to do something, Lara should be able to do it. Lara should be able to fend off her opponents with her free hand while holding a valuable treasure in the other, and now she can!
Underworld is a truly remarkable monument to its brethren at this point, combining all the best of Lara’s storytelling, control scheme, and puzzle-combat system into a fulfilling game that resolves an important arc in Lara’s life-quest.
8. Tomb Raider (2013) (Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, OS X, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Linux, Shield TV, Stadia)
Square Enix doubles down on the best of the best of The Tomb Raider with the ultimate reboot.
Young Lara Croft, on her first expedition to the rim isles of Japan as a fresh-out-of-college archaeologist, eager to discover the mysteries this unexplored, uncharted island might hold, is quickly plunged into the darkest moments of her professional career.
Square Enix’s vision was to re-birth the Tomb Raider as a heroine who rose from necessity, who maintains humanity (something previous Laras have considerably lacked), and rises to the challenge as many desperate heroes have throughout history.
This survival-style open-world RPG-esque acrobatic-action platformer puzzle combat gungame is worthy as the origin story of the best archaeologist-adventurer the world has ever known. It explores the desperate fight for survival that Lara goes through as she tries to save her friends from a lunatic cult. It show’s the pivotal moment in which Lara first took a human life. It shows us the incredible fortitude Lara possesses, how human she is in her determination to rise above the odds that are stacked against her.
An unexpected, though welcomed aspect of this game is the skill-tree the player can invest in, symbolising Lara’s survival journey as she becomes accustomed to her environment and improves from sheer necessity to do so. Stealth and action are important elements, and you must choose your battles wisely.
Lara isn’t the heroine she would later become, you are on that journey with her, and it’s a tragic, fulfilling, intriguing journey.
The title also brings the first free-exploration capability to the series. It is wonderfully done, allowing you to revisit locations and rediscover them, explore them again for things amiss, and perhaps vital to your journey.
I’ll save the spoilers, but Ultimate Reboot Lara stays true to her inherent nature: gods will be fought.
9. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Xbox 360, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, macOS, Linux, Stadia)
While in its predecessor, Lara was frequently, and I mean frequently, impaled, bruised, and left for dead, this title poses Lara as a willing participant. She is no longer the victim of fate, and takes up the mantle that her name bears.
This adventure opens in Siberia, where Lara is on the hunt for the Divine Source, an artefact that her father had obsessed over before his death. She approaches this task with a resolve forged in her previous hardships, but is still a far-cry from her globetrotting murderous incarnations.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is in every way an improvement on Tomb Raider (2013). The vistas are still open for you to explore, and you still pick your battles.
It is also an important introduction to what Trinity is and what it is capable of.
10. Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Linux, Stadia)
Lara discovers her ability to end the world, for there are places in which people are not meant to go. Is the tension palpable when treading through ancient Mayan temples, warning of an apocalypse?
We’d have hoped Lara would listen, but in an effort to play keep-away with the shadow organisation Trinity’s high council leader, Dominguez, Lara’s instinct to pilfer magical daggers kicks in and she inadvertently sets off the events which would lead to the end of the known world.
As Lara defies the apocalypse - she has fought gods before, after all, and I’ll keep bringing it up - she endeavours to put an end to Trinity’s reign over the world, and hopefully find a way to undo the consequences of her actions.
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