Just finished the original
Tomb Raider. First things first, that thing came out for DOS in 1996. That only registers as weird now. I never even thought about it until I saw the GOG release start DOSBox. Blew my mind a little bit. Anyway, the game played just like I remembered. Built very much like a Prince of Persia style 2D platformer shifted into 3D. Every damned jump has to be perfect (picking up items demands precise positioning as well). This led to me racking up about 250 saves for a six or seven hour game.
Traversal was a much, much bigger challenge than the puzzles, which where just switch-flipping and key-finding affairs.
Combat was another big challenge, but mostly because it was broken. Especially later on when the monkeys and mutants showed up and jumped all over the place. There's no true lock-on for one and the camera does the most unhelpful zoom-ins on Lara when your back is near a wall (perfectly framing her triangular boobs, completely intentional I'm sure). Fighting in often cramped environments then leads to random jumping about as you hold the shoot button down. The ample supply of medikts makes combat much less frustrating than it would otherwise be, but medikits don't save you from getting knocked into a deathpit.
I think the Playstation release had save-points strewn about the levels, which, besides the graphics, is perhaps the main reason not to play that over the save-anywhere DOS version, or better yet, Crystal Dynamic's re-make. Which turned out to be pretty faithful, grappling hook and QTEs notwithstanding. They changed a lot of things for the better, especially the combat.
Landmark title, but very rough by today's standards.
