When you think of notoriously bad video game controls, few games are mentioned with more loathing than Eidos’s 1996 classic Tomb Raider. The premise of the game is simple enough, gorgeous rich woman with pyramid-shaped boobs explores caves and looks for artifacts. In reality, the game sold itself just due to the subject matter. But what happened when 12 year-old Timmy rushed home and popped that shiny new PS1 disc into his grey plastic console and pressed the power button?

Tears. Rivers of tears.

Just like Timmy, everyone in the gaming world quickly discovered that this game was hard.. as hell. And what made it hard wasn’t what people expected it to be, like dangerous traps or powerful enemies. Sure, you fight wolves, guy’s with guns, Raptors (don’t ask), and a T-Rex (Seriously don’t ask), but none of those really feel challenging. Nope, what made it white-knuckle and rage inducing was simply the awkward controls.

Branded “tank controls”, this particular control scheme required the player to press Up and Down on the D-pad to make Lara run forward and backward and Left and Right on the D-pad to make Lara rotate in place, which changed the direction of her forward and backwards run. On top of these basic movement controls there was also a side step, done with the rear shoulder buttons, a Walk button to slow her down and keep her from walking off of ledges, and a Free Camera button that locks Lara in place so she can look around the environment freely. There’s jumping, climbing, dropping, back flipping, and diving. Control wise, there’s a lot going on for an early 3D platformer. People though it felt like trying to move a 3D character using 2D controls and in reality that’s partly true. The entire 3d environment was designed on a 2D grid system that allowed for precise tuning.

I believe the goal of Tomb Raider, more than just playing as a badass female protagonist with twin pistols and razor sharp ta ta’s, was actually something very respectable. I can imagine the devs sitting around a table planning this game saying, "How can we show players what cave exploring might actually feel like for Lara?". From planning out traversal routes, to the fear of falling off a ledge from a miscalculated jump, and everything in-between that would make Lara say “Fuck, this is impossible!”. And in my personal opinion, they delivered in spades. From the first level of the game, as soon as you take over Lara and begin trying to interact with the environment, the game forces to start learning a complex and precise system of video-game spelunking. A genius system with rigid rules and requirements for every single step, run, jump, grab, pull up, back flip, and dive. And that unique system is precisely what makes Tomb Raider something different.

And I get it, not everyone likes difficult games. Not everyone likes to retry the same jump 5 times in a row because they miscalculated the first 4 times. Not everyone likes to spend more time climbing around in a level for 10 minutes before they ever find an enemy or item. This game’s recipe doesn’t have to appeal to everybody. Its a very specific lane. But it was an empty lane when Tomb Raider came jogging down the hill with pistols drawn and sunglasses on, breasts pointing precisely due west. And no one has really matched the exact recipe to this day. There’s a few series that play in the same lane, but nothing has completely captured tomb raider’s identity or sense of tense exploration like the first few games in the series. Tomb raider’s “dated” control scheme is hated even today, but have modern controls really made the franchise better? I personally feel that the modern Tomb Raider games have lost a part of their identity along the way. Sure they look great, and the environments have gotten bigger and more detailed. But they've lost that sense of exploring truly dangerous unknown and rugged terrain.

I argue that without “tank controls”, Tomb Raider never would’ve become that icon that it did. This game needed to be difficult in just the right ways. It needed to force players to live in Lara’s world and learn her systems, not just jump around mashing buttons and timing platforming. Not just shooting enemies or collecting trinkets. Any game can do that stuff, and many have very successfully. Lara needed something that would make her world unique, gritty, difficult, and precise just like her character is. In my opinion Tomb Raider was exactly what it needed to be... 1 part badass female energy, 2 parts unhinged cave exploration simulator. Tank controls weren’t a limitation to this game, they were two thirds of it’s identity. And I love it. I think that introducing free form platforming controls into this game would not have made it better, I think it would have reduced it’s personality and created a lesser experience, to a degree that Tomb Raider would have ultimately suffered as a franchise.

Ultimately, I understand the frustration with the controls, Lara is stiff and turns like she’s got a refrigerator strapped to her back. I’ve had choice words more times than I can count after missing a jump and falling to my death, or falling into a pool of water and having to spend the next 5-10 minutes planning my way back to the top again. But even though it’s hard and frustrating, it never feels unfair to me, because I always know that grid-based system never changes. I am the one who jumped too early, I am the one who miscalculated a running jump, or got in a hurry and ran off a ledge. The game didn’t make me do that, I got impatient. And that fair, unchanging system is why I kept coming back for more time and time again, and the reason why I love the original games to this day. There is nothing quite like them and to me that is worth more than another 7/10 goofy platformer with objectively easier controls.

What do you think?

Dave