CHINA

Lara begins her adventure on the Great Wall. This is the easiest level, but here too you’ll find plenty of animals looking to bite your hands off, as well as deadly traps – the well-known and much-loved Tyrannosaurus will also appear. Enemies are usually spiders, birds and tigers.

Lara will still return to this place, as she realises that there is no key to a certain door – and so she has to get it, which will not be easy.

VENICE

And there you have it, beautiful Venice, overrun by the baton- and pistol-wielding thugs of Bartoli, a boss who also wants to seize Xian’s dagger. The difficulty level is still low, although a medipack can sometimes come in handy. Enemies are many, but they are either gangsters, who can be quickly cleaned up, or dogs. We explore the canals, Bartoli’s house, the opera house and speed ahead in speedboats – lots of fun.

THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

Lara lands on an oil rig from which she escapes by diving, getting aboard the wrecked Maria Doria. Moving from one room of the destroyed ship to another, we encounter increasingly difficult stages, the difficulty of which is heightened by the suffocating atmosphere of destruction. We have to deal with badguys with guns and also divers. Plenty of diving to take your breath away.

TIBET

Lara heads to the snowy regions of Tibet to ride a quad bike and kill some cult members. She also meets a yeti. When she gets to the monastery, she has to use the monks’ favour in removing unnecessary ballast – namely Bartoli’s men. These are really challenging levels, but very nice. The monastery in particular catches the eye. As enemies we have badguys, big cats and snow people.

CHINA

And… China again. Now Lara is on the final straight. Having acquired the key, Miss Croft explores the underworld of the Great Wall and the flying islands. The levels are extreme, very picturesque and send shivers down your spine. As enemies, we have a choice of spiders, birds, tigers, jade warriors and Bartoli himself, who has used the legend of the dagger and become a dragon.

ENGLAND

Lara fends off Bartoli’s thugs in her home. Easy level – yes to catch your breath after flying islands and yetis.

WEAPONS

Guns

Two berettas that are emblematic of the classic Lara. The striking power is low, but we have an infinite supply of ammunition. Good against rats, spiders and it’s even possible to kill a boss with them if you jump properly.

Shutgun

Best for close combat, it has a lot of firepower, but it reloads very slowly and ammo always seems to be in short supply. Sometimes, however, one shot is enough to get rid of an opponent.

Automatic pistols

These are a tad more powerful than pistols and ammunition is neither too much nor too little. Great on Bartolli’s thugs.

UZI

A very strong and deadly weapon with which to cut down even the biggest tough guys. Its disadvantage is its rapidly dwindling ammunition supply, but this can sometimes be recharged with finds. The best weapon in TR II!

M16

An equally, if not more, powerful weapon than the UZI. However, you need to aim well, as it sometimes misses enemies.

Grenade launcher

This weapon has a short range, but is very powerful. It literally smashes the enemy to pieces. Perfect for short range and large numbers of opponents.

Harpoon launcher

Works only in water and is used to kill large fish, sharks and divers.

IN LARA’S BACKPACK

Large medipack

Used to restore Lara’s health. Completely fills the life bar.

Small medipack

Partially fills the life bar, found much more often than the large medipack.

Flares

Indispensable in dark places, flares light Lara’s way.

Tomb Raider II is an epic adventure, moving away from the tomb exploration of the first part and taking us to Venice, Tibet or a shipwreck. And despite the fact that the tombs are gone, it is, for me, a much better part than the first. The gameplay is multi-levelled, more interesting and even a little… more dangerous. The difficulty level also seems to jump up, making TR II one of the most difficult games in the series.

In distant times, a Chinese emperor possessed the power of a dragon using the legendary Xian dagger. Tibetan monks manage to defeat the dragon and hide the dagger. However, Lara wouldn’t be herself if she didn’t want to find the dagger, such a find is no small thing.

We start at the Wall of China and then embark on a breakneck adventure in search of the dagger, fighting the countless hordes of Marco Bartolli’s sect, a boss who is far too interested in dragons.

Lara is given new abilities, as well as fiddly outfits to keep things from getting too boring in just a top and shorts. There’s a lot of swimming, which is chilling and takes – literally – your breath away, as well as fighting a yeti or slaying a giant dragon. The levels are very expansive, with each offering new threats – and you can also be tempted to get silver, gold and jade dragon figurines – secrets.

Personally, I love 2 and remember well the days when I was playing through it painstakingly for the first time. It’s a really complex game with a lot of running, streaming and winding.

Are you ready to tackle the monster of legends and the adorable pixel graphics? You sure are!

More about the game

Equipment
Locations

Natla, ancient queen of Atlantis, now head of Natla Technologies. An evil woman. She wants to take over the world using Scion, an artefact with which she can create terrible monsters. Treacherous and insidious.

Pierre, Natla’s sidekick. He pursues Lara when Natla orders the archaeologist to be killed. It doesn’t work out well for him, as Lara doesn’t give a damn. We also meet him in TR Chronicles.

Larson, Natla’s other sidekick. All muscle, no brain. He also realises after the damage is done that messing with Lara doesn’t pay off. He pursues Lara along with Pierre. Also meets in Chronicles.

PERU

We start in the city of Vilcabamba, where we are initially attacked by a horde of wolves. The locations in Peru are typical of the jungle. The levels are the easiest in the game, the enemies much weaker. We fight bats, wolves and bears, although later on we encounter more difficult enemies such as dinosaurs, including raptors and tyrannosaurs. We also meet Natla’s henchman Larson, who tries to make it even more difficult.

GREECE

We end up in the monastery of San Francis, where we spend quite a bit of time, away from the open. The difficulty level increases, there are more enemies, also the puzzles are more difficult. We have to deal with lions, crocodiles, and big rats. We also have to cross a water maze a few times. The levels are long and intricate, if a little monotonous, but it is certainly impossible to get bored – the dangers compensate for the landscape. We also meet another bad guy, Pierre, Larson’s accomplice.

EGYPT

The best, and only, set of levels in the game! Lara slides across the sand in an Egyptian temple, battles a number of cat-like creatures and tons of mummies. We also encounter a number of puzzles, which are of course much more difficult. We meet Larson again.

I enjoyed the levels not just because I love Egypt – it’s pure adventure in a nutshell! I think Lara realises her full potential in the Egyptian locations, which is why Last Revelation is so brilliant.

ATLANTIS

We land on Atlantis, with no weapons or equipment – we have to collect everything as we explore. The levels are out of this world, both in terms of difficulty and look and feel. We fight mutants and eventually also the queen of Atlantis, Natla, who is terribly difficult to kill. In the end, she’s the final boss.

I forgot to say that in each level we find fragments of Scion, who we lose at the beginning of the locations.

The story begins in 1945 with a nuclear explosion in Los Alamos, New Mexico. As a result of this, Natla, Queen of Atlantis, is freed from the prison in which she has been confined for centuries.

Long afterwards, a man named Larson delivers a message to famed traveller Lara Croft – Jacqueline Natla, CEO of Natla Technologies, offers her the opportunity to go in search of an ancient artefact called Scion. Lara accepts the challenge. The artefact, which is said to have immeasurable powers and which originated in the mythical Atlantis, is now divided into three fragments, each in a different part of the world.

Lara travels to Peru, Egypt, Greece and even the kingdom of Atlantis and has all sorts of exciting adventures until she comes face to face with Natla and Scion’s true power.

For the first time, Lara has the chance to show the world that even the divine queens of the lost lands don’t stand a chance against her two pistols and the power of survival.

More about the game

Equipment
Locations
Characters

Name: Lara Amelia Croft
Title: Countess of Abbingdon
Alias: Tomb Raider
Date of birth: 14th February, 1968
Place of birth: Wimbledon, London
Age: 35 at the time the game was handed over to Crystal Dynamics
Relatives: Lord Henshingly Croft (father); Lady Croft (mother)
Friends: Zip, Winston, Jean, Charles, Bram
Nationality: British
Partner: Does not own
Children: Does not have
Appears for the first time in: Tomb Raider (1996)
Zodiac sign: Aquarius
Place of residence: Croft Manor, Buckinghamshire
Status: Free
Blood type: AB-
Height: 1.73m or 1.75m
Weight: 50kg or 59.9kg
Bust: 34D
Waist: 24
Hips: 35
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Dress size: 8
Shoe size: 41
Favourite food: Beans on toast
Birthmarks: Ponytail, red sunglasses, backpack
Weapons: Double pistols, Desert Eagle, machine gun, shotgun, crossbow.

Finds
Bestiary (1984)
Ark of the Covenant (1993)
Bigfoot (1995)
Philosopher’s Stone (1995)
Atlantean Scion (1996)
Dagger of Xian (1997)
Golden Mask of Tornarsuk (1997)
Iris (1984)
Infada Stone, Element 115, Dagger of Ora, Eye of Isis and Hand of Rathmore (1998)
Spear of Destiny (1998)
Armour of Horus (1999)

History
Lara Croft was born on the 14th of February 1968, an aristocrat and heiress to a great fortune. Her father, Henshingly Croft, provided her with an extensive education at numerous prestigious schools. Lara led the normal life of a wealthy young girl until she came across Warner Von Croy’s name in the latest issue of National Geographic. The traveller was putting together a team, wanting to go to Cambodia, hoping to make a big discovery. Lara decided she had to accompany him and went to her father, demanding that he write a letter to Von Croy.
Von Croy, remembering Lara in a lecture where Croft showed off her inquisitiveness and knowledge, agrees to let Lara participate in the expedition. This is how Lara finds the Iris artefact with Von Croy and witnesses the presumed death of the traveller in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation.
When Lara completes her primary education, her parents intend to marry her off, but the independent Croft doesn’t think of giving up her freedom to a man.
When she returns home from holiday, her plane crashes in the mountains. Instead of wringing her hands, Lara decides to stay alive at all costs. She manages to survive thanks to her formidable skills and when Lara reaches an Indian village after many days, she enters it completely transformed.
Lara studies archaeology and history for eight years, after which she becomes what she is today – a tomb robber, Tomb Raider, explorer and adventurer and treasure hunter. Her parents disinherited her, but Lara started writing books to fund her expeditions. She became an authority and role model.
The classic Lara has also become a role model for countless gamers around the world. Also for me, helping me at different stages of my life.

Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider is a series of computer games, as well as films, comic books and books based on them, whose protagonist
is the archaeologist and adventurer and artefact hunter Lara Croft. The series has been a huge success and Lara has become one of the significant pop culture icons. Lara was created in 1996 by Toby Gard of Core Design, who have produced all the classics this site is about.
The classic parts are:
1996: Tomb Raider
1997: Tomb Raider II
1998: Tomb Raider III
1999: Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation
2000: Tomb Raider: Chronicles
and also considered a classic by me – 2003: Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
The gameplay in Tomb Raider involves exploring tombs and ancient ruins, traversing the world in order to save it, and fighting various deities and supernatural forms.
Lara possesses extraordinary strength and fitness and always sets her sights on her goal, pursuing it with no regard for adversity.

Lara in the Crystal Dynamics trilogy
Lara Croft, daughter of Lady Amelia Croft and Lord Richard Croft, was born in Surrey at Parkside Hospital. Between the ages of three and six she followed the classic educational path of little Abbington girls before becoming the victim of a plane crash at the age of nine. Lara, the only survivor with a mother who suddenly disappeared, had to fend for herself. ten days in the Himalayas in Nepal. For the next six years, Lara tried to follow in her father’s footsteps, accompanying him on trips around the world. At the age of 15, her father disappeared in Cambodia; his body was never found. He was not officially declared dead. Lara had to fight her uncle Lord Errol Croft to reclaim one of her parents’ three mansions.

Restart
At 21 years old, Lara is an ordinary and rather cautious young woman searching for purpose and meaning in her life after her parents disappeared (presumably killed) on an expedition. She has lived a privileged life and has long been sheltered from the hardships of life. Growing up, Lara travelled with her parents on archaeological expeditions. She developed a pragmatic vision and a passion for ancient mysteries. Lara has great moral strength. She is intelligent, resourceful and determined. In times of need, loyalty to her friends is more important than her own safety.

Lara’s backpack
Lara discovered the backpack in 1984, twelve years before TR1, which takes place in 1996, while travelling to Cambodia in the temples of Angkor Wat with her mentor Werner von Croy. When he asked her to unlock a passage, Lara found it in a room, tied to a spiked skeleton, and took it with her. When she returned with the backpack, Warner asked her: ‘I hope the backpack brings you a bit more luck than its previous owner’. And Lara replied without hesitation: ‘I make my own luck’.
From 1996 to 2003, Lara never forgot her backpack. She even had it in her underwater suit in TR2 (1997), so we assume her bag is waterproof.
Since 2006, Lara has had a new bag: more modern, more practical and, above all, more realistic. It still allows her to carry a lot of stuff, but it seems less capacious. It is always waterproof and has small pockets for grenades, lamps, etc. In TRA, her bag is a reconstruction of the one in TR1.

Rise of a legend
While work on Tomb Raider began in 1993, Lara was created in 1995 and was not planned. Toby Gard, the graphic designer who created the character, drew some sketches of a male figure with a whip and hat. This suggested a comparison with Indiana Jones, so the idea came up that the character should be female for a change.
Jeremy Smith, co-founder of Core Design, was quite sceptical; he didn’t think a woman could be the main character in a video game, and there were no games with a female character. But he trusted Toby Gard and let him do some tests, so he made some attempts: a muscular woman with a braid. She was approved and named Laura Cruz.
Another problem: the name of the character. Eidos executives wanted a more British name because it was difficult to pronounce, so Laura was changed to Lara Croft. All that remained was to model it. Later, other concerns arose: the time constraints of the graphics did not allow the addition of a braid to the character, for example. It was during this modelling that Toby Gard accidentally enlarged the character’s chest by 150%, but the team did not find it necessary to correct the error. And so the character of Lara Croft was created.

Croft Manor
The residence from the first Tomb Raider game was limited. Among other things, we had a training room and a swimming pool at our disposal. We could only move around the perimeter of the house.
In the second Tomb Raider game, the developers allowed us more freedom. New rooms were added to the existing ones, as well as the possibility to train outdoors and explore the garden and the labyrinth.
In the third part of Tomb Raider, our ability to move around the estate increased again. It was possible to ride a quad bike around the estate.

Artefacts
Scion
Scion is a mythical artefact, each of whose three parts has been hidden in a different corner of the world. Natla, one of the rulers of Atlantis, wanted to regain her power with the artefact.
The Dagger of Xian
The Xian Dagger gave the power of a dragon to anyone who believed it could give it to them – literally: anyone who used the dagger turned into a giant dragon.
Golden mask
Lara found a golden mask in an abandoned gold mine, not without problems of course.
Meteorite shards
Parts of a meteorite that fell to Earth millions of years ago in Antarctica. Lara first confronts the legend by searching for Infada, and then slowly deciphers the mystery by finding more crystals. The stones were attributed with divine powers, which Lara experiences when confronted by their owners.
Amulet of Horus
The amulet of the god Horus that imprisons the evil Seth in the tomb.
Hand of Rathomore
One of the crystals associated with the Antarctic meteorite. Lara learns that the Hand of Rathmore is hidden in Willard’s mansion on Loch Ness.
The Philosopher’s Stone
One of Lara’s first discoveries. The Philosopher’s Stone is an alchemical substance that allows you to turn base metals into gold or silver. When drunk, it gave eternal life.
Spear of Destiny
The Spear of Destiny is the same spear that pierced the side of Christ – an army led by the bearer of the weapon would be invincible.
Images Obscura
Five images that would make it possible to awaken the Nephilim race.