What is Tomb Raider Chronicles?

Ported by Aspyr.

Her legacy lives on.

In light of Lara's recent disappearance, those closest to her gather together at the Croft Estate on a grey, rainy day for a memorial service in her honor. Afterwards, the friends sit quietly together in the study of the Croft Mansion and provide new insights about Lara's past exploits that have, until now, remained a secret.

• Four new adventures take you from the rooftops of a high-tech city to the bowels of a German U-Boat.
• Utilize new moves to overcome obstacles: Tightrope walking, parallel bar swinging, and a hand-to-hand stealth attack.
• Choose from an arsenal of weapons including a grappeling hook gun, sniper rifle, and chloroform.
• Enhanced inventory system for greater combinations of weapons and accessories.
• Search through files, drawers, and shelves for useful inventory items.

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You have to hand it to Eidos — it really knows how to milk its absurdly busty franchise. Just when we thought Lara Croft might fade into retirement, along comes the blockbuster movie to prove there’s life in the old girl yet — as does this game...well, kind of.

Tomb Raider Chronicles’ obvious flaw is that despite its nearly 10-year lifespan, the game engine hasn’t radically changed. The textures look better, but fundamentally little else is different. Lara still stands statuesquely in the center of the screen and still runs and turns like a Golden Girl on Valium. The game’s syrupy slow-mo pace is still intact and still infuriating. And Tomb Raider Chronicles retains the irritating rotate function, where you must turn Lara ponderously to face a desired direction before you can make her walk or run — this caused us to miss our targets.

Tomb Raider Chronicles has lots of new moves, environments, and accessories, but the biggest change is the emphasis on stealth. Many of the puzzles and obstacles Lara faces require discretion and quiet rather than her typical reliance on John Woo-style gun battles.

Chronicles also pays attention to plot, rather than simply catapulting our heroine into danger. The entire story line consists of a series of recollections by Lara's friends, who have gathered at the Croft estate — Lara is missing and presumed dead. This allows for a variety of missions (four separate tales), and since the stories are anecdotes, they don’t follow in a linear, predictable fashion.

Lara Croft’s new moves are fairly entertaining. She can perform a tightrope walk (it’s amazing how often ropes bridge chasms in the Tomb Raider world). To cross one, just walk — if Lara starts to lose her balance, compensate by moving her left or right. With the parallel-bar obstacle, Lara instinctively spins around and dismounts with catlike grace. Lara also sports a deepsea diving rig, complete with chaff-like decoys to draw torpedo fire, and can command a number of other vehicles.

The environments and architecture are more compelling, with less of the pointless meandering that hampered earlier games.

It’s not perfect — you can get lost on plenty of occasions, even in a confining submarine. Other locales include the Roman Coliseum, the Pyramids, and even an Irish moor.

As far as Tomb Raider goes. Chronicles has the best graphics, the greatest variety of gameplay, and the most appealing scenarios to date. But compared with the rapid development of superior titles like Oni and Deus Ex, Tomb Raider is snail-paced evolution disappoints us, making it hard to recommend the game wholeheartedly. 

O'Connor, Frank. (October 2001). Tomb Raider Chronicles. MacAddict. (pg. 51).

Download Tomb Raider Chronicles for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 8.6

Compatibility notes

Minimum requirements

OS: 8.6
CPU: G3 233 MHz
RAM: 32 MB
GPU: Hardware-accelerated, OpenGL-compatible, 4MB
HDD: 300 MB uncompressed
CD: 4x speed

Recommended requirements

RAM: 64 MB