Tomb Raider II

Tomb Raider II came out just a year after the original and is a textbook example of a sequel that overturns nothing while adding everything. This time Lara is hunting for a dagger from Chinese legend, and the journey takes her from the Great Wall of China through the canals of Venice, a sunken ocean liner, and Tibetan monasteries all the way into the heart of a mountain full of molten lava. The structure stays the same, long levels full of jumps, movable crates, keys, and switches, but the environments are more varied and take place far more often among people rather than in abandoned tombs.

The most visible change is a shift toward action. Enemies are noticeably more numerous, and most of them are now armed people, new weapons have arrived including a submachine gun and a harpoon, and vehicles appear for the first time, so the player rides a motorboat through the canals and a snowmobile down Tibetan slopes. There's also a small addition that fundamentally changes the pacing, namely flares: they burn for only a limited time in dark corridors, forcing the player to decide when to light the way and when to go on blind. A bonus is the famous opening level set in Lara's mansion, where you can practice the controls, explore the house, and find a few hidden secrets. On the technical side, the game made better use of the era's 3D accelerators, adding colored lighting and greater draw distance, and the sound again relies on restrained orchestral motifs that only sound out at key moments.

Critics and players alike embraced the second entry enthusiastically, and together with the first game it made Core Design one of the most closely watched European studios of the late nineties. In hindsight it's been criticized for sometimes having too many gunfights and for difficulty that can be merciless, since death lurks even around corners the player couldn't have seen. Even so, it remains one of the series' most beloved entries, and today it's most easily accessible through a modern remaster as well as community tools that resolve compatibility with modern systems.