Tomb Raider

Out of the darkness of a forgotten tomb emerged a heroine who would forever change the face of the gaming industry — the archaeologist and adventurer Lara Croft. Tomb Raider turned her not only into a 90s icon, but also into a pioneer of the entire 3D action-adventure genre.

At the heart of the gameplay lies the solitary exploration of sprawling ancient temples and tombs. Lara climbs along ledges, leaps across chasms, swims through flooded halls and solves spatial puzzles built around moving stone blocks, levers and carefully timed jumps. The emphasis on three-dimensional orientation was revolutionary for its time and gave the adventure an intoxicating sense of discovering places no one had set foot in for ages.

The game masterfully alternates tense acrobatic sequences with quiet moments of solitude deep within crumbling ruins, punctuated by battles against wild beasts and supernatural threats. The atmosphere of abandonment, where you hear only Lara's footsteps and the distant drip of water, gave the series an unmistakable mood that set it apart from the more frenetic action games of the era.

Tomb Raider was created by the British studio Core Design and published by Eidos. Lara Croft quickly became a pop-culture star who transcended the boundaries of the gaming medium and appeared on magazine covers, in commercials and in films. The first two installments are regarded as the purest expression of the original vision. The series then churned out a new installment practically every year, which by the fifth game led to creative burnout and brand fatigue.

Even so, Tomb Raider remains one of the most influential works of its time and its heroine one of the first truly iconic gaming characters ever. It laid the foundations of the modern action-adventure and opened the way for later reboots that brought Lara Croft to new generations of players.

Why play it: For an encounter with the iconic Lara Croft and a pioneering 3D adventure full of spatial puzzles and solitary discovery.