Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (1999)

After the disaster that is, Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft, I lost all hope. A good series, ruined. But then came Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation. The series redeemed itself instantly.

This installment is the best in the whole series in my opinion. It takes place in Egypt and its whole level design, the different puzzles, obstacles and challenges to overcome are just glorious.

In Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation, you start off in the past, in which you go on an adventure with your mentor, Werner von Croy. You are just a teenager at this point. You go to the temple complex Angkor Wat in Cambodia to search for an ancient artefact. When Werner does not respect the ancient ruins, it starts to collapse and you barely make it out, without von Croy or the artifact.

Years later, when exploring as the Lara we know and love today, you stumble across a crypt on your journeys and find a ancient amulet, belonging to the Egyptian God Seth. You accidentally remove it from his grave, which awakens him. Now he threatens to destroy the world and you must reverse your mistake and stop him. Meanwhile, your old mentor Werner von Croy is back and learns of the amulet. He sends his goons after you to steal it from your hands. You travel to Karnak, Luxor, Alexandria, Cairo and Gizeh, while being hindered and chased by von Croy and his buddies. In the many crypts and temples, you also need to overcome different challenges and unkillable beasts that chase you. It is all so epic.

This game is also, undoubtedly the largest and biggest one yet. As a kid, I spent hours and hours on this game and even today, as a grown ass man, it took me many days and hours to complete this gem from my childhood.

The graphics have been improved from the previous games and the animations are a lot smoother. The best thing of all, Lara’s rack is now round and polished. The new environments, fire, lighting and water looks also very nice and more polished than the first three games.

The sounds is also improved, with as biggest upgrade, the new sounds of the weapons and their fire. Pistols do not sound like pea shooters anymore, shotguns give a big roaring bang when fired and my personal favourite: The grenade launcher. It is still one of the better sounds designs that I experienced in a game.

When speaking of the controls, it is still just as clunky and stiff as the previous games. This is of course because of the Tank Controls this game uses. However, they feel a lot more responsive for some unexplainable reason. In this game, I also discovered some new tricks Lara can do, something I did not see or notice in the previous games, if they were even there. When holding a ledge, pressing shift and up lets Lara do an acrobatic leg swing onto the platform. So epic. When jumping and pressing crouch, Lara will back flip herself into attack position into the air. It looks really cool.

You also got some vehicle stages in this game in which you ride a motorcycle and a jeep. The controls for them are horrendous and these two stages I disliked somewhat.

I only had one complaint about this game. The Cairo levels. As a kid, and as a grown man, I struggled to find out where to go to next. I did not want to check for walkthroughs at first. But I got stuck on exactly the same point as when I was a kid. No matter how hard I tried, I could not figure it out. After a walkthrough, I was like: “Really..?”. Nevertheless, I completed the rest of the game without issues after this.

For me, Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation will always be my personal favorite in the series. This is mainly because it is the game that marked my youth, but also because of its excellent level design, it’s beautiful and different environments, puzzles and balance of platforming and action.

Definitely recommend this gem.