At the next meeting, which will take place on February 11 at 18.00 in the +MSUM bookstore, we will play two games released nearly thirty years apart to answer two questions: Is Lara Croft’s 30-year-old control scheme truly so clunky, outdated, and unfun that all remakes and remasters prefer to hold our hands? Or does the original game design simply grant us more control—and thus, more responsibility for all our falls and missteps?

We will dissect this mainstream icon of the action-adventure genre alongside the contemporary indie game White Knuckle, which is so fresh that only its demo version is currently available. Whether we plunge to our deaths due to a misjudged jump in the orientalist labyrinths of Tomb Raider, or in the decaying industrial basements of White Knuckle, both games position spatial navigation and three-dimensional platforming as the core of the experience.

“Just don’t loose your grip, there’s eternity below you.” — White Knuckle

Instructions:

For the purposes of this meeting, we will limit our playthrough of Tomb Raider (1996) to the tutorial (Lara’s Home), accessible from the main menu, followed by starting a New Game and playing through the first two levels.

You can play it using a PlayStation 1 emulator (https://duckstation.org/), with the game file available for download here:
https://myrient.erista.me/files/Redump/Sony%20-%20PlayStation/Tomb%20Raider%20%28Europe%29.zip

The PC version is available in last year’s remastered edition, but Tank Controls should be enabled in the Controls menu; otherwise, the game will use a modernized scheme that overrides the original design. A pirate copy is available here:
https://1337x.to/torrent/6300744/Tomb-Raider-I-III-Remastered-Starring-Lara-Croft-v1-01-Patch-4-GOG/

It is recommended to play the game with original graphics (F1 on the keyboard, Select on the gamepad).

The White Knuckle demo is available on Itch.io and Steam:
https://futilrevenge.itch.io/white-knuckle
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3218540/White_Knuckle_Demo/