Tomb Raider's Modern Controls: Epic Fail?! You Won't Believe Why!

Why adding modern controls to 1996's Tomb Raider simply doesn't work

Tomb Raider's Modern Controls: Epic Fail?! You Won...

Here at C:\ArsGames, we love diving deep into the history of gaming, and right now, everyone's talking about the Tomb Raider remaster. But while most of the chatter is about updated graphics and nostalgic feelings, there's a deeper issue lurking beneath the surface – one that no amount of polishing can truly fix. It's the control scheme.

While you might expect me to bash the remaster's efforts, the core problem with playing the original 1996 Tomb Raider in 2026 (or whenever you happen to pick it up) proves fundamentally unsolvable, regardless of how much loving care is poured into the restoration. I mean, we’re talking about a game that’s practically an antique in video game years.

Tomb Raider was a true pioneer, riding the first wave of multiplatform games boasting fully 3D environments. Think about what else came out that year: Super Mario 64, Quake. Seriously, you could argue that the entire modern AAA games industry as we know it can trace its DNA back to those three games. It was a pivotal moment.

And Tomb Raider embraced something called "tank controls," a control scheme that, thankfully, only stuck around for a short while before being replaced by… well, pretty much anything else. Basically, forward and back made Lara move in those directions relative to her facing, and left and right rotated her. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Imagine driving a tank. Now imagine platforming with it.

Back in 1996, the sheer novelty of exploring those vertically stacked 3D levels from a third-person perspective overshadowed any control quirks. But nearly three decades of innovation have given us better ways to move characters. The remaster's inclusion of an alternative, "modern" control scheme, while well-intentioned, unfortunately highlights how fundamentally incompatible it is with Tomb Raider's core design. I tried it. I really did. It just feels…wrong.

Apparently, the original developers drew inspiration from a fascinating mix of things: the explorable 3D spaces of Ultima Underworld, the polygonal characters of Virtua Fighter, and the gameplay of Prince of Persia, that classic 1989 platformer.

And that Prince of Persia influence is key. That game was all about precision platforming; every jump required careful planning. You had to tweak your position just so to get the perfect starting point. Tomb Raider's original tank controls, believe it or not, facilitated predictable forward, backward, and sidestep movements, as well as jumps, all triggered by specific arrow key presses. The entire game, every single level, was meticulously designed around this system. Try to use "modern" controls, and you're fighting against the very architecture of the game.

Despite the frustrations that tank controls can inflict on modern players, there was a certain elegance to them. Tomb Raider is still worth revisiting, absolutely. But it requires letting go of two decades of ingrained muscle memory and embracing an obsolete paradigm. Familiarity does lessen the awkwardness, but without that initial "wow" factor of groundbreaking 3D, their limitations become all the more obvious. It's a classic case of a solution built for a specific problem, and now, the problem is gone, but the solution remains... like a slightly clunky, but ultimately endearing, relic.

And let's not forget, Tomb Raider has already had a complete remake (not just a remaster), and another one is in development. These remakes drastically reimagine the gameplay, seemingly abandoning the grid-based movement altogether. Maybe that's the only real solution. Many modern gamers simply aren't going to have the patience for tank controls, no matter how nostalgic some of us might be.