I didn't play these, but I played plenty of other games from that era with really clunky controls. Mega Man Legends was a favorite of mine and that had wonky controls.

In those days, 3D was still new and exciting, and there weren't that many games that did it well. Tomb Raider was in development at the same time as things like Mario 64, so it's not like they could really see what worked and what didn't. So, if we wanted to play exciting new games, we worked through the quirks. Especially since they weren't really making a ton of 2D games anyways.

Nowadays, if something has bad controls, or even just a novel control scheme, there are more options than you'll be able to play in a life time. Unless there's some particular reason you really want to play the original Tomb Raider games, you may be better off just playing something else.

Yeah, this is spot on and my thoughts too.

It was just a sign of the times, analogue sticks were not common place on controllers, 3D adventure games of this ilk were new and control schemes hadn't been 'standardised' like they are today (well outside of rockstar games :P).

With most of these games you have to understand they are from an era and it was one where left to right platformers were no longer king and this meant some weird stuff.

And yet, nearly all my favourite games ever are from that era and all have different playstyles.

That is the issue, these games were made for digital controls, not analog. Movement is all digital like chess pieces on the board.

There are no 'gimmes' like in modern analog games where the character auto steers and ultra reaches the next ledge. In modern games I find it more confusing why certain jumps work and others do not. Or it's all sign posted with colored ledges that you only have to vaguely steer towards.

Movement was precise, always the same, that is predictable. You had the standard jump and the long jump, always the same length, same as steps (slow, normal, run) always count out from where to jump, no guess work involved. It takes some thought to navigate through the levels rather than point the analog stick in the direction you want to go while holding down jump...

In the end these games always felt fair while in modern games it's always frustrating why you can step over / down / up a little ledge, why some ledges are inaccessible / barred.

But yes, they're a different genre of games than what people are used to nowadays. With standardized control schemes also came the intolerance to alternate control schemes :/

One person saying something sucks ass while everyone else, gamers and reviewers, saying it's great doesn't bode well for the former's opinion being the one closest to objective. If the ratio is 1:100, it's probably not the game.

Was having a discussion the other day with a workmate about some of this stuff, mainly because of Crash Bandicoot. The originals, I did not find hard at all, sure they were "hard" in terms of platformers but the truely good ones always were but when the Trilogy remake came out it because like a running thing about how hard they were, which confused me.

In the end it wasn't the fact they were hard it is how games have changed and "got better", more precise. Ledges no longer had coyote time, character models no longer had invisible square hitboxes so what was once forgiving was now unfairly hard. People were probably using the analogue stick to move instead of up arrow on d-pad for example, which isn't as precise. 

Due to this, I could never get into the remakes, something felt off. I didn't find it "hard" like others but it certainly wasn't right, if that makes sense.

And yet as you mention now, if a modern game moved from the standardisations, it's weird. L3 is sprint, except for when it's not then suddenly people look to change the controls so it is. :P

Playing Lara Croft And The Guardian Of Light right now. SOOO much better. Really fun game.

Yes, that was a fun spin-off and co-op as well :)

LOL. I just talked about that in a recent post, comparing that game controls with SM64 ones, in 1996.

Yes, they are. And it is what it is in all the original series. So far, so "good", sorry man XD.

Look, the disgusting and incredulous feeling about the gameplay you are experiencing, is what many people already had more than 20 years ago, with TR6, the first game of the series for a new generation (TR Angel of Darkness, for PS2 in 2003): a total disbelief in those horrible controls. So... that hyper-hyped game in the media during its various years of development, crushed the series forever as a big franchise XD

In fact, its original development studio and the creators of the franchise, Core, were pushed aside by its parent company Eidos, and never developed any other TR again. 

What Tomb Raider and Resident Evil series for PSX shows you, is how difficult it was to make a good 3D controls in 1996.
And also, how GENIUS and pure gameplay art Super Mario 64 was, by then. And in fact, still is.

PSX users were amused by what they got... because many of them never played N64 games. By PS2 years... the same public rejected those prehistoric and very convoluted 3D controls.

O M G... that is epic :D

And yet, I finished TR1 to TR3, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, Grim Fandango without any issues, but never managed to finished Mario 64 at the time, getting too frustrated with the controls and camera in the ice world. Never got past that... OoT was great, but Mario 64 I couldn't get along with.

It's all relative I guess, but there was never total disbelief in the controls. TR was originally a PC game, thus made for digital input. It worked well on PS1 too but wasn't made for analog controls when PS2 came out. Core did absolutely the wrong thing with Angel of Darkness. Instead of bringing the controls into a new era, they fucked up the identity of the games instead.