In 2003, the franchise hit rock bottom with Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness . Riddled with bugs and terrible controls, it nearly killed the franchise.
The PC version required roughly —an eye-watering amount for players transition from the era of CD-ROMs. Compressing these massive files into a .zip was a necessity for internet distribution. Today, looking at Tomb.Raider.Legend.zip evokes a specific era of PC gaming when extracting a file was the exciting precursor to stepping into a fully realized 3D world. 🛠️ The Game That Saved Lara Croft
Eidos Interactive took the franchise away from its original creators, Core Design, and handed it to the American developer Crystal Dynamics .