It's because business and marketing departments actually design games, and not the developers. Sad truth. And what do business and marketing care about? Money (Well we all care about money) To get the most money, you must appeal to that 14 year old male. Tomb Raider stars a beautiful women who kills and adventures and wears tight clothing.

We must make those teenage males feel empowered! Lets make them able to kill and conquer with pressing as few buttons as possible! Cool, now lets do some user testing. Oh no, the people we brought in to user test, who have never played a video game before, can't jump over a ledge. Metrics driven design to the rescue!!!! It seems these numbers go up if we make difficulty go down, oh man, I'm a hot shot producer and designer.

Ok I could go on and on. But yeah, pretty much the story of this generation. Rail shooters, QTE based combat, regenerating health, no game over state, etc. From the outside, I always wondered how such crappy games got made. But, after working (programming) on a crappy game, you see exactly how this happens. Most programmers, artist, designers who work on these games know the flaws and how to fix them. The problem is the producers and marketing teams hold all the power. Even though you may have a MS in computer science and more shipped games, some banker who got hired on his first game as a producer is going to be making most of the decisions. And those decisions will be made for monetary reasons based on numbers and projections provided by the marketing team, not fun/quality/community/making a great product.

I'm sure we have all experienced this. Anyways TL;DR: Make your own games that rock ;)

It's quite understandable that the companies investing their money into you hold the power. I'd also like to point out that the new Lara Croft is holding to the same consensus it always has, being hot. The only difference now is that the graphics level is to a point where you can feel outraged at this supposed 'specification to teenagers'. Are you saying adults are any more mature when it comes to women and their looks?

So let's get to the core of the problem, you hate that the people who are trying to make money, try and make money when designing a game? To me this makes no sense. It should be a given that a company investment will seek to maximise that investment, this includes pandering to a more casual audience that has no interest in playing a demoralising games.

Oh no I'm not saying that, I'm saying I hate when people in charge make short sighted decisions for immediate gains. This happens all too often in the game industry. For example, a F2P company sells amazing items for a discount and everyone buys them and the company makes a lot of money. But then a month later the MAU drops like crazy because the integrity of the game was compromised to make short sighted money. Now 90% of the game's items are worthless and the other 10% aren't worth their return in time investment considering you got these amazing items for doing next to nothing.

So for Tomb Raider it's the same thing. Instead of developing a well crafted game that is difficult, and challenges players; the producers wanted a super easy, appeal to the lowest common denominator, game with simple puzzles, non-challenging combat and tons of QTE events. It was lazy and just development by the numbers. What's selling? COD? Ok we're going to make Tomb Raider ala COD.

The game industry is just short sighted. How many times has DLC been released on a constant stream until players stopped buying it? I mean you can say "Hey, they made lots of easy money off DLC", but in reality they beat the DLC horse dead. Now players are left with a bad taste in their mouth and the franchise/developer lost a lot of fans.

The new Tomb Raider game isn't bad.

Bad controls and glitches generally don't make a game into a better experience for the player, and these aren't the reason you perceive the older games to be better than the newer games. The real reason you perceive the games of the past as being inherently better than modern games is that you have fallen victim to nostalgia and the Golden Age Fallacy. We have a tendency to idealize the past while blinding ourselves to the negative aspects of the past.

Reality is frequently the opposite of the conclusions drawn by the golden age fallacy. Things tend to progressively improve as time goes on. Game development has improved greatly in the 17 years since the release of the original Tomb Raider.

Modern Tomb Raider games are not as good as the originals.

I remember when my brother first started playing Tomb Raider on the Sony Playstation. He spent weeks at a time trying to solve the puzzles in that game. It took him a few months to get close to beating the game. Of course little brother had overwritten all of his data and he lost his progress. He almost lost his head too.

Modern Tomb Raider games are more like interactive video tutorials. They hold your hand on everything:

"Press the 'X' button to jump."

Duh? Or at least let me figure that out by myself.

They don't have challenging puzzles at all, and the game can be beaten in a day. There is no real sense of accomplishment in them anymore. My brother thought he was a real gamer, but when I told him to download the old Tomb Raider from PSN and play it, he couldn't get pass the first level. Complaints?"

1. Controls are bad

2. Graphics suck

3. Died 4 times back to back by a bear

4. Couldn't solve the puzzle

Is that why modern games are so dummified and give you achievement awards for doing simple tasks?

Question? What type of game do you prefer? Good game or good graphics?

Perhaps this is a societal issue. Perhaps people just want to be spoon fed and don't want to be challenged? Perhaps people just want to be told they are good, without having to actually be good?

Perhaps games are just an escape from all sense of reality? Oh, don't worry, if you die you can just respawn from your last save point (which was just a few feet before this point).

Somebody needs to play Sonic on the Sega Genesis. haha.

In contrast:

My brother downloaded the indie game "Contrast" (how ironic) and after looking at him play that I was like THAT'S IT! This is what is what I miss about games! That game had awesome puzzles that reminded me of the old Tomb Raider. It even had glitches! Hooray for glitches! Now all we need are some easter eggs.

The Tomb Raider devs can learn something from this game. A lot of followers. Few leaders. Smh.

(rant finished). haha.

#1 First of all,there is one general rule: What a person might like,someone else might not like. Different people have different tastes.

#2 Usually the gameplay of a series change drastically only if the sales of the series are going bad,or if the development process passes to a new studio. In Tomb Raider's case,that's the case.

#3 When a new studio acquires the license to make a game in an already existing franchise,the fact that they weren't the same people who made the prior games of the franchise means they might have no idea what the fanbase of the franchise might be expecting from a new game, and what are these features the fanbase consider most valuable. That's why it's important for a studio to watch player feedback. Especially if we are talking about a studio working on a game belonging to an already existing series for the first time.

#4 There is also the possibility that the studio might decide to target a new audience and use a popular brand for having the game sell by itself just by its name,if the power the brand carries is considerable. This isn't though something that always works. In many cases games that were fun and otherwise might have been succesful got negative feedback which turned to bad sales because they used an estabilished brand. Because what the brand was associated for wasn't there,and thus the fanbase of that brand got displeased and anybody that might have been curious about that game by listening the followers of the brand having negative opinions just didn't bought it. That's why my personal opinion is that if you have new ideas you want to try, and they are so many that change the basic experience too much,or want to reach another audience,its better to make a new franchise.An example of how a brand name can kill a good game is Wolfenstein from 2009. This game was actually fun. The problem is that the majority of the Wolfenstien brand got loyal to the brand because of the game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory,a revolutionary multiplayer only game. People were expecting a new Wolfenstein game to be a new revolutionary multiplayer experience. When they got a single-player only game,they thought it was bad. They didn't cared if it was good. For them it wasn't Wolfenstein. Those who hadn't played a game of the brand yet turned to the brand's fanbase to learn about the game. When the people that could be new fans of the series heard from the people who are already fans that this particular game wasn't good,they didn't bought. But they might had bought it if the game's name wasn't Wolfenstein,and they might have liked it for what it is.

#5 If a game has good graphics doesn't mean it won't be fun. And if a game is fun doesn't mean it can't have good graphics.

#6 It is generally proven that the simpler something is to learn,the more people might try it. Of course something that is too simple might not offer some people the amount of excitement and fun they could have with something more complicated. But since trying a game nowdays means buying it,you might want to let too many people try your game,so you get too many sales. For example let's take Farmville. Of the simplest of games. Most 'gamers' won't have as much fun with it as with more complicated games. But it reached a far wider audience than other games. You might have even played it yourself.It is known by quite more people than some other more compliacted games. But these games,because they are simple,they also keep the player interested less. They are only played as long as they are 'cool',and when the next new cool thing comes,people will abandon it. If these games come in sequels,you can see how this can be profitable.

In contrast to Farmville,take the pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons game as ano opposite example. You might not have even heard of it. Just getting to play this game requires you to read a huge book with hundreds of pages. It's niche. Quite a few people bother reading that book. Most get overwhelmed. But those few who do learn to play it and play it,have so much fun they keep playing it for years and don't get bored of it.

It's up to the mindset: Do you want to make something that will become too popular easily but because it won't be good enough to keep players interested for long, when you make the new sequel they will jump to the new cool game you made ? If you only think of money,that's the best option. But you can see how this can make each individual game less fun.

Or do you want to make a game that it will be as fun as a game can get,but might not become so popular because fewer people will be willing to spend the time learning how to play it,and in the end the game might end up being so good that people won't care about your new game because they will be playing the old one they already have ? If the only thing you want is to make the best game ever,that's the thing to do. But you can see how this can make it so you make less money.