The Croc Remaster Just Solved A Big Problem For Lara Croft
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Making both classic and modern movement controls available at all times could be a game changer
So, Who, Or What, Is Croc?
We have to start with Argonaut Games. That name may sound familiar from the SNES classic Star Fox or the missing-in-action Star Fox 2 that rose from the dead on the Super NES Classic console. They were also responsible for the Super FX chip that made its way to several Super Nintendo games. Take a look at their catalogue and you're likely to find at least one underrated gem from childhood if you're of a certain age. They shut down in 2004, and weren't quite prolific, but they left an impression, so their recent resurrection is quite something. The kicker of their whole story is they owned Ninja Theory for a brief time, but they clearly made it out of the shutdown. How different things could have been.
Croc was born out of a pitch to make "the first 3D platformer" centered around Yoshi, which explains the look. While Nintendo would later go on to make Super Mario 64, and beat Croc to market in the process, it's credible to say that Argonaut nearly spawned a genre, or at the very least with their ideas. They eventually released behind Crash Bandicoot, Jumping Flash, Gex, and Bubsy 3D, to name a few, which caused it to feel derivative, so it really is no wonder that Croc got the short end of the nostalgia stick. Ultimately it wasn't like the crocodile was completely outshined by those other games. It actually stuck out as a technical showpiece for the PlayStation and the Saturn, had killer sound design, and just looked pretty darn good. Overall, for my money, Croc's biggest issue is it feels made for an age of kid that the industry had started to move past, which is to say: it just feels a little basic. Another issue is important, though. It did not feel good to play with an analog stick, where pulling back on the stick at any minute angle would cause the character to make a sweeping turn around, rather than an about-face, which could be problematic near ledges and other hazards.
How They Solved This Problem
The remaster of Croc Legend of the Gobbos comes with fairly standard updated options, though some of those are above and beyond. Beyond the "Retro" and "Remastered" visual presets, the visuals can be customized with remastered textures, retro models, enhanced lighting, and a CRT or VGA shader, and everything in between. It is a nice package, but when it comes to controls, though, those are set in stone. It's that much more important, then, that they made one devilishly simple decision: the d-pad is classic movement, and the analog stick is remastered (true analog) movement. A simple repositioning of the thumb gives you either option, where you need it, when you need it.
How many revivals from this era would benefit from this control scheme or something similar? Most. For Croc, it shows its true potential in the water segments. Nobody likes a water level in a 3D platformer, but it makes it bearable. The left analog stick controls movements on a flat plane: forwards, backwards, left, and right, whereas the d-pad allows up and down tilting (and left and right rotation) with the A button acting as the "swim forward" button. It is intuitive enough that I almost didn't notice it was happening. A simple repositioning of the fingers had me swimming around like it was nothin'.
Taking Lara To School
While she's not the only one plagued by this issue, the recent Tomb Raider remasters perfectly encapsulate the issue. Modern analog controls sound so nice in theory, especially in the later games in the series, but in practice the controls are more frustrating than useful. For remasters that are well-done outside of the control scheme, it's quite the blemish, especially since it could have been better. Especially the early games are crafted so specifically for the tank controls that it's hard not to use them. Walking up to ledges, side stepping, taking a single step back from ledges to get the proper spacing all become much more difficult when trying to play with modern controls. Then, of course, there are the fixed camera sections, something that Resident Evil (REmake, specifically) fans are familiar with.
I played the Tomb Raider remasters wishing that the toggle that switches between new and old graphics would be accompanied by a control change, or at least have the option to. It seemed like the most elegant solution at the time, because part of the point of remastering these games is to modernize them at least a little bit. I don't hate tank controls, but even in 1996 Lara Croft felt unwieldy with them in many situations, particularly combat. It's far-too-many button presses to open the inventory screen, cycle to the game tab, scroll to the options menu, and get to the control scheme change, so I just left classic controls on. With this simple change, especially given that the d-pad and analog stick are both bound to the same type of movement no matter what, those adventures would have been much friendlier. Good remasters could have been great, and since I doubt they're going to go back and make any sweeping changes to those releases, I can only hope that other remasters take a page out of Croc's book, just as the world's most famous plumber allegedly did so many years ago.
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