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rjkclarke

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On 30/07/2021 at 7:31 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

Great write up on Seasons After Fall mate!

 

I liked that game a lot, and was pretty surprised when I got into it how much focus it had on its puzzle mechanics - the marketing materials for it I had seen prior to purchase were all pretty focussed on the platforming side, so that was a nice surprise!

 

In a weird way, it's got a lot in common with Hue - the idea of changing the seasons is a lot like changing the colour of the background in that game, but with Seasons, there is the additional benefit of just seeing the artwork of all 4 seasons, because the game looks so nice. It's also such a cool idea for a metroidvania, in  the sense that, once you get access to a new season, there is a lot of fun in going back to old areas, just to see what they look like in the other seasons.

 

Thanks man!! I appreciate that, as always. I'll drop you a rep point on that post at some point. I ran out earlier. I got super sidetracked reading loads of really interesting reviews on the most recent platinum thread earlier and couldn't help myself going click... Click .... Click.... Very often ?

 

I'm glad you enjoyed it too, that's good to hear. I wasn't aware it was as puzzle-ified as it was either, it was definitely a pleasant surprise though, It does seem weird to market it focused around its platforming though. I'd not really seen too much about it, I just knew it  had platforming sections and that it had a lot of good will going its way.

 

Still a strange marketing decision though. That would be like marketing Monkey Island around sword fighting or naval combat just because they feature in two of those games OR call it rhythm game because.... There's a instrument section in one. :D

 

I'm going to add Hue to my list of things to play soon  I think, because I'm fairly sure I have it. I was initially quite interested in it after you did a bit of applied science to it. Now.. After you said that  Seasons after Fall shares some similarities that's piqued my curiosity a fair amount further. So I'll look forward to playing through that one in the future.

 

Y'know I actually did toy around with the idea of mentioning the fact the game is essentially a metroidvania in that write up, but I ended up not bothering to. I thought it might not fly, because of the lack of any combat.  But it really is, isn't it. Even if it is a game without combat, pretty much all those elements are there. It certainly possesses the spirit of one at least. I really liked the dark cave puzzle, when you have to reassemble that particular altar. Some of the lighting and colours in those areas were gorgeous.

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1 minute ago, rjkclarke said:

 

Thanks man!! I appreciate that, as always. I'll drop you a rep point on that post at some point. I ran out earlier. I got super sidetracked reading loads of really interesting reviews on the most recent platinum thread earlier and couldn't help myself going click... Click .... Click.... Very often 1f602.png

 

Haha - welcome to my world "DrBloodmoney: Never not out of rep points" ?

 

1 minute ago, rjkclarke said:

I'm going to add Hue to my list of things to play soon  I think, because I'm fairly sure I have it. I was initially quite interested in it after you did a bit of applied science to it. Now.. After you said that  Seasons after Fall shares some similarities that's piqued my curiosity a fair amount further. So I'll look forward to playing through that one in the future.

 

Yeah, Hue is good - make no mistake, the puzzle solving mechanic is similar to Seasons, though it has none of the metroidvania aspects, or the narrative stuff, but it feels a lot like the same style of puzzle mechanics, but applied to a more traditional 'discrete puzzle rooms' type game (more in the vein of a Teslagrad or a something of that ilk.) Technically, you can backtrack in the game (for collectibles etc. but there isn't a focus on it in the way Seasons has.)

 

 

1 minute ago, rjkclarke said:

Y'know I actually did toy around with the idea of mentioning the fact the game is essentially a metroidvania in that write up, but I ended up not bothering to. I thought it might not fly, because of the lack of any combat.  But it really is, isn't it. Even if it is a game without combat, pretty much all those elements are there. It certainly possesses the spirit of one at least. I really liked the dark cave puzzle, when you have to reassemble that particular altar. Some of the lighting and colours in those areas were gorgeous.

 

It's funny - I wasn't a Metroid or a Castlevania guy growing up - to this day I haven't played any Metroid games to completion, or really touched Castlevania outside of the Lords of Shadow 3D ones (which are totally their own thing) - yet I would count myself as a big Metroidvania fan, given that a lot of the games that those two franchises influenced have been games I've loved - Stuff like The Swapper, Dust: An Elysian Tale, Guacamelee, Dead Cells, Headlander etc.

 

 

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Yeah.... Well maybe if people posted less interesting stuff, that wouldn't be a problem.. Also might make this place as interesting as a guided tour of a factory that makes hoover bags! So I'd prefer to be low on them if that was the alternative.

 

But, hypothetically obviously ? if we had more rep points everyone from the checklist subforum could pool all our rep points  together and do what that one Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki did and buy an island off of Fidel Castro (apparently because it was meant to have buried treasure there, that's a true story too, it's called Inoki Friendship Island) ... Well I mean we can't get one off of specifically him obviously... Nah?... Silly idea ?

 

54 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

 

Yeah, Hue is good - make no mistake, the puzzle solving mechanic is similar to Seasons, though it has none of the metroidvania aspects, or the narrative stuff, but it feels a lot like the same style of puzzle mechanics, but applied to a more traditional 'discrete puzzle rooms' type game (more in the vein of a Teslagrad or a something of that ilk.) Technically, you can backtrack in the game (for collectibles etc. but there isn't a focus on it in the way Seasons has.)

 

Well too late.. I already downloaded it, about ten minutes ago.. It doesn't have to have the narrative focus Seasons does though, I can get on board with a more, purely puzzle focused experience. Plenty of options out there if I want to play something with a heavy focus on narrative.

 

Nothing wrong with just some nice pure puzzle solving. Sounds like I'd like Hue anyway. I really loved Teslagrad too, so that's a good sign.  Thankfully I'm sure WH Smiths haven't had many complaints from people going into their stores and complaining that their Crosswords or Sudoku puzzle books, don't contain  Phil Mitchell being run over by a Steam Roller or Ken Barlow from Coronation Street covering himself in molasses and  being trampled by a herd of Rhino's whilst sleeping on a bed of nails. So I don't think I'd likely complain anyway ? - Not everything needs to have a narrative to be good, we both know this... I just wanted to take that down a strange scenic detour to get there haha!!

 

54 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

It's funny - I wasn't a Metroid or a Castlevania guy growing up - to this day I haven't played any Metroid games to completion, or really touched Castlevania outside of the Lords of Shadow 3D ones (which are totally their own thing) - yet I would count myself as a big Metroidvania fan, given that a lot of the games that those two franchises influenced have been games I've loved - Stuff like The Swapper, Dust: An Elysian Tale, Guacamelee, Dead Cells, Headlander etc.

 

Well neither was I to be honest, I discovered I liked them later in life too. Ironically it was probably playing one of the early PS+ titles for PS4 Strider, that made me decide I liked them. I'd only really played the odd thing here and there before that. 

 

I think I might even have Super Metroid on SNES still (not 100% sure), I just wasn't ever good enough to really get anywhere with it. In fact I've played Metroid Prime more than I ever did Super Metroid. I think I was at least like 13 or 14 before I realised Samus was female. Silly me.

 

Metroidvanias are honestly still a genre I don't play enough of, despite the fact I quite like them. I have a pretty eclectic taste in games, so I'm always up for a bit of experimenting! There are probably a boat load of great ones on PS4 I could play through. You probably suggested some of them above, so that wouldn't be a bad place to start looking. I mean I've at least played Dust.

 

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1 minute ago, rjkclarke said:

Well too late.. I already downloaded it, about ten minutes ago..

 

Haha - I like your style!

 

You playing PS4 or Vita?

 

I did vita, and it was a great portable game, but I did find that the smaller throw on the analogue stick on Vita made some of the later puzzles a little more difficult than they were meant to be, as it can get tricky to make sure you hit the right colour on the colourwheel when under pressure! 

I never tried it on the PS4, but I got the sense that would be less of an issue there. 

 

1 minute ago, rjkclarke said:

 

Well neither was I to be honest, I discovered I liked them later in life too. Ironically it was probably playing one of the early PS+ titles for PS4 Strider, that made me decide I liked them. I'd only really played the odd thing here and there before that. 

 

Oh man - talk about a forgotten gem - That Strider was really fun, but man-oh-man, it feels like it just came and went!

 

If you enjoyed that game, I highly recommend checking out Housemarque's unsung hero of a title Matterfall - it's got a lot of Strider in it, and really fells like the only game I can think of that takes what Strider was doing, breaks it down into component parts, and rebuilds it with new concepts weaved in to the core. 

 

In some ways, Matterfall is to Strider, as Dishonoured is to Thief if that makes sense? - It's clearly influenced, and part-homage and loving tribute, but with so much interesting additions weaved into the fabric of it, that it kind of eats the original's lunch to the point of shoving it into relative obscurity in the gaming landscape!

 

 

1 minute ago, rjkclarke said:

I think I might even have Super Metroid on SNES still (not 100% sure), I just wasn't ever good enough to really get anywhere with it. In fact I've played Metroid Prime more than I ever did Super Metroid. I think I was at least like 13 or 14 before I realised Samus was female. Silly me.

 

Metroidvanias are honestly still a genre I don't play enough of, despite the fact I quite like them. I have a pretty eclectic taste in games, so I'm always up for a bit of experimenting! There are probably a boat load of great ones on PS4 I could play through. You probably suggested some of them above, so that wouldn't be a bad place to start looking. I mean I've at least played Dust.

 

Of those ones, the real standout in terms of Metroidvania stuff is probably Guacamelee - both those games are astoundingly good - funny, clever and control like an absolute dream.

 

The Swapper is also an incredible game, (and has one of the most difficult things to find in games - and probably one of my favourites - a genuine "On my God" eureka moment, that is left for the player to figure out themselves, and is magic where it happens) but it's metroidvania credentials are not the draw there - it's more the incredibly weird art-style and the tone (both of which are totally awesome!)

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4 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Haha - I like your style!

 

You playing PS4 or Vita?

 

I did vita, and it was a great portable game, but I did find that the smaller throw on the analogue stick on Vita made some of the later puzzles a little more difficult than they were meant to be, as it can get tricky to make sure you hit the right colour on the colourwheel when under pressure! 

I never tried it on the PS4, but I got the sense that would be less of an issue there. 

 

I'm going to be playing it on PS4... I don't have a VIta... Even worse.... I don't have a valid excuse to not have one. There's plenty of games on it that I know I'd like, I've just never gotten one... I probably should remedy that one at some point.

 

Hopefully Hue plays alright on a PS4, I know some don't quite make the transition between consoles that smoothly, but then I know that happens on both sides of that fence, not just Vita to PS4.

 

 

8 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Oh man - talk about a forgotten gem - That Strider was really fun, but man-oh-man, it feels like it just came and went!

 

If you enjoyed that game, I highly recommend checking out Housemarque's unsung hero of a title Matterfall - it's got a lot of Strider in it, and really fells like the only game I can think of that takes what Strider was doing, breaks it down into component parts, and rebuilds it with new concepts weaved in to the core. 

 

In some ways, Matterfall is to Strider, as Dishonoured is to Thief if that makes sense? - It's clearly influenced, and part-homage and loving tribute, but with so much interesting additions weaved into the fabric of it, that it kind of eats the original's lunch to the point of shoving it into relative obscurity in the gaming landscape!

 

 

That Dishonoured to Thief comparison makes perfect sense actually, yeah. I wish the newest version of Thief had been as true to it's own roots as Dishonoured was, which I guess makes less sense. But it certainly felt that way to me. I mean I liked the recent version of Thief, but I didn't love it - and I really wanted to.

 

Strider doesn't get talked about very often at all, now you mention it. Outside of you and I right now I suppose. A bit like the "other" Game of Thrones game that isn't the TellTale one, just sort of forgotten. I loved Strider though, was really good, so that's definitely put Matterfall on my radar too. Thanks for the recommendation. I've heard it's name come up plenty, but never really looked into it. I'll have to read up on the game a bit later on.

 

15 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Of those ones, the real standout in terms of Metroidvania stuff is probably Guacamelee - both those games are astoundingly good - funny, clever and control like an absolute dream.

 

The Swapper is also an incredible game, (and has one of the most difficult things to find in games - and probably one of my favourites - a genuine "On my God" eureka moment, that is left for the player to figure out themselves, and is magic where it happens) but it's metroidvania credentials are not the draw there - it's more the incredibly weird art-style and the tone (both of which are totally awesome!)

 

The Swapper sounds awesome. Very unique too by the sounds of it. I didn't know Guacamelee was a metroidvania. In truth I had no idea what those games were, I assumed they were a 2D fighter or something Smash Bro's-esque.. Which looks like I couldn't have been wider from the mark ?. I'm all for unique experiences  in games though. After all these recommendations I think I'm going to have go check some of these out they sound like a blast.

 

 

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On 7/27/2021 at 9:01 PM, rjkclarke said:

I'm hoping that it doesn't deviate so much from the original that I wouldn't have to worry about spoilers anyway ... Like if a certain very famous death happened as a result of being run over by a unicycle, instead of being turned into the worlds most adorable Shish Kebab!! 1f602.png

 

Don't give them ideas! lol 

 

On 7/27/2021 at 9:01 PM, rjkclarke said:

Figuring out a system is probably a good idea yeah... I was actually most productive reviewing those older games,during mental health awareness month, where I knew that I had a dedicated thing to focus on and those games were all pretty much relevant to that, in some way or another. So that's a really good idea from you there, thanks again. I'm all for organic improvements in this thread so that's sounds like a good plan. I guess as I'm currently playing Final Fantasy IX I guess, I could do a Final Fantasy one, but I'm not sure.. I feel like if I did FFXIII I'd feel like the next two would probably need to be FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns I suppose?   I'll try and figure something like that out, I had an idea to review all of the Tomb Raider games from the PS2 era (so all the ones from the HD collection on PS3) I thought that could be a fun one to revisit, maybe do all 3 in a week and space them out a bit, or put them in one gigantic post. I'll just try and make it sound like something readable instead of what I think it will be.. Which is me writing "I love Keeley Hawes 400 times and then passing out on my keyboard" haha!! 1f603.png

 

Haha who didn't play a bit of Tomb Raider back in the day lol though I played the first couple I think on PS1, and then the new reboot trilogy, and all the ones inbetween kind of just passed me by lol so it'd be interesting to read your viewpoint on those. I know the series had a wobble around then, hence the rebooted trilogy. Yeah of course I'd agree, if you were to review FFXIII, then it's only logical to follow on and do FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns FFXIII. That is a very interesting trilogy to talk about, it's highs and lows and everything in between lol

 

On 7/27/2021 at 9:01 PM, rjkclarke said:

Oh man, that paper clip was a dick-head!! So condescending... 

Haha bet a lot of people remember that part 

 

On 7/27/2021 at 9:01 PM, rjkclarke said:

By that item milestone logic, whenever I get married, I'll probably have my trousers rip completely down the middle on the first dance, or I'll chop a finger off whilst cutting the wedding cake haha!! I guess at least theres a chance I'll get £250 from You've Been Framed, if that show is still on the air 1f602.png

I'd be wanting more than £250 from them if I had a finger chopped off! lol

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Classic Review Scheduling Experiment

 

Alright then, I've been debating this for a little while, which is giving myself a schedule to work to, for classic reviews. I keep saying in lots of posts that I'm slacking on them, but so far I haven't gone back and actually written any more of them yet. I'll trial this for a week though, which is getting three out in the space of a week and see if I'm happy enough with that. 

I can't promise I will be though, because I really struggle to do anything to any sort of schedule (I can obviously, I just don't particularly enjoy it), I end up feeling under ridiculous pressure to do a certain thing within a certain time. I'm going to give it a try though and see how it goes.

I can always just not do it, but I figured if I don't find a way to ramp up writing some of them, it will be about 2024 by the time I've actually gotten through writing about the 300+ other games I had played before even starting this thread. So I'll see whether this experimental week works.

 

What is the schedule? Well I'm thinking I'll have a review up Monday, Wednesday and then Friday... Those might bleed into the next day slightly, depending on how long it takes me to actually write them, but that's what I'm going to try and keep to. So starting tonight I guess, with the first one.

 

What am I  reviewing over this week? after reading through the last reply from @The_Kopite - Who hasn't played these yet.  I'm thinking I'll tackle the Tomb Raider HD trilogy, so Legend, Anniversary and Underworld. Which I actually got the platinum in sequentially too.  They won't take an extensive amount of time to try and re-gather my thoughts on because I only played them again in late 2019. The problem I'm going to struggle with the most is not turning this into a Keeley Hawes praise-a-thon, she's my favourite actress, so obviously I'm predisposed to being a fan of that version of Lara, so I'll try and keep my own thoughts as separate as I can, where I can. But I'm sure they'll creep in a little bit.

 

So, Tomb Raider: Legend should be up  tonight.

 

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

On 31/07/2021 at 7:21 PM, The_Kopite said:

Haha who didn't play a bit of Tomb Raider back in the day lol though I played the first couple I think on PS1, and then the new reboot trilogy, and all the ones inbetween kind of just passed me by lol so it'd be interesting to read your viewpoint on those. I know the series had a wobble around then, hence the rebooted trilogy. Yeah of course I'd agree, if you were to review FFXIII, then it's only logical to follow on and do FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns FFXIII. That is a very interesting trilogy to talk about, it's highs and lows and everything in between lol

 

That's true, Tomb Raider was one of those staple series for gamers of a certain vintage. Haha ?.....  As you haven't played them, I think I'll do a review of that  sort of in-between trilogy, which in itself is kind of a reboot trilogy after Angel of Darkness was received pretty disastrously. I'm not going to make the arrogant assumption that my write ups of them will make you want to play them, but I do need to do some reviews of them at some point, and if you did happen to like the idea of those games as a result, great, because I do think they are a trilogy worth playing through, they still held up fairly well when I played them all those years later in 2019.

 

I'll get to the Lightning trilogy at some point for sure. I just don't know when.

 

I don't think we have to worry with that unicycle idea giving Square Enix any ideas, haha like we have both said before, if by some strange coincidence a Square employee had read this thread, they probably would have clicked away very quickly, based on both our views on FFXV.

 

If I lost a finger I think I'd want more than £250 too. Some of those things you see on that show I imagine people end up in loads of pain for years and years to come, and all they have to show for it is £250 - I guess a cool story as well, depending on if it's a particularly funny one. Depends doesn't it, if you had the ultimate clip, where all the funny things happen at once that you usually see on You've Been Framed: for example an old lady falling over at a wedding, whilst, someone rides past on a BMX as a dog launches themselves at that rider to then fall into the wedding cake. They should get £250 for each individual component I think. ?

 

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Very curious for your thoughts on the new(er) Tomb Raider games! They seem to be on sale pretty regularly and I've been debating on whether or not to jump on board.

 

Luckily, I don't have a hundred or so untouched games in my backlog as it is! Haha.... that would just be silly.

 

?

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4 minutes ago, YaManSmevz said:

Very curious for your thoughts on the new(er) Tomb Raider games! They seem to be on sale pretty regularly and I've been debating on whether or not to jump on board.

 

Luckily, I don't have a hundred or so untouched games in my backlog as it is! Haha.... that would just be silly.

 

I guess I could get to those ones after a small  break after this week of Tomb Raiders? I think six in a row I might be a little Lara'd out, even if they are different versions of Lara.

 

Although I am looking forward to reviewing those newer Tomb Raiders, especially the first one, because I have what I think at least, is a hilarious real life story to share about why it took me so long to actually get the platinum in that first reboot title. I'm a big fan of those titles though, so I'd definitely recommend giving them a try. Each one is fairly different in it's own way. Rise of the Tomb Raider especially has got some really varied and interesting DLC, which people seem to really dislike for some reason.

 

The curse of the backlog eh? Haha ? - I've found since starting this, mine has gotten even bigger, from reading peoples recommendations and things like that, it's just something I've sort of accepted at this point. I guess it's tough to complain about having more awesome games to play though right? So I guess I'll try and get around to them when I do. I think some I'll realistically never get back to, I should probably update my opening post on here a bit, because in over 3 months so far I haven't once touched a single one of the games I'd marked down as high priority. It's funny in hindsight, but I think there are a few I really should revisit. Star Ocean - The Last Hope is making me do a real life ?  just thinking about haha!

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5 minutes ago, rjkclarke said:

The curse of the backlog eh? Haha 1f602.png - I've found since starting this, mine has gotten even bigger, from reading peoples recommendations and things like that, it's just something I've sort of accepted at this point. I guess it's tough to complain about having more awesome games to play though right? So I guess I'll try and get around to them when I do. I think some I'll realistically never get back to, I should probably update my opening post on here a bit, because in over 3 months so far I haven't once touched a single one of the games I'd marked down as high priority. It's funny in hindsight, but I think there are a few I really should revisit. Star Ocean - The Last Hope is making me do a real life 1f628.png  just thinking about haha!

 

I'm afraid that these forums will make mine will skyrocket too. One one hand we're pretty spoiled with all these great games to get to, but on the other it feels almost Twilight Zone-ish how there's very much too many.

 

"That's not fair.. that's not fair at all! There was time now!"

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Classic Review

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Platinum #238

Tomb Raider: Legend (PS3)

 

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Master of Tomb Raider: Legend
Earn all the trophies in Tomb Raider: Legend

 

A Few Trophy Stats

 

Platinum Earned - 25 November 2019 - 6:34:37 AM

Time Taken to Platinum : 1 week, 6 days, 33 minutes

Platinum Rarity  - 20.32%

Trophy Number - #11,971

 

 

Tomb Raider: Legend or How I learned to start rambling and Love Keeley Hawes. No, no, no, that's not the title at all. Ahem, Tomb Raider: Legend, was the first in the "original" reboot trilogy of Tomb Raider. I say original reboot trilogy, because long before we had Camilla Luddington's Lara screaming JONAAAAAAAH (I'm taking the biscuit, don't worry, I think she's great as Lara) at the top of her lungs in the recent trilogy, we had a re-imagining of Lara's timeline with a title I've seen dubbed a few ways, the HD Trilogy, the Keeley Hawes trilogy and ocassionally the Legend Trilogy. I'll be calling it the Keeley Hawes trilogy. I should also point out as a fun little side note -that when I played this trilogy back in 2019 it was almost completely flat on my back as I'd done something nasty to it. I can't remember exactly what though. I either fell down my stairs on my back (which I've done several times) or I did something twisting and lifting something when I was doing some gardening work. It was definitely one of those two I think.

 

I'm Just going to divert off on a little tangent real quick - I guess anyone that has ever visited my profile page on here might have wondered who the people in my background image are, the lady is Keeley Hawes and the guy is Phillip Glenister, specifically their characters from Ashes to Ashes. Which is a series I'll never get tired of discussing with people, or at least people that have seen it. If anyone thought I turned into Homer Simpson during the episode where he gets obsessed with Thomas Edison, when I mention Legacy of Kain (which is becoming a running joke in this thread at this point haha) then you haven't encountered me after re-watching a few Series 3 episodes of Ashes to Ashes haha.

This is only slightly relevant to Tomb Raider, with the Keeley Hawes connection, because I think she's a tremendously talented actress, I have done for an incredibly long time, but I'm here to talk about the game not specifically her, so I thought I should provide a little context for why I think she's so good, and why I might single out certain things here and there.

 

Now that's out of the way, let's get back to Tomb Raider: Legend. I personally believe there exists a certain irony with this trilogy, that it essentially paved the way for what the Uncharted series went on to become, whilst Tomb Raider sort of went in the direction of trying to be Uncharted, well at first anyway, I think the two less linear iterations of the recent Tomb Raider trilogy are much less Uncharted flavoured. I do think this game in particular formed much of the blueprint of what you'd see in later Uncharted games. No surprise really as Amy Hennig who wrote many of the Uncharted series also worked in a large capacity at Crystal Dynamics the company who also made Tomb Raider, as well as Legacy of Kain (This time it's relevant, she wrote them, or at least most of them haha). So by that token, any fans of the stories found in Uncharted would probably at the very least also enjoy the stories from Legacy of Kain.

 

Tomb Raider: Legend however, pretty much combines all of the great elements of previous Tomb Raider titles and refines them down into one really good game. I suspect some true purist Tomb Raider fans might level the criticism at this game that it contains far too much combat, much like a particular section of the Resident Evil fanbase like to do about that particular series, but I think Tomb Raider: Legend particularly, really strikes that balance between combat, puzzles and platforming very well. I think having Toby Gard involved was an incredibly intelligent decision, Gard who is essentially one of the main creative forces behind Tomb Raider itself from its genesis, knows his own creation, and made a concerted effort to try and modernise the Tomb Raider series. A series that at this point had somewhat lost its way.

 

I'm not particularly a big proponent of graphics being the be all and end all of  whether a game is good or not. If that were the case I'd have almost certainly -  never even considered playing many of the low budget and indie titles I've gotten so much enjoyment out of over the years. Tomb Raider: Legend had - even on it's initial release in 2006, very good graphics. Which themselves look even nicer with the HD edition available on PS3. One of the most impressive elements, found in Legend, are the sheer amount of variety that can be found visually. I'm a big fan of variety in any form, in video games, but this game contains so many distinct and differing locations that it's truly impressive how individual they all feel. It's a real testament to the talent that was involved with designing them.

The Japanese, level is a particular highlight personally (although, in this game they are all incredibly strong contenders), it's a very interesting mix of some of the more familiar urban locations from games like Tomb Raider III on PS1, combined with intricately designed and believable platform traversal, that can be found in levels thickly dense with vines and poles. England was another standout location from both a visual and design standpoint, it's quite a frustrating one to revisit for time trials, but the actual journey through level and how well designed each individual component is, is really impressive, especially for a game released in 2006, with the limitations that were placed upon it due to hardware.

 

Sometimes, in a game like Tomb Raider believability in level design is very key, that's where the disconnect comes for many people in the more recent titles, where you always know exactly which route to take, based on whether or not there are some slightly chalkier looking rocks to grab onto.

In Legend, Lara herself has had a slight overhaul in her design, something which really was a necessity  as Gard and Crystal Dynamics were making a very deliberate effort to try and separate the two series timelines at this point. Not all that much has changed about Lara physically, she still has those recognisable bumps and curves, which at this point, whether good or ill, had made her one of the most recognisable characters across all of gaming. All of the other character designs are interesting definitely, but I wouldn't say so interesting that I feel like I need to elaborate on them too much. I will say this though, that Amanda is very well designed to be subtly juxtaposed to Lara (they even have quite similar facial structures), something which was really well achieved. You could probably argue that Amanda does fit into, the "edgy goth game character" stereotype that was a little too rife in the mid 2000's but as a counterpoint to Lara, it works really effectively here, so it is somewhat justified.

 

To talk about the soundtrack of Tomb Raider: Legend would probably take too long (yes, even for a windbag like myself) so I'll just say that it's incredibly well produced and at times very authentic feeling; that seems like I'm diminishing how good it is, but I could talk for a long time about it, but it would probably devolve into heaping a myriad of - to be fair, deserving praise upon Troels Brun Folmann, who put it all together. I'm not ruling out the possibility of deep-diving into some game soundtracks in the future in their own seperate posts, but it would be very easy to get carried away doing it here. I would however, recommend that anyone interested look into how all the music in Tomb Raider: Legend was made, as it's incredibly interesting - and most of all you'll probably come away with quite a deep appreciation of how much effort went into actually making it.

 

I haven't mentioned the story up until this point, because I never do really (I'll have to in some games in the future, but I'll put them in spoiler tags), but I feel like I have to give some focus to Lara here, as I discuss the voice acting, which ties in nicely with Lara's character. This is going to sound really unfair, but Keeley Hawes deserved better - this version of Lara is good, great even, and she does improve exponentially over the next two games, but she does lack a little bit of depth, quite often I think  she doesn't feel very "real". Perhaps that's an unfair comparison, as Camilla Ludington's more recent portrayal of Lara paints her in a much more human light. Keeley Hawes Lara, is much more in the vein of a video-game character as opposed to a credible human. Which is a shame, one of the elements of acting I think Keeley Hawes does to a tremendously intricate degree is humanity. She can do that both visually and in an audio capacity, one line in series 3 of Ashes to Ashes haunted me for days, because there was so much gravitas on display (she really is that good). Unfortunately, I think it's a more a case of limitations of the technology, because we essentially only get one half of an acting performance by Hawes as Lara, we only ever hear her voice. If we had more modern motion capture technology and facial mapping, then Keeley Hawes, would absolutely reduce you to a sobbing wreck with some of the material that Lara gets given in this trilogy (even more so, if they used her in the newer one), because even though I said some of it lacked depth, some of it definitely doesn't. Obviously you'd need to have some good visual direction to go along with it, but that was proven to be an area where the visual artists in this game excelled. I know a fair chunk of that, might have sounded negative, but her performance is excellent nonetheless. I did have what I think was a really strange, but hilarious audio glitch in my game back on Xbox 360, before I played this version where Lara says "I think Amanda might have not have died down there"  - that has been a running joke with me and one of my friends for about 14 years at this point, that just gets brought out with no relevance any more, so that's a funny little thing that makes me think of this game quite often. 

 

The gameplay found in Tomb Raider: Legend was - at the time very innovative. At least for the Tomb Raider series that is. They really brought Lara into the 21st Century with this title. I know Angel of Darkness was the first title in the 21st century, but it sure didn't feel like it. This did - and then some. Fluidity, should be the main focal word here, because never before had you been able to traverse the terrain in such fluid motions, which even in 2019 when I last played this still held up fairly well. I always think of PS1 era Tomb Raiders traversal as (A) Get into position. (B) Start your run up. (C) Make your jump. It always used to be such a deliberate process. Whereas in Tomb Raider: Legend you can do all three of those things in one fluid motion, most of the time.  There is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to certain movements as Lara can tend to jump one way, when you expected her to go another, but with anything like this, it's just a matter of time before you get used to it. By the time you've started the time trials it will mostly be second nature.  The combat is a major improvement over the earlier titles as well, although Hard mode can be a bit of a pain sometimes as enemies seem to think you are a coconut shy, and that instead of pelting balls at you.... Well they just throw grenades instead. So, that can make firefights a little tiresome. In Legend at least. I was personally quite a fan of the motorcycle sections in this title as well, funnily enough when I played them in 2019 it really reminded me of the snowmobile section in Yakuza 5, it's one of those things you don't really expect to enjoy, is a small part of the game, yet ends up being quite memorable. As I mentioned previously, I really love all of the distinct locations that this game has, it really lends itself nicely to variety, especially when it comes to the puzzles as they are often very different depending on your location. I think you could argue that their could and probably should have been more focus on puzzles in Legend, but they at least are here, if not a little simplified. You thought I'd forgotten to mention it? Unfortunately this game is littered with QTE's which seemed to be all the rage back in the mid to late 2000's, ironically these were a gameplay gimmick that I really liked when I was much younger, nowadays I tend to find them incredibly bothersome. If you like them, great there's plenty more in Anniversary and Underworld, you definitely won't be hearing me talk about them for the last time here.

 

As far as the trophies in Tomb Raider: Legend are concerned there isn't anything most people would struggle with. As evidenced by the fact I essentially played this entire game flat on my back. Even the hard difficulty mode trophies aren't too bad, just remember to always keep an eye on your health, heal when you need to because Med-kits are quite plentiful. I don't believe that the game contains any missable trophies, because chapter select exists. I'd advise using a collectibles video, I remember using one with some quite funny commentary by someone from the UK which kept me entertained throughout - if I remember who it was, I'll leave a link in the Anniversary or Underworld review as I used the same channel for all three games. Some of those collectible puzzles are really well designed so, I'm really grateful that the game made me go out of my way to get them.

I'll give a tip that might make the Time Trials easier, I'm not sure if its in the trophy guide on this site, but I'd go a very specific route when it comes to doing the time trials, because they unlock some tweaks you can turn on that make the others much easier. Find out which level unlocks which, then do the one you think you'll need first like infinite health or one hit kills on enemies. That will alleviate a lot of the difficulty that can be found with those time trials, because those are some of the area's you'll probably spend the most of your clean-up time. Funny how Tomb Raider: Legend has similar trophy requirements to those in the Uncharted series too, even down to the miscellaneous weapon related ones. Also, as a side note, you should absolutely play the Kazakhstan national anthem from Borat on a loop as you are doing the time trials in Kazakhstan (level 5), it made me genuinely laugh out loud once or twice as I was playing it. I think my biggest complaint about this games trophies, are how basic the trophy tiles look. It's strange because, Legend and Anniversary's look very similarly uniform, but Underworlds look very different.

 

I think - By the length of this write up, you can be pretty assured, that I'd recommend this one. Is it perfect? No, but it's still a really fun experience even by relatively modern standards. It won't be like the recent Tomb Raider trilogy nor will it really feel like the PS1 era Tomb Raiders, this trilogy really is its own unique animal. In a way that's what I like about it, it sets itself apart from the other games in the series quite nicely, yet still manages to feel like a worthy entry in what was at the time of release a nearly ten year old series.

 

Well that was long, how is it I end up writing far more about games I played so much less recently, than the ones I have just completed. Strange old thing that.

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Nice write up mate  - I realised that in one sentence:

 

15 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

Tomb Raider: Legend however, pretty much combines all of the great elements of previous Tomb Raider titles and refines them down into one really good game

 

you pretty much did what I took 3 paragraphs to try and say ? Go figure!

 

I must admit, I'm very much a 'new Tomb Raider' guy now (well, actually, in terms of games, I am squarely a "Lara Croft" games guy, but those are really their own thing entirely), but your review did one thing in particular (it did lots, but this one more than anything I mean!) - reminded me how much I love Keeley Hawes generally.

 

I assume you've seen this at some point, but I'd be remiss if I didn't stick it here anyways... (start as 2:00 in, for giggles)

 

 

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22 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

I'm thinking I'll tackle the Tomb Raider HD trilogy, so Legend, Anniversary and Underworld. Which I actually got the platinum in sequentially too.

Looking forward to reading them all ? Also don't put too much pressure on yourself for these reviews, otherwise you'll probably not enjoy doing them anymore.

 

22 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

Angel of Darkness was received pretty disastrously. I'm not going to make the arrogant assumption that my write ups of them will make you want to play them, but I do need to do some reviews of them at some point, and if you did happen to like the idea of those games as a result, great, because I do think they are a trilogy worth playing through, they still held up fairly well when I played them all those years later in 2019.

O yeah, I heard that almost killed the whole franchise? 

 

22 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

I'll get to the Lightning trilogy at some point for sure. I just don't know when.

Looking forward to this too!

 

22 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

I don't think we have to worry with that unicycle idea giving Square Enix any ideas, haha like we have both said before, if by some strange coincidence a Square employee had read this thread, they probably would have clicked away very quickly, based on both our views on FFXV.

Haha! Too bloody true!

 

22 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

Depends doesn't it, if you had the ultimate clip, where all the funny things happen at once that you usually see on You've Been Framed: for example an old lady falling over at a wedding, whilst, someone rides past on a BMX as a dog launches themselves at that rider to then fall into the wedding cake. They should get £250 for each individual component I think. 1f606.png

Very true, but nowadays you'd stick that on Youtube and get a fortune that way haha

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15 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

Classic Review

 

 

Platinum #238

Tomb Raider: Legend

 

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Master of Tomb Raider: Legend
Earn all the trophies in Tomb Raider: Legend

 

Platinum Earned: 25 November 2019 - 6:34:37 AM

Time Taken To Platinum - 1 week, 6 days, 33 minutes

 

 

Tomb Raider: Legend or How I learned to start rambling and Love Keeley Hawes. No, no, no, that's not the title at all. Ahem, Tomb Raider: Legend, was the first in the "original" reboot trilogy of Tomb Raider. I say original reboot trilogy, because long before we had Camilla Luddington's Lara screaming JONAAAAAAAH (I'm taking the biscuit, don't worry, I think she's great as Lara) at the top of her lungs in the recent trilogy, we had a re-imagining of Lara's timeline with a title I've seen dubbed a few ways, the HD Trilogy, the Keeley Hawes trilogy and ocassionally the Legend Trilogy. I'll be calling it the Keeley Hawes trilogy. I should also point out as a fun little side note -that when I played this trilogy back in 2019 it was almost completely flat on my back as I'd done something nasty to it. I can't remember exactly what though. I either fell down my stairs on my back (which I've done several times) or I did something twisting and lifting something when I was doing some gardening work. It was definitely one of those two I think.

 

I'm Just going to divert off on a little tangent real quick - I guess anyone that has ever visited my profile page on here might have wondered who the people in my background image are, the lady is Keeley Hawes and the guy is Phillip Glenister, specifically their characters from Ashes to Ashes. Which is a series I'll never get tired of discussing with people, or at least people that have seen it. If anyone thought I turned into Homer Simpson during the episode where he gets obsessed with Thomas Edison, when I mention Legacy of Kain (which is becoming a running joke in this thread at this point haha) then you haven't encountered me after re-watching a few Series 3 episodes of Ashes to Ashes haha.

This is only slightly relevant to Tomb Raider, with the Keeley Hawes connection, because I think she's a tremendously talented actress, I have done for an incredibly long time, but I'm here to talk about the game not specifically her, so I thought I should provide a little context for why I think she's so good, and why I might single out certain things here and there.

 

Now that's out of the way, let's get back to Tomb Raider: Legend. I personally believe there exists a certain irony with this trilogy, that it essentially paved the way for what the Uncharted series went on to become, whilst Tomb Raider sort of went in the direction of trying to be Uncharted, well at first anyway, I think the two less linear iterations of the recent Tomb Raider trilogy are much less Uncharted flavoured. I do think this game in particular formed much of the blueprint of what you'd see in later Uncharted games. No surprise really as Amy Hennig who wrote many of the Uncharted series also worked in a large capacity at Crystal Dynamics the company who also made Tomb Raider, as well as Legacy of Kain (This time it's relevant, she wrote them, or at least most of them haha). So by that token, any fans of the stories found in Uncharted would probably at the very least also enjoy the stories from Legacy of Kain.

 

Tomb Raider: Legend however, pretty much combines all of the great elements of previous Tomb Raider titles and refines them down into one really good game. I suspect some true purist Tomb Raider fans might level the criticism at this game that it contains far too much combat, much like a particular section of the Resident Evil fanbase like to do about that particular series, but I think Tomb Raider: Legend particularly, really strikes that balance between combat, puzzles and platforming very well. I think having Toby Gard involved was an incredibly intelligent decision, Gard who is essentially one of the main creative forces behind Tomb Raider itself from its genesis, knows his own creation, and made a concerted effort to try and modernise the Tomb Raider series. A series that at this point had somewhat lost its way.

 

I'm not particularly a big proponent of graphics being the be all and end all of  whether a game is good or not. If that were the case I'd have almost certainly -  never even considered playing many of the low budget and indie titles I've gotten so much enjoyment out of over the years. Tomb Raider: Legend had - even on it's initial release in 2006, very good graphics. Which themselves look even nicer with the HD edition available on PS3. One of the most impressive elements, found in Legend, are the sheer amount of variety that can be found visually. I'm a big fan of variety in any form, in video games, but this game contains so many distinct and differing locations that it's truly impressive how individual they all feel. It's a real testament to the talent that was involved with designing them.

The Japanese, level is a particular highlight personally (although, in this game they are all incredibly strong contenders), it's a very interesting mix of some of the more familiar urban locations from games like Tomb Raider III on PS1, combined with intricately designed and believable platform traversal, that can be found in levels thickly dense with vines and poles. England was another standout location from both a visual and design standpoint, it's quite a frustrating one to revisit for time trials, but the actual journey through level and how well designed each individual component is, is really impressive, especially for a game released in 2006, with the limitations that were placed upon it due to hardware.

 

Sometimes, in a game like Tomb Raider believability in level design is very key, that's where he disconnect comes for many people in the more recent titles, where you always know exactly which route to take, based on whether or not there are some slightly chalkier looking rocks to grab onto.

In Legend, Lara herself has had a slight overhaul in her design, something which really was a necessity  as Gard and Crystal Dynamics were making a very deliberate effort to try and separate the two series timelines at this point. Not all that much has changed about Lara physically, she still has those recognisable bumps and curves, which at this point, whether good or ill, had made her one of the most recognisable characters across all of gaming. All of the other character designs are interesting definitely, but I wouldn't say so interesting that I feel like I need to elaborate on them too much. I will say this though, that Amanda is very well designed to be subtly juxtaposed to Lara (they even have quite similar facial structures), something which was really well achieved. You could probably argue that Amanda does fit into, the "edgy goth game character" stereotype that was a little too rife in the mid 2000's but as a counterpoint to Lara, it works really effectively here, so it is somewhat justified.

 

To talk about the soundtrack of Tomb Raider: Legend would probably take too long (yes, even for a windbag like myself) so I'll just say that it's incredibly well produced and at times very authentic feeling; that seems like I'm diminishing how good it is, but I could talk for a long time about it, but it would probably devolve into heaping a myriad of - to be fair, deserving praise upon Troels Brun Folmann, who put it all together. I'm not ruling out the possibility of deep-diving into some game soundtracks in the future in their own seperate posts, but it would be very easy to get carried away doing it here. I would however, recommend that anyone interested look into how all the music in Tomb Raider: Legend was made, as it's incredibly interesting - and most of all you'll probably come away with quite a deep appreciation of how much effort went into actually making it.

 

I haven't mentioned the story up until this point, because I never do really (I'll have to in some games in the future, but I'll put them in spoiler tags), but I feel like I have to give some focus to Lara here, as I discuss the voice acting, which ties in nicely with Lara's character. This is going to sound really unfair, but Keeley Hawes deserved better - this version of Lara is good, great even, and she does improve exponentially over the next two games, but she does lack a little bit of depth, quite often I think  she doesn't feel very "real". Perhaps that's an unfair comparison, as Camilla Ludington's more recent portrayal of Lara paints her in a much more human light. Keeley Hawes Lara, is much more in the vein of a video-game character as opposed to a credible human. Which is a shame, one of the elements of acting I think Keeley Hawes does to a tremendously intricate degree is humanity. She can do that both visually and in an audio capacity, one line in series 3 of Ashes to Ashes haunted me for days, because there was so much gravitas on display (she really is that good). Unfortunately, I think it's a more a case of limitations of the technology, because we essentially only get one half of an acting performance by Hawes as Lara, we only ever hear her voice. If we had more modern motion capture technology and facial mapping, then Keeley Hawes, would absolutely reduce you to a sobbing wreck with some of the material that Lara gets given in this trilogy (even more so, if they used her in the newer one), because even though I said some of it lacked depth, some of it definitely doesn't. Obviously you'd need to have some good visual direction to go along with it, but that was proven to be an area where the visual artists in this game excelled. I know a fair chunk of that, might have sounded negative, but her performance is excellent nonetheless. I did have what I think was a really strange, but hilarious audio glitch in my game back on Xbox 360, before I played this version where Lara says "I think Amanda might have not have died down there"  - that has been a running joke with me and one of my friends for about 14 years at this point, that just gets brought out with no relevance any more, so that's a funny little thing that makes me think of this game quite often. 

 

The gameplay found in Tomb Raider: Legend was - at the time very innovative. At least for the Tomb Raider series that is. They really brought Lara into the 21st Century with this title. I know Angel of Darkness was the first title in the 21st century, but it sure didn't feel like it. This did - and then some. Fluidity, should be the main focal word here, because never before had you been able to traverse the terrain in such fluid motions, which even in 2019 when I last played this still held up fairly well. I always think of PS1 era Tomb Raiders traversal as (A) Get into position. (B) Start your run up. (C) Make your jump. It always used to be such a deliberate process. Whereas in Tomb Raider: Legend you can do all three of those things in one fluid motion, most of the time.  There is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to certain movements as Lara can tend to jump one way, when you expected her to go another, but with anything like this, it's just a matter of time before you get used to it. By the time you've started the time trials it will mostly be second nature.  The combat is a major improvement over the earlier titles as well, although Hard mode can be a bit of a pain sometimes as enemies seem to think you are a coconut shy, and that instead of pelting balls at you.... Well they just throw grenades instead. So, that can make firefights a little tiresome. In Legend at least. I was personally quite a fan of the motorcycle sections in this title as well, funnily enough when I played them in 2019 it really reminded me of the snowmobile section in Yakuza 5, it's one of those things you don't really expect to enjoy, is a small part of the game, yet ends up being quite memorable. As I mentioned previously, I really love all of the distinct locations that this game has, it really lends itself nicely to variety, especially when it comes to the puzzles as they are often very different depending on your location. I think you could argue that their could and probably should have been more focus on puzzles in Legend, but they at least are here, if not a little simplified. You thought I'd forgotten to mention it? Unfortunately this game is littered with QTE's which seemed to be all the rage back in the mid to late 2000's, ironically these were a gameplay gimmick that I really liked when I was much younger, nowadays I tend to find them incredibly bothersome. If you like them, great there's plenty more in Anniversary and Underworld, you definitely won't be hearing me talk about them for the last time here.

 

As far as the trophies in Tomb Raider: Legend are concerned there isn't anything most people would struggle with. As evidenced by the fact I essentially played this entire game flat on my back. Even the hard difficulty mode trophies aren't too bad, just remember to always keep an eye on your health, heal when you need to because Med-kits are quite plentiful. I don't believe that the game contains any missable trophies, because chapter select exists. I'd advise using a collectibles video, I remember using one with some quite funny commentary by someone from the UK which kept me entertained throughout - if I remember who it was, I'll leave a link in the Anniversary or Underworld review as I used the same channel for all three games. Some of those collectible puzzles are really well designed so, I'm really grateful that the game made me go out of my way to get them.

I'll give a tip that might make the Time Trials easier, I'm not sure if its in the trophy guide on this site, but I'd go a very specific route when it comes to doing the time trials, because they unlock some tweaks you can turn on that make the others much easier. Find out which level unlocks which, then do the one you think you'll need first like infinite health or one hit kills on enemies. That will alleviate a lot of the difficulty that can be found with those time trials, because those are some of the area's you'll probably spend the most of your clean-up time. Funny how Tomb Raider: Legend has similar trophy requirements to those in the Uncharted series too, even down to the miscellaneous weapon related ones. Also, as a side note, you should absolutely play the Kazakhstan national anthem from Borat on a loop as you are doing the time trials in Kazakhstan (level 5), it made me genuinely laugh out loud once or twice as I was playing it. I think my biggest complaint about this games trophies, are how basic the trophy tiles look. It's strange because, Legend and Anniversary's look very similar uniform, but Underworlds look very different.

 

I think - By the length of this write up, you can be pretty assured, that I'd recommend this one. Is it perfect? No, but it's still a really fun experience even by relatively modern standards. It won't be like the recent Tomb Raider trilogy nor will it really feel like the PS1 era Tomb Raiders, this trilogy really is its own unique animal. In a way that's what I like about it, it sets itself apart from the other games in the series quite nicely, yet still manages to feel like a worthy entry in what was at the time of release a nearly ten year old series.

 

Well that was long, how is it I end up writing far more about games I played so much less recently, than the ones I have just completed. Strange old thing that.

Really interesting write up and I'm intrigued by the other two as well. Who knows, maybe if I ever get my backlog down enough, maybe I'll buy the trilogy and give them a go lol

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13 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Nice write up mate  - I realised that in one sentence:

 

 

you pretty much did what I took 3 paragraphs to try and say 1f602.png Go figure!

 

I must admit, I'm very much a 'new Tomb Raider' guy now (well, actually, in terms of games, I am squarely a "Lara Croft" games guy, but those are really their own thing entirely), but your review did one thing in particular (it did lots, but this one more than anything I mean!) - reminded me how much I love Keeley Hawes generally.

 

I assume you've seen this at some point, but I'd be remiss if I didn't stick it here anyways... (start as 2:00 in, for giggles)

 

 

 

Thanks mate.That's nice to hear. Glad you enjoyed it. Always nice, to give someone a healthy reminder of the greatness of  Keeley Hawes.

 

Although the fact it took me just one sentence to sum up what you wanted to say about the game, probably means I didn't have to write so much about it? Maybe ?. Not that I'm complaining, as I pretty much enjoyed every minute of writing that. Although I think if I did a word count that's probably the longest one of these I've written. Broken Sword 5 was possibly longer.

 

I can't quite say I'm a new Tomb Raider guy (at least I don't want to commit to saying that), if there were a border somewhere, where I could put both my feet in two different places, one for the new trilogy and one for the Keeley one I'd put them both in separate places. I hate to say it, but I prefer the newer version of Lara, She's  written so much better. but I'd probably rather replay the Legend/Keeley trilogy.

 

I really must play those Lara Croft games. I'm about 90% sure I have them both. I know I have at least one. So if I don't I'll have to pick the missing one up. Another one of those games where - I know I'll like them, yet never touched them, kind of things, I seem to do that quite a lot.

 

Thanks for posting that Keeley Hawes clip. I'd never actually seen it before.... Which is definitely the cover story I'm sticking to, to protect my identity as the person who made that soundscape in the video (I think I've also let slip in this thread I'm a sound wizard, previously  too haha ?) ...In all seriousness though, that was really funny. She took that really well considering ?.. That's a great clip though. Watching that just now had me smiling from ear to ear, so I appreciate that. She's so awesome!

 

 

6 hours ago, The_Kopite said:

Looking forward to reading them all 1f44d.png Also don't put too much pressure on yourself for these reviews, otherwise you'll probably not enjoy doing them anymore.

 

Thanks. I'm just trying the three a week thing out as an experiment to see if it works. If I find it too much of a struggle on top of everything else I'll cut it down. I started very late last night and didn't stop till I was done. I'm suffering the effects of it now a bit, but I had a blast writing that, I really did. Awesome to hear you are looking forward to reading the other two.

 

6 hours ago, The_Kopite said:

O yeah, I heard that almost killed the whole franchise? 

 

It almost did, it's a strange one. Angel of Darkness is definitely not a good Tomb Raider game. It's one not fond of myself, I can appreciate its merits though - it was ambitious and experimental and  was trying things quite ahead of its time when it was released. So I have to at least give it that credit. I mean introducing RPG elements in a game like Tomb Raider was odd and it didn't really work, but at least they tried something new. Even if it didn't ultimately pay off.

 

I might have to actually censor myself for the reviews on the Lightning Trilogy. I wrote like an entire university essay where I referenced the music and sound design in Final Fantasy XIII-2 in very intricate detail. So I think I'll have to try and condense that particular section so it doesn't end up boring people to tears. 

 

2 hours ago, The_Kopite said:

Really interesting write up and I'm intrigued by the other two as well. Who knows, maybe if I ever get my backlog down enough, maybe I'll buy the trilogy and give them a go lol

 

Glad you enjoyed the Tomb Raider: Legend write up man. That's always really nice to hear!!  If all goes to plan I should have the review for Tomb Raider: Anniversary up tomorrow night (or, realistically probably the early hours of Thursday haha ?) fingers crossed you end up getting them - you can get a disc copy for a decent price. I think I paid £13 for the two copies of the game I have, one doesn't work though, it used to crash on a black screen at the same area on every console I played it on, so I had to get another. But unless the price has skyrocketed, you could still pick it up for a good price, considering you're getting 3 games. I'm jumping the gun massively though, you might end up being really put off by what I have to say about Anniversary and Underworld, nor would I assume my mad ramblings were the reason you'd pick a game up.

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17 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

Thanks. I'm just trying the three a week thing out as an experiment to see if it works. If I find it too much of a struggle on top of everything else I'll cut it down. I started very late last night and didn't stop till I was done. I'm suffering the effects of it now a bit, but I had a blast writing that, I really did. Awesome to hear you are looking forward to reading the other two.

Glad you had a blast writing it and sounds like a good plan!

 

17 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

So I have to at least give it that credit. I mean introducing RPG elements in a game like Tomb Raider was odd and it didn't really work, but at least they tried something new. Even if it didn't ultimately pay off.

 

I might have to actually censor myself for the reviews on the Lightning Trilogy. I wrote like an entire university essay where I referenced the music and sound design in Final Fantasy XIII-2 in very intricate detail. So I think I'll have to try and condense that particular section so it doesn't end up boring people to tears. 

 

Wow, RPG elements in a Tomb Raider game, that's bold especially for the time. Bold moves don't always equal success though with this clearly being an example.

 

Wow a university essay on a Final Fantasy game, sounds like an interesting read to me haha but not to everyone lol

 

17 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

Glad you enjoyed the Tomb Raider: Legend write up man. That's always really nice to hear!!  If all goes to plan I should have the review for Tomb Raider: Anniversary up tomorrow night (or, realistically probably the early hours of Thursday haha 1f606.png) fingers crossed you end up getting them - you can get a disc copy for a decent price. I think I paid £13 for the two copies of the game I have, one doesn't work though, it used to crash on a black screen at the same area on every console I played it on, so I had to get another. But unless the price has skyrocketed, you could still pick it up for a good price, considering you're getting 3 games. I'm jumping the gun massively though, you might end up being really put off by what I have to say about Anniversary and Underworld, nor would I assume my mad ramblings were the reason you'd pick a game up.

Haha your ramblings wouldn't put me off lol remember the massive backlog I already have and RE7 and FF7R going nowhere at the moment so yeah it would be a long while before I would potentially look at those games lol £13 for 3 games is a fair price though.

 

Wow, must have been a fault on a part of the bluray disc then in order to constantly crash on the same area, the PS3 must not have been able to read the disc correctly in that spot. Hopefully you got a refund for that.

 

 

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38 minutes ago, The_Kopite said:

Glad you had a blast writing it and sounds like a good plan!

 

Let's hope I do the same later on, with the Anniversary review tonight. It's probably the one in that trilogy I think I have the most mixed feelings about. I like it obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to get the platinum. But I don't think that game truly knew what it wanted to be. 

 

40 minutes ago, The_Kopite said:

Wow, RPG elements in a Tomb Raider game, that's bold especially for the time. Bold moves don't always equal success though with this clearly being an example.

 

Wow a university essay on a Final Fantasy game, sounds like an interesting read to me haha but not to everyone lol

 

Yeah it's quite odd having selectable dialogue options - and things like, not being able to interact with certain objects because you don't have enough "strength" yet. It  was definitely strange, but like I said, I think people should cut them a bit of slack for at least trying something new. By that point Tomb Raider had practically done everything within it's own scope, at least for hardware at the time, so they sort of had to try something else I guess. Sometimes it works, like the leap from Resident Evil's leap from RE3/Code Veronica into RE4.

 

Yeah, that essay wouldn't be for everyone. I worry I talk about music and sound design too much as it is, that's why I always try and keep those bits short-ish or I might get too carried away haha ?.

 

If I remember right, it was about how ineffective or effective a piece of media can be at evoking particular emotions via the use of music and sound design. So I wrote a lot about the scene we've spoken about before (in fact I think the first time we ever interacted) with the future section in Final Fantasy XIII-2 where that beautiful melancholic music hits you and just sort of washes over the whole scene.

 

48 minutes ago, The_Kopite said:

Haha your ramblings wouldn't put me off lol remember the massive backlog I already have and RE7 and FF7R going nowhere at the moment so yeah it would be a long while before I would potentially look at those games lol £13 for 3 games is a fair price though.

 

Wow, must have been a fault on a part of the bluray disc then in order to constantly crash on the same area, the PS3 must not have been able to read the disc correctly in that spot. Hopefully you got a refund for that.

 

Those right there, are the words of a sensible person ?... Despite also having a huge backlog I would have just gone and found a version of it somewhere. Then never played it for about 35 years haha. I forget you have two pretty big games you are tackling at the moment.

 

I guess so yeah, faulty bluray disc. I had the same thing happen on my disc version of Yakuza: Dead Souls. I didn't get a refund on the faulty Tomb Raider. It was a thoughtful gift from my Dad, he'd been in town that day and saw it in CEX and probably  was like " didn't my son, like Tomb Raider when he was younger" so he picked it up for about £8, but couldn't find the receipt because it took me about a week or so to actually start it and it had disappeared by then, probably into a bin.  But that version didn't work so I got one from Amazon for about £5 which did, thankfully.

 

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Great review! Between you and the good Doctor, I feel pretty schooled about a franchise that I kinda stopped following after the second (PS1) game.

 

It sounds like you need a restraining order against your stairs. Back twisting is rough business as it is! I used to clown on guys sayin they threw out/pulled/twisted their back, and it was pretty funny... til I hit my late thirties. I don't think that shit is funny anymore?

 

Anyway, here is a list of my notes:

 

- Mental note, Ashes to Ashes and Keeley Hawes

- I remember playing the first Uncharted (finally) this year and felt like I was being lazy thinking of Tomb Raider as a precursor. I'm glad to hear that my ignorance wasn't too far off! Also it's quite interesting when the influence becomes influenced, as you say of the more recent TR games. Dammit, I knew this forum was gonna be the death of my backlog completion hopes...

- For those who kept up with the franchise from its inception, it must have been neat to watch it gradually morph into something less cartoonish. Or maybe not. I didn't get to see it firsthand, but to hear it described sounds interesting.

I always think of PS1 era Tomb Raiders traversal as (A) Get into position. (B) Start your run up. (C) Make your jump. - rjkclarke, circa 2021

An immortal description, my friend. This covers PS1 platforming in general really, that took me back!

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1 hour ago, YaManSmevz said:

Great review! Between you and the good Doctor, I feel pretty schooled about a franchise that I kinda stopped following after the second (PS1) game.

 

Thanks man. I appreciate that. I had a lot of fun revisiting it. Going back to Tomb Raiders roots tonight to review Tomb Raider: Anniversary, so I'm hoping I enjoy that one just as much.

Interesting that you dropped off after Tomb Raider II, any reason? Or you naturally just drifted away from the franchise. I think the first Tomb Raider game I properly played was Chronicles on PS1 -  which I believe is the fifth one. I've gone back and played the others since, I think I was about 5 when the first Tomb Raider released, I did play it at my Aunt and Uncles so I wasn't properly at the right stage to enjoy it, even though I'm sure a primal part of my five year old brain was very fond of Lara's pointy bits ?

 

1 hour ago, YaManSmevz said:

It sounds like you need a restraining order against your stairs. Back twisting is rough business as it is! I used to clown on guys sayin they threw out/pulled/twisted their back, and it was pretty funny... til I hit my late thirties. I don't think that shit is funny anymore1f629.png

 

 

You and me both! It doesn't really help that when you have twisted your back or someone else has, they usually walk around as if they've filled their underwear with something suspicious - so it's pretty tough not to just make the odd comment right? ?

 

1 hour ago, YaManSmevz said:

- Mental note, Ashes to Ashes and Keeley Hawes

- I remember playing the first Uncharted (finally) this year and felt like I was being lazy thinking of Tomb Raider as a precursor. I'm glad to hear that my ignorance wasn't too far off! Also it's quite interesting when the influence becomes influenced, as you say of the more recent TR games. Dammit, I knew this forum was gonna be the death of my backlog completion hopes...

- For those who kept up with the franchise from its inception, it must have been neat to watch it gradually morph into something less cartoonish. Or maybe not. I didn't get to see it firsthand, but to hear it described sounds interesting.

I always think of PS1 era Tomb Raiders traversal as (A) Get into position. (B) Start your run up. (C) Make your jump. - rjkclarke, circa 2021

An immortal description, my friend. This covers PS1 platforming in general really, that took me back!

 

I'd recommend most people watch Ashes to Ashes, although it is a sequel series to another show Life on Mars, which is also quite good - so it might be better to watch that one first. I personally prefer Ashes to Ashes. Both of them have their merits of course, but I think Ashes to Ashes has a little more to say on a subtextual level. Which probably makes me sound like a cockwomble for saying that, but if it wasn't all so well realised I don't think I'd heap so much praise on it.

 

Did you enjoy Uncharted? I can't help but compare Tomb Raider and Uncharted, it seems a little too obvious not to. I'm kind of dreading reviewing the four Uncharted games I've played so far in this thread. I think people might misinterpret my feelings towards them and assume I don't like them (and chase me away with burning torches and pitchforks), because I do. I just don't love them in the same fervent way everyone else seems to. 

 

I wouldn't stress about your backlog either.. Unless it really starts to bother you of course. I'm just trying to embrace the idea that I'll end up with plenty more awesome games as a result. I've added to mine so far probably a little more than I've cleared it. But it's been really fun so far. So I can't ever complain about that part.

 

It has been very interesting watching Tomb Raider organically change - and sometimes inorganically. I'm looking forward to where it goes next that's for sure. Thanks for bringing that up actually, because it's always nice to think about how much a particular video game series might have changed over it's entire lifespan. Metal Gear Solid is a good example of that, it's gone in so many different directions tonally over it's lifespan. Some games, keep the same formula yet still manage to maintain their fanbase, others try and fail. I find all that pretty interesting to think about.

 

Haha ? Thanks! That was the first thing that came into my head about that movement description. I guess it is true though, everything back in the PS1 era or before felt very deliberate when it came to some of the platforming mechanics. It all felt like a process, instead of, one fluid motion. Funny to look back on though isn't it. 

 

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5 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

 

Thanks man. I appreciate that. I had a lot of fun revisiting it. Going back to Tomb Raiders roots tonight to review Tomb Raider: Anniversary, so I'm hoping I enjoy that one just as much.

Interesting that you dropped off after Tomb Raider II, any reason? Or you naturally just drifted away from the franchise. I think the first Tomb Raider game I properly played was Chronicles on PS1 -  which I believe is the fifth one. I've gone back and played the others since, I think I was about 5 when the first Tomb Raider released, I did play it at my Aunt and Uncles so I wasn't properly at the right stage to enjoy it, even though I'm sure a primal part of my five year old brain was very fond of Lara's pointy bits 1f605.png

 

 

You and me both! It doesn't really help that when you have twisted your back or someone else has, they usually walk around as if they've filled their underwear with something suspicious - so it's pretty tough not to just make the odd comment right? 1f914.png

 

 

I'd recommend most people watch Ashes to Ashes, although it is a sequel series to another show Life on Mars, which is also quite good - so it might be better to watch that one first. I personally prefer Ashes to Ashes. Both of them have their merits of course, but I think Ashes to Ashes has a little more to say on a subtextual level. Which probably makes me sound like a cockwomble for saying that, but if it wasn't all so well realised I don't think I'd heap so much praise on it.

 

Did you enjoy Uncharted? I can't help but compare Tomb Raider and Uncharted, it seems a little too obvious not to. I'm kind of dreading reviewing the four Uncharted games I've played so far in this thread. I think people might misinterpret my feelings towards them and assume I don't like them (and chase me away with burning torches and pitchforks), because I do. I just don't love them in the same fervent way everyone else seems to. 

 

I wouldn't stress about your backlog either.. Unless it really starts to bother you of course. I'm just trying to embrace the idea that I'll end up with plenty more awesome games as a result. I've added to mine so far probably a little more than I've cleared it. But it's been really fun so far. So I can't ever complain about that part.

 

It has been very interesting watching Tomb Raider organically change - and sometimes inorganically. I'm looking forward to where it goes next that's for sure. Thanks for bringing that up actually, because it's always nice to think about how much a particular video game series might have changed over it's entire lifespan. Metal Gear Solid is a good example of that, it's gone in so many different directions tonally over it's lifespan. Some games, keep the same formula yet still manage to maintain their fanbase, others try and fail. I find all that pretty interesting to think about.

 

Haha 1f606.png Thanks! That was the first thing that came into my head about that movement description. I guess it is true though, everything back in the PS1 era or before felt very deliberate when it came to some of the platforming mechanics. It all felt like a process, instead of, one fluid motion. Funny to look back on though isn't it. 

 

 

I think there was just so much great stuff coming out of the woodwork at the time. Although I owed Lara more respect than to just abandon her for the likes of Snake, Cloud Strife, Tony Hawk, and Chris Redfield - I myself was around 13 when Tomb Raider came out, and must admit that she helped me survive puberty?

 

I did enjoy Uncharted! Until that stupid jeep segment... and then again on brutal mode?? Haha once I finished that game I went from this excitement of diving into the series to telling Nathan Drake that we need our space. Getting that hundo, sweet as it was, might have tainted it just a touch. As Rick James would say, completionism is a hell of a drug. Anyway, I'm not like "This is the greatest game since Mario 3" or anything but it was solid.

 

I'm still at that hopeful stage where it seems plausible to shave my backlog down to something that isn't overwhelming. Seeing as I say that while all the Dark Souls games are like 75% off, deep down I know it's just something I'll have to accept?

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Classic Review

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Platinum #239

Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PS3)

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Master of Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Earn all the trophies in Tomb Raider: Anniversary

 

A Few Trophy Stats

 

Platinum Earned - 1 December 2019: 4:57:19 AM

Time Taken to Platinum :  5 days, 8 hours, 59 minutes

Platinum Rarity  - 15.31%

Trophy Number - #12,013

 

 

 

"We're going back to a time we knew"

 

 

As I seem to like mixing songs and video games - this thread is, after all, named after an amalgamation of two songs (Carnival of Rust and Diamonds and Rust, if you'd never read the opening post of this thread, I mean it's long so I can't blame you haha) . I thought I'd throw out those lyrics from Under a Violet Moon by Blackmore's Night. If you are so inclined, you can listen to it here, it's quite folky though, so if that's not your thing, you've been warned -  those lyrics actually seem relevant right now as we're talking about a game that's both a second part in an established series, whilst also being a remake of what started it all. I should also point out I missed a huge opportunity to reference the fact that The Soul Reaver (The signature sword from The Legacy of Kain)  is an unlockable weapon in Legend. I just thought I'd bring that to the attention of  everyone that's reading this review.

 

Onto Tomb Raider: Anniversary then. There exists somewhere, an alternate timeline where Core Designs (the franchise' original creators) has  successfully made their own version of Tomb Raider: Anniversary, or what I believe it was going to be called Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 10th Anniversary Edition. Probably in that timeline, the current Prime Minister isn't Worzel Gummidge either. I'll leave a link here for some of the alpha footage of Core Designs version. I hope that's genuine, I'd hate to mislead people. You don't need to watch all of it, because it's quite long; but just from that small amount of video footage you can see how true that really is to what original Tomb Raider was in its PS1 heyday. Part of me thinks that might have been the better version, but I can't say for sure, as it never happened obviously. That version looks like it would have fallen snugly into the category of remake we got for Shadow of the Colossus.

Whilst I really like Tomb Raider Anniversary for what it is, it does at times ultimately feel like it's neither one thing or another. It doesn't truly feel like part of the Legend mythos, at least not organically. Thematically they are tied - yes, but in reality it sort of amounts to Underworld more or less being a sequel to Anniversary and Legend sort of existing by itself, but  all three containing the same version of Lara. I know that might seem confusing, but if anyone who's reading is unfamiliar things will probably become clearer once we get to Underworld later in the week. At the very least though, Anniversary is quite faithful to the game it's a remake of. With a few minor differences here and there. 

 

Visually, you could say that Anniversary is quite a vast improvement over Legend. That's not to say that Legend looks poor by any means, it looks great for when it was made, and as I previously said in my Legend review, even better on PS3. A lot of careful effort has been put into - not only faithfully recreating environments from the original Tomb Raider, but improving them in ways that melded better with, at the time, more modern gaming sensibilities (nowadays those improvements wouldn't be that noticeable). I must admit myself, that on replaying older Tomb Raider titles there are parts, where I just think I'm running down different coloured rectangular hallways. That never feels like the case in Anniversary. Visually they did an immaculate job. When Crystal Dynamics want you to feel the freedom of an open space, you'll feel it - want you to feel claustrophobic or trapped?  some of the tighter sections in Greece and Egypt certainly might evoke those feelings on occasion. One of the most notable things is Lara's design. I really do like the attention to detail, in keeping her iconic costume faithful, not just that though -  visually she really does look like a much younger version of Lara's appearance in Legend. I know that seems like a fairly obvious point to make; but sometimes character models don't quite make the transition effectively between remakes. With human characters that's such an important thing to get right. Sometimes I think artistic license is used a little too liberally in remakes. I'm looking at you Colossus #7 from Shadow of the Colossus, why you became a football sock covered in Christmas lights when you are meant to be a giant Eel, I'll never quite understand.

 

Tomb Raider: Anniversary, contains such an impressive amount of variety when it comes to the level design. I know I mention variety a lot, it might not be an important factor for some, but for me it always is. It really helps to keep games feeling fresh and exciting, very often. Not only are the levels designed well, the puzzles are designed intelligently too. Just like with Legend, they are often quite specifically tailored towards the specific geographical area's you happen to be in. It's even more impressive, when you factor in that Anniversary hasn't changed all that much from a game that was released, well - at the time of writing, twenty-five years ago. It's astonishing really.

Of particular note is St Francis Folly in Greece. It's a level that is in my opinion, an astonishingly well designed level - that is absolutely brimming with well designed puzzles and traps. The sheer verticality of it all is, at first very intimidating, but as you slowly start to work you way around it all, it all starts to make sense a bit better. You also have a bit of freedom in this puzzle room to be able to tackle it in an order that suits you, instead of an entirely linear fashion. I mentioned in my review of Legend, that a Tomb Raider purist might complain that the game is a light on puzzles, but you could never level that criticism at Anniversary. Egypt, is an area that is an absolute highlight to explore as well, I've always enjoyed the fact that, this area has an increased focus on combining platforming and puzzle solving at the same time, instead of just one or the other. Now - this might surprise some, but I really don't get on with Croft Manor in this game. I can appreciate that it's very well designed though, I really couldn't deny that. I just don't enjoy replaying it. It could be a slight hold-over from when I played Anniversary years ago on Xbox 360 and I was dreadful at the time trial in Croft Manor. I spent so much time there you could probably find a 17 year old rjcklarke in the freezer chilling out with the Butler. So that's probably why I struggle to love it, I am very fond of how Croft Manor looks visually though, in a way it's a massive positive that finding all the collectibles leads you to seeing how much effort went into recreating it.  

 

I think in the pursuit of being faithful to the original game, a little bit of connection was lost to Legend - with the change in direction for the soundtrack. Shifting from Legend's sometimes bombastic electrical and synthesised instruments, Anniversary decided to go with primarily Orchestral themes. Troels Brun Folmann was still onboard as the person overseeing and writing the music, but there is a radical change from the music found within Legend. It's very good in fact, I don't want people to think I'm picking holes unnecessarily. I'm actually very fond of Anniversary's soundtrack, as I am also, of Legend's, I'm just reiterating the point I made earlier, that ultimately Legend feels a bit disconnected from this and Underworld. I understand why that decision was made though, because fanbases can certainly be passionate to say the least (One of my closest friends can't seem to get past how different Lara is in the newest trilogy), so if the decision was made to continue with musical direction seen in Legend, you invariably would have had people complaining about the fact the soundtrack is "nothing like the original" or something less polite of that nature. Anniversary's soundtrack however, is in places quite quiet and reflective. It really works too, especially as in this game fighting humans is a lot less frequent than it is in Legend, this gave Folmann a chance to really heighten the pace musically when more intense combat situations present themselves as well as during important moments within cutscenes - it's very impressive how it can switch from being ambient and peaceful to foreboding and frenetic. I'm consciously trying to keep this section short, not for fear of rambling, but because it's too easy for me to just go a bit deep with the minutiae of music and sound design.

On the subject of sound design, just like Legend it was implemented very effectively here. Whoever actually constructed the soundscape in this game, my hat goes off to you - because it's truly impressive, I'm going off of memory obviously, yet still fairly recent memory,  I remember being really wowed by the sound design in Peru especially. The rushing water, the sounds of birds, ambient wind, the roars of far off animals/ ferocious pre-historic creatures. It all felt natural, which it shouldn't but, it was pieced together so well I couldn't help but be immersed in the world the game had built.

 

Tomb Raider: Anniversary, may possibly be the game in the trilogy where Keeley Hawes gives her best vocal performance as Lara. Lara has an incredible amount of personal growth over the course of this game. Slightly more so if you factor in some of the changes made to this version. The inclusion of one of the characters now being named and by virtue also being someone Lara was previously associated with, gives a little more context to Lara's first "kill". It's a scene that has quite a lot of power to it, but I can't help but think "man, I wish, Keeley Hawes got to motion capture that, I would have drowned in my own tears by now" I can just picture exactly what her face would look like, especially as they use plenty of shots of Lara's fairly inexpressive face during that cutscene. As I mentioned before, she's an absolute master of conveying subtle emotion through nothing but expressions. That's my own personal frustration creeping in though, the technology wasn't there to do any of that at the time, or I'm sure they would have done. Keeley Hawes, plays the younger version of Lara with such fine detail - she's noticeably different here, as the younger more confident, fearless and brash Lara. When compared to how she's played in Legend, where she possesses all of those elements, yet is also slightly more reserved, with a stronger sense of humour. There are some other very good voice performances in this game too, some not as good. Natla is particularly well voiced I personally thought - she maintains that balance between being a "cape swishing baddie" and someone who's lived an entire life clinging to negativity. 

 

Anniversary's gameplay is essentially not that different to that of Legend, except I'd probably say that Anniversary has got some improved movement animations and some slightly less wonky looking dodge manoeuvres. The gameplay is also one of the areas where the game really excels. I think you'd be incredibly hard pushed to find a more pure and genuine Tomb Raider experience than this one - on any console outside of the originals on PS1. What I mean by that, and I really do feel like I have to clarify this, is that the balance is 100% there, between; combat, puzzle solving, exploration and platforming, it all comes together in such a satisfying package that no other Tomb Raider game has managed since. Lot's of the other entries, whilst themselves brilliant or great games tend to  focus on one or two of those things more than others, whereas Anniversary purely, is what it is. Just, Tomb Raider.

Let's be real though, I can't discuss the Keeley Hawes Tomb Raider trilogy - without again mentioning the QTE's that are found within this game. If it wasn't egregious enough, that they had to be in the game at all, they implemented trophies tied to them as well, where you have to perfectly perform the QTE's otherwise, no trophy for you. I know they felt the need to update the game with some modern gameplay features, and for some reason QTE's were all the rage, but Crystal Dynamics ended up tailoring whole cutscenes around them, which end up making them feel really inorganic. It' feels like sometimes Lara is just absent mindedly waiting for the left directional button to appear in her peripheral vision so she can react accordingly. It's a shame, and it honestly really irks me, but ultimately the game is a product of it's time and they were unfortunately widely popular at the time, even with myself.

 

Unfortunately, we get another set of ugly trophy tiles in Tomb Raider: Anniversary - a small personal gripe I know, it doesn't in anyway effect my opinion of the game, just that the platinum trophy itself is a bit of an eyesore. Thankfully, I don't sit in a pile of my own platinum's like Smaug the Dragon admiring their beauty, or in this games case, lack thereof , so it's not something I have to worry about. Some individual trophies look great, and others just look a bit murky.

 

The act of getting the platinum though? That's an interesting one, I'll undoubtedly have the unpopular opinion here, but I love the time trial trophies in this game (except Croft Manor, that can post itself to the bottom of the ocean in a jiffy-bag full of concrete). They are quite challenging, but I really adore when a game makes you go out of your own way to learn all of it's mechanics and how to do everything efficiently. I think the ones that really test the player the most are probably the Egypt levels, as you essentially have to do those perfectly, there are a few of them, that will allow you to maybe take one death. Some of the individual levels gave me such a deep appreciation for how well designed some of those puzzles were. Even after doing them multiple times, then along the way discovering there are ways to speed up those processes even further. You could speed up the process a lot I expect by learning how to do the air-walk glitch that speedrunners use, but I never fancied learning that, I thought it would be much easier to just learn the levels and enjoy that side of it.

You do have to get every collectible again, which again I personally quite enjoyed. My philosophy with something like that, is always why complain about getting to see more of a gorgeous game you are enjoying. I'll leave the link HERE, for the collectible guides I used. I managed to find them after I wrote that Legend review. So if anyone does play these at any point, I'd recommend checking those out as I seem to remember them being quite funny. You do have to beat the game on Hard mode, but realistically, Anniversary has the least combat of any game in this trilogy, maybe any Tomb Raider? I took a look at the guide before writing this, and they pretty much said the same, about the combat not really effecting difficulty too much. If I was going to give advice though, you really don't have to worry about combat too much, heal when you need to, med-kits are a bit less plentiful this time - don't get overzealous though, because I remember getting completely battered by some Gorillas a fair few times, which was probably deserved to be fair, but also hilarious. From my perspective it was a really enjoyable platinum, the game doesn't make you do anything unreasonably grindy, and anything miscellaneous you can pick up fairly easily via chapter select. 

 

Of course I'd recommend this myself (I feel like I should drop this bit, there are very few games I've played that I wouldn't recommend people play, if I didn't I'd usually try and give a good reason). Although Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a VERY mixed bag when you think about it contextually as part two of a trilogy, or I guess part one? As this games existence, makes Legend automatically the second part I suppose. Poor Tomb Raider: Legend, a strange beast in its own trilogy. It does muddy the water somewhat, I've always felt this game was kind of pushed into the Legend  continuity as the developers were quietly trying to shove it between Legend and Underworld, hoping people wouldn't notice it doesn't really fit; hastily shuffling about whilst hypothetically saying "sssssh, we have to do this quietly, or someone will notice" - that isn't entirely fair of course, because in reality Underworld as I mentioned further back, is a much truer sequel to THIS than it is to Legend perhaps? But, as Maz Kanata the little orange tennis ball lady from Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens says " A good question - for another time".

 

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Very Minor Final Fantasy IX Update.

 

I'm starting to get back into the swing of playing it now. I love it too, I can see this becoming one of my favourite Final Fantasy titles at this rate, I can also see it being a stupidly long review, once I actually get the platinum.

 

I've got a little more free time at the moment so I'm going to try and get as much of it done as I can. I've managed to grab a few more trophies, spent ages earlier wandering around a forest to find a friendly monster and answer some questions, strange gameplay quirk that is. I'm also quite shocked that the ATE (active time events) weren't included in subsequent Final Fantasy games, those are a really cool addition, they remind me of the skits from the Tales of' series. Add some cool little character moments, that I think are going to really enhance the story experience. 

 

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@YaManSmevz - I hope this reply here, doesn't seem like a cop out, I'll do a more detailed one if you like. I got your last post, when I was writing that super long review, but I couldn't not reply.

 

That's understandable to be fair that you naturally drifted away from Tomb Raider. That was such a rampant time for quality games back in that time period. Not that it isn't now either, there's so much quality around at the moment. But as a younger person during that period, the sheer amount of interesting things would definitely lead you to just drop the odd thing here and there. I did the same with Resident Evil. I just sort of lost touch with the IP until playing Resident Evil 5 on 360 reignited my love for it.

 

Congratulations on that 100% on Uncharted 1. Super respect on that one. Actually, one of my friends has been playing the Nathan Drake Collection going after those Brutal playthroughs quite recently, and brutal definitely does seem like an apt description for that difficulty. From some of the horror stories he's told. I ought to tackle Brutal in Uncharted 3 at some point.

 

That's a good thought process you have, to at least try and not have it overwhelm you. You've got a place to sound off about it now though, so we can all send loads of encouragement your way, if need be ?

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16 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

Yeah it's quite odd having selectable dialogue options - and things like, not being able to interact with certain objects because you don't have enough "strength" yet. It  was definitely strange, but like I said, I think people should cut them a bit of slack for at least trying something new. By that point Tomb Raider had practically done everything within it's own scope, at least for hardware at the time, so they sort of had to try something else I guess. Sometimes it works, like the leap from Resident Evil's leap from RE3/Code Veronica into RE4.

That does sound intriguing and yeah the ability of thinking outside the box is something at least, but at the same time from an outsiders perspective, not having enough "strength" to interact with objects sounds off putting and potentially irritating. Yeah the leap from RE3/CV to RE4 did work as a whole, and it's always interesting for me personally to go back to those original tank controls as I was used to them straight off the bat, so RE0 was a nice blast from the past in that regard. Pity with RE4 that it started to go a bit more actiony in respects, but that's a discussion for another day.

 

16 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

If I remember right, it was about how ineffective or effective a piece of media can be at evoking particular emotions via the use of music and sound design. So I wrote a lot about the scene we've spoken about before (in fact I think the first time we ever interacted) with the future section in Final Fantasy XIII-2 where that beautiful melancholic music hits you and just sort of washes over the whole scene.

There are so many great pieces of music from lots of different types of entertainment including video games, but wow the music from Final Fantasy (for me personally) is on a slightly higher level to everything else. The musics ability to envoke feelings from sometimes rudimentary storytelling or graphical capability (especially from the earlier FF's) is sensational, and the further the series got, the overall quality of the music as a whole decreased a bit in quality (imho) but the ability to envoke those range of emotions never changed. 

 

16 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

Those right there, are the words of a sensible person 1f602.png... Despite also having a huge backlog I would have just gone and found a version of it somewhere. Then never played it for about 35 years haha. I forget you have two pretty big games you are tackling at the moment.

Yeah haha I was able to finally play a bit of RE7 last night for the first time in 2 and a half months! The first 35 mins was me panicking that I'd suffered this 'dog head glitch' I'd never heard of before but thankfully I hadn't lol that would have irritated the life out of me lol just made it to the Old House now. So far behind....lol

 

16 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

I guess so yeah, faulty bluray disc. I had the same thing happen on my disc version of Yakuza: Dead Souls. I didn't get a refund on the faulty Tomb Raider. It was a thoughtful gift from my Dad, he'd been in town that day and saw it in CEX and probably  was like " didn't my son, like Tomb Raider when he was younger" so he picked it up for about £8, but couldn't find the receipt because it took me about a week or so to actually start it and it had disappeared by then, probably into a bin.  But that version didn't work so I got one from Amazon for about £5 which did, thankfully.

That's a shame but glad you got another copy for cheap ?

 

5 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

Although Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a VERY mixed bag when you think about it contextually as part two of a trilogy, or I guess part one?

Of course! I forgot that Anniversary was part of that trilogy and was a remake of the very first game. What a weird thing to do, have it as the 2nd game in a trilogy, yet it's a remake of the original. That's really confusing. I do like my trilogies to flow logically and this doesn't sound like it's the case. Also when I saw the mention of the Croft Manor in your review, man that brought back some PS1 memories lol spent loads of time on that "tutorial" like I did with Driver's "tutorial", expect Tomb Raider's was my choice! lol

 

5 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

Very Minor Final Fantasy IX Update.

 

I'm starting to get back into the swing of playing it now. I love it too, I can see this becoming one of my favourite Final Fantasy titles at this rate, I can also see it being a stupidly long review, once I actually get the platinum.

 

I've got a little more free time at the moment so I'm going to try and get as much of it done as I can. I've managed to grab a few more trophies, spent ages earlier wandering around a forest to find a friendly monster and answer some questions, strange gameplay quirk that is. I'm also quite shocked that the ATE (active time events) weren't included in subsequent Final Fantasy games, those are a really cool addition, they remind me of the skits from the Tales of' series. Add some cool little character moments, that I think are going to really enhance the story experience. 

I see the game is starting to get it's claws into you haha wait until you start the mini games and get further into the story lol Going back to the discussion about music enhancing scenes - there is a classic scene in FFIX that I will most certainly not spoil - but it's one of those scenes where the blend just absolutely works and shows the power of music.

 

5 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

Congratulations on that 100% on Uncharted 1. Super respect on that one. Actually, one of my friends has been playing the Nathan Drake Collection going after those Brutal playthroughs quite recently, and brutal definitely does seem like an apt description for that difficulty. From some of the horror stories he's told. I ought to tackle Brutal in Uncharted 3 at some point.

Congrats also to @YaManSmevz for the 100% on Uncharted 1. Love those games. I enjoyed them more than Tomb Raider personally, just got into them easier. Full respect to anyone who can do those games on Brutal - not something I could ever achieve. 

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7 hours ago, The_Kopite said:

That does sound intriguing and yeah the ability of thinking outside the box is something at least, but at the same time from an outsiders perspective, not having enough "strength" to interact with objects sounds off putting and potentially irritating. Yeah the leap from RE3/CV to RE4 did work as a whole, and it's always interesting for me personally to go back to those original tank controls as I was used to them straight off the bat, so RE0 was a nice blast from the past in that regard. Pity with RE4 that it started to go a bit more actiony in respects, but that's a discussion for another day.

 

Ultimately yeah, not having enough strength is irritating. It makes some of the parts of the game quite unnatural, because you know there are things you've been near or passed by that you can't interact with, because your strength is a bit low. Even simple things like opening doors or lockers.

I was in the same boat with RE0, the tank controls never bothered me all that much. Ironically the biggest learning curve was my leap from my "RE break" into the new controls and camera in RE5. I guess you could call it when I just skipped a few until, Resident Evil 5. Unfortunately the nemesis from RE3 absolutely petrified me, so I didn't have the desire to play the series until I was a bit older

 

 

7 hours ago, The_Kopite said:

There are so many great pieces of music from lots of different types of entertainment including video games, but wow the music from Final Fantasy (for me personally) is on a slightly higher level to everything else. The musics ability to envoke feelings from sometimes rudimentary storytelling or graphical capability (especially from the earlier FF's) is sensational, and the further the series got, the overall quality of the music as a whole decreased a bit in quality (imho) but the ability to envoke those range of emotions never changed. 

 

That's a good point. I hate to bring it up again but I can't think of a single memorable track of music from Final Fantasy XV that truly resonated with me (granted that could just be me, not loving that game), but I really can't think of any. If you've never played it - and Lost Odyssey comes to PlayStation consoles at some point, you should definitely play it. I think Nobuo Uematsu, does his best musical work in that game.  I've often jokingly referred to that game as the true Final Fantasy XII on occasion, with a few people.

 

7 hours ago, The_Kopite said:

Of course! I forgot that Anniversary was part of that trilogy and was a remake of the very first game. What a weird thing to do, have it as the 2nd game in a trilogy, yet it's a remake of the original. That's really confusing. I do like my trilogies to flow logically and this doesn't sound like it's the case. Also when I saw the mention of the Croft Manor in your review, man that brought back some PS1 memories lol spent loads of time on that "tutorial" like I did with Driver's "tutorial", expect Tomb Raider's was my choice! lol

 

It's quite an easy thing to forget. But it also really hampers the whole trilogy overall I think. It's bizarre, because as a result Legend pretty much ends up feeling quite self contained as a result (it's a shame, because I think it's probably the most enjoyable one to play of the trilogy, even though my objectivity tells me to say Anniversary is actually the best game). I'll probably go into that in a bit more detail in the Underworld review tomorrow, because you can't really avoid it.  Croft Manor, is really well designed in Anniversary, it's fairly true to the original too, but with a lot more verticality, and the rooms flow together very well. I just have nightmares about failing the time trials on it continuously. It was a great tutorial level back on the PS1 for sure, and who didn't stick the butler in the freezer once they knew they could ?. I don't think you were the only one, who seemed to be perpetually stuck in that car park in Driver, I was in there way longer than I'd like to admit too, in fact I don't think I got out until I was a bit older and I'd just gotten the sudden urge to try and play the rest of the game. I think I watched my Uncle play it, and thought the rest of it looked good.

 

7 hours ago, The_Kopite said:

I see the game is starting to get it's claws into you haha wait until you start the mini games and get further into the story lol Going back to the discussion about music enhancing scenes - there is a classic scene in FFIX that I will most certainly not spoil - but it's one of those scenes where the blend just absolutely works and shows the power of music.

 

Yeah, it definitely is. I didn't want to really put it down last night, but I had to write that Tomb Raider review. Well I mean I didn't have to, I did want to. Unfortunately, it still didn't clear up my mixed feelings about Anniversary, perhaps I should start a support group haha. FFIX looks like it has a lot more mini games in it compared to other Final Fantasy's, not that I mind, I'm a huge fan of the Yakuza series, which arguably has you spend more time playing mini games sometimes than the actual story ?. Looking forward to seeing those scenes where the music and visuals marry together nicely, the soundtrack is very unique in FFIX so far, from what I've heard so I'm looking forward to hearing more of it.

 

7 hours ago, The_Kopite said:

Congrats also to @YaManSmevz for the 100% on Uncharted 1. Love those games. I enjoyed them more than Tomb Raider personally, just got into them easier. Full respect to anyone who can do those games on Brutal - not something I could ever achieve. 

 

Absolutely!! That's really impressive. The Uncharted series are way more accessible than Tomb Raider, that's for sure. You can just jump into them and play them without any prior experience with that kind of thing. I wish I loved Uncharted as a whole, I definitely love Uncharted 2. Unfortunately, there's only so many times I can stomach Nolan North going "wooooaaaaah, woooaaah, easy easy, arrrrrrrrghhhhh" as Drake slips off of falling ledges and platforms, I don't know why, but it just really frustrates me. I know, in that situation you would do that, but after hearing it for four games it definitely got very tiresome for me. I think you could do Brutal though, if you wanted to - I don't know that I have the desire to do it myself, that's one of those things about not ever being able to have a 100% account, it does make it easier sometimes to be able to pick your battles, so to speak.

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Classic Review

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Platinum #240

Tomb Raider: Underworld (PS3)

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Master of Tomb Raider: Underworld
Earn all the Trophies in Tomb Raider: Underworld

 

A Few Trophy Stats

 

Platinum Earned - 5 December 2019 - 8:45:48 PM

Time Taken to Platinum :  4 days, 3 hours, 34 minutes

Platinum Rarity  - 16.06%

Trophy Number - #12,046

 

 

So here we are then, at the end of the journey of retreading the entirety of the Keeley Hawes/Legend trilogy. I remember, all the way back in 2019 as I was approaching Underworld, feeling quite apprehensive. Flat on my back, because I had sciatica pretty bad still (when I was upright, I was manoeuvring around as if I'd had a trouser accident, so best to lie down haha).  Don't get me wrong, I like Underworld quite a lot, but it's the entry in this trilogy that I definitely like the least, and I think have always liked the least (I can't remember if I'd clarified in either of the previous two reviews, but I'd played these before on Xbox 360). Let's just clarify this now though, me not being overly fond of Underworld doesn't for one second make it a bad game, or one I'd steer people away from playing -  you'll probably see as we go further in why I prefer the other two entries in this trilogy.

 

Tomb Raider has always contained to some degree some supernatural elements, I mean - there are dinosaurs in the very first title, so if we're being honest, they aren't something you can say would surprise or offend you by this point. Underworld however, really, in my opinion at least, over saturates the game with the supernatural elements. In my opinion. ironically it made the same mistake that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull did, by going a little too far down the supernatural rabbit hole. Therefore,  nstead of enhancing the story, the supernatural elements become even less self aware "follow the macguffin" stories than you'd usually come to expect from a Tomb Raider plot. I must say though, if you are interested in Norse mythology specifically, you'll probably love the way this game handles its supernatural elements.

 

Tomb Raider: Underworld, was made using an entirely new engine, so it feels slightly different to both Legend and Anniversary in a few ways. One of those aspects, is the startling difference in the games visual quality. When you really compare this to the other two titles, they do feel - as was intended by the developers, to seem like " a step above" the previous titles. Legend and Anniversary were both made, like many games still are to this day, in that awkward development period between console generations - where you often have to make games that are still compatible with older hardware, instead of making them natively for the newer console. Quite often games end up suffering quite a lot as a result of this.  Whilst there is an element of that here (Underworld, is also available for PS2), Underworld does very much seem like an upward improvement graphically.

 

Crystal Dynamics made the interesting decision in Underworld to change Lara's iconic outfit, this in itself as a decision was fine, it still looks the same practically. It's just had a slight palette swap. In fact thematically, it actually fits the darker direction this games story takes several of the characters, much more than a lighter palette might have done.  This sort of brings me to one of my own personal gripes with this game, which are the way outfits were actually utilised. Bearing in mind - in this game Lara possesses many outfits that would serve a practical purpose in the settings she uses them, some, well, let's just say, they're just there to placate those that just desperately want the "Nude Raider" cheat to be a real thing. In this game, I think they over-sexualised Lara a little too much. Most people who were around throughout Tomb Raiders heyday would surely be aware of how much of a sex symbol Lara became, it's unavoidable to be honest.  However, that hasn't ever really been what her character was about. It's one of the things I'm really happy the newer trilogy don't tend to focus on, is what Lara looks like. Instead building it around her CHARACTER.

None of the above will probably detract from your enjoyment of the game I expect; in all honesty, I expect as a 17/18 year old playing this when it was first released, I really liked what Lara looked like too. As a 29 year old playing it in 2019 having read Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema essay (which I recommend, by the way,  it might change your perspective on several things in Film),  and the game extensively focusing on, well let's just say - Lara's curves, I couldn't help but just think, why? Admittedly, the focus is mainly the first area of the game, with a slight return later on, but it still seemed very unnecessary.

 

The character designs themselves though, are again just a step up from the previous titles, each of the characters features, are shown in much more detail - and most importantly, the facial animations themselves are much more expressive than the previous titles. I mentioned, previously how much of a shame I thought it was, that during a key moment for Lara her face was essentially expressionless. In  this game, that's much less of an issue thankfully. An interesting little titbit of information (although, probably only to me haha) is that Amanda, a returning character from Legend, appears completely without tattoo's in this game, which I always assumed was just an oversight from the developers but a trip to the Tomb Raider wiki informed me that her tattoo's in Legend were Henna, which does account for them not being there in Underworld. If I'm mentioning graphical improvements, I can't not mention the improvement found within the levels themselves. Something of particular note are the colours, I can't speak for every version of course, I most recently played the PS3 version, but the use of colour in this title is exemplary . The greens of the dense jungle levels, look fantastic - a personal highlight for myself, was the nice contrast between the light and dark in the arctic expedition level. Lighting, happens to be one of the best realised components here, which really help to enhance all of the qualities mentioned above, I feel like, I'm underselling it a bit, but for a game that was released in 2008, some of it looks magnificent.

 

An element that I praised very heavily in the previous two games, were the level designs themselves. Whilst I think they are good here, I think apart from a few exceptions, which I'll discuss shortly, they didn't quite feel, stand-out, or all that memorable either. So a very slight, step down in that department.  I think this game subverts the Croft Manor level in a tremendously  interesting way, it's a staple part of the series, yet it very rarely actually features as a playable location within the story, here it does. Thinking about it now, having played Uncharted 4 since replaying Underworld, the Croft Manor level in this, really reminds me of some of the underground parts in Scotland from Uncharted 4, that heightened sense that at any moment, anything you climb might immediately crumble away. The Jan Mayen level is also a particular highlight, the Valhalla maze is an incredible piece of design, it shouldn't work but it does. Vehicle sections can be tiresome to say the least, but the balance between puzzle solving and speed in that particular level really stood out as interesting to me.

While I don't think the levels themselves are particularly memorable, I do think they are immaculately designed - especially when you factor in the various pieces of mythology and era's that you are encountering within the actual expeditions themselves. It's easy enough for a game to say that it's a ruin from a specific time period, if what you see visually doesn't reflect that, then it's failed in what it set out to achieve (plenty of games have done this over the years, even Tomb Raider itself on occasion), fortunately we don't have that problem with Underworld. I can't ignore, the sheer ambition that went into making some of these levels so expansive too. It's one thing to make a large area, but it's another to actually utilise the majority of the expanse to the maximum (I wish Elex, a game released nearly ten years later, had managed this). Underworld ends up being one of those titles where the act of chasing collectibles does somewhat increase your appreciation for the level design - you see so much more than you might just following the intended path.

 

This is going to be tough, but I'm going to try not to spend the rest of the time talking about how great Keeley Hawes is in this game. I know, I know, you've heard nothing but that for the last two reviews right? Well she is great in this game, as you would no doubt expect to hear from me. I mentioned in my review of Anniversary how I think that game was probably the superior performance of hers. Now, I'm not so sure. Before writing this, I decided to watch all the cutscenes again for Underworld - and I'm starting to think her performance here might be slightly better. I still stick by what I said in my review of Legend, she deserved much better material than she was given. In each of the three games in the Keeley Hawes Lara trilogy, she really encapsulates several of Lara's  key emotions powerfully through her voice acting. In Underworld, we see a darker Lara, at the end of her tether, as her optimism is starting to wane, as she starts to lose control of the situation. Lara in this game feels like a cornered animal, which is definitely well represented in the voice acting. One of the most powerful moments comes from an interaction with both Amanda and Natla the two games previous antagonists, as she fights to contain what sounds like her primal rage, before she stops herself and remembers who she is. It was a masterful mixture of voice acting and sound design, as the sound of shattering glass brings her crashing back to reality. Pretentiousness over I promise, haha.

 

Underworld, sees a very slight change up in it's soundtrack. No longer is the entire thing overseen by Troels Brun Folmann, he merely provides the main theme here. Which is great by the way, it does set the pace for what to expect in the opening cutscenes. I had to do a little bit of research here, because I thought he had done all three - yet the music itself, in this game was composed by Colin O'Malley, which sounds more like the name of a cat that would play the piano, so maybe that's what it was? In all seriousness though, I'm not as fond of this games soundtrack. It isn't bad, nothing like that, I just don't like how fragmentary it sounds at times. Perhaps this is nitpicky, it quite probably is, but I feel like there should have been a more concerted effort to try and make each area feel more culturally representative musically - of the area it's in geographically. I don't think it's too much to ask either, because Legend managed to do that, to great success too. Whereas here the majority of tracks sound fairly similar. That's not just my memory being hazy either, I did go back and listen to some of the soundtrack earlier just to try and refresh my memory a bit. It does excel in the sound design department though, as I mentioned previously when praising the voice acting - a lot of the sound design itself found in those scenes sounds phenomenally crisp, as do the actual in-game sound effects. I can't remember every specific thing, but just like Anniversary, I remember being quite impressed by the actual ambient soundscapes in some of the areas. You can find some of the isolated ambient audio on YouTube, which if you're a bit of a sound nerd like I am, they might be worth listening to.

 

Mercifully, in Tomb Raider: Underworld we no longer have to deal with the nightmare of quick time events. Assuming of course those are a nightmare for you, some people like them I'm sure. I don't, at least not any more (when I was a youngling I certainly thought they were cool), as was made patently obvious in my previous two Tomb Raider reviews this week. They live in on this game though, in a fashion at least. Instead of telling you to press buttons at a specific time, the game slows down to a crawl and gives you a few seconds to make a life or death decision, jumping or grappling for example, or both. I must admit, I much preferred this, you can still die during this process, but it feels altogether more your own fault, whereas often  - quick time events feel unfair, considering the often incredibly short window of time you have to react. I think the simple fact of handing some of the control back to the player, made those "slowdown" sections, such a vast improvement, and was much more conducive to fluid gameplay. Another strange yet welcome addition to Underworld came in the form of melee combat, I'm not sure it was the greatest idea to implement a new combat system in the final entry in a series, but I appreciate the effort of trying. The hand to hand combat does work surprisingly well, even on the higher difficulties. I suppose they had to do something, because a lot of the puzzle solving in the latter half of this game revolves around wielding a certain very famous Hammer - I've already mentioned the Norse connection so you can probably guess which one. In a way I'm glad they did, because it does make the object feel like an important part of the story once you start to be able to wield it during the sections outside of cutscenes. I was very fond of how powerful it actually feels to use, it always bugs me a little in a video game where they talk about an ultimate artefact or weapon; then it's about as intimidating and useful as a Chihuahua sneezing your eyelids closed, actually, scratch that, that's terrifying - let's try again, about as useful as E.T when all Elliot has at his disposal is a Unicycle and no basket, no take off there I'm afraid. That took a long time to just say useless, but I thought I'd lighten the mood as this reviews starting to come to a close.

 

Interesting, so the platinum tile for Underworld doesn't make my eyes bleed. HUZZA. It's a small gripe I know, but those previous two platinum tiles were pretty ugly. As I said in Anniversary's write up, it's not as if I'm Smaug the Dragon sat on my pile of shiny things thinking "this one looks awful" and tossing it aside, it's merely just an observation. I guess to that, you could say "but rjkclarke..... there's a whole thread on this forum dedicated to the best looking platinum trophies" - whilst that is certainly true, it's still slightly relevant here, as I'm in the midst of talking about Underworlds trophies. I always wonder if I should put the trophy section at the start, because we're on a trophy site and I never seem to talk about the trophies all that much. I mean I do obviously, but unless they in anyway impede on other elements of the game, I tend to leave them to the end, because I never think that the trophy list itself really effects whether or not a game is good or bad. I just felt the need to clarify that again, for anyone that might have been wondering why I might seem like I scarcely mention them.

 

Underworld's platinum itself is actually fairly straightforward.How straightforward? Very, you can even use cheats in this game if you are so inclined, that decision is entirely yours. I have heard the game can be a little glitchy when it comes to it's trophies (I never personally, encountered any). It is I think slightly forgivable though, as when this game was released trophies were pretty much in their infancy, so I'm sure they hadn't quite worked out all the kinks just yet. The game doesn't really ask a whole lot of you really in the pursuit of trophies. I was a little bit disappointed the time trials from the previous game didn't return. as I was quite fond of them  previously.  I also suspect if they had returned for this game, I wouldn't be talking about them as fondly, because these levels/expeditions are huge, so doing them in a reasonable time without dying multiple times as well as remembering the specifics of each puzzle would probably have been a nightmare. They return in a small way, in the form of short sections on Lara's motorbike. I really enjoyed how they were implemented personally. The collectibles make a return here, as always a guide is probably a necessity, just to save yourself a lot of time, because I wasn't using hyperbole, these levels are very expansive. Other than that, the remaining trophies - amount to combat and miscellaneous tasks, including three separate swan-dives, which is from what I gather where a lot of peoples horror stories about glitches have arisen from. I'd love to give some advice here to anyone that might end up playing the game, but it's really quite simple. It's an enjoyable platinum though, so whilst I personally have a few issues with where exactly they took the story and the characters in places, I remember having a good time playing through this again. I mean I'm obviously quite a big fan of the Tomb Raider series, so if somehow Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness got a release on PS4/PS5 I'd probably still try and find some positive things to say about it if I could after getting that hypothetical platinum.

 

I would - as a whole recommend people played this entire trilogy. It's got a few bumps and hiccups in it, but overall I'd say it's quite strong, even by modern standards. It was only two years since I last played it and i don't feel like the three games had aged particularly, unless you compare them directly to the newest Tomb Raider trilogy, but that's a different beast entirely. I've often joked with one of my friends (hello  Rocky, if you read this), about how Underworld was his first platinum but my #240. Nevertheless, I'm glad this original reboot Tomb Raider trilogy was able to reinvigorate the franchise somewhat, before invariably needing to be rebooted again. I'll always have a soft spot for it, because my favourite actress plays Lara. I definitely think it has plenty of merit outside of that though. Yet, I stick by what I previously said about how this game is a much truer sequel to Anniversary than it is to Legend. Not just purely from a plot perspective, many of the technical aspects blend together naturally between Anniversary and Underworld, the music particularly so. In a way it reminds me of the recent Star Wars trilogy, where nothing quite feels that connected, even though it very clearly is. Perhaps it's just me though. I really love Legend, I appreciate Anniversary for being such a pure Tomb Raider experience and Underworld tries to bring all of those things together, and ultimately I don't think it quite manages it, even though it has a really good go at trying. I have to commend that at least.

 

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We made it!! All three of the Keeley Hawes Tomb Raider trilogy in a week. That was really fun writing these three, I'm not sure all the classic reviews I write in future will be this long. Some will, some won't. I'm not sure the whole schedule thing worked, because I ended up either getting them done later than intended or just not on the allotted day. So I guess I'll have to do some more experimenting - or I guess, be stricter with myself.  We'll just have to see. I'm not quite sure what's next. I've been listening to the Transistor OST a lot lately, so I might have to delve into Transistor next week and do a classic review on that one. I also should play those other Lara Croft games so I can enjoy a little bit more of Keeley Hawes as Lara, I've never played those either, so they'd be completely fresh to me as well.

 

I was just thinking,  I'm fairly sure that if you combined all three of these Tomb Raider reviews they still wouldn't be as long as @realm722's awesome review of Final Fantasy VII Remake, which is a great review by the way and those who haven't should give it a read.

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On 8/5/2021 at 2:59 PM, rjkclarke said:

Ultimately yeah, not having enough strength is irritating. It makes some of the parts of the game quite unnatural, because you know there are things you've been near or passed by that you can't interact with, because your strength is a bit low. Even simple things like opening doors or lockers.

A strength requirement for opening a door or locker seems a bit bizarre really.....

 

On 8/5/2021 at 2:59 PM, rjkclarke said:

I was in the same boat with RE0, the tank controls never bothered me all that much. Ironically the biggest learning curve was my leap from my "RE break" into the new controls and camera in RE5. I guess you could call it when I just skipped a few until, Resident Evil 5. Unfortunately the nemesis from RE3 absolutely petrified me, so I didn't have the desire to play the series until I was a bit older

Nemesis in the original RE3 was awesome though, scary and that but really added to the tension and the panic. Sorry it petrified you though.

 

On 8/5/2021 at 2:59 PM, rjkclarke said:

That's a good point. I hate to bring it up again but I can't think of a single memorable track of music from Final Fantasy XV that truly resonated with me (granted that could just be me, not loving that game), but I really can't think of any. If you've never played it - and Lost Odyssey comes to PlayStation consoles at some point, you should definitely play it. I think Nobuo Uematsu, does his best musical work in that game.  I've often jokingly referred to that game as the true Final Fantasy XII on occasion, with a few people.

Funny you should mention Lost Odyssey, I watched a youtube channel called Resonant Arc and his retrospective vids on the FF series and other games I'd never heard of before like Terranigma (sp) are really in depth, insightful and very interesting. Really appreciate the way he presents it all. The next vid I have to watch is his 40-odd minute review of Lost Odyssey. I'm not sure if that was a well reviewed game? Did it sell well? If it came to Playstation one day (highly doubt it would) I'd be interested if it was a game I could get into.

FFXV has a few songs that for me stand out massively and really elevate the soundtrack, but yeah most of it is a bit middling. Galdin Quay, the resting round the campfire song, Somnus, Sunset Waltz (especially the last two) are great imho. Sadly nowadays it's a few songs that are great and the rest don't stand out, whereas most if not practically all tracks from the earlier FF's were all great, stand out tracks. Uematsu was/is a genius. Was a great honour to meet him.

 

On 8/5/2021 at 2:59 PM, rjkclarke said:

Croft Manor, is really well designed in Anniversary, it's fairly true to the original too, but with a lot more verticality, and the rooms flow together very well. I just have nightmares about failing the time trials on it continuously. It was a great tutorial level back on the PS1 for sure, and who didn't stick the butler in the freezer once they knew they could 1f604.png. I don't think you were the only one, who seemed to be perpetually stuck in that car park in Driver, I was in there way longer than I'd like to admit too, in fact I don't think I got out until I was a bit older and I'd just gotten the sudden urge to try and play the rest of the game. I think I watched my Uncle play it, and thought the rest of it looked good.

Maybe I'll play Anniversary at least given it's a remake of the first Tomb Raider with the infamous Croft Manor, but backlog backlog sigh lol O yes the butler hahaha hopefully someone let him out eventually.......Bet loads of people have got that same story of the Driver tutorial lol man that was a real bugger.

 

On 8/5/2021 at 2:59 PM, rjkclarke said:

perhaps I should start a support group haha. FFIX looks like it has a lot more mini games in it compared to other Final Fantasy's, not that I mind, I'm a huge fan of the Yakuza series, which arguably has you spend more time playing mini games sometimes than the actual story 1f606.png. Looking forward to seeing those scenes where the music and visuals marry together nicely, the soundtrack is very unique in FFIX so far, from what I've heard so I'm looking forward to hearing more of it.

 

I think you've got a kind of support group going on already, but yeah go for it! lol 

FFIX does have a lot of mini games yes, and some are very extensive. The platinum time as a result is elongated for sure by those and the requirements. It has good variety though and hey if you like Yakuza, then you'll have a blast I'll bet lol

You'll get to those scenes eventually and I know you'll realise which ones I was referring to when you do.

 

On 8/5/2021 at 2:59 PM, rjkclarke said:

I wish I loved Uncharted as a whole, I definitely love Uncharted 2. Unfortunately, there's only so many times I can stomach Nolan North going "wooooaaaaah, woooaaah, easy easy, arrrrrrrrghhhhh" as Drake slips off of falling ledges and platforms, I don't know why, but it just really frustrates me. I know, in that situation you would do that, but after hearing it for four games it definitely got very tiresome for me. I think you could do Brutal though, if you wanted to - I don't know that I have the desire to do it myself, that's one of those things about not ever being able to have a 100% account, it does make it easier sometimes to be able to pick your battles, so to speak.

Haha well yeah I understand that part. Dying over and over, especially on the harder difficulties and having that same sound everytime can be jarring. The clickers and the scream from Joel in Last of the Us was worse for me lol That sound, over and over and over and over..............says a lot about my skills on that game lol

Nolan North himself is a right laugh, really funny and sociable. Was great to meet him.

Yeah, Brutal was never going to be an option for me. Never got the platinums on the PS3 original versions but got them on the PS4 versions and that was enough for me. Wasting time getting super irritated dying over and over on Brutal for one trophy, no thanks. Picking your battles is always important, especially in gaming. It's supposed to be fun, not banging your head against a wall or breaking controllers etc.

2 hours ago, rjkclarke said:

I also should play those other Lara Croft games so I can enjoy a little bit more of Keeley Hawes as Lara, I've never played those either, so they'd be completely fresh to me as well.

I have played Temple of Osiris (think she voiced Lara in that) and it was pretty good for what it was to be fair. Got it for free through PS Plus though which helped.

 

Nice trilogy of reviews btw ?

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