Together Retro: Tomb Raider

[Xeogred]

I would love if even when people can't participate or don't want to participate in a Together Retro game, they could pop in and discuss it at least. Let's start treating these threads as a conversation about the game. The more we talk about them, the more we can start fostering a community around the Together Retro games again.

On that note, am I the only one who found the T-Rex reveal a bit underwhelming? The game makes you fight raptors just before, which kinda spoils the surprise I think. The T-Rex shoulda been the big reveal, then the Raptors can show up in the smaller places when you start hiding from Rex. Then they're an extra nasty little surprise

If others agree then that's fine with me and makes me feel less bad. I usually do pop in these threads for my 2 cents but I hate to admit, it's been quite awhile since I've actually participated in one. Like... I'm talking Shining Force era or something awhile back. lol

Though, the Unofficial Together Modern Zelda BoTW event was awesome and I was knee deep there too.

[TEKTORO]

Shining Force was most memorable TR for me it actually became one of my favorite games due to participating, which is another reason Sonics UGC is so amazing!

I did start Tomb Raider on my PSTV for this month, I died before the first check point and called it a night. However I've made it further in the past, I still love the Saturn version more cause it feels awesome on that pad. I'm gonna give it ago again for sure, atmosphere is still classic and fun also once you get adjusted to the controls it's still a remarkable game. I was thinking of grabbing the Trilogy and PS4 versions but I'll save that for another time as I just picked up Shantae 1/2 Genie and fell in love immediately.

Edit: only downside the graphics have aged but that means nothing to me.

[crazythink4]

I was about to say, I'm a little surprised at how underwhelmed people are about TR, given how excited everyone seemed when the list was first announced in the original thread.

Anyway, I'm playing the very original for the first time. Yeah, the T-Rex reveal has been long spoiled for me, so I can't comment on how surprising it was.

Oh yeah, 20-year old spoilers, btw.

Given that it came out in the second-to-third year of the PS1's release, I can see why it hit as big as it did. The controls are fairly impressive given that there was virtually no precedent for 3D adventure games. They're really clunky by today's standards, of course.

One thing that's hitting me is that there's waaay too much emphasis on combat in a lot of places. Unless you're finding all of the secrets, your non-pistol ammo is very rare. It's almost on early Survival-Horror levels. I'm currently in Palace Midas, where you drop from the roof and are immediately met by two mountain lions. I'm getting mauled a lot. We were a lot more patient then (or I'm a lot worse at gaming now)

I'm playing on a PSP (legally own the PS game, ripped and loaded onto my rooted PSP Go). It's pretty glitchy tho, and it seems like I hang when I try to turn the lead bars into gold. Depending on how invested I am, I may transfer the saves off, load it onto my PS2 to get past that part, and then reload them back.

I'm enjoying the game for what it's worth. I probably arrived way too late to fully appreciated it tho.

(Oh yeah, first post to TR, but been lurking for years.)

[TEKTORO]

Funny you had Survival horror vibes, I agree the game feels very tense and after playing again myself I sorta felt some dark souls with guns kinda vibes. Although both are far stretches respectively it was cool to see it from that perspective.

[Xeogred]

What do you guys think of the Anniversary remake? Is it a faithful authentic makeover?

[noiseredux]

No it's more a reimagining.

[TEKTORO]

Not sure but when I was on a Tomb Raider kick, I used Gamesradar best of guide to sift through the differences. I tend to love horrible games so I'm not the best to ask but I chose Laura Croft any day over Nathan Drake end of story. Lol

[alienjesus]

I was about to say, I'm a little surprised at how underwhelmed people are about TR, given how excited everyone seemed when the list was first announced in the original thread.

Anyway, I'm playing the very original for the first time. Yeah, the T-Rex reveal has been long spoiled for me, so I can't comment on how surprising it was.

Oh yeah, 20-year old spoilers, btw.

Given that it came out in the second-to-third year of the PS1's release, I can see why it hit as big as it did. The controls are fairly impressive given that there was virtually no precedent for 3D adventure games. They're really clunky by today's standards, of course.

One thing that's hitting me is that there's waaay too much emphasis on combat in a lot of places. Unless you're finding all of the secrets, your non-pistol ammo is very rare. It's almost on early Survival-Horror levels. I'm currently in Palace Midas, where you drop from the roof and are immediately met by two mountain lions. I'm getting mauled a lot. We were a lot more patient then (or I'm a lot worse at gaming now)

I'm playing on a PSP (legally own the PS game, ripped and loaded onto my rooted PSP Go). It's pretty glitchy tho, and it seems like I hang when I try to turn the lead bars into gold. Depending on how invested I am, I may transfer the saves off, load it onto my PS2 to get past that part, and then reload them back.

I'm enjoying the game for what it's worth. I probably arrived way too late to fully appreciated it tho.

(Oh yeah, first post to TR, but been lurking for years.)

Hey, welcome to the site!

The lion models look pretty awful iirc. Are you using the ultimate Lara Croft battle technique of backflipping constantly whilst shooting as fast as possible?

[crazythink4]

Thanks alienjesus!

I did sort of come across the back flip shooter technique organically, but I haven't really perfected it. I guess I just need more practice

[nullPointer]

It's been quite a while since I posted anything, though I still read the forums regularly. I've been on a rampage with 2D platformers, and I'm in need of something different lest I risk burnout on one of my favorite genres. Tomb Raider definitely fits the bill as something quite a bit different, and I'm looking forward to posting a few thoughts. I have to be honest though, I'm approaching this game with a bit of trepidation. As others have noted this game is firmly rooted in the early adolescence of fully 3D games, and although it really does some things brilliantly, the controls are a tough nut to swallow. I don't mind early survival horror tank controls, I don't mind early FPS controls in which the simple act of turning around can be measured in 10s of seconds (King's Field I'm looking directly at you, although you'll never know it since by the time you turn around I'll have already been gone for several minutes); Tomb Raiders controls have never gelled with me. I beat Tomb Raider in the early 2000's on PlayStation, and even back then I remember thinking that a lot of the challenge in this game seems to stem from fighting the control scheme itself.

So it was with some degree of hesitation that I finally installed Tomb Raider 1 on Steam today. I put in some time researching mods after doing so, and landed on the following combination which really helps to make some subtle but significant improvements on modern systems.

Playstation Music and Unfinished Business expansion
Most significantly this mod allows you to install the Unfinished Business expansion pack that was released for free to owners of the PC version of the game in 1998. Being as I've only previously played the PlayStation version of the game, this will be all new content for me. I'm tentatively looking forward to playing through this expansion pack, but I suppose it will depend on whether or not I'm fully sick of Tomb Raider by the time I beat the game. This mod also allows the PlayStation CD quality audio tracks to be installed to the PC version of the game, which are not present in any capacity otherwise on the PC version.

Visual Improvements
This mod allows for some really nice resolution and VSync improvements via nGlide. Can't complain about that! Turns out this mod looks really nice in-game. Unfortunately it does nothing to improve the pre-rendered video scenes which for the most part tend to look like pixellated diarrhea on a modern computer monitor. You can't win 'em all, and as the well rounded gamers that we are, we have impressive gifts of discernment to see past such superficialities, right?

Lastly I bashed together an Xpadder profile to enable controller support. The PlayStation control scheme is just what feels proper to me on this game, so that's what I'm rolling with.

With the meta-game complete (i.e. "The Game of Preparing the Game to Game on Modern Systems"), it was time to fire this sucker up. More on actual game play later, but this post is already long enough.