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razielimI don't follow game news because modern games are painfully disappointing to me more often than not. But I was going to buy myself DLC for another game on the Switch a while back and quite by accident discovered that the first three Tomb Raider games had been remastered and released in February! Phew, can't imagine my life if I'd missed something so exciting! I told my mom about it and we just about salivated at the idea of reliving all those wonderful memories again.
In '99 and going all the way into '00, my parents and I spent a lot of time glued to our Power Macintosh playing TR. Dad played, and Mom and I pointed out hidden medpacks/items from the sidelines. My brother was by then around 1 year of age and so had become less likely to explode if we all hyperfocused on a video game for hours at a time. Occasionally, I'd also boot up the game and just play on save files of recent levels without saving, but I was too scared of all the enemies to really do much. The game really took us a longgggg time to beat. While Dad could connect us to the internet, the idea of finding a walkthrough there was totally foreign to us, and we weren't really bothered by how long any single puzzle-heavy game took us. Don't ask how long it took us to beat The Legend of Kyrandia either.
Something I only discovered NOW (like, literally, after I started typing this post) is that the game was never actually released for Macintosh, but had to be ported by a separate developer, and that came about in '99 thanks to the efforts of Aspyr, the very same developer who made this '24 Remaster!! Whoa!
Mom and Dad never actually got to experience TRs II and III, but I had a BFF in school who would regularly bring his magazine walkthrough guide and we would pore over it on breaks (Russia essentially had multiple recesses during the day) or during "extension" (An arrangement for staying after school for a few hours to play outside, do homework, and finally drink evening tea, all under the supervision of the TA. Our teacher was there too, but mostly graded until teatime). It was almost as good as playing the game together, and we play pretended to be Lara to boot. :) I don't think he even OWNED TRII, just the guide, and it was enough. Later, I did end up getting my hands on the TRII demo, but never ended up with the full game.
TRIII I played after moving back to America, with my new BFF with whom I also bonded with over our mutual love of Lara Croft. This BFF lived right next door though, and owned a PlayStation, so I basically lived at her apartment playing games instead of doing homework. We were huge scaredy cats (except when we were scaring the crap out of ourselves beating Clock Tower 10 million times trying to unlock all the endings, lol), so I think it took us like two years to finish the India section of TRIII, and uhhhh....... I don't think we ever ended up choosing the next section to start and progressing. I clearly remember beating the final India boss, but not starting a new level?? Maybe we only got that far just as I moved away, oops. And unlike my playthrough of TRI with my parents, this friend and I were basically glued to Stella's walkthroughs to help us make any progress. TRIII is already a killer enough by widely-acknowledged reputation, but the additional challenge of limitations on saving was just too much for a couple of 10 year olds. We were, however, experts on Croft Manor, and spent a lot of time replaying it and imagining that there were even more secrets hidden there than even Stella knew about.
Back to the Remaster, ghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it looks so good, I can really see the new graphics being "what the developers would have made it look like if they could have." That said, I uh... play on the old graphics a lot of the time, and don't notice that I've switched the view over. And that's really the coolest part. It takes ONE button press to toggle between old and new graphics. You can check how literally EVERY part of the game was updated, including the menus. Very cool. Also, the new graphics DO suffer a bit from that modern design principle of "environments are more 'realistic' if they're in deeper shadow" so it actually pays to intentionally switch to playing on old graphics when the new ones get too dark to freaking see things easily. Great bonus.
The unlimited saving like on PC is actually the best part of all this. I'm so glad they included that. I've always wanted to replay TRI but 1. our old 90s' Macintosh is dead and no one sells the parts that would fix it anymore, 2. I have never PC gamed in my life and I don't intend to start now, and 3. I just didn't ever want to buy the PS version bc the idea of limited saves is just.... urgh. I'm not super big on NEEDING an easy mode, I do like a bit of a challenge. I even used to enjoy working my way through DMC3 (non-SE North American, lol) on Dante Must Die mode. But over the years I've definitely gotten used to autosaves and all that, so not being able to save whenever I like I think would raise most of TR to Hard Mode for me, even as an adult. I just don't want to be replaying huge parts of levels and grinding things out like that. And I definitely recognize that I basically stopped playing on higher difficulty settings once I completely finished my schooling and no longer had entire summers to devote to bashing my head against them. I think that when playing classic TR in the 2020s, as an adult, unlimited saves basically make the whole game function more like Normal Mode. I like that there's an achievement for people who play with limited saves (less than 86 total) to create a bit of a challenge for those who want it, but I just hit 101 saves at the start of The Cistern in Greece, and I'm so much the happier for it.
Between being able to save whenever I want, my own detailed memories of the game's puzzles, and uh... being an actual adult now with decades of gaming under my belt, I'm going through the first game at a very smooth pace. I expect to hit some speed bumps soon as I don't remember the last half of the game nearly as much as the first half, but that's very welcome. It seems almost a shame that I have all of Peru permanently seared into my brain rather than actually have to solve anything there. Mom seemed torn between impressed and disappointed at how fast I played all that stuff in the beginning. The Cistern is already much more of a mystery, and I can't wait to see if I can figure it out next weekend, whoo! But what I really hope is that my parents remain interested long enough to also play TRII and TRIII together since they had never seen that.
What's really crazy about this experience is being forced to recall how much more button discipline was required in older games. I've heard people who play older Assassin's Creed games for the first time complain that Ezio is hard to control. He does chaotic things, he doesn't listen, etc. In reality, ACII simply requires more conscious buttoning, and once players learn that, they learn that Ezio is actually VERY responsive and does exactly what the player asks, even if the player isn't conscious of asking him to do something stupid. Newer games as I understand, tend to put movements on rails and magnetize the player to certain actions, leaving less control in the hands of the player for an overall smoother and more "aesthetic" action sequence. I've never felt that discomfort myself, only read about it. But adapting to TR classic again? This I felt. Lara's really been forcing me to take my time setting up my jumps properly. I ran right off so many platforms in Peru as I tried to acclimate to her not jumping immediately when the button is pressed, oh god. She jumps when she is READY to jump, two steps AFTER pressing jump. Amazing. It seems so unintuitive now, but it's been blowing my mind all weekend that this WAS what the developers thought would be most obvious way of controlling a 3D character in one of the most groundbreaking works in all of game history. The running jump OF COURSE, to them, doesn't start at the beginning of the jump, but at the beginning of the RUN. Ugh. Galaxy brain. Bc I can't help but think... you know... they're RIGHT. Like, technically. Even if I like that Ezio jumps exactly when I tell him to.
I read a lot of the comments from new players about how the Remaster "parkour" is clunky and I read the admonitions from older fans that new players aren't playing the Croft Manor tutorial and yeah, I can't help but think that culturally, we all have Assassin's Creed brain disease now. Because that series HAS been as influential as the original TR was. I guess where we're at is that people look at platforming now and call it "parkour" even when it ABSOLUTELY IS NOT. Parkour implies uninterrupted flow, while the TRI tutorial explicitly says that she DOESN'T run all the time, and REPEATEDLY instructs the player to walk before a jump. And that's something that's just so... interesting. It's like video game archaeology, seeing a game from "pre-parkour" aesthetics lay out what was essentially its design philosophy in its tutorial. Yes, the game will challenge you more and more as it progresses to NOT set up your jumps quite so carefully because there's a timer or traps or whatnot, but that flow is something you learn for yourself and earn as you progress, not something you can expect to do at the outset, and certainly not something the developers simply enable you to do. They didn't see uninterrupted flow of running/jumping as a feature this game provides, included in the selling price, but as a skill to be developed. Their design philosophy pretty much went extinct with "press R1+Forward to parkour." And that's wild. That's archaeology. That's the real Tomb Raiding all along.
In '99 and going all the way into '00, my parents and I spent a lot of time glued to our Power Macintosh playing TR. Dad played, and Mom and I pointed out hidden medpacks/items from the sidelines. My brother was by then around 1 year of age and so had become less likely to explode if we all hyperfocused on a video game for hours at a time. Occasionally, I'd also boot up the game and just play on save files of recent levels without saving, but I was too scared of all the enemies to really do much. The game really took us a longgggg time to beat. While Dad could connect us to the internet, the idea of finding a walkthrough there was totally foreign to us, and we weren't really bothered by how long any single puzzle-heavy game took us. Don't ask how long it took us to beat The Legend of Kyrandia either.
Something I only discovered NOW (like, literally, after I started typing this post) is that the game was never actually released for Macintosh, but had to be ported by a separate developer, and that came about in '99 thanks to the efforts of Aspyr, the very same developer who made this '24 Remaster!! Whoa!
Mom and Dad never actually got to experience TRs II and III, but I had a BFF in school who would regularly bring his magazine walkthrough guide and we would pore over it on breaks (Russia essentially had multiple recesses during the day) or during "extension" (An arrangement for staying after school for a few hours to play outside, do homework, and finally drink evening tea, all under the supervision of the TA. Our teacher was there too, but mostly graded until teatime). It was almost as good as playing the game together, and we play pretended to be Lara to boot. :) I don't think he even OWNED TRII, just the guide, and it was enough. Later, I did end up getting my hands on the TRII demo, but never ended up with the full game.
TRIII I played after moving back to America, with my new BFF with whom I also bonded with over our mutual love of Lara Croft. This BFF lived right next door though, and owned a PlayStation, so I basically lived at her apartment playing games instead of doing homework. We were huge scaredy cats (except when we were scaring the crap out of ourselves beating Clock Tower 10 million times trying to unlock all the endings, lol), so I think it took us like two years to finish the India section of TRIII, and uhhhh....... I don't think we ever ended up choosing the next section to start and progressing. I clearly remember beating the final India boss, but not starting a new level?? Maybe we only got that far just as I moved away, oops. And unlike my playthrough of TRI with my parents, this friend and I were basically glued to Stella's walkthroughs to help us make any progress. TRIII is already a killer enough by widely-acknowledged reputation, but the additional challenge of limitations on saving was just too much for a couple of 10 year olds. We were, however, experts on Croft Manor, and spent a lot of time replaying it and imagining that there were even more secrets hidden there than even Stella knew about.
Back to the Remaster, ghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it looks so good, I can really see the new graphics being "what the developers would have made it look like if they could have." That said, I uh... play on the old graphics a lot of the time, and don't notice that I've switched the view over. And that's really the coolest part. It takes ONE button press to toggle between old and new graphics. You can check how literally EVERY part of the game was updated, including the menus. Very cool. Also, the new graphics DO suffer a bit from that modern design principle of "environments are more 'realistic' if they're in deeper shadow" so it actually pays to intentionally switch to playing on old graphics when the new ones get too dark to freaking see things easily. Great bonus.
The unlimited saving like on PC is actually the best part of all this. I'm so glad they included that. I've always wanted to replay TRI but 1. our old 90s' Macintosh is dead and no one sells the parts that would fix it anymore, 2. I have never PC gamed in my life and I don't intend to start now, and 3. I just didn't ever want to buy the PS version bc the idea of limited saves is just.... urgh. I'm not super big on NEEDING an easy mode, I do like a bit of a challenge. I even used to enjoy working my way through DMC3 (non-SE North American, lol) on Dante Must Die mode. But over the years I've definitely gotten used to autosaves and all that, so not being able to save whenever I like I think would raise most of TR to Hard Mode for me, even as an adult. I just don't want to be replaying huge parts of levels and grinding things out like that. And I definitely recognize that I basically stopped playing on higher difficulty settings once I completely finished my schooling and no longer had entire summers to devote to bashing my head against them. I think that when playing classic TR in the 2020s, as an adult, unlimited saves basically make the whole game function more like Normal Mode. I like that there's an achievement for people who play with limited saves (less than 86 total) to create a bit of a challenge for those who want it, but I just hit 101 saves at the start of The Cistern in Greece, and I'm so much the happier for it.
Between being able to save whenever I want, my own detailed memories of the game's puzzles, and uh... being an actual adult now with decades of gaming under my belt, I'm going through the first game at a very smooth pace. I expect to hit some speed bumps soon as I don't remember the last half of the game nearly as much as the first half, but that's very welcome. It seems almost a shame that I have all of Peru permanently seared into my brain rather than actually have to solve anything there. Mom seemed torn between impressed and disappointed at how fast I played all that stuff in the beginning. The Cistern is already much more of a mystery, and I can't wait to see if I can figure it out next weekend, whoo! But what I really hope is that my parents remain interested long enough to also play TRII and TRIII together since they had never seen that.
What's really crazy about this experience is being forced to recall how much more button discipline was required in older games. I've heard people who play older Assassin's Creed games for the first time complain that Ezio is hard to control. He does chaotic things, he doesn't listen, etc. In reality, ACII simply requires more conscious buttoning, and once players learn that, they learn that Ezio is actually VERY responsive and does exactly what the player asks, even if the player isn't conscious of asking him to do something stupid. Newer games as I understand, tend to put movements on rails and magnetize the player to certain actions, leaving less control in the hands of the player for an overall smoother and more "aesthetic" action sequence. I've never felt that discomfort myself, only read about it. But adapting to TR classic again? This I felt. Lara's really been forcing me to take my time setting up my jumps properly. I ran right off so many platforms in Peru as I tried to acclimate to her not jumping immediately when the button is pressed, oh god. She jumps when she is READY to jump, two steps AFTER pressing jump. Amazing. It seems so unintuitive now, but it's been blowing my mind all weekend that this WAS what the developers thought would be most obvious way of controlling a 3D character in one of the most groundbreaking works in all of game history. The running jump OF COURSE, to them, doesn't start at the beginning of the jump, but at the beginning of the RUN. Ugh. Galaxy brain. Bc I can't help but think... you know... they're RIGHT. Like, technically. Even if I like that Ezio jumps exactly when I tell him to.
I read a lot of the comments from new players about how the Remaster "parkour" is clunky and I read the admonitions from older fans that new players aren't playing the Croft Manor tutorial and yeah, I can't help but think that culturally, we all have Assassin's Creed brain disease now. Because that series HAS been as influential as the original TR was. I guess where we're at is that people look at platforming now and call it "parkour" even when it ABSOLUTELY IS NOT. Parkour implies uninterrupted flow, while the TRI tutorial explicitly says that she DOESN'T run all the time, and REPEATEDLY instructs the player to walk before a jump. And that's something that's just so... interesting. It's like video game archaeology, seeing a game from "pre-parkour" aesthetics lay out what was essentially its design philosophy in its tutorial. Yes, the game will challenge you more and more as it progresses to NOT set up your jumps quite so carefully because there's a timer or traps or whatnot, but that flow is something you learn for yourself and earn as you progress, not something you can expect to do at the outset, and certainly not something the developers simply enable you to do. They didn't see uninterrupted flow of running/jumping as a feature this game provides, included in the selling price, but as a skill to be developed. Their design philosophy pretty much went extinct with "press R1+Forward to parkour." And that's wild. That's archaeology. That's the real Tomb Raiding all along.
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Date: 2024-03-11 20:17 (UTC)Great that you seem to be having such a good time :D
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Date: 2024-03-13 22:31 (UTC)