Reaching the end of a trilogy is always exciting to me. Ideally, it's the conclusion of all the previous lessons learned and the moment everything gets tied together into one satisfying bundle. The PS1 is probably the console I think of the most when it comes to looking back at trilogies by single developers, simply because it had so many different ones during its life-span. Crash, Spyro, Resident Evil and even to some extent Final Fantasy. I think there is something special about seeing a game series in different stages of refinement, clearly being able to observe how a developer's ideas evolve over time. And yes, of course Tomb Raider went through that aswell. With the continued smash hit of TR2, Lara Croft was now without question video game royalty and Core Design was yet again given no breaks in pumping out another sequel for publisher Eidos Interactive. Setting aside the undoubtedly horrid working conditions at Core Design during the development process, I find it once again incredible how TR3 released only a year after its predecessor. And after my new-found love for this franchise was only reinforced by how much I enjoyed TR2, I was excited to jump into Lara's third adventure.

Sadly, as you can already guess from the rating, this turned out to be a massive disappointment. As the hours passed and the downward spiral of bad level design began, I became more and more miserable having to put up with everything Tomb Raider 3 was throwing at me. I was worn down and finally broken when I reached the end. I don't want this to be a rant about how much I hate this game. I still do, but there are so many fantastic qualities here that I can not even stoop so low as to call this a lazy sequel. Core Design really cared. It's just that all the visible care and love gets utterly crushed under the weight of unfair difficulty and a lack of polish, most likely due to razor tight deadlines along with an overworked staff. So let me go through the positives first before I start falling down the rabbit hole that has become my absolute hatred for this game.

Tomb Raider 3 has the best locations in the series so far. There is an incredible leap in art design at display here. Be it the opening trek through the jungles of India, the massive canyons in Nevada or looking out over the rooftops of Nighttime London. Levels feel lived in, in a way Tomb Raider 2 was still struggling with. The updated engine makes everything look so much less blocky, which the designers take full advantage off. I love the lighting, the colors and the great texture work. The atmosphere is so good, and I wish more games would take what Core Design accomplished here as an example. Really, in terms of atmosphere, TR3 doesn't miss even once. I love just standing in these maps and soaking it all in, ready to be pulled along into more adventures. It helps of course that the soundtrack is amazing aswell. There is a tone of ambiance to each location, of course classic series leitmotifs return and new tracks have been added that round everything out. It doesn't matter if it's discovering ancient ruins or if you find yourself face to face with horrifying creatures. It always fits, and I'm in love with the overall sound of TR3.

When it comes to the story, we find our favorite adventurer once again on the trail of a mysterious artifact. While on a treasure hunt deep in the jungles of India, she encounters a scientist named Dr Willard. He is looking for the missing pieces of a meteor that crashed down on earth millions of years ago, is responsible for having whipped out the Dinosaurs and starting the chain reaction of modern evolution. Supposedly these pieces also contain mysterious powers, once even being worshiped by Polynesian trips for their god like properties. And that's all we need to trot across the Globe. It's a dumb story even for the schlocky standards of classic Tomb Raider, but I still very much enjoyed it. The increased focus on cutscenes and Lara having more fun interactions with different characters helps the story flow much better than it did previously. This finally feels like a continues narrative and not just a semi connected sequence of video game stages. There is of course the obvious issue in how Lara has now been fully reduced to nothing more then what can only be described as a full on sociopath. More than ever before, she is an absolute bitch that cares about no one but herself and is willing to kill anybody that just so much as glances at her wrong. I'm still somewhat fine with her because the point was always to have an uncompromising action heroine, but previous games at least gave her some shred of humanity. The absolute girl boss attitude I fell in love is still present, but there is certainly a discussion to be had about crossing the line from girl boss to unlikeable cunt. This crosses that line way to often. TR2 is also guilty of this to a lesser extent, but toed the line in keeping her likeable much better in my opinion.

When it comes to combat, I'm happy to say that Core massively overhauled their approach to how you fight enemies. The fundamental controls are the same, but enemie encounters are spread out way smarter. Gone are the days of spawning goons right on top of the player.  There are often spots you can jump to that give Lara a clear advantage, and even late game foes can be taken down with just a bit of effort and only the standard handguns. And that's basically all I wanted to see, and I'm glad they at least took the time to improve an aspect of the series that desperately needed a revision. Croft Manor now has been expanded with a shooting range as well. This version of Croft Manor is for sure the best one. Many secrets to find and all the tutorials you could ever need. Lara's home is practically its own giant level now. Once again I fully recommend you play around in the tutorial not only because it's a lot of fun but because it will also helps in familiarizing you with the expanded move set. Lara can now crawl, grab on to certain ceilings in order to use them as monkey bars, and is able to use a short dash that can be ended on a quick roll forward. These added options are mostly used to great effect, but I will admit that the dash stays fairly underutilized. There are only very few spots where it's actually needed, and even then I find those challenges more annoying than anything else.

And that's about all the positives I can think of. For all the love I can express for TR3, it just wouldn't be honest if I omitted all my frustrations and all the reasons why I ultimately came away with the conclusion that this is simply a very bad video game.

Starting off with the basic structure: You're now allowed to pick between locations in between the opening chapter and the finale. What sounds cool on paper, turns out to be a nightmare in reality. The three places you can pick from: Nevada, the South Pacific Islands and London vary so wildly in complexity and challenge that you're most likely going to fuck yourself over if you happen to choose wrong. Pro-tip: Always start with Nevada. I didn't, and it screwed me over hard by the final stretch. Nevada contains the easiest and most enjoyable set of levels, and most importantly: There is a similar bit to TR1 and 2 where all your items will be taken away from you, as Lara is once again captured by armed guards. Unlike previous games there is a high chance you will not get most of your inventory back, meaning that if you happen to pick Nevada last, you might lose hours of collected guns, ammo and med packs. At that point, you are just stuck desperately searching for scraps during the final 4 segments of Antarctica. It's a horrible design decision that I despise with a passion, and they should have either ditched the level select entirely or put actual effort in balancing each locations difficulty. And while the South Pacific Islands are a mostly tolerable set of levels, London is where the game fully backflips into of pit of rusty spicks.

London is a confusing labyrinth of dark hallways that loop around in the most unintuitive ways. I got lost so many times just backtracking, not knowing what my goal even was, and finding crucial progression items in spots that made me scream in agony. Of course, one of the keys needed to progress in on top of a mining drill you just escaped from in order to not get crushed to death. It's not like every sane human being would see the section now occupied by the giant death drill as blocked off for good. Add to that weird angled jumps that shouldn't work, but sometimes just do, and hard to make out wall texture that are supposse to signal climbable surfaces. Trust me, you will run past those surfaces for a couple of hours before looking up a guide and then promptly feeling the primal urge to buy a gun along with a time machine in order to pay Core Designs studio a friendly visit back in the late 90s. All that misery and I haven't even mentioned the vehicle sections yet. Oh, the fucking vehicles. TR2 had the exact same issue, but the meaningful difference is again that this was limited to only 2 sections. We had a boat, that controlled fine, and a snowmobile that controlled like shit. TR3 on the other hand has at least one vehicle for each location. There is an ATV, a kayak, a weird underwater robot, a Donkey Kong style minecart ride and another boat. I don't know which one is the worst for me, but it has to be a tie between the kayak and the minecart. Paddling the kayak through the rapids of the south pacific rain forest is pure luck, as you can't really control it and are at the mercy of the game's geometry in order for Lara to not straight up smash into a pile of rocks and drown. The minecart on the other hand will make you randomly fly off the tracks if you happen to pull the break at the wrong time, that is if you even know where to fucking go in the nightmare labyrinth known as the RX Tech Mines. Either way, the conclusion is always: try to get somewhere, die, reload, repeat that step about 50 times per stage until you get that one lucky try that lets you progress.

I hate Tomb Raider 3. I can't recommend it to anyone ever. The final boss was a giant spider mutant that makes you run around in a circle for 40 minutes so you can pick up some shinny rocks. Watch the game end with Lara shooting a totally innocent Helicopter pilot in the face and a shot of her ass while the credits play. Fuck this game, I need to game something good next.

They will never make a better rhythm game than Gitaroo Man

INFINITY==================
Not in a hundred-million years!
===============IMPOSSIBLE

When I've been away from Gitaroo Man, I always have a tentative worry. Does it still hold its power? Have I lost it? By the end of Flyin' To Your Heart, I'm back in. I am the True Gitaroo Man. "We've forgotten this sound for so long!"

Gitaroo Man seems self-aware in a way that its contemporaries don't. I don't just mean in its fun, jokey tone. It knows how to be an hour-long game. Each level presents a new storybeat, and a distinctive musical genre in this shonen anime fairytale musical, introducing enough to keep each idea fun and peppy without ever detailing anything too deeply. It's bright, exciting and fantastical, and that brief running time is the key to so much of that.

The thing that draws you in is how good the music is. It's proper game music. So often, I'll play a music game, and feel let down over how little thought was put into the music. They're often either not very musical, or negligent of how they'll feel to play. Gitaroo Man's music is brilliantly structured for gameplay, with distinct phrases for the moments they're complementing, and the whole thing's so inherently videogamey. Levels are split up into CHARGE, ATTACK, DEFEND and ENDING phases, with the music working so well to convey the drama of each section. Charge sequences have you building your life bar, calmly gaining strength through long, sustained notes. Defend stages have you dodging vicious staccato attacks, that come in the form of rapid button prompts that zoom in from each side of the screen. Attack and Ending phases are the catharsis, with you taking revenge, sustaining long notes to do maximum damage, but if you miss any entirely, that's a knock against you. You've got big Street Fighter life bars at the top of the screen. I don't think there's any piece of imagery you could conjure that could so effectively illustrate the nature of a battle to videogame players. The gameplay mainly takes the form of following "trace lines", which are big bendy lines that converge onto the centre of the screen. You have to react to each one, right on the beat, and follow their bends with the direction of the analogue stick. Bending guitar notes swoop and curve around the screen, in synchronisation with the music, and when you're playing well, you feel like you're nailing a solo, trying your best to resist making Steve Vai faces. It's a similar system to Keiichi Yano's later Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents games, but it feels so much more aggressive with all of the prompts zooming into the middle of the screen. It's combat, it's war!

There's a crucial hook to the game, and something that's deeply undervalued in it. Gitaroo Man adapts to how well you play. It has about a million alternate music bars up its sleeve, determining which would be the best to throw at a player of your skill level. In most levels, you'll very rarely hear the same song twice. I've been returning to Gitaroo Man over and over again for around 20 years, and I still don't think I've heard every bit of Bee Jam Blues hidden on the disc. It's exciting every time, and really encourages multiple playthroughs. This stuff rarely gets talked about, but it's a real feat of both game design and musical composition. You never feel like a phrase is being pulled out from a list of suitable candidates and loaded in. It's all seamless, and given its response to your skill level, it feels both rewarding and emotional. It's the feeling of getting lost in a solo. I have little doubt that the lukewarm response to Project Rap Rabbit's failed Kickstarter pitch was on the fault of the public's ignorance towards this aspect of Gitaroo Man.

It's clear that the game never would have been made without the precedent set by PaRappa the Rapper, and back when PS2 games were all at the same RRP, I can see why so few would have been willing to take a chance on something they'd already dismissed as a flash-in-the-pan novelty, but Gitaroo Man is so much more thoughtfully designed and satisfying to play. 326's artwork doesn't have the broad appeal of Rodney Greenblat's funny animal people. Ignoring the wild rendering techniques of PaRappa and just focusing on what the artists drew, Gitaroo Man's designs are weirder, and pulls more from eccentric 70s robot toys and gag manga. Everything's covered in colourful dials and buttons, and all the faces are bizarre. The visual style is both geekier and cooler than PaRappa, and I've really grown affection for it over the years, but who doesn't love Puma?

The game is so aware of its length. It knows how to use ten levels to tell a Hero's Journey. It never gets too full of itself, or takes itself too seriously, but that doesn't prevent it from doing something beautiful. The story is broad, silly and simplistic, but that's great for a short, E for Everyone game that you'll come back to again and again. The adventure takes the form of one of those Wizard of Oz-style dream scenarios, only a little more ambiguous, where we're returned to the status quo at the end, but one where the hero has learned their lesson. For me, the real ambiguity is in whether or not we're supposed to think U-1 punched Kazuya in the face.

The downsides? Uh... the compression in the FMV cutscenes is a little much. The game makes a great argument for concave analogue sticks, as you might find your thumb sliding a lot on an official Dualshock 2. I don't like that you have to navigate to the Options menu each time you want to load a save... Look - not only is this a 2001 PS2 game, it's a fucking KOEI game. It's amazing that the game came out nearly as slick as it did, drowning out developer talk from the Kessen offices next door.

Gitaroo Man was lightning in a bottle. I don't think we'll ever get a better collaboration of game designers, concept artists and musicians again, and if we do, it won't be with this budget or freedom. I mean, unless the Splatoon team decided it was time to do a narrative-focused Squid Sisters rhythm action spin-off. I don't know. Maybe Nintendo don't have the guts to become the hero.

Completed Mar 10th 2024

I've never played this sequel, but bought it on sale years ago, so the cheap upgrade offer felt like a good excuse to rectify that.

For context, I liked Part 1, but didn't love it. I really rate the world design aesthetic and appreciate the production values, but I didn't care for the story as much as I feel the game wanted me to. It was more daring as AAA games go, and well handled, but nothing life changing for me. The bigger issue was I found the actual gameplay amongst the cut scenes, on rails escapes and slow walking sections a bit sluggish. It just never quite clicked in a way the combat did in Tomb Raider / Horizon, nor did I feel the stealth was as solid as Metal Gear / Deus Ex / Hitman.

I tonally struggled a bit with Part 1 too. It's pretty bleak and unrelenting, but also very silly. It goes to such great lengths to be realistic in it's visuals and writing, but your character seems to be fine after taking an axe to the head and safe combinations are left written on walls 5 feet away. So I found that a bit jarring.

My friend recommended I up the difficulty here to Hard to make scavenging items more vital and combat encounters more tactical, and it was a great shout. If anything I wish I'd played it on an even harder setting, as by the end I was pretty unstoppable and realised I ended the game having saved up, but never used, a Molotov / nail bomb / smoke bomb. That shift in tension transformed my enjoyment of this series; and whilst I do feel it's thematically still more of a far fetched game than it is a deep essay on humanity, I loved Part 2 so much more than Part 1. I'm tempted to buy and replay the Remaster of the original one day.

Abby and Ellie's increased movement and move sets make things so much more fluid, and I felt like I was chaining together my abilities so smoothly. I went from stealth, to picking off a few people, to setting traps and then unleashing bullet hell on people often within one encounter. I stealthed through whole camps, without being spotted once. I avoided whole sections of the game. I set infected on enemies without doing anything. I walked into an infected room with a flamethrower and stood my ground like Elena Ripley. Picked off whole patrols without them ever knowing I was there. The variety and control I had felt thrilling. In particular Days 2 and 3 for both characters were amongst some of the best I've experienced in a while.

I also liked that this game felt a bit more human on human, than a zombie fest. I am not the bravest gamer and shy away from jump scares and horror titles, so that probably also added to my increased enjoyment of Part 2 Vs 1.

I should also say, whilst I'm not someone who always gets swayed by visuals, this game is pretty remarkable for a game half a decade old. Many times I found myself taking photos or marvelling at how gorgeous it was. I loved the change in light and tone in the final section too. And played with headphones on, the sound was really quite spectacular. The sound design of things like the workbench upgrade table and the infected is immense.

I won't go into anything storywise for spoilers, but I think it builds on Part 1 smartly and goes interesting places. The story (and probably the game itself) could have done with some editing and landing it's points a bit faster in places, but I'm intrigued to see where a further chapter goes narratively.

I'm excited to play the cut content now with the commentary on and replay a few chapters I particularly loved in a different way. I definitely favoured stealth over firefights, so an alternate play on those levels would be fun.

All in all, TLOU2 just feels a far better game to me than 1. And I can see why the people who love it, really love it. Whilst the story of the first probably stays with you longer, I know which one I'd rather play.

And if... or rather when... Part 3 lands, I'll be there day one.

Man, it's something else to vanquish a white whale. Tomb Raider was one of the first 3D games I ever played, and I've always had a real respect for it, but christ was it fussy. On PS1, where you're dealing with save crystals, load times, fairly limited draw distance and 1MB memory card read/write speeds, it takes a special kind of patience to make it past St Francis' Folly, and once the marvel of playing a game in 3D started to wear off, fewer and fewer people were willing to pass the threshold.

This kind of thing is what the Nintendo Switch has been all about, for me. How miraculously it can reframe impenetrable, pisstaking old games and make them fun again. I'm so glad that someone decided they ought to put the old Tomb Raiders on this thing.

For all the frustration and tedium that the original game has come to represent, it's difficult to see the Official UK PlayStation Magazine 10/10 that lies beyond all of that. Not only is the game a real technical achievement, there's a great sense of character to Tomb Raider 1 that drifted away as the wider media got overexcited about big boobs. An air of elegance to the consistent control system, the ambient, synthesised choral soundtrack and these huge, labyrinthian caverns hiding elaborate ancient relics. That isn't everything, though. There's a balance between this side of the game, and the game's absurd Hot Wheels playset from Hell stupidity. Aqueducts swarming with crocodiles, and elaborate ancient traps protected by starving lions and furious gorillas. Despite how deeply the series' lore has been mined, I didn't see any credit for the inexplicable cowboy boss beyond "the cowboy". The game's filled with big, mad, daft stuff, and I love it.

Tomb Raider was a massively influential game. It's easily forgotten, given how much the industry propped up Mario 64 as "The 3D Game" a year later, but I don't think you get an Ocarina of Time without Core Design's influence. When developers were still figuring out what verticality could offer a game, here's Lara Croft backflipping into elevated passageways and swandiving from slides. Compare that to mid-nineties 3D adventures like Descent or Jumping Flash, and you really have to marvel at how confidently Core were able to take on this design challenge. It's all owed to how strict its controls are, borrowing from cinematic platformers like Another World and Flashback. When jumping lands you in the same spot each time, you know the most interesting spots to place each successive platform. Level layouts are consistently clever and imaginative, but it never forgets that human beings are playing the game. There's a balance between strict, Sokoban-style logic puzzles, and wild spectacle. Sometimes they just let you chill out in a big room to look at a neat sphinx.

There's a solid sense of progression through each of the game's levels, and it gets freakin' bananas by the end. Starting out running through cold, undecorated caverns, and ending up in a giant gold pyramid, with fleshy, pulsing organic walls. Tomb Raider speculates that beyond the Aztec blowpipe traps and rusted old switches, there are 20th century living dinosaurs, roaming under our feet, cordoned off in a special jungle room, behind an elaborate clockwork water puzzle. They've been there all along, but no explorer in human history was clever enough to get past Level 2 until Lara came along. I love this stuff.

The Quality of Life stuff in this 2024 release is fairly conservative, but beautifully exploitable. You can save anywhere now, and don't have to worry about memory card management to do so, but I'd argue the more meaningfully transformative addition is the Photo Mode. Click in both analogue sticks, and you'll have full control over the floating camera. Not only can you take rockin' shots of the game's low-poly crocs, you can use it to scout out passageways and dangerous trap sequences whenever you like. Not having a map screen is kind of crucial to the Tomb Raider experience, but being able to quickly check underwater to see if you missed a switch or item, instead of clambering down from the tricky precipice you're standing on, is such a relief. Use it judiciously, and it doesn't make the game feel any less perilous or thrilling, but it takes out so much of the busywork.

I love Tomb Raider. In no way would I ever recommend it to anyone who doesn't already have a strong taste for this era of game design, though. Everything takes so fucking long. If you have to push a block multiple times, it's going to be a long night, my friend. For as strong a design principle as the restrictive grid-based structure is, it also turns a lot of the experience into an overwrought sequence of wobbling into the correct position. Every mandatory switch you need to pull needs to be successfully wobbled towards before you can activate them, and in puzzles with multiple switches, this can be agonisingly tedious. There are the optional "modern controls", but I'd suggest using them would be akin to driving a car with your face. Don't look at Tomb Raider as if it's a big blockbuster action game for fans of thrills. You have to be a very boring old prick to stick with this shit.

I'm really glad I did, though. Tomb Raider is a very different idea of how to design a 3D game, and it makes a great argument for doing it this way. Sure, these principles lead to the all-time studio crushing embarrassment that was Angel of Darkness, but they also gave us everything Fumito Ueda's ever made. There's such a rich sense of satisfaction to successfully navigating the game in a way that Crystal Dynamics have never managed to replicate. In a world filled with Yellow Paint and Unlock Everything DLC packs, you need a little Tomb Raider 1 to remind you what a game can be. We were heroes, once.