While I think this and Silent Hill 2 are more or less equals, I have to give the edge to 3.

Compared to its predecessor, the horror here takes on a less subdue aesthetic. Silent Hill 2 feels as though you are in the rotting heart of a grief stricken man. This game instead feels like a journey through a church of the profane. The monsters are more visceral, far more disturbing imagery and viscera can be found throughout, overall it appeals more to my tastes in this respect.

But what I think really gives it an advantage over the previous entries in the series is its unique story. In such a male dominated medium as video games, it is surprising and encouraging to see a game place such emphasis on the female perspective. Feminine horror is not unique to this game, but it is one of the best, most concise implementations of the sub genres themes to be found.

a word of advice: if you love psychological horror, especially silent hill, YOU NEED TO READ CRIME & PUNISHMENT. i understand how a 600 page book released 150 years ago in a format that doesn't exist anymore can seem off-putting or intimidating; i promise you it hasn't aged a day. crime & punishment can suffocate you with tension and anxiety comparable to any horror movie or game using words alone. the characters are oceans of beauty and flaws that will stick with you forever. without dostoevsky, there would be no shining, there would be no subahibi, and there would be no silent hill. read it and thank me later.

The first Crysis is pretty much a tech show-off and... that's about it.
Can't say i've ever been a fan of the first Crysis, but yeah, I must admit that it was impressive for the year 2007, it looked really good and not many PCs could run it. It had cool mechanics like the invisibile cloak or the fact that the environment was destroyable, a tropical setting just like the first Far Cry but this time in North Korea with robot aliens. The game sounds great on paper but in reality it doesn't excel in anything.
The remaster isn't that great either.

Everyone that follows or knows me might know that I'm a huge Dinosaur nerd and I'm also a huge fan of the Resident Evil franchise. What do you get when you combine these two things, correct Dino Crisis. Because of that I always wanted to play Dino Crisis for years but for some reason my Dino Crisis 1(PC) Version doesn't let me save my progress. Then I tried to play Dino Crisis 2 and luckily I can save my progress in this game. So here we are and the first thing that I noticed quickly is that Dino Crisis 2 isn't a survival horror game in the style of the Resident Evil like the first Dino Crisis was. It's more of a arcade like game and the majority of the game comes down to mowing down hoards of dinosaurs this may sound repetitive but the game manages to stay interesting by frequently giving you new weapons to fight all kinds of prehistoric reptiles like Raptors, Oviraptors which are your main enemies but you will also encounter Allosaurus, Triceratops and even Marine Reptiles like Plesiosaurus or Mosasaurs. I was surprised that Dino Crisis 2 even included lesser known prehistoric animals like Inostrancevia. Yes, I said "prehistoric animals" on purpose because Inostrancevia, Mosasaurus, Plesiosaurus and Pteranodon aren't Dinosaurs but this was just the Dinosaur-Nerd in me getting the upper hand. Visually the game is still beautiful if you consider when it was released and same can be said about the surprisingly good looking cutscenes.
The controls are arguably the best and most responsive tank controls which is necessary for the arcade like gameplay. Dino Crisis 2 also throws in a few rail-shooting segments which were extremely fun and a a nice change of pace. All in all I really enjoyed this game, it's not hard to beat because of it's focus on action and the arcade like gameplay that rewards you for high combos. I would have like a bigger focus on survival horror but thanks to the genre shift Dino Crisis 2 manages to create it's own identity. Yes the story is nothing special, still the big variety of enemies, weapons and set pieces made the gameplay very entertaining. But the water segment can go fuck itself. Now Capcom, please give us a remake of Dino Crisis 1.

Games I finished in 2024 Ranked

Holy crap this was by far a massive improvement over the previous installments and easily one of the best action games I've ever played. The sheer amount of options the game lets you utilize in terms of guns and melee weapons is crazy. The style system was also a really cool way to get a lot of variety in moveset dynamics, I enabled a style switching mod which opened up so many fun possibilities to really get the most out of this combat.

Story wise they really found their mark here, this younger Dante is a lot more interesting and his carefree spirit is a joy to watch. Some of the cutscenes are here are easily some of the most entertaining I've ever seen in a video game.

Sadly there are a few things that hold this game back from being a masterpiece like some of the non-linear levels being an absolute chore to play and the inconsistent camera can really lead to some unfair hits especially when the targeting system really struggles around walls and obscures your view.

In many ways, Tomb Raider 2 represents a quantum leap forward for the series, and it's the title that cemented Lara Croft as an icon of pop culture. The first one build a foundation of glob trotting adventures, the sequel erected a monument. A quickly glued together monument as I soon found out. A monument that manages to amaze you but dont look too close or it will clearly show its many cracks due to a blazingly fast dev cycle. With design decisions that lead me to absolute controller snapping frustration at times. I was still determind to see it through to the end, be it do to my new found love for the first game or my general couristy for retro games. And as much as TR2 turned out to be a very cruel mistress, I wanted to see for myself why so many fans see this as the peak of the series.

Tomb Raider 2 starring Lara Croft has you follow the British adventurer to the Great Wall of China, where she hopes to uncover a mystical Chinese dagger. Upon finishing the first level, we are treated with a similar cutscene to the end of the first game's stage. Lara is ambushed by a henchman, and we get a brief exchange explaining what the goal of the rest of the game is going to be. Turns out theirs a Venetian cult after the Dagger as well, led by a man named MARCO BARTOLI! So the race is on to find the artifact before they do. The story is more fleshed out than before, but not by much in my opinion. There is more of a through line for the levels, but by the end Core Design have made it clear that this is only a vehicle to drive the exploration. You are here for the badass Girl on the cover and her no fucks given attitude. You bought the game to explore spectacular locations and shoot bad guys, and that's what your getting.

And spectacular locations they are indeed. Tomb Raider 2 tops the first game in big ways. From the Great Wall of China in the opening to giant underwater ship wrecks, the leap in quality is honestly incredible. The latter being my absolute favorite level in the game. Many people may pick Venice or the Temple of Xia as their number one but for me, it's the Maria Doria. Swim to the bottom of the ocean and enter an upside down wreck of a cruise liner ? Get out of here, that's too good. It represents the absolute gold standard Core Design can achieve with excellent level design. They really have managed to strike a great balance of linear levels and sprawling key hunts the player can just get lost in. Other highlights include the entire set of Venice stages, the Barkhang Monastery and the mad gauntlet when returning to the Temple of Xia. The atmosphere once again kills across all the levels. The finale in the Temple of Xia is especially strong, and it also represents the perfect segway to talk about the best and worst aspects of the gameplay.

There has been an overall increase in difficulty, and it expects much more from the player in terms of knowing Lara's improved move set. Croft Manor has therefore been greatly expanded. There are better opportunitys to test your skills in high stress situations with additions like the new assault course, and the manors many new secrets. I highly recommend you not skip this tutorial stage, not only because it will help teach you the controls, but also because it's a tone of fun. Don't forget to lock the butler in the freezer. Going into the actual levels though, as much as I applaud the new movement options, midair roll and all, the level design often seems to utterly hate you. There are many, many instances of traps you can't possibly see coming unless you died to them at least once. A specific slide in Offshore Rig comes to mind. Where Lara will slide straight into a spike trap unless the player knows to slide down the exact right way the designers intended and grab the ledge. Your ability to tolerate the many similar situations in almost every level is what will make or break the game for a lot of people in my opinion. I can also extend that olive branch of shit to the less than stellar vehicle segments. The boat in Venice was a neat idea, but I have to give a big shout-out to the fkn snowmobile in Tibetan Foothills. A seemingly weightless snowmobile made out of paper and fueled with dynamite that loves to send you speeding off cliffs when you just want Lara to go in a straight line. Hope you saved a lot. Tibetan Foothills is by far the worst stage in the game, and it even manages to be the shining lowpoint for another bad aspect of TR2: The combat. Combat needed serious improvements, Combat has in fact seen no improvements. Pretty much all it comes down to is that they increased to amount of enemies present in each stage aswell as how much ammo they tank. You do have more weapons now, like the M16 and Grenade Launcher, but that doesn't help when litteral armies of angry Italian men, various wildlife and ancient Chinese warriors have it out for you. You will see many familiar scenes of Lara being pushed into corners, riddled with bullets and getting speared to death followed by reloading. Hope you saved a lot.

Even all that controller snapping frustration, I still came away loving the game more than the original by the time I reached the surprisingly cheeky ending. Maybe I contracted a sever case of stockholm syndrome but I think it once again speaks volumes about Core Designs masterful ability to make absolutely engrossing levels, a compelling main character and a journey that clearly showed me why Lara's fan base has stayed so loyal to her. Tomb Raider 2 kept me deeply hooked like no other game and while I'm still going to take a break from the series for a bit, I can not wait to return and see what Tomb Raider 3 has in store for me.

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.

>Random-ass hobo track driver gets into town.
>Takes any random object in his vicinity.
>Beats up Satan.
>Leaves.

Truly, we have entered the era of American made Silent Hill games.