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1. Tomb Raider II Remastered - PC
Tomb Raider II extends from Tomb Raider, giving Lara a couple new tools for making it through the tricks and traps. It also goes for a much heavier combat focus, and in general pulls back on the story. As a result, I think it's mostly a sidegrade of a game.
The game opens with Lara exploring the Great Wall of China looking for a rumored temple; she eventually finds the locked door and is ambushed by a minion of Marco Bartoli, some Italian gangster who wants the dagger that's supposed to be in the temple. Lara sets off to see what Marco knows and to try and get to the dagger first.
This focus on the villain shifts the general tone of the game. You start by infiltrating his operations in Venice, with the bulk of enemies being humans. Then you get captured at his oil rig that is right above a sunken ship that has a key necessary to eventually get the key to the temple, so you deal with more human enemies. It's only when you do the deep sea dive to the sunken ship that you shift to more focus on the puzzles and wildlife, though there are still a decent number of human enemies. Next you head to Tibet, which again has a decent balance between the two enemy types, and finally you return to the Great Wall and are back to human enemies (plus magic statues). Most of the human enemies are also ranged enemies, which means you're just going to be eating a ton of damage, so you better be snagging those medkits. The one positive is the game tosses a ton of ammo at you, encouraging you to use your big guns to save health. The first game made it too easy to indulge in hoarding habits.
The shift to the human focus also affects the level design. Venice's level design is quite weak because they try to make it seem like real structures humans would live in, which isn't great for puzzle platforming. The puzzles end up feeling very shoehorned in and they don't really flow like regular Tomb Raider levels do. Surprisingly, the oil rig was much better in this regard, though it suffers a bit from some unfortunate texture selection (switches really blend in with the regular wall textures). After this point the level design gets back to the high points of the first Tomb Raider; the sunken ship is very puzzle focused as you try to figure out how to get through this compromised structure, and Tibet and Great Wall are traditional "the ancients built this structure full of traps" tombs. There's a good progression of techniques for making it through, though the game still has a few too many instances of "oops, you didn't know that was coming, guess you die", but you come to accept that. When it comes to traversal, you now have the ability to do a quick 180 in midair, which is required for some of the jumps. Additionally, now you will encounter certain walls that are climbable, both up/down and left/right. This gives the designers some more freedom in the vertical elements, rather than being stuck to the very hard block heights. Additionally, unlike hanging from a ledge, when you're climbing on a wall you can jump off it.
Overall, I found I enjoyed the second half more than the first half. The second half really feels like a solid iteration of the first game. But the first half really discourages you with the combat focus, and even the second half has a bit more combat than I'd prefer to deal with, especially the kind that involves enemies spawning behind you when you hit triggers. Still, it's very worthwhile playing if you enjoyed the first.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
