Getting into 'barren' early 3D games

[FerretGamer]

I always felt that Tomb Raider wasn't really that great even at the time it came out, which is probably why it's horrible today.

[Violent By Design]

I call the 5th gen the "awkward" stage of gaming. Never cared for titles like Tomb Raider, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, etc... They're slow and clunky and a chore to play. Give me an RPG with pre-rendered backgrounds any day.

Given that RPG's essentially rely on doing chores to progress, I find this post rather ironic.

[Octopod]

I actually miss tank controls. I thought it worked well.

[KDub]

I didn't really like the 32 bit age of console gaming then and I still don't like it much now; as many have said everything just seems so awkward. The only games I like from then are ones that essentially just stepped everything up from the 16 bit era such as sharper and more detailed 2D platformers.

[Nintendork666]

Body Harvest was always more bad-ass than Tomb Raider.

You're right though, I can't imagine either holding up very well in 2013. If you're not having fun, then there's little point in forcing yourself to venture forward; life's too short for that crap.

[jfe2]

That empty, barren feeling used to give me such an intense sense of dread as a child that I couldn't really deal with playing Tomb Raider. Anyone remember Lara Croft's creepy ass butler following her relentlessly through her mansion in the beginning of the first game? Nightmarish.

[Menegrothx]

Anyone remember Lara Croft's creepy ass butler following her relentlessly through her mansion in the beginning of the first game? Nightmarish.

[Hatta]

Try it on PC. Early 3d games with a 3dfx card have aged a lot better than software rendered 3d, or first gen 3d chips in consoles.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Try it on PC. Early 3d games with a 3dfx card have aged a lot better than software rendered 3d, or first gen 3d chips in consoles.

Yeah, Glide games all have a nice smoothed look to them. They lack detail sure, but, they're super easy on the eyes still, at least as a general rule.

[Zing]

Tomb Raider was likely intended to make you feel isolated with a barren environment. The first level in particular is empty feeling. As you get farther into the game, the ruins become more elaborate.

I recently played through this for the first time, and greatly enjoyed it. I bought the sequels to play immediately after finishing the first. However, the second game didn't have the same feel. Instead of exploring ruins, I found myself running through a present-day town having gunfights with humans, and searching for switches in places no human would ever place such things. It shattered the illusion. I may give it another try someday, but maybe I prefer to keep the memory exclusive to the first game, which was amazing.