OG Tomb Raider was always a PC game to me. I used the arrow keys on the keyboard to move around so I never noticed how awkward the controls were.
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Youâd be using the dpad on the PS1 version anyway, Iâm pretty sure. Wasnât it pre-dualshock? With directional instead of analog input, you learn itâs a game with a weird appeal in adapting your brain and body to a set of course animations, and the friction that inevitably creates for you. Really, my complaint with TR is just that the levels are fucking huge and Iâd prefer if the game was a bit smaller. But thatâs also cool in some respects.
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I suspected maybe my problem was I was trying to use the analog stick but I still donât know if Iâm super enthused for what the game is doing.
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Tomb Raider was a PS1 game for me (pre-analog), post-SM64 though and way post-PoP (which I was somewhat familiar with having given my copy of Rebel Assault to a friend in exchange for it (it was a little too difficult and âoldâ for me to fully get into at the time)) and it really is a kind of PoP in 3D from the grisly death animations to, most crucially, the character movement (and as someone who beat it twice in the late 90s and then hadnât touched it since, there was still some getting used to!)
Everything is measured out in blocks/units of movement, both the construction of the environments and Laraâs actions (which are executed with some intentional input delay) and locking into the interaction between the two is for me the great appeal (well, plus the vibes, the sparse melancholy soundtrack, the shimmery polygonal spaces barely held together at their seams, the Murder Apes and Hate Wolves that rush braindead and bloodthirsty from the black fog of things forgotten).
Itâs chess on a jungle gym (pretend I said checkers if that seems like hyperbole). If SM64 is pulling off a bank heist with nothing but a Swiss army knife, TR is like pulling off a bank heist with the worldâs rustiest Swiss army knife. Important games for me and (Jumping Flash! is quite different but) the early like tentpole 3D character action games, when they were really trying to grapple with the How of character movement, have a special clunk/weight/friction that ̶g̶r̶i̶n̶d̶s̶ grounds things ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶h̶a̶l̶t̶ and idkâŠit wasnât too long before that slightly unwieldy pose-the-action-figure quality got smoothed away and something imo was lost. Aside from the cameras (canât pretend they arenât a bit crap but if youâre the type thatâs grabbed by these games that aspect just becomes another âlimbâ to flex and finesse round the playground) I donât think these games control âbadlyâ rather they insist on an intended, even rigid approach and thatâs an acquired taste and really tasty imo but also totally understandable that it might have limited appeal in this day and age.
It ainât prefect of course. Itâs a little buggy, got stuck in geometry a few times. Maybe some levels get too big and twistyâŠthey do lean on the hub and spoke setup a but much (large open space with locks, the keys are found in the series of dense branching paths (but this does of course have its merits re: spatial familiarity and sense of direction (still there are some dense configurations of geometry (especially secrets) that feel very PC/British in their obscurantism in a way youâd never see in say a Nintendo game). Save points are sometimes placed in a way that gradually encouraged me to not use them immediately, like theyâre placed in an area where you should Do A Thing and saving after you Do A Thing feels better on the accomplishment scale but thatâs a little game of risk/reward if you die before you Do A Thing and save it and while it screwed me up in St. Francisâ Folly at first, maddeningly so, once I became more deliberate about their use, save points were very fair I thought.
I guess this might serve as my wrap up post about the game lol though Iâve only just got to the last location (Atlantis).
ANYWAY I recommend this making-of. Already loved this game but the archaic ingenuity of the team endeared it to me even more. Mentions that Saturn was the target platform because it was the least powerful between PC and PS1 which kinda hamstrung the other versions etc.
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i spent a while poking around a website called styly, a japanese vr hosting thing thatâs sort of like sketchlab mixed with dreams - thereâs no collision, you control a flying camera who clips and hovers around scenes containing 3d models, but thereâs also just enough functionality for stuff like animation / movement / music / making something happen when you touch a thing that they feel more loosey multimedia ish than sculpture objects. looking at the page, the company seems to be going after corporate conferencing audiences while nearly all of the work on the platform seems to come from either random art weirdos or bored kids goofing off, as is only right. so, check it out before they all get nuked i guess.
you can play in browser with a mouse and keyboard although some of the features are turned off⊠my pro tip is to always hit the little question mark button when the game starts to jack the camera speed up 5x
anyway here are my favourites so far:
Shiniki_Kennai-Territory of Deep Forest - this is laid out kind of like lilithzones last game, spheres within spheres as a way to space out multiple 3d dioramas, the dioramas themselves are mostly static art collages but theyâre really pretty and dense⊠worth a float
Nether World - this is one of the most structurally elaborate⊠you lie down in a coffin and then climb out again in a mysterious location. the game kept telling me to eat things which i presume means lifting them to your face in VR, but since i just had a mouse i ended up flinging them around. the audio is a prerecorded speech in japanese that i couldnât understand but that was nice texture.
Kusokora Land - i wish the âPassportâ functionality worked here to get the full effect but it was still very funny and mysterious. remember to go investigate the train.
Mallots de Bain - this starts out like a joke game where you just hang around a forest while giant anime women rotate around the horizon. but then the music stops, and the women stand still while the rest of the world starts rotating instead, to increasingly disorienting effect. probably the only game to make me wish i had a vr headset.
1x1verse - just an ultra crushed and beautiful photogrammetery world to explore
P.O.N.D. Virtual World - the most explicitly gamey in that you can click on little guys to increase a score, but itâs just a pretext to float around this big gorgeously plasticy 3d theme park location
Parasite - winner of the demoscene award for most demosceney. some good rotating primative action.
New Yoku View - this artist has a lot of stuff and they all involve really wonderfully blobby creature designs. the one i linked is the most elaborate / dense and weird, but i also liked âhatake no yubuneâ pictured below, the entirety of which is just a friendly little guy hanging out on an extremely crushed photo rockpool environment
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messed around with the in-game sprite editor in cladun x2. now i have gilgamesh from the tower of druaga running around hitting things with the jousting q-tips from american gladiators.
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omg sheâs soooo annoying i love herâŠ
anyways i beat what is obvious kind of the first chapter and following interstitial section and got to the second map⊠really enjoying this!!! itâs not nocturne and is obvs styled as a sequel to it (tho i think dds1 + 2 in particular have more claim than any other game in the metaseries to being âthe sequel to nocturneâ) ig it feels like it exists in the impression of nocturne and its Monumental Vibes⊠sort of the gift shop print version ig⊠but the music is absolutely Great
exp truncates soooo hard in this⊠itâs an interesting design decision that obvs basically removes grinding as a potential solution to hurdles (which is almost always overstated as an issue with jrpgs by genre dislikers anyways) and tells you to like, play smarter and not harder ig. between that and being able to naruto run around and also escape from most encounters this is probs a good entry for ppl who idk⊠dislike fighting slightly pointless battles?
anyways it is interesting how instead of like, dungeons you have Maps, like what seem to be these semi-self contained large fields of ue4 geometry.
we saw you from across the bar and loved ur vibesâŠ
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5 felt like the grindiest game in the series for me because iâm beyond fatigued with combing open worlds and if youâre >10 levels below a boss (which i frequently was) youâre not gonna be able to do significant enough damage even if your party composition and strategy is solid
then you get yoshitsune and strategy goes out of the window anyway
v cool vibes and tunes though, look forward to playing some tinkered-with Definitive Edition on pc one day
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iâm still weirdly fascinated by fortnite zero build?
iâm regularly placing top 5 (but never winning) in solo matches and while i have no idea if iâm actually playing it well iâm understanding why the BR format is so popular? everything is just janky enough that entertaining emergent carnage can happen at any moment. this was something i used to love about big team halo multiplayer that felt sanded out of halo infinite. love blasting through the side of a building in a monster truck, earning my first triple kill, only for a sniper to blow one of my tires and send me into a gas station & subsequent fireball that claimed me and a bystander
(i know pubg probably invented all this but that survivalist aesthetic is even less my thing than this hyperkalidescope of capitalism)
the PG-ness of the violence and all the multiverse branding crossover incoherence never stop being surreal and dissociative. canât wait to get shot execution style by a million dancing gokus
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fortnite has always seemed like the closest thing to a made-up video game invented for a movie or tv show existing in real life. by that i mean there are things about it that are just like inherently more funny and interesting than you think should be possible in real video games, but also thereâs just something about it that just seems⊠fake? like it just seems like it should be impossible for it to exist and be as popular as it is. it wouldnât surprise me if people played it with the controller upside down like they do when people play video games on tv
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fortnite is the 21st century version of smashing your action figure collection into each other
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watching my roommate wrap up late-game treasure chest quests in God of War 2018 with one eye on the smartphone guide evokes an elder millennial dad dragging his reluctant son through early 2010s geocaching misadventures
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i beat a âstory questâ in fortnite where you had to spraypaint a peace sign onto some ruins and the npc over the radio sarcastically said it was my interpretation of the fluxus movement
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i just made a weird discovery!
there were 3 physical collections of the sega 3d classics games on 3ds, but only the second was released outside japan, as âsega 3d classics collectionâ. but! if you install the roms of the first and third collections onto a non-japanese system, before you unwrap the little ânew softwareâ present, theyâll be labelled in english as âsega 3d classics archiveâ for the first, and âsega 3d classics collection 2â for the third.
as far as i know, the only way to know this is through piracy, since theyâre physical-only releases, so you wouldnât normally be installing them to the home menu, and the consoleâs region locked, so you couldnât install them on non-japanese systems anyway
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Fortnight is going to be whatâs finally responsible for the reappraisal of Yoko Ono in the public consciousness.
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yeah i have zero fuckin idea what is going on with the âstoryâ but the quests give me outfit bucks 
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Yeah Iâm still hooked too, Iâve managed to win a few games now, my best win was when there was a tiny bit of area left and the last guy was on top of a hill trying to snipe me but I threw some impulse grenades up at him and he flew off and was killed by fall damage lol
Also I finally managed to kill Darth Vader!! Then I was sniped by someone watching the battle and they took the light saber before I could use it 
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