That was the funniest thing when Apex tried to use “go to this point on the map to collect lore for a character” seriously. You couldn’t really do it until the event was half over because people were just getting melted on the point
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ARMOR SPIDER: DESTROYED. making slow progress… maybe 1 archstone / day on the days i play. was very tired after work ln so this took me a few tries but the armor spider cant stand up to soul arrows at all… skill issue
the true hero makes his entrance onto the stage…
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I finally tried Mr. Driller Drill Land last night, after being curious about it since the GameCube days. (It was very cheap on PS4 recently and that’s when I got it.)
The different modes are a lot of fun, and I haven’t even tried all of them yet.
I only have two complaints:
- There are talking parts, but fortunately those can all be skipped.
- The music is more generic (from what I’ve heard so far) than in the original game.
I’d like to try the multiplayer mode at some point.
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I tried getting into Hyper Demon. Right now it’s a little too much for my human brain to handle, but I do think it’s really cool. It’s like if some weird hyper-advanced 4 dimensional alien species made contact with us and showed us what kinds of video games they play.
I’m trying to work myself up to a point where I can play Hyper Demon by training in Devil Daggers. I had never really gotten into that game before but I’m enjoying it a lot right now. A game like this is so nice to have on hand because you can almost treat it like a drug – an instant, non-stressful adrenaline boost that takes 1-5 minutes to administer.
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thanks for the rec on this (gunfire reborn)! i had looked at it before b/c i like to try to find things on steam that are popular but i’ve never heard of. the trailer did a very good job of making it seem more underwhelming than it actually is and first person run-based games almost always end up feeling shittier than you want them to.
the guns are all pretty unique and feel good, the upgrade system is pretty robust and supports a big variety of builds. it has a bit of a problem of stat overload, but i’ve been able to make really broken things happen enough that i think the system is actually pretty good despite being very convoluted sometimes.
i think it doles out characters and unlocks a LITTLE too slowly (and i’m not a huge fan in persistent stats in run based game to begin with) but unlocking more complexity over time probably does more good than bad if you sum it all up.
i’ve played about 20 hours solo and just beat elite difficulty for the first time (there are two higher difficulties than that). i think it would probably be a blast multiplayer.
it reminds me a bit of like nuclear throne and maybe some of the good parts of borderlands (a series i haven’t played since like borderlands 2).
it’s comparable contemporary is probably risk of rain 2, which also is about making really broken builds, but i find the upgrade system in this game to offer a lot more interesting choices. ror2 often feels like you’re being handed a build (or have to awkwardly wrangle one in through sort of obscure mechanics) but in gunfire it feels easier to approach and suss them out. the timer system in ror2 also always bothered me, and it’s nice to be free from that pressure here.
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I played through Silent Hill Arcade, earlier this week. Running it via TeknoParrot resulted in glitchy sound effect playback (I think one of the billed features of the arcade cabinet was its discrete surround sound audio), even after the recommended fixes/patches to the game files, etc, but it is playable. Game runs at 30fps, which I did not expect. I like how they integrated, however briefly, the primary experience of playing a Silent Hill videogame: trying to open non-interactable doors and being met with text informing you that they are locked. A mushier, kinda boring HOTD: Now With Plot edition? Sure. Yes. I was intrigued by the possibility of a slower-paced, less-manic shoot’em experience, but it doesn’t really pan out that way. Signature repeated gameplay moment: player swarmed by countless roaches/slugs, or unspeakable horror baddie advances while you endlessly mash the trigger as fast as you can, etc. IMO, still worth checking out as late-period, slightly askew take on the big budget jpn lightgun shooter.
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I understand why Norco wanted to avoid comparisons but it really is as good as it looks and those comparisons would suggest. Don’t sleep on it. I may write more once I’m done but so far it’s got it all including: osu! battle system, cluttered ranch houses, the sadness, a web of mental associations visualized
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yeah I keep realizing I shouldn’t have slept on it
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are you shit-talking the burning wall m8
bozja actually
ohhh yeah carry on then
okay, just finished Tomb Raider 1
after considering quitting playing thru after my frustrations with the backtracking/nickel and diming the game does to you last time… i decided to plow thru to distract myself from thinking about other things. i mostly enjoyed this last section a lot. there were still plenty of bullshit death pits and screwy split second jumps but my patience towards brutal savescumming and understanding the controls slightly better helped a little (i did do the tutorial level to start the game but that definitely wasn’t enough to get a lot of things).
maybe i was just more in the mood for it than i was previously, or maybe the moody/hell dungeon environments kept me interested. but yeah, the next two levels after the one i posted about ended up being some of my favorites of the game.
this is going to be a long post and does contain spoilers for the end of the game, so i’m going to hide all the screenshots/level descriptions, so u can expand them to view:
Summary
the last Egypt level is a comparatively more straightforward and focuses around this very impressively scaled Sphinx that looms over everything in a dark underground cavern. this really uses the black fog that shrouds everything that’s too far away to its advantage to create a really nice effect. apparently it was also the only level designed by the project director, Toby Gard. there’s not much to say about this level outside the main area, but it definitely didn’t feel like it outstayed its welcome like some other levels.
then some plot stuff happens and you have to start with no weapons because i guess Lara has stowed away on an enemy boat. i think this loading screen is pretty funny by the way. i feel like it was standard in so many games of this era to have a “you have been captured/your weapons are removed” level somewhere in there. not that it’s a bad thing per se, it’s just funny how many tropes were repeated across different games.
this level, Natla’s Mines, actually might be my favorite (or at least among my favorite) in the game. you’re in some underground mines and it feels much more exploration/adventure based because you don’t have any weapons to start with. i like this weird shanty town looking part.
there’s this little trailer thing that you have to have three fuses you find throughout the level to put down. i assume this is a secret? i could only find two before i ended up unwittingly in the next section of the level, not realizing that this just must not be required to go through. you have to do some light puzzle stuff around outrunning some boulders to pick up at least one fuse, which just reset if you get them wrong.
this room really makes me think of Half-Life 1, which is funny because HL1 also has a “you’ve been captured/you have no weapons now” level in it.
this level introduces lava, which is a pretty fucking brutal instant death. but given that this game already has spike pits and you instant die pretty easily from falling a decent distance it’s just more of what you’ve come to expect.
eventually after fighting what i guess is an American equivalent of Pierre French Guy and jumping around lot of lava you end up in this weird skate park area with a skater boy who i mercilessly gunned down with an Uzi. none of these bosses have been difficult at all. all you have to do is keep firing at them while jumping up and down and then heal. i like this area though.
after the skatepark you end up at some temple-ish area you push a lot of blocks around in. eventually you emerge outside and you kill yet another miniboss at the entrance to this very cool looking pyramid. again, the game’s limited scope of view makes the thing feel more moody and imposing… especially underground.
this level was really interesting overall. just the general progression and the different things you encounter throughout. it reminds me a bit of The Abyss from Duke Nukem 3D, which starts as one thing but ends up as something completely different by the end… but in a way that still feels like a very natural, organic progression.
after that you’re basically into full wacky alien blood mines environments. these weird flying demons come out of those giant eggs. it feels like it was a requirement of every game of this era to have a crazy alien-themed level at the end, and this is no different. though it’s gorier and fleshier than you might expect for a game like Tomb Raider.
this stupid timed jumping puzzle had me so confused for a long time. if you miss jumping in the little indentations you’ll slide down the slope and likely fall into a hidden pit of spikes. there are a lot of things in this game where you’re not even exactly sure what the game is expecting you to do in that particular moment and end up stumbling into weird secrets and things like that as a result. this section kinda sucked tho, not going to lie.
more blood eggs that release weird flying demons. blood eggs and water
blood egg and flesh
blood egg and flesh and lava
there’s a comically long fall in this massive room that you gradually are circling around thru and climbing upwards to throughout this level. i assume this is the central part of the pyramid you enter at the beginning.
of course this game has flesh thrones, because why not. you have to have a flesh throne. Doom 2 did, so this must as well. it’s actually really easy to clip thru these because the hitboxes are so weird/bad. not that it matters too much, because you can just push one of these blocks at the foot of the thrones.
more blood egg. please rise up and stand for blood egg
in an idea presumably lifted from Price of Persia, you end up coming upon this section of mirrored rooms where you discover you have an alien flesh doppleganger. the doppleganger doesn’t attack you or anything like in Zelda, unless you attack it. and it doesn’t just join up with you in Prince of Persia. you actually have to find the switch to activate a trap door to dispose of it in order for you to move on. i felt bad about it, because clearly my alien flesh clone meant no harm. i wish there could have been better conflict resolution in this situation. but Lara is a plundering symbol of imperialism so that cannot happen.
the level ends in a confrontation of girlboss v. girlboss at the very top of this large pyramid we’ve been climbing. it’s the formally dressed aspirational blonde US corporate girlboss vs. the casually dressed plundering scion of wealth brunette UK girlboss. the eternal conflict.
there’s a weird cutscene featuring alien people arguing with demonic blonde girlboss i couldn’t follow in between this. right after this, blonde girlboss falls to the bottom of the pyramid and Lara has to fight a giant monster.
the giant monster is easy to just dump ammo into, presuming you don’t get to close to it like i did here… in which case it will just toss you around awhile like a ragdoll and it’s an insta-death
ah yes, the alien altar in the midst of the sacred blood mines. we have reached peak videogaming now.
this last level you just escape the pyramid as you blew up the thingy on the altar and you have to navigate a lot of dumb timed traps that are super easy to die in. not a huge fan of this section, but i guess it’s pretty linear and not as long and grueling as they could have made it.
eventually you fight winged Demonic Blonde Girlboss. this could make a good anime. unfortunately it’s really easy to just pump uzi into her and she’ll go down, in spite of her flying around and faking her death for a second time and stuff.
it does leave you with one last section in this very cool moody pyramid before you finally escape
and then Lara escapes, the pyramid blows up and… that’s pretty much it. no ending dialogue or anything like that. kinda weak given the weird alien cutscenes we got and stuff. i presume this game was probably rushed and they didn’t have time to make a really proper ending, like a lot of overscoped 90’s games were.
apparently this version i was playing has a different, lamer credits sequence than some of the other versions. oh well.
the youtube channel Ross’s Game Dungeon has a video review on an old RTS game called “Baldies” where he outlines what are his own personal stereotypes of old PC games:
even though Tomb Raider 1 was cross-platform, and you don’t exactly need a manual to play it (but you do need tutorials)… i think it basically meets all of these stereotypes.
so what do i think of Tomb Raider 1? it’s hard to rank, really. for a game that came out basically at the same time as Mario 64, the scope and scale of everything is really impressive. it’s clearly easy to see why this was a groundbreaking game, and not just something that’s “of its time” or whatever. the variety of environments also surprised me. i kind of associate Tomb Raider with being mostly caves. not only did a lot of levels have different kinds of approaches and things they expected you to do, but they often felt of a piece with the others immediately around them. especially as the game went on, it felt like the thematic/narrative stuff tying them together became a bit stronger and more focused.
i still feel like the controls and some of the things you’re expected to do are pretty rough though. the timed indiana jones style jumping puzzles are actually among the worst parts of the game for me. what was most enjoyable was just exploring at your own pace and trying to suss out the environment to move forward. the combat is also basically really stupid overall, but i guess i still prefer it in the game vs. it not being in the game.
but yeah, not sure how to rate the game. it’s less artistically successful than a game like Silent Hill 1, but also it’s going for a lot more than those games… and really does feel like it takes you on an entire journey. which is a feeling i love about a lot of 90’s games.
so i would say, overall: i’m not sure how much i like several of the decisions made in Tomb Raider or would defend them… and there’s some pretty annoying and stupid stuff in this game. partially that’s probably a result of compromising with older technology and trying some things for the first time. partially maybe it’s just design norms of the time accepted more of that kind of stupid bullshit then. but regardless of all of those things, it was a very memorable experience that i won’t forget soon. and definitely worth playing at least once if you can tolerate the bullshit.
20 Likes
also, if anyone cares, these were my top 5 favorite levels from Tomb Raider 1:
Natla’s Mines
Palace Midas
The Lost Valley
Sanctuary of the Scion
Atlantis… mostly due to blood egg
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I played so much baldies… great game
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Now that you’ve experienced Tomb Raider (and assuming you want more without experiencing the diminishing returns of the sequels) play Galleon! It’s an OG Xbox game from 2004 that Toby Gard worked on and while fairly different is still very much of the same lineage as the old Tomb Raider games.
@winkerwatson could probably talk about it more at length than I could. On the old forum he would always tell people “Play Galleon” whenever they would talk about playing Tomb Raider lol.
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Galleon owns. It works great on xemu.
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I bought Norco on release because I knew I wanted to support it (having admired the creator’s art for years) and, eventually, play it. Your post inspired my to try it out today and it’s very good. I understand why some say the puzzles are too easy, but that doesn’t bother me.
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Hmm…I do like I-10 content.
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Aside from the interstate highway, that particular reference is obvious to anyone who lives in Louisiana.
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He miss the Replayable / every old PC game has a crazy deep strategy guide