/vr/ - Retro Games

>>9843649
another good example. only x4 is even close

the first crash bandicoot is the best one

>>9843660
see, i hold this opinion as well (along with spyro), but at least the sequels had enough appeal and popularity that you can safely say they succeeded

>>9843649
Tr1 is not widely considered the best

Anyone remember when this series wasn't just hallways of mindless, overly spongy enemies? I sure do.

>>9843687
the sequels are focused on the combat which was by far the worst part of the game so yes

>>9843719
TR2/3 seems way more popular

>>9843649
All Tomb Raider games are fun though. Sure, the best one is either 1 or 4, but all of them have good aspects to them, maybe AoD is pushing it but even Chronicles isn't that bad. If you dive into the development cycle of these games you'll appreciate them more. It's a miracle they're as good as they are to begin with.

>>9843660
>>9843662
Spyro 1 is the best but crash 1 isn't, that's just a contrarian opinion. Crash 2 is way better if you demand a pure experience, and crash 3 is better if you're not an autist and you're able to enjoy variety.

Btw i don't give a fuck about completionist autism so if you're complaint has something to do with how hard it is to get every random fucking challenge, i don't care and you're a retard.

>>9843706
Literally never. That's what it was from the very beginning.

>>9843721
Most of those people probably haven't played those games in 20+ years, because 2 and 3 shit the bed hard.

>>9843757
Not these anons, Crash 1 is the best. It has a focused, tight design of straight up platforming challenge. The overworld is charming and cohesive, fuck retarded gay portals. Sounds like you're a little filtered bitch.

Haven't played any Tomb Raider except 1 and Reboot.
What do each add to the formula? Any new platforming moves or other mechanics?

>>9843687
Yes it is. The only game that comes close to the quality of the origin is The Last Revelation.

>>9843687
TR1 is easily the best

>>9843845
> TR1
> The baseline

> TR2
> Adds dynamic lighting (environments are lit by gunfire as well as by flares, a new consumable item)
> Lara can do a flip while jumping forward or backward to land facing the opposite direction
> Lara has a new wading animation for shallow water
> Many levels are set in modern, urban environments and filled with human enemies with guns
> Human enemies are bulletsponges and their guns are hitscan, which makes them irritating as fuck though
> Adds NPC characters that won't attack Lara unless she attacks them first (monks in one of the late game levels)

> TR3
> Adds crawling
> Adds colored lighting
> Adds a "choose the order in which you play certain levels" feature (the first and last levels are set, but the middle three can be played in any order)
> You lose all of your guns in one level though, so if you don't do that one first you fuck yourself out of weapons that can't be found again
> I think this is the one that added climbing on monkeybars as well, but it may have been the next one

> The Last Revelation
> adds rope climbing
> adds combining weapons in inventory (combining a gun with a scope to make a scoped version, for example)
> Adds different ammo types for guns (mainly different types of shotgun shells)

> Tomb Raider Chronicles
> Adds "stealth features" to one level (they're fucking awful, the engine was not designed for stealth gameplay
> Adds a level where you play as Teen Lara (complete with a flash of underboob in the opening cinematic) where you go through the entire thing with no weapons
> Kind of shit from a mechanical perspective, but it's set on a rainy Island in Ireland and is filled with creatures from Irish folklore, which is kinda cool

>>9843861
> Angel of Darkness
> Adds explosive diarrhea
> Also adds a grimdark storyline
> Adds very light stat upgrades for Lara
> In practice this means you'll find a barrier you can't move because you're not "strong enough", then find another barrier you can move ten feet away that increases your strength and lets you move the earlier barrier
> Adds sections where you play as a second character

Technically Legends/Anniversary/Underworld are retro as they had PS2 releases prior to the cutoff, but they're an entirely different beast. There's debate as to whether Angel of Darkness is even considered part of the classic series.

>>9843763
>focused, tight
The stupidest /vr/ buzzwords.
>filtered
Crash 1 may be the toughest Crash game (on the PSX) to 100% (not true, by the way), but it still hardly a challenge for even a slightly above average player. Nonetheless, Crash 2 is still more fun to play despite being easier.

>>9843763
This is just a gay ass way of saying it's better because it's the most basic and repetitive.


Nah.

>>9843859
Another contrarian opinion. DMC1 sucks. You use the same fucking combo over and over for 90% of the fucking game.

>>9843932
>look mom I haven't touched the floor for 4 minutes
Fuck off back to Bloody Palace

>>9843876
>>9843930
Seething zoomers.

The Tomb Raider series is just the flagship title of AA gaming as a whole and how it increasingly got worse and worse

>innovative first entry in the 90's
>followed by derivative sequels made in a hurry
>modern reboots that turn it into hand holdy set piece corridors with a story that cares too much for twitter well-thinking points

>>9843649
>widely considered the best one
Source?

>>9844201
Literally read any TR thread on /vr/. The first one being the best is pretty universally accepted, the only deviation is people who started the series with 2 or 3 and never went back to play the original.

>>9843721
2 maybe, but 3 isn't really, outside of Lara's Home

>>9843861
TR3 also added sprinting for Lara

>>9843660
Nah

>>9843861

I'll add some miniscule gameplay change info:

TR2 and beyond relaxed the timing for running jumps somewhat. After the first 2 steps, which is probably 1 ingame square grid, Lara's no longer bound by the animation timing when jumping.

TR3 and beyond also changed how jumping grabs worked by having Lara immediately go into grab animation. This allows her to grab closer higher ledges she would've otherwise have bumped into in the previous games.

>>9843759
Sort of. Classic Tomb Raider was 90% puzzles to 10% bullet sponge combat
Reboot is just Uncharted with tits, they even tell you how to complete the puzzles.

>>9845251
>>9845386
Good additions lads, I forgot about sprinting, and they did loosen up the timings a bit after the first game.

I wish there were more games in the style of TR1 and 4. Those long sections of exploration and puzzle solving interspersed with small bursts of combat just tickles my pickle. The first game also has this really intense feeling of isolation. Having NPC interactions be extremely rare and the choice to not have constant background music give the game a certain type of atmosphere that I don't think has been replicated.

Modern exploration type games try, but they usually give you a sidekick that banters with the player character (like the Uncharted games) or they give the player character a support team that they are in constant radio contact with (like Tomb Raider Legend), or there are human enemies scattered everywhere in the levels. You don't get that feeling of being truly alone when playing games in the genre anymore.

>>9843649
Tomb Raider 1 is only "good" by virtue of being a sub-par game in a series of unrelenting and unending shit.

>>9843652
Depends on what you mean. As far as the X series goes then yes, that's an example of the first game being the best. But for Mega Man as a whole it's obviously not even close to the first game.

>only x4 is even close
X4 is dog shit though. X2 is the only one that comes close.

>>9843649
>Is there anything more tragic than when a debut entry of a game series is widely considered the best one?
Yeah when a vocal minority relentlessly tries to gaslight everyone into pretending the sequel didn't utterly surpass the first game in every way imaginable.

>>9845718
X2 would be at least on par with X if the bosses weren't utter dogshit

>>9845850
>t.doesn't handle changes in game mechanics well.

Everyone says DKC2 is the best one but the first is a perfect game in my opinion

>>9845891
I prefer 1 for nostalgia reasons and for the fact I can just sit down and beat it in less than 40 minutes, but 2 is a better game despite having more gimmicks than I'd like to. Bonus rooms in 1 are pretty wacky and make little sense, see Orangutan Gang. Also bossfights are pitiful.

>>9845891
I liked 3's levels more. Krack Shot Krok is the single greatest level in the series.

>>9843649
pic obviously not related

>>9843932
lol this zoomer/bitch never played beyond Normal and it shows

>>9843649
pic unrelated I guess

>>9843861
Tomb Raider 3 also added dynamic liquids and fire. In previous games fire and blood ware just a measly sprite, but now they behave similar to "clouds". You can also see blood from undewater enemies spread in water.

>>9843861
3 also added several vehicles, advanced geometry for levels (triangles conforming to the grid, making more organic shapes), and added some fairly interesting AI stuff that absolutely does not come across to the player (mild stealth elements, enemies rush to trigger level elements, TRex behaviours, animals flee gunfire, etc.)

>>9847340
TR2 added vehicles first, with the boat and snowmobile. Of course the first vehicle you get is a fast powerboat and the level you get it in is cramped venice canals where you can barely use it.

The first Final Fantasy for giving you choices with party setup, leading to nice replay value. Also it doesn't go overboard with some kind of epic story and just lets you enjoy the game however you want. The music is some of the best FF music ever written.

>>9847546
Every subsequent game in the series is just a rehashing of the original formula. The later ones just get worse and worse.

>>9843652
I disagree, X4 has painfully mediocre level design and a lot of dumb decisions to show up the graphical evolution (like X and Zero standing in place until they finish their Charge Shot animations or putting away the Z-Saber and hair going back down), it made X4 feel sluggish. The dogshit level design of X5 and X6 didn't help.

Fantastic music, though.

>>9845857
>t. likes standing around

>>9847215
>>9847340
Wind affects rain and gunsmoke.

>>9847508
True, but TR3 added the Quad, Kayak, Mine Cart, stupid diver propellor thing, and reused the boat.

>open tomb
>open lara
>trmain
So what's the best way to play these games nowadays, including the gold expansions?

>>9849569
The github decompiles like trmain. However, IIRC there was an anon here who would make a post containing a collection of pc versions based on some EU version for the people who just want to play the games with no nonsense attached.

>>9849650
Oh I'd like to see that post

>>9849861
The links are all dead now sadly (zippyshare). They were dumps of the Polish versions with patches included. I personally never used them as I already had my own copies.

>>9844037
>>innovative first entry in the 90's

Image related are some really early screenshots of Tomb Raider from April or May 1996. Keep in mind that Super Mario 64 was released in June 1996 in japan and September 1996 in the US. Tomb Raider came out October and November 1996. It was in development around the same time as Mario 64, and I am sure the Core devs probably saw some preview gameplay of Mario 64 through various gaming media outlets. Reading this article, the editor who wrote it was unsure how Tomb Raider would even play. There were no 3D third person platformers that could be used as a reference. The Playstation didn't have a dual analog controller option until early 1997. Not long after the N64 launched. The game was in development in parallel with Mario 64 and with a d-pad in mind. The Sega Saturn was the lead development platform for the first game too. Even though it was always a multiplatform title. But because of the quadrilateral polygons of the Saturn, models and environments were made for that system first and then ported/ modified to the PS1 and DOS-PC platforms. The game most certainly was a first of it's kind, type of game. Even though Mario 64 did come out first in Japan and NA. It was innovative in the sense that the devs were learning how to make a 3D adventure platform as they were developing it and couldn't really pull from other games as reference points. I still love the original game. For me, I played it originally on the Saturn. And even though the Saturn game looked extra chunky, I still enjoyed it.

>>9843662
Ots wierd cuz i played riptos rage first and I enjoyed it a lot. just started spyro 1 and fucking love it.

>>9851248

Early Game Fan preview from November 1995

>>9843649
I don't think it's the best. It's so crude that it's a rough draft of what's to come. They didn't even know how to code in Lara's signature pony tail at that point, and a giant fat torso with scrawny arms as the final boss? Retarded. Personally I think Last Revelation is the best.

>>9843719
The sequels add more combat as a means of giving CORE a new option of where to hide keys as item drops to advance the level.

>>9849569
Can you play custom levels with these?

>>9852053
OpenTomb is dead afaik. OpenLara is probably okay for TR1 based levels. TRMain, or the decompile projects, probably yes but there might be the odd level editor that decides to throw a fit. Tomb3 (a decompile project for TR3) might be a different story. It recently got to a point in development where it moved a few hardcoded level functions out of the exe to the script file. What this means is older custom levels that were named a specific way to utilize said functions won't work correctly while newer custom levels are no longer bound by such limitations.