Tomb Raider: Underworld

Pros: - Story. I know I've said the same about Legend, but Underworld just expanded on it by brilliantly weaving both the stories of Legend and Anniversary and putting a conclusive end to the trilogy, including what happened to both Lara's parents, Avalon, and more - Platforming. The devs added many new movements that Lara can now do, like standing on ledges and horizontal poles, and also wall jump! As a result, they were able to add more puzzles and intricate level designs into the game, pushing the limits of what the player was initially made to accept from the previous games in regards to what Lara was thought to be capable of - The perfect amount of puzzles mixed with just the right dosage of complexity. Knowing that the devs had previously worked on Anniversary a year prior, I'm glad that they made use of that experience to ramp up the difficulties of the puzzles in Underworld seeing that Legend didn't have much of those - Combat. Not much was improved, but the things that the devs had improved, were really significant although few in amount. The two major improvements worthy of mention and praise here are the fact that Lara can now shoot while climbing (mostly) and aim at two different targets at the same time with her dual pistols. That's cool and exactly how it should have always been - Soundtracks - Visuals. Much better looking than Legend and Anniversary, and you can clearly see how Lara has aged based on her model alone Cons: - The camera. Not gonna expand on this since this has been an issue since Legend - (NITPICK) I already got used to this, but at first, I was kinda put off by Lara's movement speed. I feel like her jogging speed in this game is a bit faster than in the previous games, and it could get pretty annoying when you couldn't help prevent Lara from falling off ledges while standing on small platforms simply because her movements are simply too quick A great example on how to end a trilogy. Exceptional story and gameplay :)

Does not launch for me on my system AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 64GB RAM

perfect tomb raider games year

After playing tomb raider legend this is refreshing, graphics are very nostalgic, a lot of quality of life changes, fun enviromental puzzles. Does feel a bit clunky at time but it's a classic. So happy to have discovered it here and GOG always ahas a good price for these retro games. Recommend!

The strangest part of the game is its first few minutes, where I simply could not get past the loading screen. It took a good while of googling and PCGamingWiki shenanigans. IIRC it was fancy reg editing and also naming the exe to DXHR.exe (Deus Ex Human Revolution) from a Steam Discussion to make AMD apply correct settings to play the game. The platforming engine itself may remind you of Legend, trying to have too much variety that the core gameplay feels too punishing with certain long climbing/shimmying sections that make you lose a few minutes' worth of progress when making mistakes. Maybe I'm just impatient, and the demo available on the internet can help you decide better. Now, if the cover art isn't giving it away to you, Lara is most sexualized in this game. The first real level of the game (also the first hour) has Lara in a revealing diving suit to find an underwater ruin, but she doesn't even have flippers on, opting to go through avoiding the deathtraps within barefooted when she gets out of the water. Subsequent land levels also let you choose if you want her to wear longer or shorter pants, which is really nice. The dirty effects on her model as she goes through levels is well done and invites you to enjoy how she looks. I'm not saying this aspect of the game is bad, just that you have to keep it in mind when making your purchase. On the other hand the 2013 reboot goes a different direction where it's revealed she's a Terminator in disguise, but you do get clothes that cover more of the body fitting the activities and less "ogle positions" (let's just say the underwater cave in Underworld has some sus-looking climbing sections). Overall it's classically frustrating experience, but you do get to look at Lara a lot as she goes through the paces. Feel free to use mods and the menu-hook if you find yourself being too frustrated to have fun.