I'm going to be something of one as i expect a lot of dislikes on this worst part of Legacy of Kain series. That's right - I'm not going to argue about the fact, that it IS the worst game in the Legacy of Kain series. It definitely is, for a number of reasons. However, Legacy of Kain is a series you expect to be next to perfect. And as such, being worse in one of the best franchises of video game history doesn't necesserily make the game bad. It just makes it "rather good". Blood Omen 2 is an alternate reality becoming true reality. It's the events becoming real, because of the stuff that happens in Soul Reaver 2. Problem is - it pushes this concept quite hard and as such feels more like a complete spin-off "gaiden" game, then the part of the series. Part of the reason for that is because it was developed by a seperate team within Crystal Dynamics, and the lead designer was completely different. Other part of the reason was the fact, that it was apparently first designed as a mostly stealth game and later reworked into something that prefers stealth, but has a lot of head-on action too. With these reasons, game feels different, has a much worse storyline than the one you'd expect from Legacy of Kain and the gameplay feels a bit rushed and unrefined. This is one of the reasons a lot of people tend to dislike it. The other reason is the fact, that the game has a lot in common with a relatively obscure (but rather good, i might say) game Chakan, or more specifically, it's unproduced sequel. And also with some old mod for Quake 2. The reason behind it is the lead designer who was working on both the mod and the Chakan game. You can read more about this here: http://www.thelostworlds.net/BO2/Chakan_and_Sirens.html But the thing is - even though it feels and plays different, even thought it might just have been a different game turned into Blood Omen 2 (not like the unrelated Shifter project wasn't turned into Soul Reaver in the first place)... Even with the fact, that there are storyline things which were never explained, even though they were planned to be in Defiance. Even with all that, it's still a rather good game. Not the game you'd expect to have Legacy of Kain or Blood Omen in it's name. But not a bad game at all.
Angel of Darkness could be a new direction Tomb Raider needed. It could be the perfect change from an trusty, but very old engine to a new one, from a great gameplay, to an even more nuanced and interesting one, merging Action Adventure with RPG. It wasn't. And part of the problem lies within the fact, that this game is an unfinished product. It was being made as a first Tomb Raider for PS2, alongside with the last Tomb Raider for the previous generation of hardware - Chronicles. When the work on Chronicles was finished and all the effort became focused on AoD it became apparent, that the game wouldn't work the way it was. So it was scrapped and started over again. Long story short, it never got finished, as Eidos decided to ship an unfinished, cut down version of the game to coincide with the second movie based on Tomb Raider. And later blamed Core Design for all the faults, took away the franchise from them and gave it to Crystal Dynamics. because AoD was a complete and utter failure as it was. Joke is, it is rumored, that a beta build of the game was more full and better working than the released version. So, if the game was unfinished, what do we have here? We have an attempt to make a story-driven, dark and moddy Tomb Raider, which adds some NPC talking, questing, skill progression, a secondary character and many new features to the series. Which would've been good, if it was finished. As is, most new things seem rushed and stupid. For example, the concept that Lara has to re-learn some of her abilities in an RPG style, because of the psychological and physical damage she suffered at the end of The Last Revelation is great. It could've made more open levels more "Metroidvania" and interesting to explore. As it is, it sometimes requires you to do meaningless tasks to "level up", so you can progress in a fairly linear fashion. All th NPC dialogueQuesting thing sounds interesting, but it works rather bad and exists only for the first quater of the game. Secondary character is kinda cool (and reminds a bit the later released Dark Sector and Infernal), but he's not fleshed out and, with the death of this storyline, is completely forgettable. And the story - oh, it could be great. In fact, it was meant to be a trilogy of games, with AoD being first. Thing is, with cut content even AoD story is convoluted and a mess, with character just appearing or dissappearing like everyone should know them already (and we should, but their introoductions were cut with the areas they were in). And the technical issues... Oh yeah, there were those. In the original version of the PC game, thee was a quicksave. Fun part was - it worked at random. And could load you a very early quicksave upon load when used. SO you had to make 3-5 quicksaves, just in case, every time. And when the quicksaves are broken, you can guess that things are bad. Some of the glitches and annoyances were later patched (and GOG version is, as always, probably patched too), but the core - the feel of a rushed, unfinished and cut down game - couldn't be patched. Angel of Darkness is "that game" of the series people tend to block out in their memories. It's a shame, as it does have some really solid potential and great ideas. And i wish there would be a remake someday. But as it is, i would recommend this only to: a) diehard TR fans with good patience or b) wannaby developers, so they can see what happens, when the game is forced to get released in an unfinished state.
Warrior Within was a controversial release. It's not surprising - the ar direction was completely different from the beautiful magical Sands of Time, the narration went from a fairy tale to a teenage Godsmack fan wet fantasy. Hell, the sand enemies BLEED. As in red blood. These things are incredibly stupid, i'm not even going to try to justify them, apart from saying, that the art design is actually quite good, even if quite "grungy". But what is absolutely amazing about Warrior Within, is gameplay. The game is very open-ended, playing closer to Metroidvania title, than to the linear experience of SoT. The combat, the worst part of SoT (even though it had some good ideas and looked good), is absolutely fantastic. In fact, i still consider it the best of its kind, God of War, eat your heart out. And the acrobatics and avoiding the traps is still as good as in SoT. So, what we have is probably the best Prince of Persia game (sorry, the classic one), which unfortunately has some issues in terms of art direction and the story. And some technical issues, which i expect to find in the GOG release as well, since the game was never patched. So you may experience no sound in several cutscenes and few annoying bugs. There are very few, but it's still a shame, that Ubisoft never bothered to fix them. P.S. There's also a nice bonus for PoP fans in the form of tons of videos in this game. Videos about history of PoP and about making of Warrior Within. Very interesting stuff.
While this is strangely not a universally accepted thing, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation is the best classic Tomb Raider game. I know, i know. The ropes were implemented in an awful and annoying way, the game takes place pretty much only in Egypt... I know this complaints, but is tand by my words. It's the best classic Tomb Raider. I guess, it comes down to the personal preference, but for me Tomb Raider was first and foremost about, well, |tomb raiding". It was about some seemingly unexplored places, *you* can explore, filled with deadly traps and hidden treasures and secrets. The first Tomb Raider game was about that - it felt like an adventure in exploration, with the storyline only reinforcing the adventuring spirit and need for exploration. But the first Tomb Raider feels outdated, it lacks the agility and moves later classic titles have, it feels more clumsy. Which is not surprising given its age, but that's the thing - it deserves respect for what it did and what it started. But it's not that fun now. Tomb Raider 2 and 3? People love them. And i can see why. Because i also do. But they focus on other things. They are still about exploration, but action more often than not, becomes the key. You shoot a lot of enemies, and enemies are often people. And rather often they have all the right to shoot you too. That's the thing about TR2 and 3 - the games' locations are cities, military bases, science laboratories. With you shooting guards, not just some "bad guys". Sure, TR2 and 3 did some cool stuff, it was fun to see the underwater sections and explore sunken ships. hell, even the urban exploration thing, like the London non-used underground station was kinda fun. But it ultimately felt like developers just had a list of cool places around the world the wanted Lara to visit, and they just threw them in the game without much rhyme and reason. The Last Revelation, however, does the opposite. It's a focused and much more agile and fun return to the Tomb Raider 1 feel. Which is exactly why some people might not like it, thinking of it as a more boring, lacking of "epic adventure action" experience. But, in my opinion, it was the return to what Tomb Raider does best - exploring the tombs, finding secrets, solving puzzles and figuring out ancient prophecies. It wasn't without bad parts, sure. The ropes i already mentioned, and there was a simply too tedious part with a motorcycle closer to the end of the game. And Alexandira part is a tiny bit too open for exploration, while having only one correct path of events. But it's still great at what it does right, and what it does wrong just makes it a tiny bit more annoying, not bad. And Chronicles? It's actually rather good. It does some new things but feels more like TR3 with an episodical structure. And the last episode is a bit more annoying than it should've been, thanks to the fact, that TR engine just couldn't do spy stealth gameplay right. But other episodes are quite fun. Especially the one with young Lara, who dosn't have a weapon throught the entire episode, thus making it a heaven for people who love the exploration, acrobatics and puzzle-solving parts of Tomb Raider. Chronicles just tried to do episodic structure 5 years too early and on a wrong engine. I'm happy, at least Chronicles didn't suffer from "episodic turned into one game" problem as much as something like Fahrenheit. But that was it, the glorious end for the classic Tomb Raider. On a pretty high note, with Chronicles being more of an "eplilogue". And while i love Underworld and like Anniversary (don't get me started on Legend, though), while i mourn the complete failure of brilliant ideas in Angel of Darkness, when i think Tomb Raider, i think about The Last Revelation. The best classic, and probably the best overall, Tomb Raider game.
Deus Ex is an amazing game. Everyone knows it. Invisible War, however, is considered to be an awful game. Thing is - it's not. It's just an awful sequel to the greatness original Deus Ex was. Invisble War was a popular pc-elitist-ian example of "games dumbed down for consoles" back in the day. Very small locations, short length, ridiculosly simplified inventory and RPG elements, no hit-zones on ragdolls (until the patch which added the headshots. yes, they were added in a patch)... Almost all the good gameplay stuff that made the original Deus Ex so good, fun and challanging was gone or "dumbed down". And if you add an insane amount of bugs and hilarious ragdoll physics, it's easy to understand why the game was hated so much. So why do i consider it to be a good game, then? Well, short length of the game helped it to have a much tighter and intriguing story, with much more choice-consequence focus than the first game had. It was very nicely done, and the story was developing the way you, as a player, made it develop. It wasn't the greatest story, sure, but it was still fun to constantly see and hear consequence to all you do. Plus, to some people, unhappy with how games tend to end with a "more to come" attitude, it will be refreshing to see that all the endings in Invisible War are very final and very definite. So, yeah, it's an awful sequel to Deus Ex, but it is a very solid and good game.
