Awful. Game speed changes from level to level, wrong music tracks, difficulty spiked up, and lacking a few other things from the original.
This is, without a doubt, one of the worst games ever created by a major game studio. The story about how the devs had very little time to do what they wanted to with it is infamous by now, and it's all lies. The truth of the matter is that they couldn't even get the controls to work decently, which should have been step one (of ALL possible things). The biggest complaint about the first five games was how clunky the directional pad movements were, and yet with this first attempt at a series update, they were made even clunkier. It's pretty much unplayable if you don't have a huge amount of patience and a willingness to re-load saves over and over. In my first hour, I came across a ridiculous amount of bugs in the opening levels. At one point, while riding an elevator, Lara glitches through the top of it and was held floating endlessly in mid-air, forcing me to re-load. I can't even comprehend how this made it to store shelves. The Angel of Darkness will forever be remembered as the game that almost killed the Tomb Raider franchise, and for very good reason. Only play this out of curiosity and if doing a binge play through the series, as most will probably deem it worthy of being skipped over completely.
I'm not big into racing games, and there have only been a few in the past that have managed to really grab me. However, this is a pretty good one, all in all. It's not my favorite of the genre, but it's straight-forward, and the the tracks are quite varied, which is refreshing. Terrain plays a big part in how you play each track, and I found that to be kinda nifty. Another cool thing, in terms of nostalgia, I started playing and instantly realized I had played this before when I was a kid (probably in Radio Shack, as they usually had games like this loaded onto a computer for customers to play around with. There are, of course, some issues. The way racers stop in front of you to slow you down can be frustrating. Sometimes they'll be on one side of the track and just appear in front of you out of nowhere. I also hit a number of things that you can't see (this is especially annoying when flying through the air and not being able to see the sides of the track - you literally hit air and it can cause you to crash). Also, the arrows that point you in the right direction don't always pop up at the most needed times. I actually found they worked better on the reverse tracks. A final downside... it's short. I got a good couple nights of fun out of it, and now I'm done with it. Luckily, I got it on sale with the sequels, so I can move onto them soon (and a 4th one is coming out, it seems). What really makes this game shine is its fluid controls. Maybe it's not realistic, but it brings me back to the times of Jet Moto and the like, where realism never took precedence over fun. I wish more games racing games controlled as well as this one.
Great games of their time, I had a blast revisiting TR1 with this pack. 5/5 rating for that one. I wasn't able to get it running on my Windows 7 desktop (wouldn't even load), however, and had to use my Windows 10 laptop to get it working. Cinematics were at the lowest quality, but it wasn't like it took away from the fun. TR2 had some major problems with glitches. I couldn't get it to work on my laptop, but it worked on my desktop (oddly the opposite problem I had with TR1). Also, I had to do some research on fixing the gamepad I was using to get that working. There are some glitches throughout the game, falling through the graphics and whatnot, which I don't remember encountering when playing it on PS1. Overall, it was a difficult experience, and not quite as enjoyable as I remember back in my childhood. It's severely flawed in comparison to the first, a lot harder, and while level design starts out strong it does become bland and monotonous to trudge through as you progress. I'd rate it 3.5/5. TR3 had even more problems. The sound wasn't working, so I had to do something about that. Only worked on my desktop, same as TR2. As far as the game goes, I remember not exactly loving it back in the day due to some really poor design choices and camera problems (yes, even worse than TR2). It's virtually unplayable in some areas, and I swear it has to be due to bugs because watching walkthroughs on youtube, things just don't seem to be working the way they are supposed to. If you play this one, expect to use cheats. 2.5/5. If your PS1 isn't working anymore and you want to revisit these, it's probably worth it overall. Don't expect a smooth process though, and simply enjoy the experience for what it is: nostalgia.
