Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft

This is easily the best game in the franchise for a multitude of reasons, they include how beautiful the game looks (ESPECIALLY with the remastered graphics from a quarter of a century later) as well as the difficulty and the somewhat complex narrative it has compared to its predecessors.

I'll start with the narrative as that seems to be the biggest improvement here over the games predecessors, it sees Lara traveling to the likes of India, Nevada, the south pacific, London and Antarctica to retrieve artifacts that are literally other worldly as they came crashing to earth several centuries ago and grant powers to those that find them, naturally it’s up to Lara to retrieve these artifacts from the likes of crazy scientists, cannibalistic tribesmen and even a CEO of a beauty chain (basically Sharon Stone from the Cat woman flick from 2004) in order to stop their destruction of their respective locations. The best part of this game is that these mini adventures can be tackled in any order following the completion of the India stages, meaning the game begs for replay value even if it's highly recommended to tackle the Nevada stages first due to Lara losing all her resources there. The game introduces stealth mechanics in these areas as well as the London levels which builds on the item management from the second game as Lara is heavily punished for being spotted in these areas, although the game is somewhere between its predecessors when it comes to how generous it is with the resources the levels provide her. This leaves us with the graphics which have received a massive improvement over the second game, each of the areas look beautiful despite them consisting of a desert, a jungle, a security compound, a mostly deserted island and the dark streets of London among other places. If I had negatives about this game, it would be mostly contained in the kayak level as simply put, this vehicle doesn't control well at all. I get the feeling the tribesmen cursed this kayak to be deadly for our heroine (it makes sense given how she slaughtered most of them in a previous level) as it's nigh impossible to control down the rapid waterfalls in this level, thankfully you can progress through the level for quite a bit before needing to use it otherwise it might just have dragged down the overall game.

I should also mention the save crystals as they make a return here from the first game, they're mostly useless in the pc version given how the developer wisely decided to cut the limited save feature from the ps1 version but forgot to remove these crystals in the pc version. The save feature in the ps1 version however is brutal as it takes an already difficult game and makes it nigh impossible with the limited amounts of saves you can make throughout the campaign. This is where the difficulty really does come through as even without the limited saves, this game is brutal with its trial and error. Naturally this makes the pc version shine as it encourages further exploration in these vast environments to find the secrets in each of them (which are required to access the admittedly shitty bonus level at the end) however coupled with how cryptic some of these puzzles can be and how aggressive the enemies are (particularly with the boss battles) there has to be some sort of achievement with finishing the console version of this game giving how thankless it is even compared to other brutally challenging games. In short, I really don't recommend the ps1 version unless you're an absolute masochist. I'll also quickly mention Tomb Raider III: The Lost Artefact here even though that does have its own pages on this site. It's a great expansion pack that much like golden mask, brings forward the best moments of the main game to create its own unique storyline and levels. You can read what I said there for more details about why I love it so much.

Despite my issues here and there, this is still a near perfect game. The dynamic lighting and weather effects in each level is still impressive to this day and provided you're playing the pc version; the challenge is tough but ultimately fair (barring that atrocious kayak level of course) which makes this game worthy of your time.

Lara Croft returns on an adventure to recover four pieces of a meteorite that are scattered across the world. Lara will be travelling to India, South Pacific, London, Nevada, and Antarctica (note: the middle three can be done in any order).

The graphics don't seem a noticeable improvement on the previous game, so you still see that the levels are constructed out of square panels and bland, flat textures. You can still light flares in dark areas which take advantage of the lighting model. The game is pretty dark overall though, so I turned up the in-game settings as well as my TV to make it easier to see. Paths are not always clear; I found it easy to miss climbable walls and 'monkey bars' on the roof. There seems to be more detail with the guns; which have smoke and shells dropping to the ground.

In some ways, Lara is very agile with fluent movement. Lara can run, jump, climb, flip and roll around the environment and is well animated. There's a few new moves too; now she can sprint, crawl and monkey-bar across certain surfaces. The controls can feel a bit awkward until you get used to them. You also have to be in fairly precise positions to interact with switches or to pick up items. This can be a bit fiddly to make Lara slowly step to the required position. Also, it's quite easy to die by falling off ledges due to the controls. The vehicles can feel very clunky and awkward to control too, especially the Kayak. You can save anytime, which means it's not too frustrating when you do die. I found it pretty straightforward to configure the Xbox 360 controller to control Lara. The controls weren't perfect like that, but it was close enough to play through the game.

The gameplay consists of a mix of combat, platforming and puzzling. There are switch puzzles, timed areas, and block puzzles, but the majority is just finding the button to press to unlock the next door. The frequency of block puzzles has been drastically decreased compared to previous games.

There's loads of levels within the game and I found them to be better than the previous game, although the sheer length of the game makes it drag. Some of the early levels have branching paths; allowing you to miss fairly large portions of the map.

The combat feels more simplified compared to the previous game, but that could be more to do with the dumb AI with mêlée weapons; that often walk into you instead of trying to hit you. Lara fights against a variety of creatures as well as humans. She will be slaughtering a variety of monkeys, dogs, tigers, eagles, alligators, raptors and horrific monsters. In the previous game, the various enemies seem to have specific strengths and weaknesses, but in this one; I didn't feel there was as much need to switch weapons.

The game seems very generous with medi-packs and ammunition. Also, there's some green crystals (which were the save crystals on the Playstation version) which give you an instant health restore. Lara has unlimited ammo in her standard dual pistols, but other ammo is limited. Aiming is automatic if Lara is facing the correct direction, which leaves you to concentrate on the acrobatics to stay out of harm's way. The weapons are similar to the previous game so you have Uzis, a Desert Eagle pistol, a shotgun, an MP5 sub-machine gun, a grenade launcher, a rocket launcher, and a harpoon gun for underwater use.

During the Nevada set of levels, your weapons and ammunition are confiscated. Strangely, you don't get your equipment back at the end. There's opportunities to find weapons in the other levels, but the ammunition you collected is gone for good. I thought this was an insane design decision and was infuriating to lose items that I had spent a long time collecting. I recommend players choose Nevada first to minimise the impact.
In terms of bugs: Lara can get stuck in walls and can only be dislodged by tapping the roll button. There were two occasions where I saw the textures get completely messed up; the first saw textures swapped out for random ones, and the second saw most textures be rendered solid black.

The game is an improvement over the previous game. Firstly I found the level designs to be more enjoyable and the combat was less frustrating (Tomb Raider II had many unfair combat sections where enemies got cheap shots off on you). I found the game to be overly long though, so playing it became a chore.