Assassin's Creed Chronicles Trilogy Vita Platinum

 Hello Everyone. I recently platinummed the Assassin's Creed Chronicles Trilogy on the PSVITA (and can now say I platinummed every AC game on Vita) and wish to talk about the experience.

 

The trilogy is made up of 3 games, Chronicles China, India and Russia. Note that only the trilogy pack has a platinum. If you get the games separately, they do not have their own platinums. Normally, this wouldn't matter since in the Trilogy Pack version, the 3 games have their own separate lists of trophies but uh..... I had some issues with this.

 

 

Lets start with a basic review of these games. All 3 games are 2D Side Scrollers that attempt to translate the gameplay of the mainline AC games into a linear 2D Stealth game. Navigation lets you climb objects in the environments marked in red such as walls and beams and even use them to transition to the foreground and background. You can manually jump and even manually side/back eject and manually catch ledge. Making these the last AC games with these features until 2025 when Mirage and Shadows added them via a patch. The movement here works more like platforming and is pretty fun and solid. Once I got the hang of it, I felt like 99% of the time, I was in control of my character and they did what I wanted.

 

Combat works by requiring you to do light and heavy attacks to weaken enemies and finish them off with a final heavy strike. Most enemies will not die to purely light attacks. There are no instant counter kills. Instead, you can parry and counter kick or roll over enemies. However, Combat is very difficult. Your Assassin is extremely frail and will die to a few hits and faster if shot. Enemies will tank through your attacks and attack you in groups. And in India and Russia, they will duck to let their allies shoot you (wheras in China, you need to farm friendly fire for a trophy). I do feel like this works for the game. Stealth and Platforming are the main focus. Combat being relatively simple and hard kinda works better to prefer Stealth.

 

Stealth works by letting you hide in bushes and crates (and sometimes crowds), or climbing up and around enemies and their absolutely massive vision cones (seriously, I wish these were smaller). The 2.5 nature of the game also kicks in by allowing you bypass some enemies depending on your plane. For example, if you and a guard are in a hallway, that guard can see you if you get too close. You can bypass them by climbing around their feet if they're on a ledge or above them, or distracting them past a hiding spot.

 

The different planes was confusing at first. I remember early on in China, there was a level where there was a bridge. There were guards on the bridge and below it. I remember being so confused on how to ghost past this that I just stealth killed the enemies and moved on. Later, when I revisited the level, I learned that you can cling to both the underside of the bridge and cling to the sides. If you're on the underside, the guards above can't see when they look over even though their vision cones are seemingly "overlapping with you" because they're in a different plane. While the guards below the bridge can see you if they look up. Conversely, if you cling to the sides of the bridge and shimmy along, the guards below can't see you even when they look up because they will only see the undersides of the bridge. While the guards on the bridge can see you if they look off the edge.

 

On top of that, you have a few gadgets in each game to help you out. You have infinite Whistles and you can control  how loud they are (shown in a ring) to attract certain guards. All 3 games give you access to 2-4 Smoke bombs which blind and stun most enemies and still count as ghosting (despite it disturbing guards). China gives you access to throwing knives to cut certain objects in the environment and Noisemakers to distract guards. India gives you access to throwing knives that ricochet. Russia swaps that with a silenced rifle and an electric grappling hook to pull objects and non-lethally electrocute enemies. 

 

Most gadgets are limited to 2-4 uses and you can collect more from ammo caches or pickpocketing guards. Eagle Vision lets you know what guards are carrying. I do like the way China and India handle this. Because gadgets are so powerful but rare, you have to plan when and how to use them and how to get more. I remember during my Perfect Ghost runs of China, basically planning out when to use my Noise Makers and Whistles instead of my Smoke Bombs to stretch them out longer and which guards to pickpocket for refills. I could "choose" which sections I could "skip" with a Smoke Bomb as a reward for playing well,

 

Russia kinda twists this. Later on, enemies start wearing gas masks rendering them mostly immune to smoke bombs taking away one of your best tools and rewards for playing well. Its grading/scoring system is also way more harsh so you don't even have a lot of gadgets. I had 2 smoke bombs for my entire playthrough despite getting Gold Shadow and Silencer Ratings in every encounter.

 

You also have access to Helix Abilities. Glitches in the Animus you can exploit to help you out. For example, Helix Blend makes you invisible to enemies when standing still. Helix Dash lets you dash between hiding spots without being detected by guards. Helix Assassinations dissolve bodies. Helix Kill lets you instakill enemies in combat. Helix abilities are recharged by collecting Helix Cores throughout levels. Characters unlock and lose Helix Abilities depending on where they are in the story. Except in NG+ which gives all characters full access to all Helix Abilities they had in the main story and retroactively adds Helix Cores to levels that didn't have them.

 

I love the idea of Helix Abilities on paper. I've talked before about how, since AC1, since the AC games are technically a simulation within the Animus (that are intentionally designed to resemble video games to make it more intuitive for Animus users), there should be more ways for the player to "glitch" the simulation in their own favour. But AC has seldom used this idea. AC Mirage in 2023 had an interesting take on this with "Assassin Focus". A "Mark and Execute" style ability that allowed the Assassin to teleport between enemies as long as they were within a certain distance and had line of sight. The explanation of this ability was that "it's a glitch in the Animus the user can exploit to stealthily kill enemies multiple distant enemies  that you normally couldn't reach". And it being a "glitch" allowed the ability to remain "lore accurate". Players who wanted the game to remain visually and mechanically consistent with the 861 CE Baghdad and Scrappy Basim setting didn't have to use it. Players who did use it didn't get whiplash why Basim was teleporting between enemies and why he doesn't use it in cutscenes. Because it's not Basim's ability. It's the Animus'.

 

The Chronicles games make Helix Abilities Mandatory for the sections they're in for the main story. So for example, in India when Arbaaz is captured and doesn't have his gear, you can only proceed by using Helix Blend to hide. Same for Anastasia in Russia. And later sections heavily push you to using Helix Abilities. In a weird way, Helix abilities are at their most fun in NG+ during the early levels. Since these levels were designed to be completed without using Helix Abilities, Helix Abilities really do feel like Glitches you are using to bypass tricky sections quicker. They end up working like Gadgets where they're a scarce resource you deploy in situations you feel are the best.

 

Speaking of the level design, this is an area I am mixed on. All 3 games start out fun. Most early levels are generally larger and have multiple ways to progress even when you're ghosting. Later levels become way more trial and error and "you have to do the specific thing in a specific order" to progress. Even for stealth takedown playthroughs, it's rough. Russia ends up being the worse in this regard due to gas mask enemies. While China generally remains somewhat open ended even by the end. A shame because these games are otherwise so close to being great. Instead, they often feel more frustrating than anything. I do wish these games gave you a minimap or something to better note more enemies around you as you can get sucker punched by their vision cones.

 

I will note that Social Stealth is sadly limited to just "moving groups of people" and these functionally are no different to haystacks or bushes. You can assassinate guards from crowds and they won't panic or give away your position. A shame because I was curious to see how these more stealth focussed games would adapt crowds and social stealth. Maybe intentionally using a noisemaker to spook a crowd into running away from it and running alongside them as a faster mobile hiding spot. Or agitating guards so they then waste time scanning crowds you aren't in.

 

 

The 3 games also have a scoring system based on your playstyle. China adopts one based on 2013's Splinter Cell Blacklist.  There's the "Shadow" Playstyle (Awarded for Ghosting past enemies and not knocking out or killing them), Assassin (awarded for Assassinating at least one guard in a section) and Brawler (Awarded for killing at least 1 enemy in combat). These 3 playstyles are also split into Gold, Silver and Bronze tiers. So if you sneak through an area unseen and only stealth kill 1 enemy, you get an Assassin Gold Rank for that section. If you sneak through an area unseen and don't kill anyone, you get Shadow Gold. Getting spotted or disturbing enemies with sound like footsteps (but not Smoke bombs or noisemakers) reduces you down to Silver and Bronze. Brawler Gold requires you kill everyone in Combat and leave no survivors. Note that targets you have to kill don't count for scoring. 

 

India and Russia tweak this. Assassin and Brawler are now fused into the Assassin Playstyle. Stealth killing enemies unseen now earns you Assassin Gold while combat kills earns you Assassin Bronze. The middle playstyle is now "Silencer" earned by knocking out enemies non-lethally. They also add in a streak system where the more Golds of a style you get in a row, the higher your score multiplier will be. The highest score in a level is gained by doing all Shadow Gold + all the Optional Objectives. And high scores also unlock new upgrades.

 

I'm mixed on this system. On the one hand, I do like Chronicles India and Russia are the first AC games to add actual non-lethal means of taking enemies down and completing entire missions and acknowledging it (AC3-Rogue had non-lethal takedowns but they rarely came into play except for rare story or optional sections). It allows the game to have sections like the final sequences in Russia where the player can have guards they can take out but in a way that makes sense for Orelov. But, I have a few notes.

 

Firstly, India uses the "Shadow > Silencer > Assassin" ranking system. Aside from the irony that Assassin is the worst score, from a gameplay perspective, there isn't much difference between Silencer Gold and Assassin Gold. There's trophies in the game to get "Silencer Gold" and "Silencer Assassin" 30 times each. This required me to play through a section, knock out one enemy and then progress to the next section. Repeat until I get the trophy. Then play through the section, stealth assassinate 1 enemy and then progress to the next section. Repeat until I get the trophy. It's not like Knocking out enemies causes them to wake up later, or requires certain gadgets or tools or setup. For the most part, the difference between knocking out and killing is the animation you do. So instead of there being 3 seperate playstyles, it's 2 and one you have to repeat. China at least has a more appropriate system as the 3 playstyles were actually distinct in Ghosting, stealth takedowns and combat kills. Russia takes a few steps forward here. You can use the Electric Hook to electrocute certain groups of enemies to get instant and safe KOs. But this is somewhat situational and rare. For the most part, getting Silencer Gold and Assassin Gold is the same process as in India.

 

 Another issue with this is the rewards don't really scale or reward you. If you properly get a lot of Shadow Golds and complete Optional Objectives, you will get rewards like extra health, more damage etc. Stuff that's useless to Shadow Players but out of reach of Combat Players.

 

Something like Splinter Cell Blacklist also had a similar 3 Playstyle scoring system in Ghost (Ghosting past enemies and knocking out enemies), Panther (stealth killing enemies) and Assault (Combat kills). But here, the system worked better because levels only required you reach a certain score with your chosen playstyle to get the medal. Not get the highest score possible. You were also rewarded for "chaining actions". So if you snuck past a lot of enemies, it would give you a massive Ghost Bonus. If you used Mark and Execute on 3 enemies using a silenced pistol, then immediately stealth killed someone, you'd get a Panther multiplier of 4x. If you were in a shootout and killed multiple enemies quickly, Assault bonus. So now, all 3 playstyles required playing in different ways to get their respective highest scores. Plus, you can get gear and unlocks to min-max certain playstyles.

 

Something like the Hitman games just dock marks for KOs and penalize you way more for unnecessary kills. I wonder if Hitman's approach might have been better for Chronicles. Have a score that goes up when you Ghost past enemies and ticks down when you kill or knock someone out and have KOs refund some points if you hide the body. 

With all that setup, lets talk about how the games specifically lay out their trophies.

 The 3 games have relatively similar trophies. China basically asks you to beat the game but also get the max score in every level which requires you to perfect stealth and complete every optional objective and collect every collectible. India and Russia don't ask for that perfection but do ask you to beat the game in NG+ Hard mode which turns off enemy vision cones unless you use Eagle Vision and without getting spotted. This was rough. These games are already hard enough to stealth on Normal and NG+ modes. This required so much trial and error. The Chronicles games often feel less like freeform 2D Stealth games like Mark of the Ninja or CounterSpy and instead more like puzzle games that demand precise timing and execution if you want to ghost through them.

 

I did enjoy a few Trophies as they provided a fun challenge like India's 2 speedrunning trophies, and Sharpshooter Trophy. But a few trophies from the 3 games were especially rough or annoying: 

 "Not Your Usual Assassin = Complete Assassin's Creed® Chronicles: India without killing anyone." Apparently, this also includes accidental kills. India has a few "timed levels" that task you with speedrunning the level. However, there's sections in these levels where the wall or platform you are using will crumble beneath you. And if there's an enemy below you, the crumbling wall/platform will crush them and it will count as a kill. And during timed levels, the game doesn't even tell you that someone died.

 

 "Mercy Shooter = Don't kill any enemies in the Orelov Sniping sections in Memory Sequence 7". I was so confused when I first did this. I imagined that the trick here was to shoot the walls with your sniper so it drew enemies away from where Anastasia was hiding so she doesn't get spotted. Instead it it's "Don't do headshots or chest shots". You have to shoot enemies in the legs so they enter a downed state. Later on, this sequence throws enemies hiding behind doors and gaps that require you to hit their arms. Or have multiple approaching enemies so you don't accidentally shoot an already downed enemy.  And to cap it all off, the final section requires you to shoot an explosive barrel that kills people but the game doesn't count it.

 

The games also have a lot of grinding trophies. India asks you to Double Assassinate 200 enemies. There aren't even 200 enemies in the game, never mind 200 you can Double Assassinate. There's one for pickpocketing or Looting 100 enemies, Helix blending past 100 enemies, using Helix Assassination 100 times etc. Russia has one for head shotting 100 enemies. These trophies required me to just grind out the same activity for 40+ minutes per trophy.

 

However, I ran into 1 major issue. While playing through  India, I did 1 playthrough on the Normal Difficulty. I was doing my second Playthrough on NG+ mode to get the trophy for beating the game without killing one and the one for getting the max score on every level. Then I planned to do 1 playthrough on NG+ Hard mode to get the trophy for beating the game on NG+ Hard without being seen. Then my plan was to go mop up any remaining trophies for the India game, then move onto the Russia game.

 But partway through my 2nd Playthrough, during the second level and several times, The game would freeze during checkpoints when it was supposed to save and my Vita would throw an error that the game cannot save (it was a VITA UI popup rather than a game popup). The Vita would then tell me the save is corrupted and ask me to delete the save. Doing so seemed to delete the save and then overwrite it on the spot. I closed the game app and reopened it and seemed to save my exact progress through the game. This repeated several times.

 

After I did several levels, I closed the Vita for a while and reopened it. That seemed to fix the repeated prompts to delete the save game. I noted that I had base game HP, Gadgets, Abilities and unlocks rather than my NG+ unlocks. But the game was still skipping some of the tutorials and pop ups it would have done for a new playthrough. The mid level stats page seemed to forget I had completed some of the optional collectibles. I thought nothing of it until at one point, I quit to the main menu and looked up the mission list and found only Mission 1 available. The game seemed to have forgotten I beat it already and was doing NG+. I could load my progress/autosave and get back to mission 7 at least. So I decided to finish the game quickly in hopes I could get the the trophy for beating the game without killing one and the one for getting the max score on every level. Then hopefully the game would know I beat it. It remembered to give me the trophy for using Smoke Grenades on 100 enemies so I hoped this was just visual. But no. When I beat the India game, No extra trophy popped and the mission select menu still shows only Mission 1 unlocked. 

 

I tried connecting my Vita to my old pre-Catalina Mac (Thank you Apple for killing 32 bit apps 😤) via Content Manager and seeing if I could pull a MattKC and fix my save file. But no dice.  Looking through the logs, The Vita just threw Error C0-12157-6 (“Could not save the file”). A generic Vita filesystem write error. It basically means the save file could not be written/updated correctly at that moment. Could be caused by corrupted save data. My theory is that when I reached a checkpoint, the game tried to overwrite part of the save file but the write got interrupted. Maybe due to a storage hiccup or memory error or lag when writing. My Vita's OS then flagged it as a bad write causing the C0-12157-6 error. The OS then asked me to “delete corrupted save” and replace it with a fallback snapshot, which explains why it kept gameplay progress but lost meta-flags like NG+.

 

Doing some research, it seems the Chronicles Games on Vita are Unity ports (the engine, not the game). Unity games' saves seem to rely on big binary blobs (e.g Checkpoint + Profile data packed together).  If only part of the blob gets updated, the “checkpoint” half may survive while the “profile” half (unlocks, collectibles, NG+ state) gets wiped. And a brief Google Search shows Chronicles Save file wipes being somewhat common for PC and Xbox. So yeah, play this game on PS4/5 and/or use Cloud Backups on PC.

 

In any case, it meant I had to replay India twice over to get the remaining trophies. When I finished Russia, I didn't get the trophy for beating all 3 games. So I had to go back and beat India and China again and it finally popped.  I was really annoyed having to play these games again.

 

Back to the games themselves and onto less depressing topics:

 

Presentation: 

 The 3 games all look really cool and distinct. Each incorporates a unique art style for their cutscenes. China is inspired by old Chinese Oil paintings. These are the most striking during cutscenes but gameplay environments sometimes have that contrast. India uses traditional colourful indian designs and its levels are extremely bright and vibrant. Russia uses iconography from old Communist Propaganda Posters. Part of me wishes these games went further with their aesthetics. Have China be entirely playable in this Oil painting style for example.

 

When I was looking up tutorials for the games online, I was struck by how much better the PS4 version looked compared to the Vita.  It's not just more detailed but so much more vibrant. Colours and details really popped more. Even guard vision cones and the desyncronization visual effect looked so much cooler.  Obviously the Vita version would look worse and it's not terrible. But man, I really missed out lol. Sound and music are also well done and I found myself really enjoying each game's take on The Ezio's Family theme. 

The Stories: 

Each of the 3 games follows Ezio's Precursor Box from the Embers Movie. China stars Shao Jun around the 1520s returning with the box. The game follows her using the box to get herself caught and starting a revenge quest to kill the Tigers, a Group of Templars.

 

China's story is...... really bland to put it lightly. This is the most cookie cutter Assassin's Creed story I've ever experienced. Poor Shao has the standard revenge arc but the presentation and characterization are so basic that it's hard to be interested. Like, if I didn't know about the wider series, this story feels like it's a spinoff story to something. Like, this is the Assassin's Creed 2 Discovery to the main Assassin's Creed 2. But like, this is Shao's main game. This is supposed to be her Assassin's Creed 2 yet it feels like filler.

 

Part of the issue is that Shao gets very little to work with in this game. She gets little time to mourn her fellow Assassins following their purge. She has few characters to bounce off. She doesn't even get Ezio's box by the end (nor is the box used. Even AC Rogue at least got to use the Box). The most interesting part of this story was reading the collectible Codex Entries that describe Shao's backstory about Shao's origins as a concubine's daughter and how her agility and grace allowed her to be spared getting her feet bound, her relationships with other concubines, her life after the emperor died etc. This stuff is legitimately interesting. I'd love to see a movie based on these or play a full AC game that explores Shao's life. 

 

But Chronicles China is arguably set during the least interesting part of her life. Everything before the game shows her life as an Imperial Concubine, Spy and Assassin in training. And everything after the game would have shown her rebuilding the Assassin Brotherhood in China. Chronicles China is like if you made an AC game starring Ezio but only included Sequences 9, 10 and Discovery in the story.  Plus, for people who haven't watched Embers, I imagine the game's story and Shao's connection to Ezio would be confusing.

I really can't think of a way to improve the story aside from shifting when it takes place. Starting with a younger Shao and moving forward to her training, meeting with Ezio, briefly covering the events of the game itself and then showing her later life. But then that's out of scope for a spinoff like this. Maybe instead, she has an ally or someone she has a personal stake in?

 

The next game, Chronicles India, jumps around 300 years later. By this point, Ezio/Shao's box wound up in the West Indies, Adewale used it for a bit and it's in the possession of the Assassins. It ends up playing a role during the events of Assassin Rogue and by the end of that game, the Templars control it thanks to Shay. The box then ends up in the hands of British East India Company Templars in India using it to find Isu artifacts. And that's the stage for Chronicles India..... a game that seems very uninterested in the box that's supposed to connect it to Chronicles China.

 

India stars Arbaaz Mir as the main character. And at first, the story seems more interesting and has more going on. Arbaaz has a romantic relationship with Princess Pyara. Both of them, along with the Assassins are also investigating the Templars using the Box and the Koh-i-Noor Diamond to find more Isu sites. Arbaaz' adventure takes him across Punjab and parts of Afghanistan. As a character, Arbaaz is a lot more lively and charming and has more to interact with. I was hooked. I was expecting a story where Pyara, playing the role of a supposed "neutral civilian that looks the other way" facilitates opportunities for Arbaaz while Arbaaz does favours for her like investigating some rebels. Maybe even have a conflict where Arbaaz' loyalty to the Assassins may be at odds with what his lover, the Princess, wants.

 

But no. There's no real central arc or conflict for Arbaaz besides "get the box". His individual interactions with other characters and even Templars and British officers are engaging but that's it. Even the ending is while the Templars have kidnapped Pyara and Arbaaz has to trade the box for her, she just stabs her captor and they still lose the box. Arbaaz even says "oh well, other Assassins will deal with it". My man, why are you so uninterested in a magical artifact made by Time Travelling Super Aliens lol!

 

The final game, Chronicles Russia, jumps about 80 years to July 1918 to Russia. And this is easily the best story of the trilogy (not a high bar but still). We follow Nikolai Orelov. A veteran Assassin tasked with one final mission before he can flee Russia with his family. To recover this Isu Box from the Imperial Romanov Family. During his infiltration, revolutionaries (and some undercover Templars) storm the place and execute the royal family. The only survivor is Tsar Nicolas II's youngest daughter, Anastasia, who is in possession of the box. Orelov saves Anatasia but as he approaches her, his necklace and her box interact and hit Anastasia with the Bleeding Effect. Giving her the memories, personality and abilities of Shao Jun. Anastaisa ends up in a Bruce Banner/Hulk situation where in periods of stress, she "blacks out" somewhat and Shao Jun takes over. Anatasia has limited recollection and control over this.

 

Orelov takes pity on her and delays his plans in order to escort her to the Assassin Brotherhood in Moscow. While there, the Assassins pull a The Last of Us and schedule a surgery to extract Anastasia's brain, killing her in the process. Orelov overhears this and makes his way through the Assassin facilities, avoiding and fighting his former Assassin brothers who now have orders to kill him. The game ends with Orelov giving Anastasia the false documents originally intended for his wife and a new identity of Anna Anderson allowing her to leave and start a new life in Germany. The 2 tearfully part ways and Anastaia believes that she can now keep Shao Jun's memories under control.

 

First off, just as a premise for an AC game, this is absolute gold. Yeah, it resembles The Last of Us, but the idea of Anastasia grappling with Shao Jun's memories is so cool.  She's a playable character but can't KO enemies or carry bodies. She instead viciously stabs guards and even remarks how horrified at both what she's doing and how easy it is. Even mechanically, the Helix Abilities are integrated into the story. Orelov doesn't have access to any of them. But Anastasia does because she "blacks out" and doesn't remember how she somehow blended her way past so many guards and is amazed at this. From her perspective, she might as well be breaking all known laws of physics. We the player both use our experience from controlling Shao Jun back in Chronicles China and the Animus to help a character that has the abilities but feels like someone is puppeteering her. 

 

My biggest complaint is that the story barely goes past this premise. Imagine if this worked like a 2 souls/mind thing where Shao Jun and Anastasia were inhabiting the same body. You now have Shao Jun, teleported nearly 400 years into the future, into a strange new world, in a body she doesn't recognize, with a new Assassin Brotherhood that's more alien to her. How does she react and grapple with this? What about Anastasia? The royal now forced to inhabit this new personality? What about scenarios where the 2 personalities disagree? None of that ever happens in the story.

 

We also get little from Orelov here. How does he feel knowing he's next to a master assassin and technically his superior? The 2 never get to chat or discuss their lives and experiences as Assassins from different worlds.

 

The issue is the format of the game. Being a linear 2D side scroller, the game can't really accommodate both Orelov and Anastasia/Shao Jun at the same time. But even if this were a typical open world AC game, the format of the story is a Last of Us style Point A to B journey. So it wouldn't really work for that.

 

I suppose what I am saying is that out of these 3 Chronicles games, Russia is the most I want a remake or adaptation of. 

 

 

-Conclusion:

 

In closing, playing the Chronicles games casually was fun if frustrating in places. They do a great job in translating AC to linear 2D Side Scrollers. Their unique aesthetics and settings are cool and they focus more on Stealth and Platforming than their main series counterparts. But their more puzzle and trial and error design end up hurting the experience and is only worsened going for the Platinum. Needing to replay and grind so much became draining by the end. Worse is that their stories (aside from Russia) fail to be engaging or interesting. Often feeling like filler DLC. I don't think I'll ever play these games again.  If I wanted my fill of 2D Stealth, Mark of the Ninja and CounterSpy exist.

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory PS3 Platinum

 Hello everyone. I recently Platinumed the 2011 Remaster of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and wanted to talk about it.

 

I was surprised looking at the only Trophy Guide on PSNProfiles . It gave the game a 7/10 difficulty rating as well as stated this was the hardest classic SC game. Personally, I'd rate this as a 4/10 difficulty but maybe I am biased. I have been playing CT on and off again for years since it came out. Maybe a new player or one unfamiliar with stealth games would find it way more challenging. I'm also not complaining because this does give me something to flex on my cousins who platinum Souls games😤!

 

 To platinum this game, you need to do 3 playthroughs minimum, one on each difficulty as the difficulty trophies don't stack. So you can't play the game on Expert Difficulty and get the trophies for beating the game on Normal and Hard Difficulty. Though, to be fair, even if they did stack, I'd probably have done 3 playthroughs anyway. The game has 3 Gold Trophies that can get potentially bugged: "Makes you feel alive - Complete the game in Hard difficulty without being killed more than 5 times", "Greater Good - Achieve above 80% success rating in all missions" and "Immune - Complete the game without using medkit".  While the exact mechanism isn't clear, it's possible the game "remembers" mistakes that void these trophies even when you reload a prior save. The main culprit is probably the Quicksave/Quickload system as it might "continue to run in the background". So if you, for example, accidentally use a medkit and do a quickload, the game accidentally still remembers you use the medkit.

 

The suggestions to address this on the PSNProfiles guide are the following: 

• Delete the game data (for disc versions of the game) or delete/re-install the game (for PSN versions of the game).
• Delete the save data.
• Attempt these trophies on Normal difficulty.
• Attempt these trophies in one sitting.
• Attempt these trophies on another PS3 system.
• Both save and back up your saves regularly, as well as alternating backups between PS+ and a USB stick. Use this to cancel out your mistakes like dying 5 times.

 

My plan was the following:

 

Step 1: 

Delete my existing CT PS3 save data from my disc copy of the game. 

 

Step 2:

 Do a playthrough on Normal Difficulty and plan to hit the "Immune" and "Greater Good" Trophies. As well as any miscellaneous challenge trophies that don't involve killing people like  "Art of Unseen - Do not be detected throughout a mission", "Enhanced perception - Hack 10 terminals without scanning them", "Darkside - Disable 40 electronics using the OCP" etc as well as using saves to hit some of the story choice ones like "Not Today - Free yourself when captured", "Dead Man Hanging - Leave Morgenholt hanging", "Dignity and Honor - Free Morgenholt", "Price of Betrayal - Eliminate Douglas Shetland", " "Price of Friendship - Show mercy to Douglas Shetland".

I want to give a shout out to "Cold Duty - Sacrifice the Pilots as per order". I originally planned to save the Pilots first to get "Unsung Hero - Perform acts of untold heroism in Seoul" then reload my save and let the pilots die. But I messed up the timing and had the turret shoot at me, which killed the pilot I was carrying which caused the "Cold Duty" Trophy to pop first instead, saving me a trip.

"Worms - Hack 3 retinal scanners remotely" was an interesting one. The guide says there's only 4 retinal scanners in the entire game but there's actually 6. 1 in Bank in the laser room. 2 in Displace for the same hallway laser  for each direction. 1 in Battery as the entrance to the Meeting room. And 2 in Kokbuo Sosho where one is the entrance to the Server room and one in the server room to raise the servers. On Normal Difficulty, the timing on the first 3 are easy enough to hit without triggering alarms.

 

Normal Difficulty, at least for me, is easy enough that I can play almost every mission on autopilot at this point. There's a fair bit of wiggle room on how lit up/loud you can be before drawing attention from guards. This helps with the "Greater Good" trophy as you can lose anywhere from 5-10% score minimum from alerting NPCs and civilians are super sensitive and easy to alert which can lose up to 15%. It also makes it easier to hit optional and secondary objectives which are necessary to help keep you above 80%. You also have enough health to tank multiple shots so not being able to heal per mission is more than feasible. 

 

During my Normal Playthrough, I somehow managed to get 100% in every mission except Displace. The game glitched and counted the guard I knocked out before the retinal Scanner as a "found body" costing me 5%. Complete with alert music. My theory is that the guards trapped 1 floor below me had "vision" that extended slightly too high and were able to "see" the body. I'm lucky I was able to hit the Finicky Secondary Objective (seriously, it requires you to book it as soon as it's available, get in position and scan zoomed in. Be even a second late and it doesn't count😤). Saving me a 15% penalty.

 

 I was legitimately surprised I got Bathhouse and Seoul 100%. I was dreading them. I was prepared for that to be 82% or something because I had to use Sticky Shockers to eliminate the Thermal Vision Guards right next to each other. They even had dialogue that there's a body next to them but for some reason, the game didn't count it. I am not complaining. For the Bathhouse bomb defusal section, my strat was -1- Break the Lock when entering to slow down the first guard that spawns, then Sticky Shocker him and hide his body. -2-  Plant Sticky Cameras across the starting area to distract and stall the 2 other guards when they spawn. -3- Once I disable the 3rd bomb, run to the door, bash it open to KO the final guard right as he spawns, and book it to complete the mission with a 100% score somehow. Seoul was doable with 100% when using Smoke Bombs to distract turrets.

 

I feel the biggest worry I had here are the limited save slots. CT PS3 only gives you 3 manual save slots to alternate between. 2 regular and 1 quicksave/quickload which I had to avoid using to glitch the trophies. Bathhouse 100% with only 2 save slots was scary as at any point, I could lose points and not even realize it and not have a save slot far enough back to fix it.

Step 3: 

 Once I finished my first Normal Playthrough and got those associated Trophies, I then reloaded Missions 1, 2 and 7 to mop up all the miscellaneous kill/loud trophies that weren't feasible before like "Life's Edge - Neutralize 20 enemies with the combat knife", "Knock, Knock-out - Knock out 5 guards by bashing doors", "Good ol' Pump-action - Take out 5 guards with the shotgun".

Shout out to "Topsy turvy - Take out 5 guards from ledge or over the rail". From Memory, I figured there would require me to get to Mission 4 since there's 3-4 guards hanging close to railings. But no. There's 2 spots in Lighthouse funnily enough. One across the Bridge and 1 on the Lighthouse. And I was able to get 3 railing kills in Cargo Ship as on the top of the ship, those railings count. I did try fishing for Railing Kills earlier like in the starting area and Engine Room but apparently, those don't work for railing kills.

 

"Silent Death from above - Take out 5 enemies by inverted neck grip" was interesting. Off the top of my head, I only counted 2 possible places to pull this off in the entire game. But no. You can get 2 in Mission 1 in the room before Morgenholt. There is a pipe there! Plus 2 in Cargo Ship in the Pump Room. But.... this gave me the trophy? Even though I only did 4/5? I am not complaining. I had a backup spot in Mission 4 in the Bedroom as my 5th choice so it saves me a trip.

 

Step 4:

Delete my Save file entirely again. Now all I have left are the trophies for Hard and Expert Difficulty.

 

Step 5: 

Do a playthrough on Expert Difficulty. Seems odd to do an Expert Playthrough before a Hard One. But there's no other challenge aside from just beating it on Expert. So I took the chance to "chill" with an "easier" Expert Any% run before an "Hard with < 5 deaths" run.

 I did die/reload a lot on Expert because I was trying to rush through the game at this point but I was completing almost every mission in around 12-17 minutes each. The main challenge here is that if you are even slightly lit up or make even 1 more "loud sound than the environment", it makes nearby guards suspicious. You also die in 2-3 shots so it's often better to reload saves as you play through the mission.

But overall, since my goal was just to complete the game, it was a lot less stressful. I was able to go on "autopilot", Sticky Shocker and Ring Airfoil most enemies and zoom through a lot of the game while watching YouTube or TikTok Videos on the side. I can't skip the mandatory dialogue sections like you can on PC since that requires repeatedly quicksaving and quickloading. Even if that didn't glitch the trophies, the PS3 takes forever to quicksave and quickload so it might actually be faster to just tough out the dialogue sequences. It's funny imagining Brainrot Sam scrolling TikTok while Shetland and Otomo are giving their speeches lol.

I want to shout out the gas grenade. The "most useless gadget that ended up having some use here". As a stealth gadget, this is useless because it takes a few seconds to activate and this alerts guards and have them shoot at you. But as an "easy way to KO groups of guards", it's really good. If you can shoot this and get a hiding spot, this can potentially KO 3-4 guards, especially if it gets other guards to run into it without seeing the gas. With careful usage, this let me get through areas faster and safer than sneaking or manually knocking out guards.

Even Bathhouse was less stressful. I can use my Stick Shockers on the 3 guards in the shower room, then in the Bomb Room, break the lock and plant wall mines to kill the guards that investigate the broken lock and then dead body. It took a lot of attempts but was ultimately doable.

Step 6:

Delete my save file one final time. Now for the Hard Playthrough with < 5 deaths.

Step 7:

Going into this run, I had 4-5 "problem spots" I was worried of. The first Turret in Seoul, the "destroy the plane "section in Seoul since the guards and turret can sometimes shoot you even when you're way above them (I died a few times on my Expert run up there), Bathhouse showers and bomb room, and second last room in Kokbuo Sosho as you are in a time limit and the 3 guards that spawn can be a challenge if they see you. But as soon as I got into the laser hallway, the trophy might as well be mine. I was home free and the rest of the level was just muscle memory. The most stressful part there was just the worry the trophy had glitched.

I died 3 times on this run and in places I didn't expect. My first death was embarrassingly in Mission 2 in the Engine Room. I was distracted laughing at a Taylor Swift Blank Space TikTok that replaced the lyrics with gay so I didn't notice a guard creeping up on me and firing which caused the ship to blow up. That was terrible and I was genuinely considering deleting my save and starting again to restore my chances. But I pressed on. My second death was in Seoul but not where I was expecting. It was in the areas after the first portable radar. I was going too fast, made slightly too much noise and was shot dead by 3 guards before I could react.

My 3rd death was in Kokbuo Sosho. In the main atrium, I accidentally walked past a computer that was lit up, started getting shot at, and took too long to pause the game and reload a manual save so I died. I was actually worried now. Also, I had a hard crash going into Seoul 2. I was worried that would hurt my run.

Hard difficulty mostly wasn't too bad. Enemies were still faster to react to me but it's still more lenient than Expert. I could move through each mission in usually around 11-13 minutes (minus Bathhouse and Kokbuo Sosho which took around 20 minutes). All 3 of my deaths were because I was distracted or rushing so would have been easy to avoid. For the most part, this trophy might as well be called "beat Bathhouse and Seoul without dying more than 5 times" since those are the only missions with actually problematic sections where even a skilled player can mess up. 

 

Step 8: Probably delete my save again for the meme. 

 

After getting the platinum and thinking more on it, I feel CT PS3 might be the easiest SC game to platinum. The only other SC game I have all the achievements on is the PC version of Blacklist because Ubi retroactively added only the singleplayer achievements to it in an update (I also have all the singleplayer trophies in the PS3 version of Blacklist). 

 

CT, at least compared to its predecessors, is harder in a few ways. The Guard AI is smarter and isn't as easily distracted by whistling or thrown objects. Pandora Tomorrow can let you conga line enemies with whistles. CT also removes the pistol laser from PT and the SWAT Turn and corner aiming so headshots and panther style takedowns are harder in a few places. But by in large, CT's additions and improvements make the experience far more playable and even modern in many cases. The sound meter gives proper feedback on how much noise you and environment are making so you can probably use that info instead of just guessing. SC1 and PT didn't really have environmental sound masking your noise.

 

CT gives you instant melee takedowns with no strings attached, the Ring Airfoil and Sticky Cameras are way more powerful, the OCP can instantly and safely disable lights temporarily without alerting guards, a proper map that shows you primary objectives (even if it can be a bit cumbersome) etc. But moreover, the game is far less rigid and reliant on "one way trial and error". PT and SC1 had missions like the Oil Refinery and Submarine where you could easily make a single mistake without realizing it and get a mission failure like spooking one guard you had to grab with no workarounds.

 

CT almost always gives you primary objectives that can't be failed, or have multiple workarounds, or offer multiple chances. There aren't even any missions that fail you for getting spotted once and alarms also don't trigger mission fails. The game doesn't even dock marks for KOs like Double Agent V1. Another example, at the start of the Seoul Mission, you have to interrogate one of the NK Guards. It's your primary objective and if you kill or KO both of them, you get a mission fail. But the game tells you upfront you have to do that, have them literally on your path, they naturally move on their own into prime position to be interrogated, and there's 2 of them. Whereas PT would mission fail you if you spooked even one of them.  I'm just saying, when PT PS3 gave me a trophy for beating the game without dying, I was like "I literally died like 30 times this game lmao. Thanks for the trophy because I would never grind for that one on its own!"

 

As another example, if you kill the general and co in Battery, there's a computer nearby that contains the info to progress the mission. A lot of doors can be hacked or lockpicked instead needing to find the code or force a guard to open them. This is why the final parts of the Bathhouse and Seoul missions are often the low point of the game in terms of pure gameplay. It's CT briefly returning to the style of SC1 and PT where the game forces you into very specific and janky scenarios that have few ways to work around them.  

I think all this also makes CT arguably the most accessible SC game (aside from maybe Conviction and Blacklist). It being so lenient and generally polished makes it easier for a new player to learn the game and graduate to getting good enough to Platinum it. I could be wrong but I feel that, for a new player that never played SC before, once they get to grips with how sneaking and the general controls feel, a lot of other aspects of CT would probably click into place a lot easier.

 

I do feel that, it was a missed opportunity to not do more with the guard behaviour on Expert Difficulty. There's no "guards wake up and become alerted if you knock them out" system which would have been a great way to have the player weigh up their options between Ghosting, KOs and kills (which get rid of the enemy at the cost of your score). But at least it makes getting the platinum easier.

 

That being said, some of the difficulty from CT's platinum comes from the optional and secondary objectives that you have to hit to not lose 15-20% score. Many of which are well hidden or easy enough to overlook, especially for new players. Expert and Hard can be easy to die on, especially if you aren't aware of upcoming threats you should be ready to load a save on. But overall, compared to Blacklist's achievements, Blacklist was like 30% memory/knowledge and 70% execution. Getting all the Assault Masteries was a test of my abilities and skills. I feel that even if I knew what was coming up, pulling it off was the hard part. Whereas CT is like, 40% execution and 60% memory/knowledge where just knowing what's coming up and how exactly it works generally helped way more than say, my reaction times and aiming skills. As sneaking, once you get the hang of it, is often sufficient for a lot of the game

 

I guess what I am trying to say is that Ubi retroactively adds these achievements to the PC version of CT and/or ports the game to PS4/PS5, I feel CT would be a fun game to platinum there as well (assuming the glitches were fixed). Most of the trophies are about beating the game and messing around with the cool moves Sam has, and the truly hard ones are doable with practice and patience. I certainly had a fun time with this platinum.

 

I platinummed the Tomb Raider PS3 Collection

Hello everyone, I recently platinummed the Tomb Raider PS3 collection, which consisted of Tomb Raider Legend (2006), Tomb Raider Anniversary (2007), and Tomb Raider Underworld (2008) and wanted to talk about it.

 

For the most part, I kinda had an inverted experience platinumming these games where actually platinumming them tended to be more fun than playing them casually.  These 3 games generally had 4 types of trophies:

 

-Mandatory Story Trophies: 

 

Which also include beating the games on the hardest difficulties. Fortunately, The hardest difficulty isn't all that hard since it only increases the damage that enemies do. The majority of these games is solo platforming and puzzle solving which aren't affected at all. Checkpoints are also quite common. My main advice here (and I know it sounds dumb but hear me out) is to save your health packs and don't use them except for really tough boss fights. Because when you die, you respawn at the last checkpoint with full health but no extra health packs.

 

-Collectible Trophies: 

Which are kinda mixed. Legend and Anniversary have a relatively small number of collectibles per level which are marked by coloured gems. But also have "relics" and golden collectibles which are hidden behind a puzzle or cool environmental challenge. Underworld makes these the most tedious as there are 180+ collectibles hidden in arbitrary vases you have to break. You can't see if a vase has a collectible until you break it. Say what you will about Uncharted but at least their 100+ collectibles are at least always in the environment as shiny objects you can see beforehand.

 

-Speed Run/Time Trials Trophies: 

Which are the most fun. Legend and Anniversary ask you to speedrun every level. I remember beating Legend, averaging around 1 hour 10 minutes per level, looking at the speedrun times and being flabbergasted at "how the hell am I supposed to beat this under 12 minutes!?" But the levels themselves are a lot more bite sized and manageable than they first appear. Once I memorized their layouts, it was really fun zooming through them and getting those times. Anniversary tended to have more strict times than Legend so I tended to just barely make under par. Except for Anniversary's final levels which either had massive sequence breaks or had generous times. Legend and Anniversary also let you use unlocked cheat codes without voiding trophies. Yeah, this could make the trials easier but also felt like a bit of catharsis and I feel made the experience more enjoyable.

 

Note that when doing time trials, the game doesn't refund time when you die and have to load the last checkpoint. So the pressure was on.  Also, Underworld, unfortunately, doesn't have any speedrun trophies. The closest being 3 brief motorcycle sections that ask you to complete them quickly.

 

-Miscellaneous Challenge Trophies:

 

All 3 of these games have some mini challenges for certain sections of some levels. However, I found some of these to be buggy and frustrating for a few reasons.

 

The first is way these games handle saving. Before you beat the game, you can go into the pause menu and save the game and this prompts you to save/overwrite a save file like every other game. This save file also doubles as a checkpoint during levels. You also have an autosave that operates independently from the manual saves but cannot be manually loaded for some reason.

 

However, once you beat the game, the game takes way the ability to create manual save files. Instead when you save the game, it just "saves your profile". So it saves all the collectibles and time trials you did. But now you can't load save files as checkpoints so now, you have to beat the level in one sitting to progress.

 

Take Anniversary's "Lightning Never Strikes Twice -  Complete the Hephaestus room in Greece without being struck by lightning" trophy. I missed this trophy during my first playthrough. I incorrectly assumed when I replayed the game, I could just load my save and retry it since that's how it worked for every other PS2 game from the time. But when I finished the game, I found that if I had to retry this section, I'd have to quit out of the entire game and replay 10-ish minutes of progress of this level to get back to this section ..... or just let the lightning kill me so I could try again?

 

Another rough trophy was Anniversary's "Central Shaft Survivor - Complete the central shaft in the Lost Island without dying". If you played this section before beating the game, you could quickly reload a save as the game creates autosaves on every platform saving you needing to replay the entire level from scratch. But since I messed up and beat the game first, I had to replay the level every time I messed up. Made worse because the flying enemies had projectiles that could stun lock me and send me flying off the platform to my death 🙃. The platforming was also finicky and on a time limit so it was easy to mess up and fall to my death. The only solace was that it was only 10 minutes per attempt.

 

Legend only has 1 buggy challenge trophy. "Biggest Bang for the Buck - Blow up 2 mercenaries with 1 propane tank while riding the motorcycle". I never got this during my main playthrough because the game's auto aim was far more efficient at tearing through enemies. But depending on how you replay the level, it bugs the trophy out. I did a replay on Easy Difficulty and blew up 4+ enemies with propane tanks multiple times on 2 different levels and didn't get the trophy. I was prepared to delete my save and try again on a fresh file since that apparently had the best success. On a whim, I reloaded the Bolivia level on Speedrun mode and tried it and somehow got the trophy on the first attempt.

 

For Underworld, it's recommended to get all the misc challenge trophies, especially those involving combat, on your first playthrough since it both carries this same save system and also, once you beat the game, the game enters "Treasure Hunter Mode" where enemies don't spawn. I learned my lesson from Anniversary and Legend.

 

That's my overiew of my experience platinumming the games, as for the games themselves, they're ..... fine?

 

I have very little experience with the Tomb Raider games. I played a bit of TR 2013 back in 2015 on Mac since it was on the Mac App Store. I remember it being kinda fun. Ah the memories of having to press Alt/Option to aim since Apple Magic Mouses didn't let you left and right click at the same time.  I also played a few hours of Shadow back in 2019 when it was free on PS+ but I remember bouncing off it. So for all intents and purposes, Legend, Anniversary and Underworld are my first and most comprehensive TR experience.

 

Legend, Anniversary and Underworld, if I had to describe them, feel like a hybrid between Prince of Persia Sands of Time and "Uncharted before Uncharted". Now I know why people called Uncharted 1 "Dude Raider" when it first came out lol. The resemblance is there. All 3 games have main character Lara navigate through generally linear levels set in exotic locations, mostly platforming and puzzle solving with brief spurts of combat.

 

Platforming in these TR games is ..... finicky. Let me first discuss how platforming works in other games. In Prince of Persia Sands of Time, your jumps are always manual and consistent. The Prince will always jump a set distance no matter what. Moreover, if his model collides with anything while airbourne, be it a ledge, wall, pole, column etc, he'll interact with it every time no matter what. Plus, the controls are entirely character dependent and not camera dependent. The Prince will jump and wall run in the direction he is facing. He will always wall jump perpendicular to the wall he was on when you press X. As a result, a lot of the platforming is based on timing, reaction, positioning and speed. For example, You have to wall run and jump at the correct time and move quickly to get through a section, giving the game a nice sense of flow.

 

In Uncharted and Assassin's Creed 1, platforming is a lot more scripted. While you can manually jump and climb, the game uses invisible assists before you jump which guide where you land. In Uncharted, this is most evident in the game Golden Abyss, where you can make Nate make a 15ft long jump from a standstill in one section when he normally can't make even half that if you jump without running like the game wants you do. And in Assassin's Creed 1, just run around normally and you'll see the game adjust your jumps so you grab a pole or stick to a wall or fling you off.

 

While this sounds like it could be frustrating, both these games offer ways to mitigate that. In Uncharted's case, the assists pretty much never fail. You won't have a situation where Nate fails to grab onto a ledge he collides into as he jumps. Even going back to that 15ft standstill jump in Golden Abyss, the cutscene before this tells Nate he has to do a running jump but the system only checks if you are jumping in the general direction at a certain point and does the rest. 

 

In Assassin's Creed 1, the game has a "ledge grab/breakfall/grasp" mechanic where holding O when airbourne has your character reach their hand out and grab onto whatever they come across. So if you make a jump and your character misses the ledge, pole or wall, you can use ledge grab to correct for the automated jumps. And the ledge grab is really generous. You can fall off a building and ledge grasp at the last second to break your fall and continue on like nothing happened. And this is the key to why parkouring in older ACs is so much fun.

 

This brings us to these Tomb Raider games. The levels seem designed for Sands of Time style platforming where the player has full control of their moves and will automatically grab onto ledges they are in contact with. However, the platforming system itself feels like an unrefined version of the auto-assists that Uncharted and Assassin's Creed would later use. If you jump at a wall or rope and Lara didn't jump from the correct initial starting point, she won't grab the ledge or rope even if her model collides with it or it's otherwise within range. And this leeway with what counts as the correct initial starting point can be inconsistent. I've had scenarios where Lara can jump vertically what feels like 10 ft to reach a ledge above her from a standstill but fail to grab onto a pole that's 6 ft up she could have grabbed with her hands. Generally speaking in most typical platforming sections, I generally had around 80-85% confidence I could make most jumps.

 

The worst example of this were the wall rope swing jumps in Anniversary. The way these work is that you jump and shoot out your grappling hook and use it to run along a wall, gaining speed and height so you can jump. You can either jump parallel along the wall which works almost every time. But you can also jump perpendicular off the wall and these had me praying to all 431 deities listed on Wikipedia every time I had to do this. These seem dependent on Lara's exact positioning before she jumps, her speed before jumping, how long you hold X and where you position the left stick relative to the camera before you jump. That one jump in the last section of the Egyptian Level was so frustrating as it took me nearly 7 tries before I got it. Even the speedrun guide I was watching took 3 tries to get it! Lara would usually jump parallel to the wall forward or backward rather than perpendicular off.

 

My main strat, which usually had around a 60-70% success rate was to try and position the camera flat behind Lara, wait until Lara begins to start running back on the wall, position the left stick as perpendicular to the wall as I could, pray and then press X. I'd have killed for a proper manual wall eject and ledge grab Assassin's Creed 1 style. Anniversary does add in a "Manual Grab" option you can toggle where holding R2 when airbourne has automatically Lara reach out for nearby ledges and automatically release when you let go of R2. But this doesn't really solve the issue.  The way this "actually automatic" Manual Grab works is it assumes that the issue is that Lara would grab things when the player didn't mean to. Which is the opposite of the real issue where we need something to address situations when Lara doesn't grab something the player wants her to. I'd have it that when holding R2 when Airbourne, Lara reaches out and grabs anything she comes in contact with. And not Holding R2 has the system work as is. That would at least address a lot of the minor inconsistencies.

 

I found platforming in Underworld to be the most straightforward. It arguably has the most interesting mechanics with being able to carry around poles which can be used for both combat and climbing, being able to side eject and wall jump, and more robust swinging mechanics. But the game rarely gets interesting platforming sections. And it doesn't even have any speedrunning trophies to make up for it.  I will also complain slowly climbing walls is rather tedious.

 

Combat:

 

Typically in all 3 games, the combat controls somewhat remind me of Ratchet and Clank. You lock onto targets with L1 (L2 in Underworld), and auto fire at them with R1 (R2 in Underworld). Lara can dodge, side and back flip is quite mobile. There's no cover system at all and there's only a handful of weapons with clear roles.

 

Combat in Legend, even at the highest difficulty, is kinda mindless. It's simple enough to strafe around most enemy guards and trade shots and/or fire until they are dead. Most of Lara's cool movement options don't seem to play a role. The only exception is the boss fight against Takamodo. His boss fight has him firing relatively slow projectiles at Lara at different heights. So you have to roll under the high ones, jump over the low ones and stay close to deal damage with your short range guns. It was the only combat encounter where I felt the combat system was at its most fun.

 

Anniversary actually improves combat significantly despite being mostly the same. Now, all of Lara's enemies are animals or monsters that charge her and take a lot of damage so you actually have to dodge and jump around to avoid getting swarmed and hit stunned. There's also a mechanic where if you deal enough damage to an enemy in a short timeframe, they "get enraged" and charge Lara. If you time a dodge and shot right, you can 1 shot the enemy. So combat becomes this dance of dodging around enemies, dealing damage, enraging them and going for the quick kill. It's actually really fun. However, the final levels tended to make it more frustrating with how many enemies it spams.

 

Underworld..... kinda walks back all these improvements. The cool dodge/1 shot mechanic is gone. Most human and non human enemies require strafing and shooting. Underworld's additions are that Lara can now shoot 2 enemies at the same time when duel wielding, and can do a slow mo aiming mini game to 1 shot an enemy after filling up an "Adrenaline bar" by dealing damage.  Mjolnir was kinda fun to use but ultimately, combat in this game felt like padding.

 

Story/Narrative:

 

All 3 games' stories were.... kinda there I guess? 

In Legend, Lara does have her crew with Alastair and Zip on the radio. Their banter was fine if a bit forgettable to the point I couldn't tell who was Alastair or Zip. I did find their cheers during motorcycle chases to be a bit annoying. 

 

Funnily, I feel Legend' story feels a bit flat because Lara doesn't talk enough. Or rather, she doesn't really vocalize her feelings and thoughts. There's no journal where she writes her thoughts so instead it feels like she's zooming past the monster or the fact Amanda is back or that Lara learns about her mother. It's like I am watching a summary of a story where the story glosses over any monologues or thoughts.

 

Anniversary is technically "worse" in this regard. There's no Zip or Alastair so Lara is silent for what feels like hours at a time. I feel having a button I could press to have Lara give some Prince of Persia style narration or monolouging would have helped flesh her out. A major aspect of this story is that in the final set of levels, Lara murders for the first time in her life. And the villain, Natla, is using this as a means to bring Lara over. The idea that Lara is struggling with her morality and this is the case that makes her become more of an antihero than the more "noble" explorer she was back at the start of the game is cool. But the story never gets to explore it until the last set of levels.

 

Underworld feels like a more dramatic and bigger production version of Legend. The story is a bit darker and seems to have a theme of "how far will Lara go? How much of her friends will she push away or sacrifice in pursuit of her goals?" Which is interesting when I first started playing it. I was like "oh yeah, now the story is getting somewhere". But I don't know, it ends up feeling kinda..... there by the end.

 

I think it's because the game doesn't really get to explore or push these plot beats or extract much drama out of them. As an example, Lara's doppelganger sneaks into Croft Manor, kills Alastair, blows up Croft Manor, steals  from Lara and leaves. From a storytelling perspective, this seems like gold. This should be Lara's lowest emotional point. Her friends and allies should be shaken after this. Maybe Zip now berates Lara for how pursuing all this endangered them and got Alastair killed. Leading to Lara only pushing everyone else away and pursuing Amanda alone to avoid endangering anyone else. Meanwhile, her doppleganger ruins Lara's reputation so she no longer has access to her usual contacts and resources. 

But no, it's more business as usual for Lara. You don't get the sense all that stuff happened in the previous level. At the least Underworld finally added a journal and it's kinda interesting.

 

 

-Graphics and Presentation:

 

Legend and Anniversary look pretty good as PS2 games. Eyeballing it, they seem to be running at 60 FPS. I didn't notice any frame drops and performance issues. The UI and Menus all look really clean and cool.  The games felt a bit unpolished with some animations and movement. Especially in Underworld when Lara is falling.

 

Underworld looks fantastic. I was like "this looks better than Uncharted 1. There is no way in hell this is a PS2 game". And I was correct. This collection has the PS3 version rather than the PS2 version which looks on par with Legend/Anniversary. Even the UI is pretty slick and easily my favourite. I love the PDA and sonar map. It's not very useful but it's cool. I wish it showed collectibles or something so I wouldn't have had to use a walkthrough so much.

 

Music in all 3 games is.... fine (except Legend main theme. That was sick!). Can't recall anything particular. Voice Acting and performances all seem pretty good as well. 

I also want to add that Underworld, for whatever reason, keeps trying to push the camera behind and below Lara when you sprint. The game would rather have you staring at Lara's ass than seeing what you are running into. I had to practically counter the recoil of the camera when I was running more than the recoil of guns in other shooters lol.

 

-Closing:

 

 

Overall, I walked away liking the platinum chase more than the casual playthrough, especially in Legend and Anniversary. Learning the routes, abusing the level knowledge, and shaving time off runs was the most “alive” these games felt, because it turns their linear design into a puzzle you can solve faster each attempt. 

 

Underworld is the odd one out: it looks the best and has the moodiest presentation, but it doesn’t do much with it. The combat feels like padding, the platforming tools rarely get pushed, and even big story beats don’t stick

 

If you’re here for trophies: I’d recommend the collection for Legend/Anniversary time trials alone, and I’d only recommend Underworld if you specifically want a straightforward platinum.

 

My next platinum review will be for the PS3 version of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. See you then. 

GTA4 and its DLC

 Hello everyone. I recently got a copy of GTA4 Complete Edition for my PS3 and wish to talk about it. I haven't played the game since it first came out. I remember me and my dad messing around with it when it first came out. Good times.

 

For those who don't want to read this and want a TLDR: I enjoyed GTA4 and TBoGT DLC. Didn't enjoy TLaD DLC as much. Liked the story, world and details. Felt the lack of checkpoints and rigid mission design hurt the game. Still would recommend the game(s).

 

Now for the super long review: 

When I first booted up the game now and started playing the first mission,  what immediately struck me (aside from how despite the kinda rough looking graphics but really solid animations and details) was how whack the driving physics are. GTA4, compared to its successors and predecessors, is an outlier by having really heavy and grounded driving physics. Cars take a while to get up to top speed, understeer hard, and can be a challenge to weave in between traffic. I remember in the starting area, intentionally making a super slow left turn at an intersection in the starter car and only barely making it and thinking "holy smokes. I feel driving IRL is easier lmao". I remember there was even a Reddit Post a while back that compared GTA4's Driving to an equivalent car in Assetto Corsa and the Sim Racer handled the car better and easier lol. GTA4 cars lack downforce and have way bouncier suspensions.

 

Still, I can see the appeal of this made by GTA4 fans and even agree with some of them. The heavier physics mean driving from point A to B is actually kinda challenging. In GTAV for example, you have super arcade-y driving physics where even large trucks can turn on a dime and weave through traffic. GTA4's approach mean something simple like going to a place weaving through traffic can be rewarding because of the effort and skill required to pull it off. Moreover, cars seem to transfer more momentum which makes collisions more impactful (as well as individual vehicles feeling more distinct to drive). Crashing a large van into a smaller car and seeing the damage and crumpled cars looks gnarly. More intense damage can even start affecting the car by misalligning tires and changing its shape. I recall the PS3 version of GTAV having somewhat similar car deformation but not the PS4 version in order to accommodate car interiors.

 

In fact, GTA4 has some of the most impressive dynamic animations and ragdoll physics and details I've ever seen in games. You slightly bonk or get bonked by a car and the NPC will reach out and properly balance themselves in response. Shooting enemies has them tumble and react in more elaborate ways. Even fires and explosions seem more punchy and believable compared to other games (especially car fires).

 

But back to the driving physics, I won't deny it isn't satisfying at times. I remember one of the later optional Most Wanted Missions where I had to catch a fleeing car where my car's tires got blown out and I had to drive backwards, do a perfect J-turn and resume shooting at the car. It felt really cool. Especially as I could see my target car swerving with busted tires. There was this sense of "we're both playing with the same rules yet I outperformed you".

 

But at the same time, even with the eventual fun and my improvements, it never felt "fully comfortable" to me. It's hard to describe. Imagine you're playing Sonic The Hedgehog 1 and you're in Marble Zone after Green Hill Zone. Even though you can clear the zone pretty fast now, it doesn't feel great to actually play through since it lacks the open ended speed of other Sonic 1 levels.  That's kinda how I felt driving in GTA4. I never felt "one with the controls" as it were.

 

 I'm reminded of a video by YouTuber Whitelight who talked about how the map in a driving game should match the driving physics for the best possible results between game feel and gameplay. Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2010 had really heavy highway based driving physics because the game focussed on highway driving. Cars took a while to get up to top speed and turning was more challenging but it fit what the game was going for. Meanwhile, 2012's Need for Speed Most Wanted kept the same driving physics from Hot Pursuit but set the game in a city resulting in a more frustrating experience. City based driving games typically require more arcade-y physics to compensate for the more narrow grid-like layouts. That's why games like GTAV, Saints Row and Simpsons Hit and Run have the driving physics that they do. They expect the player to be crashing out, getting into pursuits, racing, driving through dense and narrow city streets, doing drive-bys etc as well as frequently swapping cars. So the physics are designed to compliment that and make it more fun to do.

 

I suspect this is why GTA4's driving physics never fully clicked for me and why I began to prefer using Taxis more to fast travel as the game went on. The map seems designed for a more arcade-y style but the driving is more realistic leading to a bit of a mismatch. And I imagine the case for all the people that complained about GTA4's driving over the years. Moreover, it's odd because this is the only core gameplay system in GTA4 that is so demanding and "realistic". Gunplay, melee combat, stealth etc, don't require the player to account for bullet drop, heavy recoil, proper firing techniques and precision etc. I would have preferred if GTA4 picked a lane. Be that more grounded almost sim-like GTA where driving and combat required a more thoughtful approach, or be like other GTAs and be more arcade-y. In any case, I do feel the best option for a GTA6 would be GTAV's general model with some of the aspects from GTA4. Give me more distinct vehicle handling with more deformation and more apparent momentum.

 

 I will note that gunplay in GTA4 is probably my favourite iteration of gunplay in any of Rockstar's open world games. In GTAV and RDR2, the gunplay there was built almost entirely around the auto-aim system. Hold L2 to lock onto the target, flick the right stick up slightly and press R2 to get easy headshots. Even Body shots were also quite good as the auto-aim was too helpful. It was too easy to "autopilot" my way through shootouts.

 

GTA4, despite using an auto-aim system that would be the basis of future Rockstar open world games, makes a few smart decisions with it. For one, fully holding L2 to use the auto-aim has it target the body of the target. Firing at a target continuously increases the reticule and makes shots less accurate. Moreover, if a target takes cover, the auto-aim will still target their covered body. Enemies in cover like to pop in and out quickly in cover.  Your character takes a second to pop out of cover so trying to auto-aim fire a covered enemy can waste more time and leave you exposed.

 

If you half press L2, you enter a free aim that with no aim-assist lets you aim more precisely. So you can use this to manually target heads and limbs sticking out of cover. As I played the game, I alternated between the 3 kinds of shooting depending on the situation, Just R2 for blind/hip fire, full press L2 for auto-aim shots, and half-press L2s for precise headshots from behind cover. While not the most fun 3rd person shooter gameplay in the world, I was more entertained than I was in GTAV and RDR2's shootouts. I guess it also feels more in-line with my character since as I am being more dexterous with half holding L2, they are aiming more precisely?

 

The controls are a bit finicky here. I like that  you have a dedicated crouch button with L3 and a dedicated "take cover" button with R1 that even lets you do stuff like cover change. But sometimes, pressing R1 to leave cover was inconsistent or had my character take cover on something else. The weapon switching controls are a weird hybrid between the Dpad switching of prior GTAs and the weapon wheel of GTAV/RDR2. In GTA4, You can use the Dpad to cycle between all your weapons. But you can also use L1+ Dpad to quick select between a pistol, sidearm, grenade and rifle. This is an area GTAV and RDR2 improved on. Just having a weapon wheel with L1 lets you more precisely pick the weapon you want, have even more equipment, and frees up the regular Dpad. My other main gripe with the controls is the "mashing X to sprint"  that's been a thing in every Rockstar open world game. I really dislike this. It feels annoying and tires me out. Let me just hold X or press L3 to sprint like every other game 😤.

 

As I played GTA4 more, I was reminded of a review of the game by Shamus Young and NakeyJakey. They both pointed out how Rockstar's rather rigid and linear mission design hindered their games. GTA4 is a really interesting sandbox with a ton of cool mechanics. You can pick up and throw bricks and bottles. But there's only one early game mission that requires you do it. After that, bottles and bricks never come up again. You can find them in the open world but there's no place to use them. You can pull over cars by using the sirens of a stolen police car. There's a mission that teaches you this mechanic to pull over vans. But no future missions where you have to stop a fleeing vehicle let you use this mechanic.

 

The game has a pretty cool melee system with disarms and counters and pushes that can play nicely with stealth. But after the early game, melee is useless because combat encounters require guns and cars.  There's a mission with Packie where Niko has to climb around a building to get the drop on enemies but combat arenas no longer feature ledges you can use to climb around. There's a mission in the L&D DLC where you can call your allies to cover the rear entrance of a house while you can throw a grenade through a window to flush the target out. But no other strongholds ever incorporate this mechanic.

 

 Aside from hurting replayability, the game's rigid adherence to a strict order during missions can also make the game frustrating in some places. Missions don't have checkpoints. I remember there was mission for Ray Pegerino where you escort him to a meet up with a pretty long drive, the meet up goes wrong, you need to shoot your way through a lot of heavily armed guards to get to Rey, then get in a car and help him chase down another car with some diamonds he wants. The game paints the target car as red and instructs you to take out like you do in other missions. I began firing at it with my Uzi. When the car blew up, I got a mission fail because it also destroyed the diamonds.

 

 The "correct" play was to simply follow the car until it crashed, the occupants ejected out so I could shoot them, then nab the diamonds, get back in Rey's car and drive him home. I dislike this because there are chasing missions where you have to shoot the car to damage it to get the occupants to bail so you can finish them off. But there are also missions where you have to follow the target car or bike to a certain point but they are immune to your bullets. And there are missions where you have to follow the target car or bike to a certain point but they aren't immune to your bullets. If you choose wrong, you risk failing the mission and have to restart from the very beginning. GTA4 offers a "quick restart" option to let you instantly restart the mission but it doesn't refund any of the armour or ammo you lost during the mission. You could load a save to get your equipment back but then you have to drive all the way back to the mission start point.

 

This Rey Pegerino mission stood out to me in a few ways. I had already failed the mission once before by not noticing an enemy and getting shredded. On my second attempt, I played it all the way to the chase and failed by blowing up the target car because I had no way of knowing I was just supposed to follow it. On my 3rd attempt, I got impatient and tried rushing through it and died again. On my 4th attempt, I took the time to go buy ammo and armour, then  I played it nice and slowly and got it. I felt more annoyed after this mission. Repeating the same drives, listening to 2-3 different versions of the same dialogue but then the same dialogue, redoing the same shootouts. 

GTA4's lack of checkpoints and rigid mission design, aside from being frustrating and annoying, also discourage replayability and experimentation. I remember in GTAV, during even simple missions like "The Ballad of Rocco", I was exploring around the building, looking for other ways up and not minding that I got a mission fail because the mission had pretty generous checkpoints. Even during firefights, I found myself playing more aggressively and getting closer with enemies or using explosives. In GTA4, I found that the more I played, the more cautious I became. I started maining the sniper rifle and AK47 as their longer range let me deal with many enemy areas safer from a distance. I started using Taxis to skip the drives even during missions. Even GTA4 seems to recognize this. The last story mission actually has a checkpoint in it after the long drive. The DLCs even include regular checkpoints in missions (although they don't refund any spent resources but it's still a huge boon).

 

I will talk now a bit about the PS3 version I played. I've heard that the best version of the game might be the Xbox 360 version. The PC version has issues with performance and stability, especially at higher FPS, as well as having some songs and licensed content removed. I played the physical Complete Edition Greatest Hits Disc at version 1.06. This version has..... some issues. The framerate is especially rough especially when you start driving or getting into large firefights with explosions. It feels like it drops below 20 FPS when you hit max speed in cars or get multiple explosions. I also had around 3 instances of hitting an invisible building, pole and car that then loaded in a few seconds later. When flying in a helicopter, some buildings remained with their low quality textures for a really long time (more of a funny thing when that happened lol).

I didn't encounter too many major bugs/glitches except for the mission Paper Trail which gave me a fear of helicopters.

 

With this mission, I noted that when I received the Phone call for it from U L Paper, there was no audio from the phone call that starts the mission. I went to the helicopter and again, no dialogue. I followed the target helicopter and even the radio was silent. When I was right above the water right before the target helicopter escapes, Little Jacob pops out, fired one RPG, missed, and I got the mission fail for letting the target escape. I retried the mission and the same thing happened. I figured I had to line up with the target perfectly so Little Jacob's 1 shot would hit. This was an oddly challenging and strict mission.

 

That's how I spent the next 2 hours. Repeating this mission over and over again. Trying different strats and flying more perfectly. I put on the Bright Sessions Podcast to make the attempts more bearable. I thought to myself "I would kill to have Big Smoke from GTASA here with me instead of Little Jacob. Even he was a better shot". I looked up walkthroughs and forum posts and nothing helped. They all said "the mission is fine, just fly slightly ahead and to the side and you'll get it first try. Just get good". I was bamboozled. What's going on? Shouldn't this be the most frustrating mission in GTA history? Why is nobody complaining about this? Worse was that I couldn't even go do other missions since the Call to Start this mission is mandatory. I noted that when I tried quitting out.

 

Finally, I found a GameFAQs post that noted the audio issues for this mission and recommended NOT to load your save. It advised shutting down your system and booting it up entirely. I did so and all of a sudden, the mission had proper dialogue and Little Jacob started firing as soon as we crossed the water rather at the last possible second. He fired 3 rockets and the 3rd one got the target helicopter. Words could not describe how overjoyed I was.  I was not looking forward to having to restart my PS3 every time I wanted to retry this mission. Reading up further, this bug seems to be caused by reloading your saves frequently and saving over that. Something I was doing a lot of since I was gunning for the trophy to beat the game under 30 hours 😬.  Fortunately, the game never did anything like this again but I can't say I wasn't very worried.

 

Moving on from all that and talking more positively about the world, GTA4 may be 16 years old, but it still feels like a big budget game. You can feel it in all the random vocal barks NPCs have as you walk the streets. How you can have conversations with Taxi Drivers. The wealth of dialogue during hangouts. How extensive the in-game internet and radio are. I remember reading that Rockstar did research on the demographics and car dealerships in IRL New York so in-game locations had an accurate depiction of people and their cars. Which is why Sports cars are rare in the game compared to GTAV. You can walk into restaurants and order food and eat it.

 

Moreover, playing the game in 2025, it feels like such a time capsule of 2008. From the culture, the advertisements, how its in-game internet depicts chat rooms and websites, the phones you use, the radio having conservative pundits talk about hot button 2008 issues like terrorism, gay rights and immigration etc. You know how like, Assassin's Creed 2 was made to replicate 1450's Florence in intricate detail as a historical piece? GTA4 feels like that but for 2008 New York. Apparently TV Tropes calls this an "Unintentional Period Piece" where "Many works that are intended to be "contemporary" end up displaying so many cultural quirks that later audiences mistake it for a deliberate exaggeration of the era by a work made much later".  I feel that describes GTA4 well.

 

Part of that is the usual satire GTA games are known for but it has more of a narrative purpose as well. You play as Niko Belic, an immigrant who is new to Liberty City. The game was designed to highlight how "over the top" this place is for a newcomer. Niko even comments on the shallow materialism of the Liberty City residents. So the satire here plays double duty in putting you in Niko's shoes by seeing how weird yet believable this place is. 

 

I see a lot of comments from people hoping GTA6 takes after GTA4's darker and more grounded tone compared to GTAV. But I don't think that will be the case.  Recall that GTA games are inspired by the popular depictions, movies and cultures of the setting. GTA3 was rather dark and serious compared to GTA Vice City because a lot of stereotypical crime and action films depict New York as this gritty dark place. Makes sense that the 2 sorta modern GTA games set in New York would turn that grit up to 11. Conversely, GTA Vice City is a lot more wacky than GTA3 since Miami has that wacky depiction in popular media. GTAV is pretty wacky because the popular stereotype of Los Angeles is of this materialistic, celebrity obsessed place.

 

I suppose the point I am making is that GTA4's tone and world feel tailor made to a GTA game set in New York. I can't imagine a GTA game set in New York that would capture the same vibe if it was wacky like VC or V. Nor can I imagine GTA4's tone working well for GTAV or 6. It's the same way why Watch Dogs 1's gritty tone suits a more noire inspired game set in Chicago while Watch Dogs 2's more wacky tone fits a game set in a very 2016 Summer and techy San Francisco.

 

In terms of graphics and animations, GTA4 is surprisingly good. The mocap and performances during cutscenes is solid and you can really see emotions' on characters' faces as they talk. People move and act in lifelike ways. A lot of models are distinct in appearance and voice. The game's production values elevate it. 

I will complain there are a few aspects of GTA4's presentation I am not fond off. For one, a lot of cutscenes start and end with a "fade to black" before resuming gameplay or the next sequence which sorta kills my flow. Not as much of a problem in GTA3-SA since the version I now play on modern hardware load so fast that the fades are too brief to be noticeable. An GTAV rarely has fades like this. But in 4, the occasional 10-20 seconds load in place of cutscene transitions can be jarring and take me out of the experience. I suppose that is a technical issue and can't really be helped.

 

Another more severe issue is the lack of an OST. GTAV had a full on OST that played non-diegetic music during certain sequences which elevated the set pieces. For example, there are unique and subtle background tracks that play when you are doing the Jewellery Store Heist Loud or Smart. The Smart piece sounds a lot more "mischievous" for  lack of a better phrase which really adds to the act of sneaking to throw in a sleep grenade. GTA4, in contrast, is an awkwardly silent game when you are out of your car. A lot of cutscenes, shootouts, sneaking sections etc feel less impactful without accompanying music. This was also an issue in previous GTA games but feels more noticeable here given GTA4's otherwise stellar presentation.

 

This is also probably just me, but I kinda dislike how the radio host, Lazlow is depicted in this game. One of the things I liked about GTA3's radio was that Lazlow was kinda the "straight man" to the wackiness on the radio. Such as him arguing against the people that were blindly against phone use and the like. It acted as some nice contrast and grounded the game, making it feel oddly more real in a sense. GTA4 makes him just as wacky, unhinged and twisted as any typical satirical GTA character.  I suppose you could argue that Niko, Johnny and Luis are already the "straight men" here but they don't necessarily care about the wider world or aspects of Liberty City that don't immediately concern them. Having a "straight man" Lazlow trying to work through the wacky world of GTA4's radio would serve as some nice contrast. Plus, there's already a wacky and exaggerated conservative radio show so you'd have more variety. Have Lazlow be something of a reverse-JJJ where he is the rational one dealing with wacky and conspiratorial figures.

Moving on from this, I found myself entertained by GTA4 and its DLC's stories. The ways they interspersed, explored the criminal underworld of the setting, the themes of revenge. It's good stuff.

 

I do wonder if the game went a bit too far in accommodating its story by sacrificing its gameplay. I am not taking about Niko, Johnny or Luis going on shooting sprees when they are supposed to be more chill. I am talking more about certain gameplay limitations. 

For example, Niko barely has any customization options (either for him or his vehicles). There are no property you can purchase. Meaning by the halfway point, I had 700k+ and nothing to spend it on. I could easily top out my supplies every mission and burn them. Johnny in the L&D DLC can't even change his clothes and most of his missions require you drive a motorcycle. Narriatively, this makes sense. Niko doesn't care about luxury, fashion, flexing or splurging. He sees money as a means to an end at best. He is consumed by his quest for revenge. He doesn't even have a Visa or Green Card so he can't exactly buy property. Johnny is loyal to his fellow bikers and is a ride-or-die biker. He's not going to change his style or suddenly drive cars casually.

Some of this could actually be the result of budget and deadlines that happens to be explainable by the story. But still, I remember reading reviews and Gameasutra posts from 2009 about how “GTA4’s story is the wrong fit for a GTA game”. I wouldn’t go that far (except for L&D). But when GTA4 gets its inevitable re-release in 2028 or something, I feel its reputation will be a lot more mixed. You see a lot of YouTube videos and comments showing how GTA4 is better than GTAV by highlighting its physics, environmental interactions, animations etc. But when fans of GTAV (and likely GTA6) play a remaster of a GTA game with minimal player customization, zero car customization, no property or planes, and a much smaller map with a different driving experience than what most players expect, I expect the current public sentiment on GTA4 to shift. GTA4’s current reputation benefited from coming out when it did and being relatively inaccessible on modern hardware.

I do wish to speak about GTA4’s DLC. I was curious to check it out after years of people praising it. To put my biases upfront on the table, I am someone who is skeptical about any game’s Singleplayer DLC as I feel their structure can limit how integrated they can be with the base game. Paid Singleplayer DLC, by its nature, meant to be fragmented. The base game has to accommodate players who both have and don’t have the DLC. As a result, games are pressured to be designed in such a way where the DLC is somewhat disconnected from the base game so content from one may be limited in the other. There are exceptions to this. Cyberpunk 2077 and the Dark Souls games do a great job in structuring the DLC as part of the main game so you won’t even notice you’re playing DLC content or using DLC items in the base game. Something like Skyrim and Borderlands may have DLC that is disconnected from their main plots but act as expansive side areas and content that work well to compliment your playthrough to the point it’s hard to imagine the game without it.

On the other hand, you have Spider-Man 2018 where the DLC is accessed from a separate menu that includes its own exclusive progression and activities. The crimes you stop in the DLC don’t count towards crimes you stop in the base game. The exclusive bomb defusal activities don’t appear in the base game despite how much variety that could add. As a result, you have no reason to enter the DLC after you complete them. This is an example of what I mean when I say that paid singleplayer DLC can feel fragmented. If SM2018 came out in 2019 and had this DLC as part of the base game, then the content could have been integrated much better with the base game (see RDR2’s epilogue).

GTA4’s DLC unfortunately feels closer to the Spider-Man 2018 model. The DLCs are launched as separate games when you first launch the application similar to PS3 HD Collections. Their improvements and additions don’t carry over to each other or to the base game. For example, L&D’s automatic pistol, striker shotgun, grenade launcher or gang activities or even checkpoints don’t appear in base GTA4. TBoGT’s mission scoring and replay system and nightclubs don’t appear in either L&D or the base game. Conversely, content and progression from the base game like pigeons, strangers, Street Races, Most Wanted pursuits, Stunt Races/Flight Challenges, Assassination missions etc aren’t doable in the DLCs. You even have to make a completely separate save for the DLCs that shares slots with the base game. Something I learned the hard way when I accidentally overwrote my GTA4 base game save with a L&D save 😢.

This structure already caps a lot of the value of the DLCs. Let’s say you get tired of doing some of Johnny’s races and want to take a break doing Niko or Luis’ content. You can’t without exiting the application altogether. Once you complete a DLC, you have very little reason to return to it as the base game has more content. This is why I feel GTAV’s multiple protagonists worked better at least from an overall gameplay perspective. You had 3 characters sharing the same playthrough, world and general set of activities and you could quickly switch between them to access their exclusive content. Conversely, even though games like GTA LCS and VCS feel like expansion packs/remixes of GTA3 and VC but on the PSP, since they are full games that released after GTA3 and VC, they have content comparable to full games since they are meant to be entire standalone games rather than add-ons to already complete games.

I’m willing to acknowledge perhaps there were technical limitations, budget or time issues holding the GTA4 Complete experience back from a more integrated experience. After all, it was 2008 on 7th gen consoles. Even having DLC like this in the first place was likely an achievement. But in any case, it would help explain why the DLC underperformed. You’re not paying to add more content to the base game, you’re paying for a smaller standalone experience with a fraction of the content. That’s a tough sell.

As for the DLCs themselves, looking at them as standalone experiences,  I was a lot more mixed on TL&D. The early game was a bit dull with how you have to slowly follow your fellow Bikers in formation as you drive between locations. You know that one meme that’s like “I hate following missions where the guy you’re following moves slower than your run speed but faster than your walk speed”? That's how I felt during a lot of these missions. Sometimes, the mission would have the other bikers say “let’s race” so you can now zoom ahead to the destination. I found that a lot more entertaining. I wish I could trigger that manually. I play GTA games to zoom fast, not slowly follow NPCs.

The game tries to have some gameplay benefits to sticking in the correct biker formation by recovering your and your bike’s health and ammo and playing more dialogue but I never found these worthwhile. The game also tries to have something of a pseudo “Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood” system where your fellow bikers ride you, gain stats by doing missions with you, can die and need to be replaced etc. the idea is cool but I didn’t notice much benefits with the fodder recruits. The named crew members, Terry and Clay, can’t die and help in drawing fire just as well as new recruits. Plus they have unique set pieces and interactions in certain missions when you call them. I notice the game keeps reminding you to use them with text messages in missions. I suspect this is because playtesters forgot about them and just played these missions solo. 

I did use my fellow bikers more for discounted ammo restocks and delivering me bikes (which only worked around 60% of the time when I called them). But ultimately, I think the gameplay is too limited here to really feel a bond between brothers. The game even has a wall in your safehouse that memorializes fallen comrades that I barely noticed until way after the fact. 

I feel the bigger issue with the game is the player character. Johnny Klebitz is part of a motorcycle gang. A lot of the main and side missions require you to be on a bike. If you hop off your bike to steal a car, the game prompts you to return to your bike. Some side races and gang hideouts won’t even start unless you are on a bike. And some won’t spawn one for you. I remember wanting to do all the bike races in this game. But a lot of the time, when I arrived on my car and phoned Terry to deliver me a bike, he was unavailable. Requiring me to taxi back to the main safehouse, grab a bike and drive back to the race.

I question the value in making a Grand Theft Auto DLC that discourages the player from committing Grand Theft Auto. TL&D wants 90% of your vehicle use to be 1 of 4 kinds of bikes. I feel the appeal of a GTA game is the variety in scenarios, activities, vehicles and gameplay. The story and new weapons in TL&D are kinda cool. But the DLC as a whole wasn’t very fun to play. I don’t think I’ll be replaying this one.

 

TBoGT, on the other hand, was a lot more enjoyable. Maybe it was the lull after TLaD but I was vibing hard with TBoGT. I love the setup and premise. I like how the colours are shifted to be more colourful to represent Luis as a nightclub bouncer (though the colours can be hard to see on the full map. Dark Green for certain waypoints instead of Niko's bright pink is a bit hard to see exactly for me. The game uses both pink for main mission waypoints and red for enemies so it was hard at times to be 100% certain what I was walking into).

 

I really like the character of Luis and his story. Him juggling his life with his job and mom and estranged siblings plus His friends and their interactions felt genuine and relatable. Him being pulled apart by working with Tony and all the trouble it's causing him. I was invested. I also felt the crossover missions with Niko and Johnny's story were a lot more creative here with Luis using Yusuf's helicopter and tools rather than just doing another on-foot mission.

 

TBoGT also introduces more varied side missions than TLaD. You have more varied drug war missions, a fight club, base jumping and triathlons. This feels closer to a full fledged GTA game compared to TLaD (especially since being a Nightclub bouncer doesn't constrain the kinds of missions Luis can do). Like, if I had to guess, TBoGT, as a standalone game, feels like it has more fun content and variety and improved gameplay and controls than GTA3,VC  and CT combined. While also feeling like it has about 40% the content of base GTA4.

 

TBoGT also makes some nice improvements and additions. Missions can be replayed and have a scoring system/optional objectives encouraging you to do better (although the oddly precise objectives in some missions plus the lack of manual checkpoints in missions hurts this). Side missions like base jumping no longer require you bring in your own supplies (I hated this in TLaD). So you just get given a parachute instead of being blocked off until you bring your own.

 

I do have some complaints but most of them stem from TBoGT being a DLC. A DLC means it can't have the 90+ main missions that Niko had in the base game. Instead only having 26-ish. So the game has to speedrun a bit through Luis' family and friends' lives and how much danger he and his family is in now thanks to working with Tony. So around mission 24-ish when the Russian mafia tells Luis he has to kill Tony or everyone he knows and loves will also die, it lacks impact because it feels like we've skipped a few steps and are ignoring "show don't tell" because the DLC doesn't have the means to show that danger.

 

Like in GTAV, there is a mission where Micheal's family are attacked by Merriweather. Highlighting the danger that the villains pose to Micheal. Which is why the Deathwish mission feels so climactic. You get that payback. Imagine instead of that mission, Devin Weston just told Micheal his family could be in danger if he didn't work for him. Wouldn't feel as intense. That's what TBoGT does.

 

My other complaint is that TBoGT's additions also are isolated to just the DLC. They don't get retroactively added to the base game. So even though TBoGT adds parachutes, base jumping, drug wars, new weapon types and triathlons, you can't do them unless you are playing TBoGT. Conversely, you can't do the regular races, assassinations and Most Wanted missions from the base game in TBoGT. In addition, TBoGT inherits the same flaws GTA4's base game still has in the more rigid mission design and limited opportunities to use GTA4's bevy of mechanics in interesting ways. 

I suppose you could argue that it doesn't make sense for Niko to do triathlons or base jumping or for Luis to do Assassinations. But I feel it's better to have that inconsistency than have a TLaD situation where the game is less interesting as a whole because so many open world activities are sacrificed for the sake of the story. I feel most players would be glad at having more varied gameplay.

 

 Speaking of the side activities, I will also complain about the Drug Wars Side missions since you have to do 25 of them to get a trophy (although the game gives you more rewards up to 50). These work a bit like Radiant Quests in Skyrim. There's a couple "Mission Start points" all over the map. You go to one and it starts a random Drug Wars missions with different types such as "Hijack" (there's a stationary drug loaded vehicle, your friends remark how this will be easy, as soon as you steal it, it gives you a 2 star wanted level. You have to escape it and deliver the vehicle to a drop off point), "Convoy" (there's a moving car or boat. Get close to it and have your friends kill everyone so you can steal it and drop it off), "Stickup" (go to a spot and get in a firefight with a large number of gangsters. One of them has the drugs you need. Kill him to drop it and retrieve it and then drop it off), and "Stash" (there's a bag of drugs guarded by gangsters. Basically Stickup but you don't need to kill people until one drops it).

 

These missions can be kinda fun and pay out around $9000 per mission so can be a good way to grind money. Some scenarios can be kinda cool letting you steal helicopters. The dialogue can also be interesting and I had some fun moments seeing my friends draw aggro and die to give me a chance to escape with the drugs. The issue is if you are gunning for completionism. These missions start repeating quickly as there are only around 10 variations (being generous). You'll hear the same dialogue and see the same scenarios over and over again if you aim for the 25 for the trophy like me. And there are rewards for doing 50! Some of the Stickups and Stashes are also really challenging with gangsters with AK47s that can chase you down, shred your health and incapacitate your friends. I think I did around 32 of these missions in order to complete the 25 I needed for the trophy.

 

 The structure of these missions is also rough. The game treats these like proper missions, but doesn't do checkpoints. So if you mess up, you gotta go to a new Mission Start point and load a new Drug Wars Mission. I think this is an area Ubisoft's games do better. The Far Cry and Assassin's Creed games of the time have dynamic outposts you can just casually enter and clear without needing to launch a dedicated mission for them. If TBoGT structured Drug Wars as "hotspots" you can casually enter when off mission and bring backup, I feel they'd be more fun as activities you can do as you explore the open world.

 

The other side missions fare a lot better. For Base Jumping, you only need 15 for the trophy so they don't get as repetitive. They're also "static quests" as opposed to "Radiant Style quests" and offer some nice parachuting challenges as you glide through checkpoints and land on vehicles. I found these more enjoyable. Fight Club gets a bit more tedious since it's the same fights over and over again.

 

 

In closing, I really enjoyed my time with GTA4. I had some frustrating moments. The lack of checkpoints, rigid mission design and some control oddities mean I probably won't be doing replays of this game anytime soon. But I can see the appeal of GTA4. The story, world, tone and vibe of the game still stands strong. I'd recommend GTA4 and TBoGT. But you can skip TLaD and watch its cutscenes on YouTube. You won't miss as much. Still, I do hope this game gets a remaster so people can actually and comfortably play it in the modern day because despite everything, the game is a work of art.