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.