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.
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