These games make me hate my life

[PattyWhacker91]

I think I have some kind of psychological disorder. I am not enjoying these games, but I keep pushing through because I want to say I've beat them. I have beaten Tomb Raider 1 and 2 so far. Now I'm on the third game. I've played through none of the expansions. Every iteration after the first game seems to get progressively more unbearable. Most of the difficulty comes from trying to figure out where to go and wrestling with the controls. I could never tolerate the tank controls in the original Tomb Raider so I've switched to the modern controls, but I still cannot utilize moves with the original controls. Right now I'm a Lud's Gate in the third game. These London levels have just been pure hell so far. They really emphasize the problems within these games: confusing level design, bad camera angles, dark corridors, unresponsive controls etc. I thought it'd be fun to go back and check out Lara's origins, but I think I just want to give up now. I know video games have advanced significantly since the 90s, but I'm wondering how these games were so well received in the first place. What do you guys get out of these games? I'm curious as to why these games get such high praise.

[Scally]

Why force yourself to play if you don't like them? Is the sense of achievement that great? Take a break maybe and see if you feel like coming back later. For me it was the sense of exploration, discovery, history and story.

Don't give up on the original controls. They are part of the game design. Are you using keyboard or controller? Maybe try a different method.

The expansions are very good, you should try them. Especially lost artifact. Though it might hopefully get some more updates.

[567657544]

We have another crying baby here.
Tomorrow when you grow up and no longer need diapers, you will be able to play these games, You just have to postpone it for now.

[DarkMoe]

uninstall and play something else ? What is the purpose of the post ?

[elite_dude]

This game is not like square enix tomb raider...The original tomb raider games put you directly in to the field and go solve puzzles, fight and do hard jumps!...

For the camera sometime is annoying especially in small places... To fix that just press the look button to reset the camera.

Try to use modern controller with mouse and keyboard and you need to get used to it.

[SilviaMonti91]

I loved TR3 back in 1998, and played it when i was 8! I finished the game alone and without solutions so...where is the problem nowadays? :/

I don't know if you're playing with the keyboard or controller, but I suggest you to use keyboard. I think that is easier.
And press the Look Button when you don't like the camera angles that the game imposes on you

[Powellinho.72]

So basically what i get from this is your trying to make yourself feel better by trying to make the most of it, despite the fact your not enjoying it, because you will feel like you have wasted your money

I get it, but id say just move on, everybody cant enjoy everything.

[Teratus]

There's nothing wrong with giving up if you don't enjoy the games.
Whole point of games is to be fun after all, if you're not having fun then take a break or play something else.

There's plenty of games I will never play or will never play again for the same reason.
They're not fun to me, doesn't mean they're not fun to other people.

[Mayer]

Lud's Gate was way worse on the PSX, you couldn't see ♥♥♥♥.
I loved these games as a kid, but I used the Official Strategy guides heavily.

[PattyWhacker91]

I'm playing these games mostly out of pure curiosity. I know they were considered must play games for the original Playstation at the time. Tomb Raider games from Legend onward have been mostly enjoyable. When I heard about the remastered with the update visuals and controls, I wanted to go back and give these classic games a chance. However, anytime I start to get some type of enjoyment, it seems as though these games like to spit in my face.

The difficulty of these games are due to all the wrong reasons: blind jumps due to bad camera angles, camera abruptly changing causing me to fall into a pit of spikes, vehicles that are a pain to control, enemies that appear behind the player without warning, backtracking through the level because I forgot a key hidden inside a dark room, pressing switches that I have to guess what they do, think fast trial and error sections, so on and so on. I'm playing Tomb Raider 3 right now, and it's as if the developers of the game hated their lives and wanted to make the player feel miserable as they do. The London levels especially are truly some of the worst stages I've played in a video game for quite some time.

There's a part of me that just wants to keep pressing forward. I keep telling myself it's all going to be worth it in the end, but the amount of ♥♥♥♥ stew I need to chew through to reach that end is taking a toll on me mentally. I am just bewildered by the high praise these games. I just don't understand it. I can only imagine those who have nostalgia for these games are the only ones actually enjoying them. I guess I just want to reach out to other fellow gamers, vent my frustration, and try to understand where they're coming from if they enjoyed these games. Believe me, I want to say I'm enjoying these games, but in reality I'm just not.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

These games are a time capsule from when the industry didn't have standardized control schemes for every game. It wasn't like it is today where you can easily transfer familiarity with one control scheme to another. Every game controlled differently, and it was just normal that we'd have to struggle initially until our brains adapted. And even then the interfaces were arguably not ideal, but merely functional.

While "tank controls" are sort of an interface type you can divide games into, even that was still new and not quite transferable. (E.g. I wouldn't say if you were super comfortable with Tomb Raider that would transfer well to Resident Evil, etc.) The industry was still figuring out 3D camera control, as well.

As such, a lot of games from back then feel extremely counterintuitive for many players unless they lived through that evolution and are used to mode switching their brain between interfaces. You have to give your neuroplasticity a workout to get into some of these games today. I lived through it and even I have trouble with it sometimes lol. There's no shame in admitting that.

For Tomb Raider, I find it helps to imagine the game as a series of modular grids and more like interactive careful puzzles than action platformers.

That said, if you really want to go from struggling with it to enjoying it, you may have to do the other thing we did back then: play just this one game exclusively and exhaustively over and over and over again ad nauseum and iteratively adjust until it becomes second nature. No matter how clunky or bad one thought an interface was, adaptation eventually yielded results back then. It's just how it was.

You have to remember that the genesis of fully 3D graphics on consoles followed on the tail end of a long period of time where most of gaming consisted of 2D games you had to play repeatedly to memorize and suffer through a little more each time you play, often without saves. That was still sort of the mentality even as the N64 and PSX generation took off. Saving was a thing obviously, but that design mentality of, "Eh, people will just get better the more they play," was very much still in effect for action games early on.

While the modern control option in these remasters is arguably more intuitive than the original interface, the game hasn't been altered in any way to fully exploit that more contemporary interface. The difficulty, actual physics, animations, mechanics, spacing, etc. are all still intact. It's just the design philosophy of the time, and of this series.

This is not a "git gud" post, incidentally. Just an explanatory one. My position has always been and will always be that video games exist for enjoyment. That enjoyment can come in many forms.

The satisfaction of mastering an initially counterintuitive interface. The casual escapism of a visual novel. The atmosphere or vibes of an adventure game. The choice and consequence or in-your-head RP of a roleplaying game. The micromanagement of a strategy game. The immersion of a sim. The maddening addiction of trying to beat an incredibly hardcore game (Soulslikes are nothing - go play G'n'G without save states... :P YMMV of course.)

It just depends on the person. Not everyone is going to enjoy every one of those things. If, even with this context, you simply aren't enjoying yourself... it's okay to just play something else, too. I can't play fighting games! One of the quintessential genres of the medium, and I can't play them to save my life. 🤷‍♂️ It is what it is, and it's just video games. It's not that serious. First and foremost: entertain yourself. Whether that's with this game, or something else.

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by PattyWhacker91:

I think I have some kind of psychological disorder. I am not enjoying these games, but I keep pushing through because I want to say I've beat them. I have beaten Tomb Raider 1 and 2 so far. Now I'm on the third game. I've played through none of the expansions. Every iteration after the first game seems to get progressively more unbearable. Most of the difficulty comes from trying to figure out where to go and wrestling with the controls. I could never tolerate the tank controls in the original Tomb Raider so I've switched to the modern controls, but I still cannot utilize moves with the original controls. Right now I'm a Lud's Gate in the third game. These London levels have just been pure hell so far. They really emphasize the problems within these games: confusing level design, bad camera angles, dark corridors, unresponsive controls etc. I thought it'd be fun to go back and check out Lara's origins, but I think I just want to give up now. I know video games have advanced significantly since the 90s, but I'm wondering how these games were so well received in the first place. What do you guys get out of these games? I'm curious as to why these games get such high praise.

These games were so well received in the first place because these games were played for what they are, not for what a casual gamer would love them to be.
Yes, these games getb progressively harder with everything, combat, exploration, puzzling and everything together and.. THAT is exactly what makes these games better, because Tomb Raider always was and always should had been about puzzling and exploration where "getting lost of where to go and what to do" is part of the fun of a "puzzle game focused on no-hand-held exploration", that is why those games were so well received, because games were not made to play for the playeer, were made to make the player think and play the game by themselves, for the game itself and the experience these games present.
And at the time there always were more casual games too, but these had less attention back in the day, before the longer you took to finish a game because it was hard the better the game was and a game you finish in a weekend was boring and lame also a total waste of money.

[Guerriero Solitario]

you should go to playing with sand, it's a game that's more suitable for you

[LegendaryThunder]

Originally posted by PattyWhacker91:

I think I have some kind of psychological disorder. I am not enjoying these games, but I keep pushing through because I want to say I've beat them. I have beaten Tomb Raider 1 and 2 so far. Now I'm on the third game. I've played through none of the expansions. Every iteration after the first game seems to get progressively more unbearable. Most of the difficulty comes from trying to figure out where to go and wrestling with the controls. I could never tolerate the tank controls in the original Tomb Raider so I've switched to the modern controls, but I still cannot utilize moves with the original controls. Right now I'm a Lud's Gate in the third game. These London levels have just been pure hell so far. They really emphasize the problems within these games: confusing level design, bad camera angles, dark corridors, unresponsive controls etc. I thought it'd be fun to go back and check out Lara's origins, but I think I just want to give up now. I know video games have advanced significantly since the 90s, but I'm wondering how these games were so well received in the first place. What do you guys get out of these games? I'm curious as to why these games get such high praise.

>I don't understand why people like these games!

Oh this'll be a read.

>Instantly attacks the exploration, instantly attacks the controls

https://youtu.be/_yF3fCWfmEk?si=7AknSkGKSsGcOX1C

[PattyWhacker91]

Well everyone, I decided to push through through those hellish levels in London and now find myself in the RX Mines. Now I'm trying to figure out how these mine carts work. Supposedly I'm to press the jump button in order to brake, but the cart keeps flipping over whenever I hit a curve on the track. I try to lean in the opposite direction and press the brake button, but nothing seems to work. Alas I'm hating life once again. I think I might be a masochist.

[Mac]

If you want to revisit Lara's origins but can't bear the games, watch them on youtube. There's plenty of TR players and full walkthroughs.

We love playing them.