Why are Legend, Anniversary and Underworld considered bad?

[Nino_Chaosdrache]

Like the title says why are people saying that Tomb Raider Legend and the other two games of the trilogy are bad Tomb Raider games? I don't want to say they are wrong, but just want to hear their opinion about it. Afte rplaying some of the older Tomb Raiders I know that it has more action sequences than the previous games, but there must be more I assume.

Now I want to say, that I'm not a Tomb Raider noob. I played Tomb Raider 2, Tomb Raider 3, am currently playing The last Revelation and played Chronicles and The Angel of Darkness with 12, 13 years. So basically my first TR games were Chronicles and AoD and when Legend was released after the mess that AoD sometimes was I was all like " Wow, finally a real Tomb Raider game again". YOu could say Legend made me interested in the franchise again and after Legend I bought Anniversary without even reading any reviews, because I expected it to be as awesome as Legend was. Which it was as well.

With my back story being told I would like to hear your reason about why you didn't like Legend the whole trilogy around it.

[ValentB]

I didn't jump on that train, I experienced each of 5 games first hand and got disappointed that I couldn't play and enjoy them.

[webcider]

Messaggio originale di ValentB:

I didn't jump on that train, I experienced each of 5 games first hand and got isappointed that I couldn't play and enjoy them.

And I got disappointed because i wasn't challenged and Franchise stopped being about exploring tombs in the new games as thats not a tomb raider game thats just a third person shooter/adventure game.

Sadly i am able to play both the old and the new games just fine, despite the latter boring me to death... its not about what people like or dislike.. its about generally prefering automatic jumping "Computer decides what you want to do based on information" or " I decide what i do i got full control i decide if i want to ungrab or grab i decide if i want to attempt to climb this part of the level.. because it looks manageable instead of Invisible walls and what not, The new tomb raider games has Onrail mechanics, Invisible walls, Unclimbable rocks that should be climbable, but game painfully shows you that they are not which is just not logical ... and i hate that sort of game design, Its painfully simple exploration mechanics and puzzles are also really terrible.. compared to the complex multi layered puzzles of the old games. with a complex but perfectly logical control mechanics that makes you able to pull out difficult jumps and rewards the patient gamer that is fascinated by exploring.. and wants to take his time ... soaking in the ambient sounds and the wonders of exploring a dissulated place.

[Leonardo]

now the only game for me that is playable on pc with gamepad is tomb raider anniversary. tomb raider legend has such a messy control, lara move along with the camera while you walk, its bizarre. its diferent from ps2 game.

[Cat Slave]

For me personally, I was never a Tomb Raider fan. It seemed like a dumb sexual fantasy game, empty in content. I tried the original games but never finished a single one because I got bored, frustrated at the controls (wasn't used to PS1 controls) and the horrible voice acting was annoying to me. I did love Resident Evil and Silent Hill though (the latter of which had amazing voice acting and story) so the fact that these games are old aren't really an excuse for the lacking voice acting and controls. After my dissatisfaction with the first games, I never bothered to look into any of their sequels. When I watched the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider movie, I was put off even more because of the rather lame movie and mosly that awful ♥♥♥♥♥♥ "personality" of Lara Croft portrayed in the movie. Haven't played the 2013 reboots but it seemed like just a typical SJW remake to appeal the snowflakes, so I never bothered to look into those either, and thought I'd never care to look in that direction.

However, I have played and loved immensely the Prince of Persia trilogy, then I watched this video had a good cluckle and realised that the middle reboot series (Legend, Anniversary, Underworld) are from approximately the same time. Since I was extremely disappointed with the lack of great games from 2010s, I was looking to find some "new" games (ones that I haven't played) from before 2010. And this Tomb Raider trilogy is exactly from that. Just remembering how people used to compare Prince of Persia with Tomb Raider, I thought I'd give JUST those three games a try.

Turns out, while I wouldn't consider them my favourite games, I still really enjoyed playing them. So far, I'm near the end of Legend (started from Anniversary, since Legend is "supposed" to be a "sequel"), and I have enjoyed both games so far, partly for the same reasons, partly for different reasons. Going back to the original PS1 games, I see a lot of nostalgia driven people praising the originals as being better in every way, which makes me cringe when I remember the atrocious voice acting and inconsistent jerky progression of the story, I can say from a non-fanboy point of view, that while there are some misses in the trilogy, I'd say overall it's definitely an improvement over the first couple of games (mostly comparing TR1 with Anniversary), but they're still comparable if you remove graphics as a factor. However, the middle trilogy is BY FAR, hugely, miles better than the later sequels of the original series. If you're looking to find crappy Tomb Raider games, look no further than the later sequels of the original series. Only the very first original ones were any good (even though I still wouldn't play them for crappy voice acting and jerky story progression, I can deal with old graphics though).

As for the two 2013 reboot games, I still haven't got around to them, but I don't even know if I will, because I'm a little suspicious about the whole catering to snowflakes idea, and the fact that they're recently made games. Also, the trailers look really unimpressive to me. Those aren't arguments to judge the games' quality, just reasons for why I'm losing interest in them.

So in conclusion, from my non-fanboy non-nostalgic point of view, I cannot argue that the middle Trilogy is the best (due to my ignorance of TR2013 and RotTR), but considering how many crappy Tomb Raider games there are, the Trilogy HAS to be pretty high up in the list. Some may argue the 2013 reboot is better, some argue the first two games are better. Even if that is true, that still leaves the middle Trilogy very high up on the list.

[JAGIELSKI]

TR2013 is a decent game. Yes, the story is SJW BS and the QTEs even more so, but other than that it's very good one. Dunno abouth RoTR though.

[JAGIELSKI]

The whole Lara's now a weakling deal. Fortunately only in story and QTEs. In regular gameplay she's still kicking a​s​s. Although, the two aspects one would play TR game are greatly diminished (and wasn't that great in L/A/U either).

[Cat Slave]

Messaggio originale di Darkhog | Computah iz ded:

The whole Lara's now a weakling deal. Fortunately only in story and QTEs. In regular gameplay she's still kicking a​s​s. Although, the two aspects one would play TR game are greatly diminished (and wasn't that great in L/A/U either).

I get that people want to remember Lara being as bad ass as she was originally conceived, but her "badassness" was saturated in a way that makes it seem forced, over the top, kind of like a comedy movie that doesn't know a build up is as important as the punchline.

I get that Lara was supposed to be over the top in many ways, but I felt that she was quite more natural in L/A/U games. They did expose Lara's vulnerabilities more, but that just gives more substance to her motivations rather than it just being actions for the sake of being badass. Also, even throughout her vulnerabilities, she did remind everyone that's she's still a badass, especially in the moments when she was angry. And I know there weren't as many such moments, but that just makes those moments even more impactful rather than Lara either being an angry brat or a pretentious brat. Build up is as important as the punchline. I recently finished Legend and the line (spoilers): "Every breath that you will take from this day on will be considered a gift from me!" was delivered so well that you wouldn't doubt her badassery. Not to mention the fact that voice acting in L/A/U is much better than the original ones, which just adds to the impact even of simple lines.

[Cyclik]

Legends was the best game in series , unlike new lara

[gamer]

The fans of the older games didnt like the more action oriented gameplay. they wanted more puzzles and explorations. Personally i think legend is a great action game.
Underworld is horrible because of the flashbacks story and the villain that Lara supposedly had vanguished in the previous game made a comeback

[✘GreedoShotFirst✘]

LAU isnt as hated as you think. It has its critics but at the time both Legend and Anniversary were mostly well recieved in the community even if they had some changes and shortcomings that some fans weren't thrilled about.

The LAU series was definitely very much TR at its core just with modernized controls, action sequences, and story telling (even if it is still tripe). There was and always has been a group of fans who never took to the games outside of the Core Design games but i never got the impression the majority of the fanbase hated LAU.

Underworld might have been the only exception due to the deceptive marketing and disappointing ending to the trilogy storyline, which a lot of people were outspoken of at the time.

[JAGIELSKI]

IMO the new TR is more worth ridicule that L/A/U ever was. I mean, they've significantly decreased, at times to the point of removal the only two reasons someone might play a TR game.

[Cat Slave]

Messaggio originale di ✘GreedoShotFirst✘:

LAU isnt as hated as you think. It has its critics but at the time both Legend and Anniversary were mostly well recieved in the community even if they had some changes and shortcomings that some fans weren't thrilled about.

The LAU series was definitely very much TR at its core just with modernized controls, action sequences, and story telling (even if it is still tripe). There was and always has been a group of fans who never took to the games outside of the Core Design games but i never got the impression the majority of the fanbase hated LAU.

Underworld might have been the only exception due to the deceptive marketing and disappointing ending to the trilogy storyline, which a lot of people were outspoken of at the time.

My opinion might be be unpopular here, but I personally was really impressed by the ending of Underworld. It's rather mature and meaningful. I'm guessing most people wanted a sweat-breaking long bombastic final boss fight with an explosive grandiose flashy epic resolution as most games tend to strive for, but in my eyes, that has gotten cliche to the point where it doesn't work anymore. I was just expecting that to happen at the end of Underworld, but what I found actually surprised me, in a very pleasing mature kind of way. Such an ending held far more psychological impact than those typical firework endings you usually get. I was satisfied.

[✘GreedoShotFirst✘]

Messaggio originale di He Who Judges:

Messaggio originale di ✘GreedoShotFirst✘:

LAU isnt as hated as you think. It has its critics but at the time both Legend and Anniversary were mostly well recieved in the community even if they had some changes and shortcomings that some fans weren't thrilled about.

The LAU series was definitely very much TR at its core just with modernized controls, action sequences, and story telling (even if it is still tripe). There was and always has been a group of fans who never took to the games outside of the Core Design games but i never got the impression the majority of the fanbase hated LAU.

Underworld might have been the only exception due to the deceptive marketing and disappointing ending to the trilogy storyline, which a lot of people were outspoken of at the time.

My opinion might be be unpopular here, but I personally was really impressed by the ending of Underworld. It's rather mature and meaningful. I'm guessing most people wanted a sweat-breaking long bombastic final boss fight with an explosive grandiose flashy epic resolution as most games tend to strive for, but in my eyes, that has gotten cliche to the point where it doesn't work anymore. I was just expecting that to happen at the end of Underworld, but what I found actually surprised me, in a very pleasing mature kind of way. Such an ending held far more psychological impact than those typical firework endings you usually get. I was satisfied.

Underworld is my favourite out of the three, honestly. However, i think its understandable that people were somewhat disappointed. The tragedy in the ending of the arc was mature and believable. I just think the scene itself couldve been done slightly better. it was a bit awkwardly done imo. I think people wanted a bit more closure out of the storyline than we got.

Underworlds dark tone and tragic story is one of the reasons why it is my favourite in the series, though.

[Cat Slave]

Messaggio originale di ✘GreedoShotFirst✘:

Messaggio originale di He Who Judges:

My opinion might be be unpopular here, but I personally was really impressed by the ending of Underworld. It's rather mature and meaningful. I'm guessing most people wanted a sweat-breaking long bombastic final boss fight with an explosive grandiose flashy epic resolution as most games tend to strive for, but in my eyes, that has gotten cliche to the point where it doesn't work anymore. I was just expecting that to happen at the end of Underworld, but what I found actually surprised me, in a very pleasing mature kind of way. Such an ending held far more psychological impact than those typical firework endings you usually get. I was satisfied.

Underworld is my favourite out of the three, honestly. However, i think its understandable that people were somewhat disappointed. The tragedy in the ending of the arc was mature and believable. I just think the scene itself couldve been done slightly better. it was a bit awkwardly done imo. I think people wanted a bit more closure out of the storyline than we got.

Underworlds dark tone and tragic story is one of the reasons why it is my favourite in the series, though.

I do understand myself why people weren't happy, but I didn't miss anything out of the ending. The tone and atmosphere of the entire game is why the ending works, in my eyes at least. I would feel unnecessarily spoonfed if they took the time to address every detail. The vagueness is answered by Lara's mental state at the end. Lara's mental state and attitude, I feel, IS the resolution and final result of all the events. Maybe I am a bit biased because of how much I focused and liked her psychological aspect, but I wouldn't want it differently.

Even though I liked exactly how it was, I do understand it was a little out of character of the whole franchise, so that might also be a valid argument why people weren't satisfied. Maybe I'm a bad Tomb Raider fan (well, I never was one in the first place), but without exactly these kinds of things in the series, it would never be ingrained into my mind as a cherishable memory. But again, that's my bias speaking here.

[Dark Redshift]

I like Legend and Underworld almost as much as Core Design despite preferring the latter. It's just Anniversary that sucks.

Here's why:

1. it's buggier than the others, especially the original CD on modern hardware. This mostly involves Lara failing to grab certain ledges including if she jumps toward them a certain way, even though they are the ones she can grab onto. Not even a saving grab.

2. Most of the major changes to the level design are bad starting mostly with Tomb of Qualopec and the worst offenders being Egypt and Atlantis. Specifically;

A. The graphics chosen for some areas look great whereas others like Tomb of Qualopec,
Egypt, the last two Greece levels and both pyramid levels in Atlantis look like a.rse.

B. Many of the areas I liked from the original game were cut, such as all the side rooms in
Atlantis. What they should have done there was keep the side rooms and have Lara come
back to the shaft like the original, but make the shaft taller so she can still do the climbs the
game does have to the next ledge before going away and coming back to the shaft higher
up for the next one to give us the best of both worlds.

C. They get names wrong on several occasions, such as renaming the Cistern to Tomb of
Tihocan because they cut almost all of the original Tomb of Tihocan level and bolted the
Cistern onto it instead, Atlantis is now the Great Pyramid and the real Great Pyramid is
now the Final Conflict. Also in Greece they renamed Thor to Hephastus which is still
the wrong god: Hephastus would be a fire and lava based room as he's a blacksmith. The
Thor room's main attraction is not the hammer but the Disco Ball of Doom before it so the
right Greek god would be Zeus.

D. The go-to method for making levels feel big in Anniversary is to simply put long, boring
hallways between rooms in lieu of any resonable method of connection with the occasional
pit or two to climb around ala Sands of Time to stop you nodding off. Egypt is the worst for
it as to "avoid making it some kind of architechtural hodge-podge" as Jason put it, they
disconnected the rooms which fit together nicely in the original TR1 and connected them
with more long boring hallways with pits to artificially lengthen the level. The other two
Egypt levels do this too but Egypt also starts putting difficult to dodge traps in the hallways
with the worst ones being Obelisk of Khamoon which puts needless traps in every major
room as well as the hallways with only one occasion where you can bypass them. Even the textures for Egypt are dull, drab sandstone that looks like it should be concrete, with no depth to them compared to the original textures in ruins that look too intact, even for Tomb Raider's otherwise acceptable standards. It's even worse on the PSP game which I beat first as they had the bright idea to make some of the long boring hallways even longer and putting long boring hallways in places where they don't exist in most versions of the game including between the lava bridge room and scion room in Atlantis.

3. The use of ancient advanced technology being found and exploited by an antagonist from that era (Atlantis and the Nephilim race, in TR1's case Natla) is gone. The pyramid is no longer a golden marvel full of fleshy walls and genetic engineering machinery built to harness a volcano for geothermal power, with the scion being essentially a sci-fi punch card shaped like a CD with a data capacity measured in Zettabytes. Instead, it is now a boring, grey cave labyrinth with the odd archway or buttress of symbols from different ancient cultures on it with very little pulsating muscle moss in the walls and its powers of creation instead being mystical magic bulls.hit.

The scion still contains a lot of knowledge but it is depicted more as a penniseive from Harry Potter. The best way to describe the version of the pyramid in Anniversary is "cliche Tolkien fantasy volcano doom fortress".

4. Lara is forbidden to allow the player to take part in the human boss fights except Natla and they have been replaced with quick-time events which are less forgiving than the ones in Legend (the latter game I don't mind as they were for set piece traps and they fit that game more). The cowboy has also been removed simply because Larson is now depicted as "having a bit of chemistry with Lara" whereas in the original games Lara was simply teasing him as she would any other enemy and Larson was more of a perv as he was the bad guy. Here they make him more sympathetic and have Pierre killed by the centaurs instead of Lara just so she can kill Larson and feel bad about it because he's "meant to be her first kill".

A plot point that falls flat as Lara has killed human enemies before TR1 (such as the gladiators in Rome in TR5, undead or not as it's ambiguous) and Lara seems to just imagine Larson's blood on her hands because the devs p.ussied out and did not show impalement deaths, Lara catching fire or any form of blood so she has no blood on her hands. This incidentally makes killing enemies a little harder as without blood it's impossible to tell if you are actually damaging them or not until they are enraged or die. Bosses don't count as they have health bars. Tomb Raider 0 (2013) did a far better job of showcasing Lara's first kill in a way that makes sense in the canon and many more human kills have to follow, desensitising her to the violence in a way one would expect it to go if it were real life.

5. The bosses do have special ways to beat them like TR2 onward (such as Bartoli, Sophia Leigh, Dr Willard, Boaz and Eckhardt) but all the methods used involve using the Adrenaline dodge in some way. The combat sucks a big fat c.ocksicle in general as all the "Prince of Persia Two Thrones with guns" moves from Legend like all her melee attacks, grapple attack, sliding tackle and bullet time jumps are gone. The adrenaline dodge seems to be a variation of the latter move and it's all we get. Enemies that aren't bosses are also very hard to dodge and can easily knock you down, dealing a ton of damage and stunlocking you, sometimes off a ledge.

6. Natla has been flanderised to all hell. In TR1 she appeared to be experimenting with genetics for the best of intentions, presumbably hoping to help her species survive a cataclysm where a comet struck Santorini and set off Atlantis's supervolcano (which is how the real Atlantis on the real Santorini was destroyed, minus the comet). However, she did incite a war just to keep her co-rulers busy so she could use the pyramids machines and the scion for her experiments.

Come the present day, she finds that the Nephilim are practically extinct except herself, Joachim Karel and arguably the Sleeper, and that humanity themselves have not evolved into a stronger, wiser subspecies in nearly 2000 years. Her new plan is to recover the Scion, continue her experiments in the pyramid and unleash her mutants on humanity to force them to evolve via natural selection.

In Anniversary, Crystal Dynamics changed her into f.ucking Mumm-Ra. She appears to no longer be an aspiring genetics scienist doing her experiments to either save her race from a cataclysm or force the humans she was bred from to evolve, depending on the milennium, but instead she seems to be doing her experiments to built her own army and cause said cataclysm deliberately so she can literally set the world on fire for s.hits and giggles. Tying into point 3, even her cryostasis pod has been changed into a stupid magic crystal.

7. Crystal Dynamics based the entire game on plagiarism: Core Design came up with the idea first as a far superior, more faithful remake that changed and upgraded the areas in the right way, as well as including locations, mechanics or events that Core wanted in the original game but couldn't have due to technical limitations, usually time, polygons or power. This better remake was called Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition and was going to be a timed exclusive to PSP with upgraded PC and PS2 versions coming later.

It would run on a fully debugged version of the TRAOD engine with no major glitches anymore, previously used for their parkour platformer sports game for Rebellion, Freerunning. Testing the latter with a Lara model is where the intial concept of the remake came from too.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/it-felt-like-robbery-tomb-raider-and-the-fall-of-core-design/3/

There's a trailer for the original remake too. It looks a little choppy but that's because A. it was running on PSP hardware which is where the game would have first come out and B. it was 2006 so of course graphics technology for PC, console and handheld console games wouldn't be as advanced as today. Look at the original graphics option (next generation turned off) in Legend.

You will still see me playing Anniversary now and then but that's more stockholm syndrome as I didn't know about TR10A when I first got it and while I was annoyed by the problems, they didn't become a real issue until I did learn about it, how much better TR10A was even before it was fully finished and polished and exactly what Eidos and Crystal did to poor Core. If anything, Tomb Raider Anniversary as we got it from Crystal is my equivelent of Devil's Castle Dracula 2 (Castlevania 2) for the AVGN. I still have nostalgic memories of playing it and that's the only reason I still do. Even then I play the others more.