Last week I ordered the Tomb Raider Collection from Amazon for nostalgic reasons. It came with all the first six games. I was really quite childishly excited when it arrived, despite my suspicions of having major Windows 7 compatabilty issues. However I installed all of them without any problems and began with Tomb Raider II. I never bother with Tomb Raider 1, and I think there are currently two reasons why. Number one being that for some odd reason we never owned it, and as I started playing Tomb Raider as a very young child, around 7 years old perhaps, I never questioned it and just adored the second game. The seocond reason is that now that Anniversary is around I can enjoy the story of the first with much better graphics. Hurr de hurr hurr hurr.



Damn that boat.


Anyway, I toddled along at a fast pace, remeniscing everything about the game. The "Aha" that escaped Lara's gob everytime I picked something up, her weird grunts whilst pulling herself up from a ledge, killing man eating tigers and flesh eating spiders... It was going well. But after maybe a day or two I began to get a bit impatient. I started remembering parts from Tomb Raider III and I just couldn't help myself. I stopped with the second game not even really a quarter through it and went straight onto three. That went well too, and I so desperately wanted to get to the T-Rex that made me so nervous when I was younger. But strangely enough I started to get frustrated with it. And surely enough I began to remember parts from the fourth game. You guessed it, I gave up on number three and moved right onto four.



Damn that quadbike.


That is where I currently stand. I am rather disappointed in myself. My original plan was to make the nostalgic experience last for as long as possible, by playing them all in order and not giving up on any of them unitl they were completed. However it just got to the point in each game where I began to itch to play the next one on in the series and unfortunately I gave in to the temptation.

And I'm sorry to say that it is beginning to happen with The Last Revelation. The game is starting to piss me off, bad style. I load it up and end up quitting after a half hour. It is so damn frustrating! Don't gt me wrong my opinion of the games has not lessened over the years, I still think of them as great. It's just that I'm sad to say I seemed to be better at them back when I was a kid. And I'm left wondering why that is. Why do I keep getting so fed up with these old loves of mine? I truly thought I'd have a blast but I really am not. At first I thought I had turned into a snob about graphics. My computer is a pretty decent gaming system and I can run most modern games on the highest settings, therefore I am now used to all the pretty, up to date, modern graphics that we are flooded with today. But I've decided that is not the reason. Sure the pitiful amount of polygons present are a total change of pace but I found I enjoyed that as obviously I kept thinking, "Wow, and I used to think this game looked amazing!" Because back then they did. All part of the memories.



Damn those pigtails.


I then began to think about he possibility of difficulty. Not to show myself up or anything but
I will admit that I am finding the games quit confusing! You have to back track a hell of a lot, repeat areas, run around like a headless chicken. Part of the frustration towards game number four was the fact that I kept going to far ahead in the game and find myself stuck due to lack of a key or whatever. If you compare that to the most recent Tomb Raider, Underworld, you'll find that that is no longer and issue and the game has become pretty linear. Have I just become used to that in the more modern games in the series?


With all that said and done, I'm going to try my best with the fourth and then maybe, after five, go back to finish the two I abandoned so needlessly! Not too sure if I will go through with The Angel of Darkness as that was so far from being a Tomb Raider game it might as well have been a FPS.

This is the run up of my previous blog. Will contain SPOILERS, without a doubt. Also be prepared for it to be all over the place.

I completed the single player campaign a couple of minutes ago and I have to say I've enjoyed the ride. I will admit that it didn't grab me quite like the other games in the series, mainly the outdoor parts of the levels, however they were short. Also the actual lack of shadows started to tick me off...

I still stand by a lot of the points I made in my 'First Impressions' blog. A couple of key elements of the title were taken away, such as hiding the bodies and the need for stealth at all times. I really did miss having to hide the bodies... It was far too easy to get passed groups of bad guys by lobbing a frag grenade into the middle of them or just tearing into them with an automatic or shotgun. I tried my best to complete the game as stealthily as possible, by silently headshotting the bad guys and sneaking up behind them. But in all honesty there were not that many opportunities for the latter. Perhaps I just failed bad at this game, I'm not sure. All I know is that there were many times when I thought "Sod it, let's watch the explosion take care of 'em".

Saying that, I enjoyed the experience. There were many exciting parts of the game. I especially liked the "Death from above" scenes and dragging enemies out of broken windows. After coming to grips with the controls and interface I soon built up enough points to upgrade my favourite equipment (though being a complete fool I didn't realise there was an arrow staring me in the face that lead me to the various compartments in the weapon stash, I had no idea that you could upgrade EVERYTHING until much later in the game.) Upgrading stuff was a nice little touch in my opinion.

Another minor element I liked was how the screen went black and white when you were hidden in shadows. It was an lovely way to add to the rogue atmosphere, now that Sam Fisher was well, ahem, 'freelance'?' No fancy schmancy Third Echelon suit with lights on it to show you how well lit you were. I was beginning to miss the goggles until you got them later on, though they only had one option rather than three.

The campaign itself was nowhere near as short as I was lead to believe. I had read it was maybe around five hours long. Fair enough I didn't play it to death, keeping it to an hour or two every couple of days, and I had to retry a few times on various checkpoints, but it was much longer than five hours. Certainly not the longest game in the world but long enough.

The story actually had me quite intrigued. When it flashed to the future I was like OMFG, the bastard game just SPOILED it for me, but that wasn't true at all and I saw how they had worked it in to make you think of the obvious betrayal. And when Sam hugged his daughter... Aw, let's face it, it warmed the heart am I right? Nothing like the chug chug chug of a helicopter in the background to set the scene.

The ending I enjoyed immensely. It could have been a tad bit extended and dramatised for good measure, and much more interactive, but it sufficed. It got me thinking about this bad guy image they had crawling all over Fisher. Yeah I'll admit he was turned into a bit of a vicious and bitter areshole, but c'mon, the guys life was turned upside down by various happenings! Anyone would get a bad outlook on life with the shit he had to go through. Overall Sam Fisher is a bad ass, in the best way possible. That ending cutscene in the police station, simply epic.

To end this blog I will state that the Splinter Cell series has been a pleasure to indulge in, and I can think of worse things to do than to listen to Michael Ironsides voice <3.

I'll try not to add any spoilers.

Okay well I woke up this morning to find my PC preorder of SCC had arrived. I wasn't majorly excited to get the bad boy installed, though Sam Fishers voice gets me rather weak at the knees... So after my morning coffee I installed it and got cracking.

What hit me first was the menu features the co-op twosome rather than Mr.Fisher. I'm getting the distinct impression that SC has become more focused on multiplayer than the single player. (By the way, I didn't read up on thid game TOO much so if I write anything that has an obvious answer please don't gimme any lip yo! ;) ) Yes fair enough the series never really had a strong storyline compared to other games on the market, and even when *SPOILER MAYBE I DUNNO WTF D:* Sam's daughter was killed it didn't really seem to give you an OMGZWTF moment. Basically I just loved the gameplay. It made me forget the lack of depth in the story.

I have never really fully understood how SC grabbed me in the first place. I tend to get really nervous with anything to do with stealth. But not to toot my own horn or anything but I kicked ass at all the SC games, except for Double Agent. In fact I got bored of that one and never completed it. Kinda pissed with myself for not doing and losing interest but I will get round to it at some point maybe... But anyway, yeah, as I was saying. I get jumpy whenever you have to make sure you're not seen, not set off alarms, hide bodies... Don't you remember back in the first two SC games, where if you make a slight mistake with a body even if it's far back in the level, an alarm would go off and it sometimes fucked your game completely? Well, SCC isn't like the old games. At first I was a little wary of Conviction, as what I did read about it gave me the impression it was nothing at all like the other games in the series apart from it featured Sam Fisher and his gorgeous voice. But after playing for maybe an hour, well I'm fairly impressed.

Okay so I do miss the fact that you can't hide bodies. Let's face it, Conviction is much more 'actiony' (not a word but I don't care :D) than the others. The others were more focused on the stealth. Whereas in this one you can pretty much barge into a room with a shotgun and take out the bad guys. I'm not taking that route however. I'm sticking to stealth. So, it may differ quite a bit from the other SC games, but it's fun. I love the gameplay, despite the lack of body hiding. The way you move from cover to cover, kinda like Frogger on his logs but not as intense, then performing executions and my favourites, well aimed headshots, it's entertaining.

As I mentioned I'm not that far in yet, but I've heard the campaign is really quite short? Is that true? I am trying to space out my gaming time on it just in case. I really don't want to complete it within a couple of days...

Overall so far it's giving me some fun times. It runs great and looks awesome on my PC, no faffing around just changed a few settings and the controls to my liking and bam on with the show. If I manage to get round to doing the co-op then I may add a bit about my experiences with it.

Mmmm Sam's voice.

Wait what?