Tomb Raider 2: Econd Coming - The Review by a Myself

Channel:

Philly Wonken

Subscribers:

544

Published on April 21, 2021 10:29:35 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1TPUchX1XY

Game:

Tomb Raider II (1997)

Category:

Review

Duration: 11:32

57 views

1

Shadow MAn 2 Econd Coming is a sequel to the 'pretty underrated, but not necessarily a masterpiece', Shadow Man. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the top 5 greatest platformers on the N64. As far as Caddicarus is concerned, it's the worst game on the Playstation 1... I agree with him.

The game was popular enough to get a sequel, one of the early releases of the PS2. The plot revolves around a cops fighting Satan. It's got graphics and gameplay, and has levels in which shadow man walks around. You collect things and use them to shoot punches at stuff. If you're lucky, you can walk behind an enemy and press triangle.

STORY!
Fucking, its ancient Asian in whenever and dragon be breathing fire with a knife in his dick. but then some fucker takes out the knife and hides it in a cave in a fortress in one of the worlds biggest tourist attractions. Meanwhile, in current year, Lara the Croft rides her helicopter up to China in her never-ending mission to put an end to the world's Tyrannosaurus population.
She finds some door or whatever but uh ho the door handle is missing better come back with some tnt and-
-ah ah I'd rather die than tell you about my boss, Spaghetti Ravioli, whom you can read more about on my pc over there. here, let me just kill myself real quick.
Now Lara was planning on just coming back and just blowing that motherfucking door open but, but then she saw how good the Venice levels were so... She goes to the opera, then she gets on a plane, gets knocked the fuck out, slaughters an entire oil rig. Rides a submarine down to the cruise ship from Uncharted 3. Which, obviously, being a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean, it's filled with enemies. Then she finds something called a seraph, takes it to wherever the fuck, exanges it for a door handle, goes back to Bowser's Castle, Somehow ends up in a magical land of floating jade crystals, then the dragon comes back so she shoots the fuck out of it. Goes back home with her new kitchen knife when oh oh! Here comes all the enemies you missed, here to get their heads crushed by Lara's juicy tights. Just lure them all in the freezer, so you can keep that delicious meat fresh for later mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
All in all, a pretty standard story of hardship, friendship and sunk ships.
GRAPHICS!
Visually, the game looks good, I recommend playing the PC version, I also own a PS1 copy but... The PC version is just better. It doesn't wobble all over the place, for one thing. It also has a whole additional chapter you can download, in the form of Tomb Raider 2: Gold. You can patch it out with texture filtering, and use the Nvidia Control Panel to jack the antialiasing way up, making everything look nice and smooth. You'll also need that fan made patch just to run the game in 16:9 on PC. Which is pretty insulting, considering the PS1 versions are 16:9 by default (little known fact). There's apparently a way to replace the cutscenes with those AI enhanced HD versions, but I couldn't figure it out. The only problem with it is that raising the resolution affects the FOV. It's not too bad in 1080p. But, don't try to play it in 4k...
I also own the Android version, which I purchased a long time ago. It's features fully reworked high quality textures and a bunch of other improvements. I usually hate these types of hd texture packs, but the ones in this version look really great. They really should be added to the PC version. But, they wont be, because Square Enix sucks balls.
On a technical level, the environments are huge, even by modern standards. And they often branch out and loop around without requiring any loading screens, which is cool. Also, the lighting is great, you can use flares to light up your way, muzzle flashes will light up the environment. And, the water, like damn. The way it distorts world goemetry and those water caustic effects... For it's time, it's downright beautiful. In Tomb Raider 3, there's even shell casings that realistically bounce around, great stuff.
Shout-out to Lara's pony tail too, that shit is just straight up impressive. Like, look how it floats when Lara is swimming, how'd they get something like that to work on a PS1, fucking wizards... Also, Lara's tits arent square in this one, so that's a big improvement.
I give Tomb Raider 2 an honest High Score out of 10. Learning how to play it was a joy, beating it was hard as fuck, but never frustrating (regardless of how many times I found myself calling Lara a dumb bitch). I loved every second of it. It is one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life, and it somehow aged incredibly well by virtue of being so different. I would give anything for someone to go back and make something like this again. It made me wish more platformers had tank controls, for crying out loud.