Work was alright, and after work was even better when a friend and I went out to the local tea shop to enjoy some boba tea and Japanese food! It was my turn to pay this time, but he managed to surprise me with a Metal Gear shirt! Early Birthday present and all that. Took the evening off from working on any projects and just chilled with more totally normal Tomb Raider. Made it into Egypt before calling it a night. All in all it was a good day! I only wish it was my Friday… but I have that to look forward to tomorrow at least!
Tomb Raider
Lions & Statues & Adventure! Oh My!
The mod selection for Tomb Raider Remastered is already looking pretty good over at the Modders Nexus. Over the weekend I dressed Lara as a Succubus, today I made her extra buff. I also turned her to gold.
I’m kinda bummed that you don’t get an achievement for locking the butler in the freezer, but if you willingly turn yourself into a gold statue you get an achievement. THAT’S NOT FAIR!!!
I’m one lead bar away from escaping Palace Midas. That will have to wait for another night… or a lunch break. It’s time to give Lara a rest, along with myself. Another good night of rest and I should start feeling good again.
Lara The Succubus
Spent the evening playing around with mods for the Tomb Raider Remaster. Now she’s cosplaying as Morrigan and purple hair! 😛 I decided to call it a night at The Colosseum level. Earlier in the day Yutram and I played The Game of Life together for a Couch Co-op session. It was pretty chill, and might even be worthy of a future video!
The Misadventures Of Lara Croft
Apparently in the new Tomb Raider Remastered Trilogy if you leave the butler in the freezer for too long he’ll actually ice over! Also there’s a Photo Mode!
I’ll have to take a more careful look at my surroundings, just to get any good photo opportunities stored away. Definitely puts a new spin on an old game!
Made it out of Qualopec’s Tomb with the first part of the Scion before calling it an evening. I’m thinking tomorrow night I’ll pick some form of Metroidvania to pad out what remains of my evening.
Opening The Tomb Raider Time Capsule
I downloaded Core Design’s recently leaked Tomb Raider Anniversary, and I’m not disappointed at all in what I see. Not all of the levels are accessible, and being this is an alpha release this is nowhere near a perfect state, but diehard fans are patching the game what seems like every other day over at archive.org to make the game all the more playable. Right now the only way to play it is on your C: Drive, and the game folder has to be on the root drive (can’t be placed in a Programs Folder for organization), and as a result I can’t get the Alpha to run under Linux properly via Proton or Wine. I’m not well versed enough in Wine to figure out how to get a game to run properly, not sure how to keep the proper directory structure. I did learn that if you don’t patch the game properly you’ll be visited by 3D Nicholas Cage.
Once Core Design discovered they were not going to be able to publish their version of Tomb Raider Anniversary, they decided to recycle the assets and make a game based on the 2004 Movie National Treasure starring Nicholas Cage. This leak even includes a splash screen even after you fix it to load Tomb Raider content:
I’m not sure how much of this was converted from their original Tomb Raider idea, but trying to start the game only results in crashing.
This level shows up when I try to load The Great Abyss. From what I can tell this is part of The Lost Valley but in its own enclosed map.
Apparently in this build of the game Natla is a Nazi? There are a few nazi flags hanging about, along with the nazi eagle as you wander deeper into the mine. I’m not sure if this was in transitioning from Tomb Raider to National Treasure (did National Treasure even have nazis? I never watched the movie), or because it had something else to do with the Indiana Jones project name. Still I was taken aback by it while turning around in the level just to happen upon… that. Kind of a jarring coincidence in these jarring times.
In this build of the game Lara is fucking invincible. She can walk on lava, manages to avoid drowning, and survive boulders and spikes completely going through her.
In this stage of the game all enemies are currently incomplete. They have no loading animations and little to no texture details.
Peru is probably one of the more finished looking maps out what I’ve seen thus far. There’s this really cool effect that happens when you enter this corridor, where these stone faces roll around and begin to spit darts. It only made me wonder what the rest of this game would have looked like had Core Design been able to finish it?
To no surprise a lot of the levels use the original textures from the first Tomb Raider, and in some cases even models. It makes sense as that would save time on making any more textures than necessary. This makes it easier to focus on other aspects of the game, like level design, game mechanics, etc.
This game requires a controller for it to work properly, with the best one being a Dualshock 4. I do own a DS4, but no matter what I did the game couldn’t read any one of my controllers. The game doesn’t really have a keyboard and mouse setup since this was originally designed for a PSP, and the release is new enough that I don’t know of a solution. I’ll be keeping an eye out for patches or any more information I can get my hands on, I really wanted to livestream this, but at the moment my controls are quite limited. Still, what I’ve been able to see so far has been an adventure in itself! I might try installing this on my laptop to see if I can get different results.
Core Design Releases Their Version Of Tomb Raider Anniversary
I always like finding early builds of games just to see how things have changed and progressed from the time of creation all the way to the final product, and for many years I often wondered what the Core Design version of Tomb Raider Anniversary would have been like if Eidos didn’t fire them and go with Crystal Dynamics.
Thanks to archive.org and Core Design, we now can! I’m sure it’s riddled with bugs galore, being this is an unreleased released game and all, but there’s just something cool about seeings things that could have been, what could have changed, and from what I’ve read the Core Design version was more faithful to the original rather than the Crystal Dynamics version, not to say it was a terrible game (though I could have done with fewer QTE’s and a less annoying puzzle for climbing Natla’s Pyramid). I have the files downloaded, might have to check a look into this time capsule during my weekend downtime.
Christmas In Peru
One of the games I remember receiving for Christmas when I was a kid was the original Tomb Raider. It was the only game that I had on both a console and a PC. To this day I still find reasons to return to this particular game, especially now knowing how moddable this game is. I found a full Christmas mod for the first original trilogy, and it felt right to start at the beginning with it to take in the full experience. I’ve recorded the stream, and will probably fashion it into a holiday video for next year if I have enough content. While I sit on this one and think about how to edit it, we can at least enjoy pictures from last night’s sight seeing:
From the mansion level to the main game, everything is covered in holiday cheer. The mansion has a custom winter skybox, as well as Christmas lights painted throughout the house. Even Lara is wearing her Christmas PJ’s, which for some reason bare her sequel… seems a tad narcissistic doesn’t it, Lara?
I’ve had to laugh at quite a few changes to the game. Wolves, bears, bats and even the skeletons have “Christmas Sweaters” painted onto their models, and we also have candy cane bridges and gates. Some to make you laugh, though there were others that made me scratch my head.
Anytime I swim underwater I keep randomly losing blood. My health isn’t actually going down, but for whatever reason blood comes out along with the bubble particles that are supposed to come out of her mouth. When you swim like this it seems like Lara’s Aunt Flo is having a visit anytime she goes for a swim. Truly this is a Christmas story that I will be telling for years to come. :zorak:
I think I found something to pick back up again when the holidays return once more. I’m definitely not going to finish this mod by the time Christmas is over, meaning I’ll have a new tradition to look forward to! I haven’t even scraped the tip of the iceberg with this mod, but I anticipate there will be much laughter as I continue through this version of the game, with plenty of eggnog chai in tow.
I wonder what other people have for holiday game memories? This one was by far one of the most memorable for me.