Разработчик: Core Design
Описание
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- OS *:Windows XP / Windows Vista / Windows 7
- Processor:1.8 GHz Processor
- Memory:512 MB RAM
- Graphics:3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 9
- DirectX®:9.0
- Hard Drive:2 GB HD space
Отзывы пользователей
The year is 1998 and Lara returns to the screens with what I consider to be the best adventure in the entire classic series. Noticeably more mature than its predecessors in terms of graphics and detail, the third instalment put even experienced raiders to the test due to its high level of difficulty. Core Design experimented, albeit cautiously, with new elements: Alternative level routes, a new drivable vehicle and free choice of levels were just some of the innovations. Lara could now crawl, "monkey-swing" and even make short sprints. The third part began in the Indian jungle and left it up to the player to decide where the journey should take them next. It's an interesting design choice that large parts of the game are peppered with water levels. Tomb Raider III was also much more puzzle-orientated than its predecessor, but managed to strike a good balance between action and puzzle units. In terms of storytelling, the extensive animated cutscenes were also quite impressive for the time: After Lara has acquired a strange artefact called the Infada Stone, she chases the remaining lost shards around the world to uncover their secret. To this day, the first encounter with the statues in India, the wild canoe trip through an island in the South Pacific and the exploration of Area 51 and the London underground bring tears of nostalgia to my eyes. The levels were consistently quite challenging and, with a few nasty exceptions, brilliantly thought out. The game was also significantly darker than its two predecessors, both in terms of lighting and the graphic depiction of violence. I suspect that gamers could simply take more back then...! Those who made the effort to collect all the secrets were also extremely well rewarded with their own bonus level (All Hollows). A stand-alone expansion with six new levels titled "The Lost Artefact" was released in 2000 and follows on almost seamlessly from the previous main storyline.
Another outdated classic that didn't age that well... perhaps you should listen to other pplz advice and check the remastered version instead.
You should definitely buy the remastered version of Tomb Raider III, not this version. The only way you'll like this game is if, like me, you enjoyed the first two and could put up with their jank.
Stella's Walkthroughs are an absolute necessity for this game (and probably the remastered version too). I found them more necessary in this game than in the previous two.
Overall: I had some fun moments with this game, but it was more irksome than the first two and its design and handling begins to feel dated since it uses the same engine with only mild modification. The nail in the coffin was that there were entire regions of the game containing zero or few levels I enjoyed. So even though I did like a lot of the other levels, it was enough of a slog that I can't recommend the game in good conscience, especially since the remastered version is now available and solves most of the quality of life issues I'm now going to complain about.
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Thee levels were cool overall, with varied environments across different regions. The level design is hampered by the game's terrible, flat textures. They are much like the first two games, but somehow I found myself repeatedly confused because of an unintuitive ladder texture (or whatever). Otherwise, I didn't usually get stuck... but it depended on the levels.
Interestingly, in some levels it's possible to expand your playstyle a bit—if you're risk-averse or don't like shooting guards, you can often figure out ways to release or wait for allies who will kill them for you, and stay out of the fight! Not always possible, but it's cool that this is a feature in some levels. Some levels also involve more stealth than previous games, though it's clunky. Overall, the difficulty is slightly harder on average than the first two games. Since there are more mechanics, there are slightly more complex movement sequences; timing can be more important.
- I found the India levels difficult to navigate and a bit tedious. But I liked the vibe.
- I liked the Nevada levels fine, but I was ready to be done with them—it's not a tomb. (Area 51 had an egregious amount of backtracking, which is unintuitive without a walkthrough, but the level was interesting enough otherwise.) These levels overall felt a little bit less tight than the first game, and about the same as the second; enjoyable but nothing too remarkable.
- The South Pacific levels are REALLY COOL and have interesting designs. I loved how open and expansive they felt in comparison to most levels. Visually, they are commanding. All the levels are very three-dimensional, but these ones felt better. Some of these levels, like the Coastal Village, are surprisingly nonlinear—there are multiple routes you can take. They are probably the best levels in the game.
- The first two London levels (Thames Wharf and Aldwych) were my least favorite in the game—labyrinthine in a confusing and boring way, with too much backtracking and a relatively uninteresting (and non-tomb) setting. Lud's Gate would have been one of my favorite except for its abysmal water sequence. The City boss fight is neat, but short. India was a mild disappointment, but London was a major one.
- The Antarctica levels are beautiful and engaging, with environmental mechanics for freezing if you swim in ice water for too long. They have a solid aesthetic, special new enemies, mostly better layouts, more fun and intuitive puzzles, and a great boss fight at the end.
Gameplay is similar to the first two games. The camera angle and tank controls remain challenging to operate, and Lara remains just as unresponsive as ever (jumping, etc.). My biggest pet peeve is how sluggish Lara still feels, especially with some of thee animations being so slow—it makes it unappealing to use most movement mechanics in combat. She can sprint, but she's so hard to control that it's not worth doing much. She comes to a dead stop if she hits a wall, and most corridors are full of 90-degree turns, so movement is frustrating. This is nothing new, but I was disappointed they hadn't bothered to address any of these problems.
It's very easy to softlock yourself, more so than the first two games. That's bad design. I was occasionally softlocked despite being really careful. You have to save constantly, but not too often as you have a limited number of save slots. Save Crystals are a nice feature and make the game less unforgiving; they show you where you have to go in some situations. On PC, they fill up your health when touched, however they don't seem to actually save the game. (The lack of autosaves remains annoying: you really do have to save constantly to avoid wasting your time.)
The "monkey bar" swing/clamber mechanic is cool. And faster than I would have expected! But like other mechanics, the places to monkey swing aren't necessarily intuitive or easy to visually see. But I love how it expands the way you can explore. The crawling mechanic is new (I think) and fun, but slow, and the only way to drop down a ledge while crawling is to go backward, which makes no sense and is awkward.
Enemy AI and animations are a little better: they sometimes take cover and try to hide. It's not a lot better. However, Lara's auto-aim unufortunately cannot distinguish between neutral and hostile characters! This leads to friendly fire, which is no fun.
Vehicles are difficult to control (canoeing in particular is grueling) and the controls are literally unexplained, which is a problem when you're trying to dismount. Why would the player guess to press "about face" and "left/right" at the same time? The water levels remain less enjoyable than they ought to be, in large part because of the cumbersome vehicles that are required to progress.
Graphically, the game is similar to the first two. I like Lara's outfits a lot: they're cute and varied. The use of lighting in levels can be a bit creative (nothing extraordinary, but nice), though the sound remains very '90s quality, in a rustic but slightly grating way. The biggest graphical problem is still the low draw distance; this makes exploration hard and limits immersion. The lack of texture detail can be problematic and make progression unclear. However, fog in some levels is super cool! That's new. Godrays are a nice touch in a couple spots, and I wish there were more. Water looks about the same as the second game, I think.
As for the story... I had no idea what was happening at literally any point. It made absolutely zero sense. Not that the story made much sense in the first two games, but I found this one uniquely nonsensical. It was amusingly disjointed. On a more serious note, Tomb Raider has always had a colonial tinge—just think about Lara Croft's character for a minute. Unfortunately, the South Pacific levels (as fun as they were) are really pushing it—why exactly am I running around a random village killing every man I see? It's one thing to be fighting (colonial) men with guns, but IDK about the villagers. They're minding their own business, and it's not exactly tactful. I guess it was the 1990s.
The game is full of technical bugs:
- General bugs can make it impossible to progress. I didn't encounter any game-breaking bugs, but I frequently read about them in Stella's Walkthroughs.
- You can't change your resolution on the main menu and then load a save; you have to do it in the other order. Otherwise the game crashes or glitches.
[*] The game would not allow me to change my brightness level without crashing, so it was very hard to see visual cues. It was just too dark. This is related to the previous bug.
Tomb Raider III has its moments, but it's not for everyone. You're more like to enjoy the remaster.
Only if you are a big fan of Tomb Raider. The game is extremely hard, it requires to have a guide or walkthrough. I believe it is a waste of time without it as it will take a huge amount of time to progress through the game, mostly by trial and error. There are far better and more balanced games out there.
Tomb Raider 3 is the one you could swear you've played before in the good old days, but just can't remember anything about it. Yeah see - the reason for that is this game is actually insanely difficult for what it is, and the longer you play the more you realise you probably rage quit two or three levels in and sealed those memories away. Happy to say the wait paid off as this was actually pretty cathartic to finish after getting my butt handed to me on the PS1 all those years ago.
Entertaining Action
Let’s get one thing straight, if you though any of the first two games were too frustrating or hard, this isn’t for you.
Just like Tomb Raider 2, this one expects you to have played the previous games in the series. But even that won’t save you from death.
Tomb Raider 3 makes sure you know your place from the start as it spits in your face while you’re lying on the floor crying.
The first level starts with you sliding down on some mud (I guess?). There’s a nice platform on the downhill that you can see an item on. And of course, as any sane person would do, you slide down to it and grab it. As you pick it up, a boulder falls on you and you’re dead.
Literally the first item you see, is a trap. And don’t you worry. This keeps up the entire game.
One positive thing about this is that for the rest of the game, whenever you see an item that’s just out in the open, you get scared. You start to triple-checking every wall, corner, floor, ceiling and might even start looking behind you in real life to make sure there’s no trap there before you pick it up.
As this also just happens to be the longest Tomb Raider game (out of the original 6 by Core Design), you have plenty of time to get used to the game over-screen.
But if you can get through that, you will have a really good time with this game. There’s a lot of interesting locations, the movement is better than before and the non-cheap difficulty is really fair.
But just like with Tomb Raider 2, it’s not the easiest to get this to run on modern hardware. There are a lot of resources online to help you, but I would still recommend getting the remastered version instead unless you really want the original PC version with 0 changes.
I will be extremely blunt here. This version is outdated.
This is a PC port from 1998, and was not optimized for modern systems. It does not have controller support, or any options for different aspect ratios. As soon as I booted it up, I also immediately noticed visual glitches that I can only assume are the result of the game running on a modern PC.
Buy the remaster instead. There's literally no reason to buy this version when the remaster is fully playable in HD widescreen with full controller support, and the Lost Artifact expansion pack, which is missing in the old standalone Steam version.
Doesn't work with a controller.
A solid Tomb Raider game, it tows the line between the puzzle heavy tomb raiding of the original 1996 game and the combat heavy (Human killing) levels of TR2. It does both well, but the levels are either TR1 inspired or TR2, therefore if you're like me and didn't particularly like the combat of TR2 you end up finding some levels a bit of a slog. Still worth a try.
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Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Core Design |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 16.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 85% положительных (549) |