Tomb Raider 3 - 14 years later, pt.3

The game still does that thing where it spawns a boulder right behind you that you can't avoid it unless you already know about it.

There are 6 outfits in this game, 3 have bare midriffs, 2 are skin-tight. I think I like the Antarctica-gear best, it's practical. ...mostly

Cannibals! Amputations! You know, for the children.

There is a missile-launcher/bazooka in this game, which insta-kills every enemy, but there's barely any ammo for it (I think maybe 5 missiles in the entire game), which makes them a valued commodity. The rockets look yellow-black, and immediately stand out everywhere. 

Tomb Raider 3 massively toned down the "spawn enemy in your back"-issue, although it still happens sometimes. It will have an embarrassing return in Tomb Raider 4.

One render-graphic shows Lara with a belly-button-piercing. It is never referenced again and treated like it never happened.

You don't explode if you enter the cheats incorrectly. Awwww

I've always subconsciously marveled at the minimalistic interface. Your ammo is displayed as a simple number in the corner, your health is a red bar on top, breathing-air is a blue one. They are only shown when actually necessary, so you never feel like they are in the way.

You can sprint in Tomb Raider 3. When you do, you get a third bar on top (a green one). The sprint is really useless though. You can only run straight ahead, it's very short, and only marginally faster than usual running. So far I know it's only used in a few puzzles, some of them optional.

Unlike sprinting, crawling does make sense and is fun. It feels a lot better suited to the environment to crawl through tight passages, and you're able to explore vents. VENTS! Imagine that. 

In Tomb Raider 2 dropped items spawned at the feet of the enemy. In TR3 they spawn in the middle of the next ground-tile, so a medkit might be within a dead guys' torso.

All items already in the environment are in the center of a square too. This takes away a lot of possibilities for item-placement. In TR2 you could, for example, have to carefully balance to an edge of a platform to get something.

In TR2 items are sprites, here they are 3d-models. I think this might be the reason for the tile-placement.

You can walk slowly through deadly spikes, but you don't really notice or learn this until far into the game, so might make a lot more complicated jumps than necessary.

Lara references Jeff Goldblum in a cutscene. Wait what. 

The bad guy is Finnish. Who would've thought.

The cave-ins and eartquakes feel like classic Star Trek action, as in "shake the camera while I pretend to fall sideways".

There is a bonus-level which I never played. You can access it after the end of the game if you have found all secrets.

Just accicentally pressed quick-load instead of quick-save and landed 3 levels back. See, it happened again.

There are some kayaking-sections that are just awful. I never managed to make it through them, so I cheated me some medpacks and gulped them down whenever I got the into the damage/kill-zones.

The bad guy in TR2 jammed a dagger into his heart and gained superpowers. This guy here just jammed a dagger-shaped rock into his heart and gained superpowers.

Why is everyone so polite? Stranded in the middle of the jungle, with no supplies, predators everywhere, they go "Good day to you, Sir! May I offer you some biscuits?" The polite mercenary without a leg isn't even supposed to be British.

The giant spider has only one attack, which insta-kills you. Not fun.

Final cutscene: Lara goes outside, evades some guards, steals a helicopter and has an aerial battle with another helicopter. What. The final scene, the final climax of the last 20 hours, is Lara destroying a foe/obstacle that has been introduced just 30 seconds earlier? This is worse than Mass Effect 3.