revolstar wrote on Today, 12:25:

Yeah I played TR 1-3 a while ago and oh boy did these age poorly! People usually complain about the tank controls and the blocky 3d graphics but what about poor level design? All you do most of the time is backtrack. It's super easy to get lost and usually the objective is to traverse like a million meters to flick a switch that opens a door back at the beginning of the level. Games have evolved a lot since the late 90s haven't they? 😉

You've got to remember back in that time period Tomb Raider which was a 3rd person free roaming action game was a technical marvel, especially if you were lucky enough to have a Voodoo card. It's easy to forget how much crapware was around at that time. Games that ran poorly were put out as commercial products. It was more about technical competency and playability than game design when it came to pushing the envelope of tech. As times went on technical prowess was easier to achieve and built in and then it started being more about game design.

Even as late as Call of Duty there were still the ideological game design wars between playability and graphics. I like to think that Vince Zampella's design philosophy of playability at all costs and the success of that series finally pushed us into a golden age of gaming for a while. I remember playing Call of Duty at that time and thinking they get it. Even though WW2 games were everywhere and starting to feel stale at that time a well designed game (Call of Duty) came along and reviatlized that for years to come.

It used to be real easy to tell a dog from a good game as an experienced gamer but nowadays everyone has the technical know how, but all the inspiring game designs take a backseat to checklists of functionality driven by marketing or just uncreative producer types. It's seldom that a new and unique game idea gets through anymore.