Continuing clearing out my PS+ games installed…
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris - a Tomb Raider spinoff done as an isometric platformer/twin stick shooter. The base premise is that Lara and her partner, Carter, were raiding tombs in Egypt, when one of them touches an ancient staff, thus putting a curse on both, and Iris and Horus themselves are summoned, asking (well…forcing really) Lara and Carter to help them in their battle against Seth, who seeks to free himself from the realm of death. If you played Guardian of Light before - then this game is pretty much same gameplay-wise, but now they’ve introduced an equipment system with Rings and Amulet which can enhance the playable characters, expanded the coop to 4 players instead of 2, and obviously changed the landscape in which the game takes place.
It’s a pretty neat albeit a short game, and you are not at all forced to play it with others if you so desire, but it does make things a bit more fun as each player has to take on a certain role e.g. in terms of weapons to wield or working together to solve puzzles. Levels will even reload upon a player connecting to your lobby (or vice versa) to slightly alter its layout (like some platforms may disappear), thus adjusting itself to the number of players.
There’s a multitude of weapons to choose from (assault rifle, pistols, machien guns, shotguns etc), some of which you collect naturally as you progress through the game or by accessing challenge tombs, and each weapon has an upgraded form of some sort (except the more ultimate ones like railgun or bazooka), so you’re enticed to do those challenges if you wish to deal with enemies more easily.
As I’ve mentioned, it’s a sort of hybrid between a platformer and a shooter, so when you’re just navigating the levels - the gameplay resembles more of what you can expect from full-fledged Tomb Raider games with puzzles, platforming, using objects/devices to advance through the tombs, and when you’re up against waves of enemies - it’s literally a twin-stick shooter (left stick to move, right to aim, R2 to shoot the weapon). The ammo is shared between all weapons so you have to balance around ammo consumption and fire power, and ammo replenishments are done via pickups that sometimes drop from defeated enemies or just on the level itself.
The bosses are all pretty unique but not really too challenging and there’s only 5 of them, so unless you REALLY can’t figure out what to do - you’re very unlikely to die, and you have plenty of health to tank some of their attacks. I did like the boss fight against a cobra where you need to use mirrors to guide a magic beam from the staff of Osiris - do that 3-4 times and GG.
The Tombs themselves offer replayability in the form of additional built-in challenges - some are points-based (you get points from collecting Gems and defeating enemies), some are tomb-specific (e.g. in one of the tombs you need to drop 5 enemies into a pit), some are time-restricted (e.g. beat the entire tomb in X minutes), but the rewards are good because you can obtain top tier weaponry or rare equipment or just ammo/health upgrades, and you’re not thrown out into the main menu immediately upon finishing the story so you can continue playing.
There’s also a mechanic of switching weather conditions and the time of day, but really only comes into play when you’re in the “world map” so to speak, and it all basically comes down to opening some paths to previously unreachable tombs or boosting your stats through rings and amulets (since some of them are time of day/weather dependent), but the rarest ones usually just boost your character all-around.
If you’re not satisfied with the base game - there are two DLCs available (each is on sale for like 5$), which give you access to more tombs to raid, with new bosses and even exclusive weapons, as well as unique equipment and costumes.
Give it a try, but make sure you find a buddy with a good internet connection - lag can majorly fuck you over here to the point of potentially missing jumps straight into deadly traps, and the framerate also takes a hit at times.
Strider - this game has actually been sitting on my HDD since forever, and I only recently decided to dive deeper into it, and I have to say - it’s really fucking good. This game is a sort of reboot/remake of the original Arcade game from the 1990’s but also at the same time acts as an amalgam of the entire franchise, and turns itself into a pretty big Metroidvania 2.5D action platformer. It’s rather pleasant to the eye, the game’s 8 areas which you’ll visit during the playthrough are rather distinct, the movement is tight and Strider himself is unlikely to screw you over while traversing the world, as he automatically attaches himself to the walls or ceilings.
Since it’s a Metroidvania, you’re naturally gaining new abilities and can of course travel to previously visited sections of the Kazakh City map - sometimes just naturally on foot, sometimes through the use of his mechanical Eagle or Panther or a special device (though here they appear more as sort of spirits rather what you could’ve seen in Marvel vs Capcom), as well as different types of the Cypher, which is Strider’s main weapon.
You get a total of three special moves (or Options) those being the Panther, the Eagle and the “Ouroboros”, and a total of 4 Cypher or Plasma types - those being Reflective (can deflect enemy bullets), Explosive (additional damage, causes enemies to catch fire), Ultra Cold (causes enemies to freeze), and Magnetic (sends boomerang-like projectiles). There’s also the Dash ability and Kunai, both of which are further altered depending on the chosen Cypher/Plasma type - e.g. Reflective makes the dash to deflect all projectiles (except missiles) while the Kunai ricochet off the walls, or Magnetic makes the dash break shields and stun enemies, the the Kunai turn into small homing missiles that paralyze enemies on hit. You’re usually not dealing with too many enemies on screen, but since the game throws different types of them (shield soldiers, shotgunners, flying robots etc) it can get kinda crazy, and at higher difficulites you’re gonna juggle between types and abilities like you’re in a Devil May Cry game (and honestly the Plasma type system makes me think of Dante’s style switching in DMC4 more than anything else). You also have the Slide attack (lets you sideswitch with enemies quickly), Helmbreaker attack (can instantly freeze enemies for example), Charge attack (bigger range and instantly breaks shields), and all of them, in combination with the dash and the kunai, are used in platforming and can help you get to secret areas or just avoid enemy attacks. Do keep in mind though that the Dash is on a cooldown, the Charge attack has some build-up and you can get hit out of it, and the Slide attack can’t go through Shields, while the Special moves/Options use Energy, so you can’t just spam those and think you’re good to go.
Strider also has a special Hit meter, which is filled with every attack you land and decreases with each attack you take, and once it fills completely - he enters a sort enhanced mode, which heavily increases the range and damage of each slash you do, so in a No Damage run you can just slide and dice through whatever the game throws at you and deal with bosses really fast. Hell, one of the game’s trophies challenges you to do a playthrogh in under 4 hours and I assume it’s fairly popular with speedrunners, so go ahead and test yourself if you’re confident in your abilities.
Since it’s a Metroidvania - the game offers you plenty of exploration, where you can find secrets (like alternate costumes), pieces of artwork, or upgrades for your character - you can increase the healthbar, the energy bar, the amount of kunai you can throw, and the speed with which the energy is automatically regenerated, so ideally you’d want to make the most of your abilities and take a look at every corner and that platform over there in hopes of finding something cool. The bosses are all great and inspired by past Strider games, and are actually challenging (well… some of them anyway, you can die real fast if you’re not careful however), I’m pretty sure not all of them you’ll have to meet on your travels, so don’t hesitate to explore around. I think Symphony of the Night would be a very fair comparison to how the bosses are done, as in you’re not always locked into a tight room like what Megaman usually did, and the boss battles vary in how much space you have to avoid their attacks.
Oh, one important thing to mention - the game has NO LIMITS for button presses, and its built to support literal mashing of the attack button to hack away at the enemies, so to be the most effective at combat I’d suggest you finding a position for your controller (or keyboard, if you’re on PC) in which you are comfortable enough to attack, jump and move, or else your hand will get tired real fast. You could just cheat and use a Turbo function, of course, it’s all up to you. Note that using any alternate devices like Hitboxes or Fightsticks for this game in particular is NOT advised (unlike some of the Castlevanias, where they work surprisingly well - watch a Rondo of Blood run from one of the past GDQs, you’ll be amazed how efficient that control method can be) - you need the right stick functionality to aim your Kunai and you need the d-pad functionality to switch between Plasma types - a left stick alone isn’t going to cut it, plus you need a touchpad to access the map.
Outside of all that…my only gripes with the game are:
- There’s no New Game+, so you can’t just start a playthrough with all upgrades and weaponry obtained from the start for speedrun purposes. Going through the story fast is actually a challenge here
- Despite being a Metroidvania and having distinct areas/locations - the game’s rather short. You can finish it in a day or two depending on how long your game session is
- I kinda wish there was some sort of a parry mechanic in here. Sure, you can deflect most bullets using the Reflect plasma, but that works only on bullets - some enemies can shoot rockets or drop small bombs on you and you can only protect yourself from those either via efficient mobility or one of the Options
- Certain parts of the game have a gravity alteration mechanic as a part of the platforming, and I think it just doesn’t work - it’s very unintuitive, it doesn’t keep accepting the directional input for the left stick, and because the gravity spheres attract you - it can screw you over while just jumping from platform to platform, which hurts the final boss fight.
But yeah, overall it’s a really solid game, kinda wish we got some sort of a sequel for this, instead of a total silence for almost 5 years now. And since Double Helix was bought out by Amazon - I doubt we’ll get another entry in this vein
