I've been playing quite a lot of Tomb Raider II. First I tried playing it on ePSXe and Duckstation emulators, but I couldn't get it to work.., as soon as I tried to launch the game properly it gave me a black screen. Later on, I found out there's a remastered version for PC, so I sailed the ship and got it. It turns out the remastered version lets you switch graphics any time you want, a modern look or PSONE era stuff, you decide..

And I've been having a BLAST. I haven't played this game since like 2000 or 1999, I had a massive trip down memory lane with it. There were things I had forgotten about, like the part where you go to a Tibetan Temple. Small stuff like wall textures, ground textures, certain enemies and items would trigger massive memories from way back. Especially the Venice level, lots of small stuff that I suddenly remembered as soon as I saw them, the last Venice level gave me A LOT of flashbacks. The sunken ship level gave me A LOT of goosebumps, now I understand where my fascination with ship wrecks and exploration come from.

It's a very good game despite some technical issues. Lara's movement is awesome for it's time, the animations are superb for a 1997 game. The way she jumps, lands, grabs onto stuff, does athletic moves and so on, it's insanely good for such an old game. The combat is not great, sometimes aiming and camera angles can get very confusing and most enemies are bullet sponges, especially human enemies armed with firearms, who can really take a lot of your hp as they trade damage with you. The puzzles are mostly easy, you can get around them without much issue if you try hard enough. The platform element of the game is very fun, it works almost flawlessly. Still, I have died a lot and spent a lot of time exploring levels and trying to find my way around it, really kept me busy. Sometimes I asked how a 8 years old me could figure out this game back then, and my 31 years old ass couldn't do it lol

You get to appreciate old games, much better than today's bloated crap full of shiny graphics and little substance. Tomb Raider II has a lot of charisma and I like that a lot.

After I'm done with this game maybe I'll do the first one and the third, they come packaged in one with the remastered version. Or maybe I'll go and boot up Metal Gear Solid on the emulator, I haven't played that game in AGES and I can barely remember two or three things about it. Perhaps I'll do a full PSONE run and play Medievil or the Medal of Honor games for some cathartic nazi killing moments.