Marvel's Avengers: The Definitive Edition (PC)

Developer:

Crystal Dynamics

|

Release Date:

2020

|

Systems:

Win, XBOne, Series S/X, PS4, PS5, Stadia

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about Marvel's Avengers, because it's about to be delisted on Steam and is super cheap right now. Honestly, this fell off my radar the moment I learned they were going the games as a service route with it, so I was very surprised to find myself handing over actual money for it and now I own it I guess!

My curiosity got the better of me when I learned that they'd given players the entire shop's worth of content and freed it from its microtransactions. Plus I had to buy it now or I'd never get another chance, as they've gone and delisted it from online shops. I hate it when they do that.

I was only intending to put the game on for a few minutes and see how it plays, I wasn't expecting to use my screenshots/video to write about it for the internet. In fact, I wasn't even expecting it to run. So the graphics have been left at their absolute lowest to squeeze the maximum FPS out of it. This is as bad as the game can possibly look, at least without some extra effort messing with INI files or whatever. I know people work horrifying miracles sometimes.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to be playing the first few hours, so you may learn a lot of stuff here you might not want to know about the story.

Tomb Raider (PC)

Today on Super Adventures, I'm putting a few hours into the original Tomb Raider! Uh, I mean I'm playing the original version of the 2013 reboot/prequel instead of the 2014 'Definitive Edition' of the 2013 game, I'm not playing the original ORIGINAL Tomb Raider. Oh fuck it, I'm calling this Lara Croft's Tropical Torture Island Vacation.

I suppose I could also call it Tomb Raider 9, though they got bored of numbering the games somewhere back around 3, and that doesn't include things like the Game Boy games and the isometric Lara Croft series. Or the remake of Tomb Raider 1 that came out a few years back called Tomb Raider Anniversary. Man there's a lot of Tomb Raider games in the world right now, and I've barely played any of them. I was scared off years ago when the reviews for each new game reported that it was more of the same, except worse.

Tomb Raider 2013 isn't more of the same though, and while that may have worried the faithful (especially after the early trailers), it caught my interest. I'm the asshole who liked Resident Evil 5 more than Resident Evil 2, and Fallout 3 more than Fallout 2 you see, so there's reason for me to approach this with a bit of optimism... though to be honest I actually kind of played and finished the entire game a year ago, so I won't be coming in blind and utterly clueless like I usually do. Sorry.

(Click the screenshots to open them up into a slightly less pathetic 1280x720 resolution. You should be grateful for that much, seeing as the game was far more interested in giving me a completely unacceptable 1272x720!)

Project: Snowblind (PC)

Hi. Sorry for the long break but I'm still here I promise, and to prove it I bring you many pictures from Crystal Dynamic's 2005 FPS Project: Snowblind! I've been playing through all of the Deus Ex sequels this year, so it didn't seem right to leave out poor Snowblind even if it's not really part of the family. It was originally intended to be a multiplayer-focused Deus Ex spin-off called Deus Ex: Clan Wars you see, but Invisible War's crappy sales put an end to that plan. There's some obscure trivia just for you, taken straight from the first paragraph of its wikipedia page. I will of course only be examining the single player though, as that's what I do.

Just to shift subject for a second; I know this doesn't need to be said, but there's been some drama over game journalism lately and I feel like re-clarifying how Super Adventures works. I don't generally review games here, I show off a few hours of gameplay and report how I felt about them during and after playing this small fraction of the product. I salute those wise and learned game critics who can scientifically determine a game's objective worth down to a percent, but that's not a skill I have. I can only say whether or not I personally enjoyed my time playing it, share my first impressions, and provide for you a site full of my other opinions to judge my personal taste by.

You can't really call anything I do game journalism, I'm usually more of a snarky archaeologist, and the games I dig up are chosen by a team of experts consisting of myself and you guys. On the other hand I've got nothing against playing brand new games that are sent to me, and if there's ever been any conflict of interest due to my innumerous friendships with game developers I've always made it obvious enough for folks to make up their own minds about the bias in my rantings, and I always will. Probably.

(Click on screenshots to open them up at their original resolution.)

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (PC)

The final 'L' game on my site this year is action-adventure sequel Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver!

Today Crystal Dynamics are best known as being the guardians of the Tomb Raider series (seeing as they've made nothing else since 2006), but a decade ago they were more famous for another 'borrowed' franchise they'd decided to make their own. And a decade before that they were making 3DO games and Gex sequels, but hey everyone's got to start somewhere.

The Legacy of Kain series started in 1996 with 2D action RPG Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain by Silicon Knights, with Crystal Dynamics as the publisher, but the two companies had a bit of a falling out and Crystal Dynamics was the one that walked away with the IP in the end. They also walked away from publishing, deciding to develop the next game in the franchise themselves by merging their original concept for a game called Shifter with the Legacy of Kain mythos, while Silicon Knights were left to make Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for Nintendo instead.

Sorry I thought all that was interesting for some reason. I guess I've been overly fond of Soul Reaver ever since I got my hands on the Dreamcast version and found myself helplessly playing it through right to the end. The sequels bored me, but this first game was really something special. Or maybe I just grew out of the entire series when the gameplay became dated. I suppose I'd have to replay this to find out for sure. So I'll go do that then.

Off-World Interceptor Extreme (PSX) - Guest Post

It seems that freelance video game analyst mecha-neko's found the closest thing you're gonna get to a Mystery Science Theater 3000 game.

I was originally going to play the 3DO version of this, but then I was told there was a PlayStation version that was EXTREME, so I just had to play that instead.

Crash 'n Burn (3DO) - Guest Post

Another Monday guest post by mecha-neko.