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Playstation vs. PC

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First post, by Great Hierophant

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I finally got the chance to play Tomb Raider on the Playstation for the first time today, and I would like to comment on the differences.

Graphically, PSX TR looks far, far worse than even software rendered PC TR. Not only is the screen in low resolution, on a TV screen the picture is stretched vertically. Also, its hard to tell that the game is 3D accelerated because it seems someone put vaseline all over my TV, its so fuzzy and indistinct. PSX seems darker than the PC at the default levels. To be fair, the movie cutscenes are cleaner due to the lower resolution of the TV screen.

Sound is better on the PSX. Many more sounds and voices are streamed off the CD, without pausing, and they are encoded in 16-bit as opposed to the 8-bit of the PC. The missing event music really helps convey distinct moods , opposed to the ever-present background noises of the PC. On the other hand, the PSX does not always play the ambient noise tracks like the PC does. This also means you don't have to experience pauses and skips as the CD seeks the track again. Finally, the in-game cutscene voices play in sync with the action, something that is difficult to depend on in the PC version due to the speed of various drives.

The PSX has the initial advantage in control, as PC joysticks aren't standard and require a keyboard mapper to use more than four buttons. However, I hate the PSX control mapping because the jump button should be where the action button is and vice versa. I assume its backwardsness is due to its European design, but the PSX game should have allowed you to frely map the controls.

I played from levels 1-4 and for the first time I encountered save crystals. No more incremental saves, I find that the crystals heighten the tension within the game, especially as I don't know precisely where they are. Also, I noticed that it seems that the enemies fall using half the bullets, it seems, of the PC version. Could this be to offset the save anywhere feature of that version?

Reply 1 of 1, by slube

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I agree with a lot of what you're saying. The graphics are certainly better on the PC, though at first, I wasn't drawn to the PC because of the lack of music.

I may have mentioned this before, but I've used ePSXe, the emulator, and I found it improves a lot on playing it with a real playstation: because of the plugins, you can make the movies high resolution, and the plugins make the music much better. Also, you can save in more places, as they've added an incremental 3-slot save (it may be more by now.) I personally hated having to use the crystals, because it would mean doing some part over and over again that I hated.

The biggest problem with the PSX version on the emulator is the shaky graphics, which I understand is the result of improving the resolution. It can make you seasick after a while.

At first, I wasn't impressed with the playstation version, but as the graphics got better, and certainly with the texturing, it became much more compelling. I needed the music, though, so adding that really made it worthwhile. It's a shame it's so hard to do, and I'm still holding out hope that someone will continue the work, or there will be an easier way to do it. The nice thing about the music on the PC version is that you get both the ambient and the music.

I must say I much prefer the controls of the PC. I've never liked the gamepad; I've always felt it's extremely imprecise, and I've heard that if a console player goes up against a PC player on an FPS, the console player is at a great disadvantage, because of the control.

As far as the sound goes, it seems to me that the sounds that have been put on the PC work pretty well, but I do agree, there is something better about the PSX sound, regarding the sounds of walking, weapons, or enemies. I figured it was the plugins of the emulator, but it could also be the encoding. The most obvious difference to me is that the Uzi fires half as many shots.

The movies, too, are stuck with the scanlines, which you can take out with the emulator, but this and all the other problems are built into the game, and would probably be very hard to fix. In my opinion, if the music packs can be finised, along with the retexturing, the incremental saves, and the keyboard control, the PC version will be the clear winner.

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