I finally played and finished Barkley, Shut Up & Jam: Gaiden
hahahah what the fuck
that's a coincidence, i just replayed it today for the first time in a while. i still like it a lot but this time what hit me was the ridiculous amount of rpg detail throughout the whole game, like the little pool shaped like a cross in kobe bryants tomb or suddenly realising that the song that plays after you beat jordan is a slowed-down midi version of 'sweet georgia brown'.
anyway i'm playing the original tomb raider game now. d-don't judge me.. if jamie can watch the x files for some background feeling of weird mysteries then i can play tomb raider to wander around strangely textured lo-res crypts filled with awkwardly shambling yetis and dinos...
the controls are annoying, especially the jump stuff, but i kind of like the strange level design. the first level is filled with really jarring and obvious holes and corridors in places you can't get to but think maybe you could if you tried, or strange floor angles made of packed ice, and lots of nooks and crannies that don't do anything. the movement/jumping stuff makes it more of a chore to navigate through than it has to be but it still feels uh distinctly unlike any other game environment made of just crisscrossing paths and so on. maybe thats just me or there's a ton of games which did it better which i haven't played but i can't think of much offhand aside from like isolated moments in n64 shadows of the empire icelevels or something. also idk strange open spaces of sudden carefully detailed lowpoly vine/shrub textures in a ruined temple/cavern place. narrow corridors suddenly opening up to huge + weirdly elaborate multileveled rooms. theres a continuing sense of it being just a little stranger and more evocative than it really should, considering.