Tomb Raider: Underworld vs Victoria
Tomb Raider: Underworld
Tomb Raider: Underworld is a rather unique iteration of the age-old favorite action-adventure series featuring the fearless adventurer, Lara Croft. The game retained the franchise's love for intriguing puzzles and yet, it provided a ton of improvements in terms of adding in a dual-target system, non-linear puzzles (puzzles with multiple solutions), new abilities and tools, as well as a cool all-terrain hybrid motorbike.At the time of writing, Tomb Raider: Underworld would be celebrating its 10th anniversary next year, and as such, the game's graphics isn't exactly up to today's standards. The gameplay may feel rather clunky to some as well. However, if you really want to experience a more recent Tomb Raider that stayed true to the old puzzle-heavy format, this is the game to play.
Victoria
Victoria is a horror-themed match-3 adventure game that begins with a tragic story. The protagonist in this game, Victoria Miller, lost her husband and two children in an incident involving an aggressive poltergeist. Driven by her bitter need for revenge, she decided to pick up the ancient art of hunting supernatural beings and track the poltergeist across the United States in hopes of slaying it.At its core, Victoria is a pretty standard match-3 puzzle game where you’ll need to make matches of 3 or more in order to remove the items from the playing area. Most levels require you to clear away blue tiles by matching over them but sometimes, you may be asked to make specific matches in order to use the many weapons that will eventually be available to you against the supernatural creature you’ll be fighting. However, what allows this game to stand out from the usual match-3 games out there is the creepy atmosphere it provides and the occasional jump scares that's intended to give you a solid jolt from time to time.
Overall, when it comes to immersion, Victoria hits the nail on the head. However, despite the supernatural-fighting bits, the gameplay in this game can be rather simplistic, and after some time, rather mundane. That said, considering that true horror-themed match-3 games can be pretty rare, Victoria might just fit snugly into the gaming niche it is obviously designed for.