Thursday, July 05, 2007

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 10

Obelisk of Khamoon
  • This was a real let-down after the previous level.
  • This level was pretty much all movement puzzles and no thinking puzzles.
  • Some of the puzzles are really quite bad. There is one involving three crushing walls, one after another, with balancing posts in the middle of each. So Lara has to jump from post to post while avoiding the crushing walls. If Lara has to rebalance herself on one of the posts (using the triangle button) she can still make it through, but if it happens twice over the course of the three posts, then you're screwed. The game screwed me over time after time. I don't mind losing for poor skills, but the rebalancing appeared completely random. I hate dying for the random number generator's sake.
  • The obelisk itself was pretty unimpressive. I remember being completely floored by the one in the original game, and this one was lame. I think it's a size thing. (I'll refrain from comments about what an obelisk might symbolize).
  • The enemies were really just cannon fodder. I offed most of them easily from a distance.
  • The spinning blade traps are horrible in this game. If you're going to copy Prince of Persia (the modern games), then at least give Lara enough ability to avoid those traps as easily as the Prince does.
  • I'm now onto the Sphinx level. Let's hope it's better.

2 comments:

ruffin said...

Hrm, over a week later, another update. This either means the predicted sleepless nights have precluded posting and the going is going slowly or, well, or it's not so sleepless. ??

Unknown said...

I had family come to visit and an article to complete which pretty much killed anything but Zoo Keeper play on the Nintendo DS for a few minutes a day. Now I'm gone again for the weekend and won't have an update until Monday night at the earliest.

I did start Sanctuary of the Scion (the Sphinx level) and it's looking good. It had a puzzle that reminded me of my Prince of Persia: Sands of Time experience -- I sat down and drew a diagram, "computed" the answer I needed to achieve in the game, and immediately saw the solution from that short paper-and-pen work. I think that's a pretty gutsy puzzle, and worth my time.