Dungeons and Dragons Online: First Play

Since I don't have the time to play WoW regularly now, I thought I'd give DDO a shot. Feels a little like my first experience with EverQuest, from the somewhat uninspired game design (have you seen the text random NPC tavern dwellers spit out in DDO? "Don't bother me," or, "She said WHAT?" over and over? Seriously, put a little C into the NPC, please) to the slightly green tinge I have when I'm done playing. Yes, it's an engine that gets me seasick.

The game itself is okay so far. I ran through the n00b dungeon/solo experience. It was okay. Everyone in the starting city has a weapon with the same special effect -- flames dancing off of it -- as everyone else. Not surprising in that everyone's carrying around weapons that were rewards from their first question chain, but that every weapon has flames, from Great Axes to Rapiers (do I capitalize those?) smacks of the same issue of underplanning and undercustomizing the uninspired tavern replies also evidence.

Still, there's just enough to the game that I think I'll give it at least another few shots. Game mechanics are just like WoW (quest givers with icons over their head, actionbar tied to numbers, etc), but it might be fun to get all nostalgic and run some D&D again. The free play also seems relatively well done so far. Two races, drow and some wacky machination race, have to be purchased, but otherwise no intrusion from the parts of the game that cost dough on my experience so far. It serves as a very extended trial, I suppose, and there's got to be a serious market for gamers like me, that might play once or twice a month and don't want to shell out a subscription fee. Microtransactions will be much more likely to grab my dollar until I have time to chose to sell out again -- at which point I'll have another option in my head (DDO) to add to WoW that I wouldn't've had before.

Where'd my flames go?

For Xmas, I got time to play more GTA3:SA. Grabbed my Broadway from the garage, but the flame paint was gone! Wack. Also ran into the basketball save bug where saving in Mad Dogg's mansion makes all the basketballs in the game disappear. Aggravating. I've been running a number of the asset missions, as up until now I'd only gotten the Roboi Food Mart and Vendant (sp?) Meadows airstrip. Found out I needed to finish driving school to buy Wang's Cars (har har), so did that in an hour or so. Had left it without finishing earlier, as the tasks are pretty tedious. Now have Wangs, the Valet, Meadows, and Roboi. Also finally shelled out for high respect clothes.

Was surprised to see a decent amount of character development happen within a non-required mission set. That's either bad design for minimalist gamers like me, or a good reward for completists. I'm coming down on the bad design side; it was only boredom and luck that had me start these missions back up, and the bonding between Caesar and CJ and the development of Kindle (CJ's sister) is pretty important context for the last few missions I'm running.

One part of the game that I was upset I didn't take advantage of fully before moving on was the gang war "minigame". I'm happy to see the game ends with it, give or take, as you grab your brother out of prison and start taking back the neighborhood. Like I just mentioned, doing the Wang's Cars missions helps set up a Sweet vs. Kindle, hood vs. escapism tension in the proverbial plot. Sorta fortuitous that I came back to those missions now (about two real-life years after playing San Fiero the first time).

GTA:SA remains the best alternative to my WoW addiction, as I can play for a week without shelling out for a month. Wish I had a ready platform for GTA4 when I finish, but neither of my computers quite make the minimum cut.

MGS4: Finished

Final score:

MGS4 Notes

These could be spoilers. You've been warned.

1. If I'm going to play a Brother's Keeper mission, and said brother at one point tries not to get in trouble, but later goes out of his way to get in trouble for no apparent reason, then I hate it. Seriously.
   
2. Also, if said brother follows a space-filling curve when there are obviously better paths that he should be able to see with his own eyes, then I hate it.
3. Too many sick people at the end of Act 3/beginning of Act 4. What the heck?
4. I don't think this is just poor translation, but the conversations are even more stilted than ever. Not one bit of this sounds like two people having a conversation. It sounds like two people reading lines. Spontaneity is zero.
5. Partitioning the game into 4+ acts has really broken the game into pieces that make it feel like a series of set pieces instead of a continuous adventure. At this point, MGS3 is winning.
6. Is this just the culmination of the gameplay ideas (when you do play, it is at least entertaining) across a patchwork of pieces that Kojima felt were needed to tie the whole sprawling story up with a bow? That is, because it wants to be the end, it has no choice but to go from place to place to make it coherent ... and fails to be as coherent as the previous games precisely for that reason.
   

Asus XG Station Approaches Availability - Tom's Hardware

This, from January 13th of this year:

Announced around a year ago, Asus' external graphics enclosure is nearly production ready, according to company sources.

The XG Station houses a single or double-slot PCI-Express x16 graphics card, using a notebook's Express Card interface to provide x1 bandwidth. This allows an included (unspecified model) mainstream graphics card to exceed Intel's 965GM performance by over 6.7 times, according to Asus.

Crimminy, release it already. I'm not to the point that I need it; I doubt I will for some time with my tower sitting at home with the same slot. But man, this is a cool piece of hardware. If you game with a laptop, this would extend its gaming life by a year or three, albeit in a somewhat clunky fashion [as you need an external monitor]. Still, sounds great for home gaming, and if you got a socketed processor on the motherboard, would nearly eliminate my need desire for a tower.

Rock Band (PS2): Da Wife Loves Drums

Got Rock Band for the PS2 yesterday evening. Once she got the hang of it, Rebecca was very keen on the drums.

Which is good, because the song list doesn't appeal to her vocally -- about half the songs neither of us know, and nearly all the songs are hard rock sung by growly men. So the original scheme -- Rock Band as Guitar Hero for me and simultaneously Karaoke Revolution for her -- isn't working out. Maybe by the time the second Track Pack comes out the PS2, they'll have Blondie and the B-52's on there.

But the drums she likes. Although the foot pedal is still tricky. Tricky to get comfortable, tricky to figure out how to work effectively, and then just tricky. She would really like the "easy" difficulty to not include the foot pedal, so she could get comfortable with the other stuff first.

It certainly seems like "easy" guitar is much easier than "easy" drums. As established in Guitar Hero, "easy" for guitar means it only uses the first three fret keys. I don't have crazy fingers, but on "easy" I effortlessly stay at the top of the fan meter. It seems that "easy" drums means using the blue drum is rare or nonexistent, but red, yellow, green, and orange foot pedal are generally all represented. Some "Act I" tracks use the foot pedal barely at all, but others use it nonstop. Some more tutorials on drums, or an easier-than-easy level, seem warranted.

Another "feature" of the drums is that they're loud. That is, Rebecca can't really hear the music or drums from the game over the noise of her slappin' the skins. (The obvious answer for this is to crank up the volume, but it's notable that I can hear it just fine and she can't.) The guitar strumbar was redesigned for quietness, so having the drums so noisy is a little weird. I don't remember practice pads being so loud, but then again, I played trumpet. (Better put quotes around "played".)

Of course, _I_ want to get headphones hooked up to the audio out so Rebecca'll look like a real studio drummer. But that's just me.

Despite these issues, Rock Band does indeed rock. The drums open up the gameplay to a broader range of players, and the cooperative feel is electric. If the song list were also more accessible to the Karaoke crowd, it could be even better. I know the downloadable songs of the current-gen versions ameliorate this somewhat, but even those feature only a handful of female vocalists and barely any pop, none from this decade.

Okami (PS2): First 12 hrs

Innovative and with an artistic style all its own, but the user interface sometimes disrupts an otherwise excellent game. Dialogue can sometimes be "clicked through" to hurry it up, but often not. Painting challenges punish the player for losing by suffering through the long lead-up sequence again. And no, you can't get out of the challenge entirely -- once you're in the "Konohana Shuffle" challenge, the only ways out are to succeed or power off. (Note: this is the sort of poor interface problem that might be overlooked by a reviewer -- so far, Okami is fairly easy, and if you don't screw up one of these challenges, you'll never see how annoying it is.) "Helpful hints" from the dino-buddy are sometimes timed so poorly as to be laughable -- suggesting you practice with a new weapon, for example, when immediately thereafter you are forced into the most challenging battle thus far with no opportunity for such practice. (This guy is called Waka, and he is by far the most annoying Tao master I have ever met, fictionally or otherwise. And I suffered through Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street.)

Nevertheless, the style is distinctive, the play mechanic is unique, and the emphasis is on exploration and discovery, not twitch skills or resource management. If you're a fan of Ico, this is a very different game that I think will equally appeal to you.

MMORPG Extraplayinganza

One month of UO two years after one month of UO years after years of UO:
I believe the guy writing The Worst Ninja has things down pretty well. He's approaching UO for the first time, making all the too-contrived conventions appear that much more obviously. Here's a quote from my favorite part of his descriptions of his 14-day trial.

[The bank, where long-time players discard items they can't fit in their bank box on the ground] is a treasure trove. Armour, weapons, magic talismans, mysterious keys and, best of all, a complete, joyously humiliating jester outfit, which I duly don and prance about in for the benefit of my silent patrons. And then, there it is. Thank you, thank you, thank you, kind strangers. An axe. A huge, magic axe, several orders of magnitude more powerful than my geeky claws. I don’t care about its magic, though. This could be a one-of-a-kind ancient elven heirloom for all I care. All I care is that it can chop down bloody trees. At last, I can be the ninja-jester-lumberjack I’d always dreamt of becoming.

The picture of the guy's worth a look.

It is much easier to kill things now. Mobs drop lots more magical loot than before as well. Kingdom Reborn's interface would be much nicer if the sys reqs weren't so high and it didn't crash my box at least once an hour. I did enjoy the special moves you can pull off in combat, which is also a new feature, but this is still no game for the soloer with so many more enjoyable options out there. The majority of the interface still stinks, and for the first time I can ever remember I wasn't able to retrieve my corpse in time and lost some gear. No big deal, but I was upset to see that the stuff I'd dropped on the ground was still there though my adventuring gear disappeared with my body.

Oh well. I like that it's still around.

EVE Online

14 day trial wasn't bad. The game looks great, that's for sure, and they're able to pull off the simulation-first goal of UO very well. For instance, you will almost certainly be buying all your new gear via contracts with other players. When I bought a new ship, it was player made. This is good -- a true economy. I'm sure there are drains somewhere, but for the most part it appears to be about as closed a economic loop as you can get. I've also read a number of interviews with EVE folk that show that their push was to build a good, persistent, impressive simulation rather than just the tired cartoon that is WoW (which I'll still be playing soon).

My only gripe is that fighting seems to be pretty much a big dice-roll fest. I'd rather have Elite-like dogfights, and those aren't found here. You control your ship with the mouse, afaict, making it move to points, or you select targets and orbit (including combat) or get within x meters and stop. There's no real evasive action, though until you learn to target sans mouse, it sure feels like there is.

Even with the older client, it's a gorgeous game. Really, it is. That I enjoyed quite a bit. If I was going to play two MMORPGs at a time, this would be a great change of pace from UO/CoH/WoW. It's very tempting, but the complete lack of twitch play turns me off.

City of Heroes

There's a certain type of game engine that makes me puke. This is one. I get green playing it. In my first shot, I didn't interact with other players much at all, ran through some very boring missions (not unlike ones "real" heroes in comic books do, but without the character development/exploration), and ran away from some of the tougher two-bit street crooks between mission goals. The engine is very dated, with 2-D textures on walls, eg. Reminds me of Tek Wars, another game that made me puke, and, yes, Perfect Dark (yet another pukefest when someone actually commented that I looked green after playing on the floor for a few hours). But the reminder wasn't just the queasiness, but the tech in the engine. Tired engine, bland missions, and large headaches means they likely won't be getting my dough. I'd like to play more to give it a longer chance, but my personal, physical reaction will probably nix that.

Malas in UO remind you of anywhere?

Boy this sure looks familiar.

It's a land introduced by the Age of Shadows expansion to UO that has continents floating in stars, breaking up into tiny piece, not at all unlike what happened in the Burning Crusade expansion for WoW.

God of War: Chains of Olympus Update #1

I just finished off the Basilisk, first real boss of the game. So far, so good. The controls do get very natural, and even dodging isn't horrible although it does require a slightly higher level of concentration than it did on the PS2.

This game should have been distributed on the PlayStation Store. The win for Sony would be (a) big name game on the store and (b) sell more memory stick hardware. Seriously, that would have been a huge hit.

Graphics are beautiful. There is a bit of glitchiness when you sleep the PSP, mostly in the sound, but that's mostly understandable.

Going to play this on the HDTV in a bit with the PSP-2000 component cable. Hoping to see how well it looks on the "big" screen.

PS3 God of War can't get here soon enough.

UO:KR -- What's old is, well, still old.

I guess it's fun that they kept Thopas around, but Ultima Online's new Kingdom Reborn update brings me right back to where I was when I was playing on a 333 MHz AMD K6. My Core 2 feels insanely sluggish and, in a grand irony, I'm only able to access those same portions of the UO world I was able to access a decade ago; there are *no*, count 'em, *no* new expansions built into the fancy new interface.

I just installed UO: Second Age again. Hopefully the old 2D client will be a little snappier. EA claimed it'd make the 2D clients obsolete/incompatible once 80% of the users went to KR. Hopefully they're keeping track of the number that switch to KR and back. Of course with the delay the expansion slated for summer 2007 has undergone, I don't see many major changes happening any time soon even if everyone had made the switch.

There are some nice additions to the new client, like a tool bar stolen straight from WoW [which I'm sure stole it from someone else], a quest log [ditto], and a world map with tons of spoilers, like dungeon locations. Was annoying that my house got nabbed by someone. Logging in had the unfortunate effect of popping me out in the middle of nowhere, mobs aggro'd.

In any event, here are the proverbial proofs of life.



... and, of course, your Resource Monitor on Vista + Kingdom Reborn. Memory-a-Plenty it ain't.



EDIT: You know, honestly, I feel pretty badly about my tone here. There is something neat (special?) about hearing that "You've entered Britain, here's the happy music" music that's hard to beat. It reminds me of when UO's Britain was bustling with players who weren't in UO for "character advancement" and were more interested in creating an enjoyable simulation, a MUSH even. It used to be that the fanciest armor was player-made, and people were proud to show off color-matching sets that could only be made by craftsmen intent enough to find, mine, or trade for a rainbow of ingots, and that's just one example. Players used to be proud to have made an item well enough that their name was inscribed onto it, and when you saw the person who'd made your gear in Britain, you'd give a quick bow.

That MUSH feel is likely gone from UO now, I think, and was certainly gone from Britain when I was there tonight, where I only saw two other characters during my quick visit when I used to see scores. Still, the potential UO had and, I suppose, has is incredible. It was, initially, a wonderfully designed game. Perhaps if they'd let me into the new expansion material without shelling out $30, which I'm more than a little loath to do, I'd know if it continues to be as wonderfully developed. I've got my doubts, and today's (yesterday's?) UO players are partially to blame. It's so much easier to run from one NPC with a question mark over their head to the next with a bright yellow "!" before teaming up with warlocks played by 13 year-old boys for hours to run through dungeons so linear they might as well have been set up by [the 32X's] Admiral Ackbar. *sigh* Ye olde halcyon times of yore.

Super Mario Galaxy

I received this game for my birthday and with it I have ventured into Super Mario's world for the first time since SMB3. After playing for about 90 minutes, I am still getting used to the awkward Katamari-like controls. Also, it took me a while to realize that I could shoot stars at enemies, since I wasn't actively pointing the WiiMote at the screen. The spin attack is neat, but I want more range. I am not a fan of Princess Peach, so I like the addition of Rosalina, who bears a slight resemblance to Namine from Kingdom Hearts II. Finally, I am looking forward to being able to control the camera. Except for the very beginning of the game, the player is unable to rotate the camera, which is especially frustrating when Mario is standing on the bottom of a planet.

Guitar Hero II PS2: FImp

Finished up the Medium difficulty. Did get booed off of the stage once in the next to last set list, otherwise ran straight through. The Free Bird encore was cute... about five yes/no screens wondering if I really wanted to play it. UFO animation was a little out there, though.

One thing I don't get about the game is why someone would pour so many hours into the game instead of learning to play guitar. I mean, the medium difficulty was enjoyable and didn't require, for me, any practice time, but I get the feeling the more difficult levels will, as would getting five stars in every Medium song. Having played just enough drums, piano, and bass to know what that time wasted would get one on a "real" instrument, I have to question why I'd put in the time. Sure, the rewards for the first few hours are much greater than the first few hours on a traditional instrument, but how long before the returns are much lower than the additional investment?

Past that, however, there were times when playing felt awfully close to how jamming on the guitar should feel, scare quoting the "should" there. It's well done. I'll complain that the graphics are absolutely wasted on anyone, as I doubt they have time to watch. The songs aren't always exactly favorites. Looking forward to Rock Band.

Aside: Did try Frets on Fire, which would seem to have the potential to be the first OSS game worth a rat's behind... okay, beyond say FreeCiv, the Privateer port, Marathon updates, we'll add angband for Matt, a few built off of ids' engines, and perhaps a few others. Still, if done right, FoF would be a really nice addition, potentially the sort of game that would help sell Linux on the consumer desktop. Unf. it takes over 500 megs of memory, which on my poor box with Vista and only a gig means no go. I tried twice. Oh well. Time to hook the tower back up, I guess.

UDF #4

My basic complaints so far:

1. "Waves" of bad guys. Lame. Given how organic the environment of the game feels, there needs to be a less obvious way of introducing bad guys.

2. The movement when jumping/climbing a la Tomb Raider needs to be just a hair more smooth. They've got some decent environments to work in, that don't look entirely contrived with ledges and whatnot, but there needs to be a little smoothing out of the diagonal jumps.

3. Don't be afraid to let people explore some dead ends or provide more than one path through the environment. Vines are all over this jungle, but only a few are climbable. Let the others be climbable, but lead nowhere. Or let them lead to other parts of the environment but be essentially useless. Something.

Finally caught up with Elena, the female sidekick. The game is much more interesting with her around. And I have a nemesis in the game now too. That's also helpful.

There is also a Smith & Wesson that is awesome. Single shot kills like in Resident Evil.

UDF #3

Much more combat tonight, well-mixed with climbing and jumping around the jungle and later in a fort. The story has slowed down, mostly because there is a lot of action while Drake catches up with his female sidekick. Hopefully things will get more lively when the two are together.

This isn't Tomb Raider. So far, there really aren't any ways to explore an area and puzzle out how to get from point A to point B. There is always only one way forward, and you can find very tiny niches to explore along the way, but that's it. Tomb Raider would at least throw you into a big room that acts as a hub and you explore different areas from there, possibly in an order of your choosing.

New weapons: RPG and an Uzi. Liked the Uzi. RPG go boom, but loooong reloads.

Spectacular scenery.

One thing that's a little weak about the jumping and climbing is that when you're scaling a wall there really is only a direction and a button push to go where you want to go. There isn't any timing, except when you get onto a breaking ledge. There isn't any figuring out which ledge to go to, since there is always only one direction forward and one back.

I'd like for level designers to feel a bit more free to put in some dead ends or means to make the climbing challenging. Here, I think the right thing to do would be to copy MGS2 and have Drake be limited in how long he could hold on by his fingers. That pressure would make the climbing sections a lot more tense, I think. If not that, then something.

If Tomb Raider went for the killing, you should see this game. I got a reward in the game for 30 headshots. Since I'm usually firing like mad, you can imagine that 30 headshots only happens after a hundred guys or more have died. Oh, and I got a 50-kills-without-dying reward, so that gives another measure of how many generic bad guys have died at my hand. I know it's not feasible to record 30 different actors doing bad guy voices, but would it hurt to use some modest modulation on 2 or 3 actors to make those voices sound slightly different every now and then? That way when I hear "I'm going to get you, airplane man!" for the 20th time, it doesn't sound like the previous 19 times...

UDF #2

I just finished a fairly long section of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I'm more impressed than ever before.

- The animation really is top-notch.
- The next Tomb Raider team better be taking some good notes. Drake is smoother than Lara in her last two games, and he's doing many of the same moves.
- As a side note, Drake is scripted kind of like Lara, but so far I haven't feel constrained by it. That is, I haven't found a situation where I wanted to do something natural and the scripting (i.e. magic) kept me from doing it. I think this really is a bit closer to the simulation than Tomb Raider Legend and Anniversary were.
- Game starts with gunplay, but then I played for probably a good hour without a single shot being necessary (except one or two places where you can use it for a puzzle). Lots of exploring.
- I can't tell if I think the little hidden treasures along the way are a bad idea or not. It does take me out of character because I don't press ahead with the story's implied urgency...instead I loiter around and look for special stuff. I think I'm going to stop doing that and enjoy the story.
- Speaking of the story, it's great. And the dialogue and characters are entertaining.

"I'm in the captain's quarters [in a ruined ship]. And the captain's still here."
"What does that mean?"
"He's dead. And it looks like he was ripped to shreds. A bad way to go."
"That's too bad. [brief pause] Check his wallet!"

- Got a bit of the ol' Tomb Raider vertigo while playing. Very happy.
- Playing the demo made me a good combatant in the game. I'm suspicious that I'd've not liked the game so much had I not practiced so much on the demo. (I beat it four times, twice on hard.)
- That said, once you get the gunplay down, it really does become quite enjoyable. You think about where and how you're going to use cover, reloading on the run to save time, switching between your two weapons (nice touch...you can only take your pistol and one of shotgun or AK-47) as the situation warrants. No other 3D third-person action game with guns has been this fun for me. (God of War is great, but doesn't use guns.)

Feeling like GOTY. We'll see if it keeps up.

UDF #1

I just started Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for PS3.

- Really, really good looking. Immersion is relatively easy because of that.
- Characterization is awesome. Conversations are more natural than most game dialogue. I love the actor for Nathan Drake (main char).
- The woman playing Elena is good too, and they've made a woman who's attractive without looking like a model. Good job. I still would have preferred a brunette.
- There appears to be a fraction of a second lag between audio and video. Not distracting while in the game, but during longer cut scenes, can take my attention away.
- Not a whole lot new in terms of interaction. Lots of stuff familiar from Tomb Raider Legend and Tomb Raider Anniversary.
- Main interactions other than climbing/jumping are push/pull and shoot.
- Did find one hidden treasure. Woohoo for me. Only 59 more to go.
- Summary of story: Found Sir F. Drake's "coffin" which had a secret diary. Shows location of El Dorado. Attacked by pirates and escaped when Sully rescued us in his plane. Ditched Elena and headed off with Sully to find El Dorado. Made it into a deep underground temple/tomb and found where El Dorado, a solid gold statue and not a city, used to be.

Good stuff so far. Not much gunplay at all, which I like. Won't mind some shooting occasionally if plenty of TR-like stuff.

Xbox360: NCAA 2008

If the distinction hadn't already existed between "evolutionary" and "revolutionary," it would have to have been made based on my experience playing NCAA 2008 football on the Xbox360. Why would I pay hundreds to play on this instead of the PS2 again? Yuck.

The change between EA football options available on the N64 and PS1 compared to the games on the PS2 was an impressive one, scary ghoul-eyes excepted. Can't say we've taken another leap like that since then.

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.
  

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 9

Temple of Khamoon

• Quite possibly the best level yet.
• Part of the joy here was that I aced it -- every artifact and relic, on my own.
  
• This is one movement puzzle after another, which made it very intense.
• Despite following the original level's outline fairly closely, the puzzles felt very different. This is where Lara's new movements helped push the game beyond the original in an essential way.
• I'm fairly certain that the block/key puzzle at the end was snatched from the beginning of the old Obelisk of Khamoon level. It will be interesting to see if anything else has changed in the next level.
  
• Biggest letdown: ambushes by cats all over the place. These suck.
• The first pressure-sensitive retracting floor is pretty annoying. I will need to look up how others dealt with it.
• If the levels can stick to this standard of quality, then the final half of the game should be gold.
• Thinking back to the original, it also had a ramping up, but I'd say that most of that was the deviousness of the puzzles -- which I equated with quality back then. The standard is a bit higher now: puzzles must be good and the level must look coherent while doing it.
• I think the coherence is why (as noted last night) the Cistern and Tomb of Tihocan were combined. It would have taken some serious reworking to make it all flow in a natural way. That they didn't want to put in that effort perhaps says something about how this game was made.

Next up: Obelisk of Khamoon. The game has me hooked now -- I may be in for sleepless nights of playing, as I experienced with TR1 so many years ago.