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Old 27-10-02, 23:41   #1
Scottlee
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St Francis Folly is a decent level that contains almost as many annoyances as it does moments of genius. Like Vilcabamba and the Lost Valley before it, the proceedings are split into two distinct sections. The first has you trying to get yourself out of a room of large pillars. The second has you going in the opposite direction (namely down) with the objective of opening a multi-locked door.

Following on from Larson’s shock pressence at the end of the previous stage, we now get the Pierre person he spoke off turning up to play silly beggers. His appearance between the pillars is the first of many throughout the Greek levels on TR1. Not many rival this first one for quality though. It is realistically handled and more than a little creepy. One minute you believe you are alone in the place and the next you see a flash of grey from the back of Pierre's jacket. As if that wasn't enough to shake you up, once the shootout is over you have to spend two or three minutes running round that room just convincing yourself that for the time being Pierre isn't there anymore. Great stuff.

Unfortunately the same praise cannot be heaped upon his second appearance in this level, which to be frank is nothing short of nonsensical. You have to wince at the way Pierre seemingly runs into thin air once the bullet holes in him have become too much to take. At least with the pillar confrontation there were enough exits for you to believe he escaped without using a magic spell. And why doesn't he fear the tiger placed down there at the bottom with him? The Pierre you see in TRC would have run a 1000 miles at the sight of a beast like that! Furthermore, why doesn't the tiger attack him? God knows. Maybe I'm just moaning for moaning's sake? I don't know. Well moaning is not the right word. Questioning probably sums up my intent better.

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Sidenote - This is for James Bond boffins. Does anybody think that Pierre's jacket looks exactly like the ones worn by Zorin's mine workers in "A view to a kill". First one to agree wins a hug. (Handshake if you're male)

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Most of this level is centred around four challenges left behind by Francis and his buddies before they passed away. Completing the four challenges earns you the right to borrow the four keys needed to open the end of level exit guarded by Pierre and his pet tiger. The quality of these individual tests are varied but on the whole quite high. Two of them even stand out to the point of being superb. You can probably guess which ones I mean. They are Damocles and Thor.

The Damocles test has you walking through a room with swords hanging from the ceiling. When you walk underneath a sword, it falls down and either kills you or nearly kills you. It's a simple idea but one that excels for three reasons…

a) The concept is never regurgitated in later games
b) The swords only fall down on your way back across the room. This lowers your guard and fine-tunes the tension perfectly.
c) The swords have the mystic power to swing towards you as they come down. This stops the whole room-crossing task from being too easy. In fact it makes the difficulty setting perfect.

Thor is a combination of small ideas put together in no particular order. If anyone knows what the hell that electric ball thing is supposed to be though please tell me. As much as I like its ambiguity, there seems to be no apparent way of avoiding its attentions when both entering and leaving this section. I thought the panels on the floor might hold the key to a safe passage but they do not seem to do anything. These days I am resigned to just run-jumping through as fast as I can, accepting the fact that I am going to lose at least a centimetre of energy.

The giant hammer is a much more straightforward booby. It is a wonderful device to encounter for the first time, and can even ensnare the vets if they're off guard. Wonderful TR moment.

The other two tasks I have not mentioned so far are ones of which I can't remember the names. These are not as good, though. One involves bypassing the dreaded and much over-used boulder thingymajig. The other has you swimming and pulling switches within the air time limit. This is largely over-used too. However, in defence of the latter, I suppose I could argue that it had not been done before - Unless you count the voluntary underwater section from Vilcabamba, but not everyone will bother with that. There is also some nice wallpaper at the starting point of the Francis water test. Coupled with its debatable originality victory, I will just about award third place to it among the gods ahead of whoever did the boulder thing. ("Atlas?")

There is not much else to talk about on this level aside from Pierre and the test rooms. The music is nicely paced and the graphics are squeaky clean. I think I will finish though by mentioning the coolness factor of the exit door. Those four sliding swords are so cool aren't they? I was convinced there was a huge boss lurking behind there for ages. 8/10

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Best part - Damocles

Worst part - Taking that boulder on. It is hard to get past even when you have completed the game 5 times

Secrets - 2/4 good ones. The two that get my respect are the first and last you come across. I like the one in the pillar room where you have to do all those backflips and timed jumps. Even the crumbling ledge at the top is cool. I deliberately fell through that once thinking I could cut a corner. How wrong I was. I died! The final secret is the one near the door with the swords. You have to drop down all those levels within the time and that is what you call a proper secret! The one above the crocodile is too easy. The one just prior to the scene with the crocodile on the other hand is too hard, at least for playstation owners. I do not think I will ever get that one.

Monsters - 3/4 are cool. The odd one out, as you would expect, are the bats. All the other rampaging beasts are great. I especially like the crocodiles, even if in this level there is only one. They are so menacing! I could see 100 of them, and the 101st would still send a shiver up my arm. It is the way they just glide effortlessly and munch at Lara's feet. Ugh.

Time - 25-30 minutes. An hour if you do this level for the first time.

[ 16. October 2005, 21:09: Message edited by: Scottlee ]
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Old 28-10-02, 00:08   #2
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Nice review Scottlee!!
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Old 28-10-02, 05:13   #3
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I wonder if You work for a newspaper or do reviews on movies. If you don't, maybe you should. It is very entertaining and enlightening, to read your 'analysis' of games, levels and creatures. Bravo!
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Old 29-10-02, 18:59   #4
slhgflasgdfghasdfilgasdlf
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These reviews are great, St Francis is one of my favourite levels. PErhaps You could ask to put your work on trc.com? I also wonder if your doing just TR1 or all the Raiders?
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Old 30-10-02, 14:21   #5
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Scotlee, yet again, a great review.

It's nice to see an intelligent look at the levels, and its also nice to jog my memory.

Do you have all your TR reviews in one place, or do we have to enjoy them when they appear on here?

I'd like to have the other stuff you've written...

Chris.
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Old 30-10-02, 20:17   #6
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Very nice! I wanna go play it now!

Btw, some info for you on the names of the doors- They're all named after ancient god, I think they're greek ones but I'm not sure. Thor is the god of thunder (hence the lightning bolts, I think he also had a hammer), Neptune is the god of the sea, so the puzzle was underwater, Atlas is the guy you see with the world on his shoulders, and damocles... well, I don't know who he was but I assume he had something to do with swords. And there's an easy way to do that trap with the boulder- if you run towards the pit where it eventually falls into, you will see that on one side is a marked tile where it lands, and before that is a safe spot you can rest safely until the boulder lands there. It's easier than running to the edge, but that's fun too.
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Old 30-10-02, 22:08   #7
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Damocles was a Greek courtier in Sicily.According to Cicero, the sychophantic Damocles acclaimed the happiness of his master, Dionysius, who responded by inviting Damocles to a feast and seating him beneath a sword hung by a single hair, to symbolize the ever present threat of peril, even amid good fortune.
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Old 01-11-02, 01:46   #8
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Another great analysis, Scottlee. I am currently playing St. Francis' Folly, and I finally figured out the Thor room, on my third time through the game. The colored grey squares on the floor under the lightning ball are what you DON'T want to stand on. Avoiding these squares will keep the lightning away from you. It's normal to assume that jumping from square to square would be the safe route, but therein lies the trap. Quite brilliant.

I too have noticed some of Pierre's more blatant disappearing acts. Once, in the Cistern I believe, he ran into a little square niche in the wall and just vanished! I thought it rather amusing. Maybe he has an artifact that renders him invisible. Who knows? One thing that spooked me about the Neptune room: behind the pool there is a fairly large area with nothing in it but one wall texture that is different from the others. A secret door, perhaps? There doesn't seem to be any other reason for this area being there.

About the last secret, I have never been able to get it without cheating. Here's what I do. Go to the floor level, where the lion is, and save. Next, go up to the pressure pad, activate it, and then jump off to your death, plummeting head first into the ground. Load your last save and walla! the secret door is still open via a strange programming glitch and you can run right in. I know it's cheating, but I can't get it any other way.

An interesting note to Glidos users: in the Thor room, the lightning is black! And it doesn't shoot from the ball, but from the wall behind the ball. Wierd!

[ 01 November 2002: Message edited by: Croft Security ]</p>
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Old 02-11-02, 06:37   #9
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Even though I have all the Tomb Raider games it's the original game I love coming back to. St Francis's Folly is a delight to play, - I love it! I use an explore everywhere 'sneak and search' technique whenever I go exploring with Ms Croft. I must say that things like a gorillia suddenly bursting out of a room we've already searched do tend to raise an eyebrow; - and I will confess to sometimes encouraging Lara to use cheat coded Uzis on Pierre, - but overall I never tire of it.
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Old 02-11-02, 08:34   #10
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During the St. Francis Folley, I found a way to open the secret door at the bottom in time to get the secrets.

You are in the Center, with the switch to your left, facing the floor block switch that starts the timed sequence. I do a running jump across the gap to the right of the block, then I turn left to face the block. I position myself so that I can just hit the forward key once, making me run quickly and stop on the block. Then I quickly jump back twice. During the second jump back, I hold action so I won't fall, but I quickly drop down to the next platform.

I always make sure that I have at least 1/2 or more of my energy before doing this. I lose a little energy even with the safety drop, but not much and it is worth it. After landing, I immediately do a back flip and then tap the back button to drop down to the next platform.

As soon as you hit the platform, start running straight down the long platform, and run off the end and immediately into the door before it closes. I either dive or jump, whatever I think of at the moment, towards right side of the door.

There are 2 bats on the last platform before you reach the bottom, but I ignore them and usually I get by them without getting nipped. Once I am in the secret room, then I shoot the bats and pick up my goodies.

Have you done your review of the Coliseum? If you haven't yet, please include how the hec you got the 1st secret? Even if you have done it, could you tell me how you managed to jump from the sloped part (or below it) with the 1st cave to your left, and the far cave ahead of you and to your right? I tried several times, and couldn't manage to get it. This is the first secret I could not manage to get, no matter how many times I tried.

Secret number three was fun to try, with the different sized columns, with the platforms on each, flipping and jumping every which way, quickly to the top. Unfortunately, because I have no noises with my TR1, only music, I can't hear the door up above to figure out when I can start jumping on the block and columns.

I have Glidos, I use VDMsound, but I cheated to get my TR1 installed. I just copied all the files and folders from the CD, into a manually created directory. My install never worked properly, no matter what I tried, thus, I couldn't set up my sound blaster with the proper IRQ, DMA, etc. I am guessing that is why I get no noises. I really miss being able to hear the scary music, noises of animals, etc., BEFORE I get attacked

So during the Coliseum I missed 2 of 3 secrets and in the Palace Midas, I missed a secret also, I think it was only one. But I have absolutely no clue where it is. One of the secrets during this part is at the base of the 'T' shaped pool, where I killed 2 crocs and some gorillas. I had to do some tricky jumping to get some goodies. And another one is when you get back out of the water and drop down on the outside of it, down in a little corner. At least I am pretty sure those are 2 secrets. So what am I missing?
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