From A Gamer Of 15 Years

[Gamer56]

I've been playing games on PC now for about 15 years. I cannot count the number I have played over the years, but just that it numbers in the thousands. In a way I've liked the Tomb Raider series OK, but in the earlier games the graphics were horrible, and that was a technology problem, and the game play was difficult and sometimes impossible. By that I mean that unless you used a walkthrough, hints were not forthcoming nor were any idea on how to solve the puzzles. This leads to frustration and people stop playing when they get frustrated and feel they do not have a chance to figure the game out and beat it. I am a programmer, so I know these things.

Anyway, of all of the TR games released to date, I have to say I liked TR 6 AOD the most in spite of its shortcomings. The developers let themselves be rushed into releasing the game before all the bugs were worked out. That was a mistake. Leave the whiners and complainers wait, they'll still buy the game when its released. With that aside, the pro's of TR 6 were awesome graphics, which should be expected with todays technology. Also excellent were the improvements of playability. The player was subtly guided throught the game, there were no irrecoverable wrong paths to take, hints when needed were given, but none of this was over done. The new moves like Stealth and body upgrades were a nice tough and helped to add another dimention to the game. What I hated were the timed runs with nowhere near enough time to get them done, and two of the boss fights which were poorly thought out. Bogging and freezing the PC. Lastly, the controls. Its not that they were much different or unlearnable, they did not work properly. If the developers would fix those six areas, this game would have been great. So, in designing the next game, remember these points. Take your darn time and design the game right and test it and get the bugs out. Pay no attention to the complainers wondering where the next game is and when it will be released. Look at Duke Nukem Forever. It will be Forever before they ever releaase the darn thing, but I'll bet its right when it is released. Watch your timed runs. They are a good obstacle, but average players must have the ability to beat the challenge especially if they have a minimum requirements PC. In Tomb Of The Ancients, near the very end we were required to run through a sectioned hall with darts and cutting blades. I did this a million times and quite a few times did everything perfect, and that door closed long before I ever got there. One of the problems was Lara moved way too slow. By the time you got her lined up and going at all you had already lost. Improve the controls to make her move more snappy and give 5 more seconds. The other timed run was near the end in The Lost Domain. In this level, Lara was already facing the general direction she needed to go in, but they designed in a camera flyby view which took the player over the play area and behind the door she was to go to. What a waste of time. Leave out the fly by's and give Lara another 5 seconds. The boss levels that sucked were the Ghost in the ending part of The Hall Of Seasons. Whomever thought this fiasco up should be fired. Even the best walkthrough player and queen of TR could not beat this area. Besides having to protect yourself, draw your weapon, and then to have to shoot the boss 30 times and within a period of 3 to 5 seconds, holster your weapon, turn, locate the painting, run to it, do the action thing to take it, all in one felled swoop is assnine. This boss level was just pathetic, poor, planning. You also had the problem of Lara not wanting to move her butt either, which complicated this area and compromised it completely. Further, the light which indicated the painting moved as well. Com'on, get a life here. Lets redesign this so that 5 shots takes the ghost down for 15 seconds, and the light stays put but is not visible until and unless the ghost is down. OK, nuff said on that joke of an area. The second boss fight was another brain fart by the developers. You have a big powerful boss put into a room with a player that has litterally NO health, absolutely NO protection, and what ever ammo he carried in from the previous boss fight which isn't much. Why didn't they just have it so that Kurtis was tied up to a pole by Eckhart, and had to spit hockers at the monster and hope to drown it. Cut me a break, please. Then you have the control problem which further added to the impossibility of the level. Personally, I don't mind a good boss level, I've played many of them in my day. But they should have skipped this waste of a level all together. If they insisted on keeping it in there, lets redesign it a little. Lets have Lara give Kurtis health and a big weapon after he boosts her up so she can escape, and she realized he wasn't going to make it out. Also, lets give Kurtis a few barriers to help him out a little. This would be a start. The controls also ruined this level. The auto-aim was a bust on this one, and because Kurtis had no barrier to hide behind to catch his breath, the player had no chance to maybe disable the auto-aim. As a result, you had to shoot its head, then try to holster your meager ****py gun and get beside the monster, unholster and shoot the pods. To beat all you had to do this 4 times?? Again, cut me a break, please. Well this monster happened to be fast and you could hardly ever get beside it wheither you had your weapon drawn or not. It did not matter. If you managed to shoot one pod, you could not get on the other to shoot it, and it was just a big frustrating joke. Like I said, just skip the level, I doubt that its fixable. Honing in on the controls. The controls really messed up a lot in this game. Lara failed to obey commands, and did things when she was not commanded to do so, and many times did the wrong thing. She had a mind of her own. When you needed to run or sprint, like in the timed run at the end of the Tomb of The Ancients, she would not run or sprint. At the end of Renne's Pawn Shop she again had to be kicked in the rear to get her to move, and unless you were real lucky with jumping, you died. To best derscribe Lara's movements when you really needed her to react reliably, you'd have to say she was lethargic. Sometimes this was caused by the PC bogging down, but most of the time she just did not control when you needed her to do so. On the PC bog downs and freezing. I have a newish PC which exceeded the recommended parameters. My PC constantly froze in the beginning, and got slow and jumpy in may areas thoughout the game. This required a complete shut down and hard boot to rectify. This is unacceptable. Another annoyance was if you died it took forever to reload the saved game. Thisng just moved way too slow. This was most likely caused by the heavy amount of graphics files that had to be worked with. An even bigger and faster PC by users would help, but developers must consider and design for most users to have a midrange performance PC at best. My rant is done for now. Hopefully these developers will read this and heed my advice. If they do they could possibly develop the first perfect Tomb Raider game.

[Soma Holiday]

I completely agree. Aod was the first game I have gotten through without a walkthrough, that makes me feel good.

As for the controls, perfectly said.

Brother Obscura is too hard, Eckhardt was too easy, and boaz would've been great with a faster control system.

[LCAJfan214]

I always needed a walkthrough. I will always do something wrong.

[DragonDan]

Well, that pretty much sums up our list of complaints. I would add that if you (the big game developer) advertised a certain move, enhancement or attribute, that the game actually includes it! How many FMV trailers did we see with Laras' dual pistols.
And there are the completly wrong parts in the manual. While I am at it, why did they take my favourite move away??? That would be the backflip/ mid-air turnaround/ draw guns move. That was indespensible when dealing with a fast enemy.

[Yours_in_darkness]

I love you, Gamer56.

[VMan]

That was VERY well said. I'm like you. I enjoyed The Angel of Darkness, but the game could've and would've been so much better if they fixed those annoying flaws. But then again, sometimes I don't put all the blame on Core Design. I think that if they decision to release the game was left entirely up to them, our version of the game wouldn't have come out when it did. They would've worked on the game some more. Lets not forget that Eidos did rush Core, forcing them to put the game out before it was really completed, and I bet it was due to people complaining about the delays.

[ 26. February 2004, 04:38: Message edited by: VMan ]

[caisenma]

I would also add the point of levels themselves - many people believe the actual levels weren't particularly original or well designed, and lacked a certain feel, which I'd agree with. However, that's all opinion, so perhaps it doesn't fit in here, as everything Gamer56 said is pretty much 100% agreed on here.

[Goober425]

AOD was actually the first Tomb Raider game I had to use a walkthrough for.... huummm this could be a bad sign... anyway I though Brother Obscura was too hard too... and Boaz with Kurtie was pure torture.... everything else was manageable....