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Revenge of Osiris - The Underground Lake & The Castle of Corpus Fatalis

by

TimJ
     
release date: 07-Feb-2007
 
difficulty: challenging

average rating: 8.82
review count: 25
 
review this level

file size: 248.59 MB
file type: TR4
class: Castle
 


author profile(s):
email(s):
timj@jeanmonod.ch

Six years ago, an archeologist team discovered an underground Temple a few miles away from the King's Valley. They tried to open the door, but didn't succeed. The night after the discovery, the team disappeared mysteriously whereas something strange was happening: after the night had fallen, the sky became as red as blood, and the moon, full this particular night, became vivid orange, seeable from thousands of kilometers. A light beam tore the skies and fell on the temple through the hole the archeologists had made. The ground began to shake and a violent explosion destroyed the accessto the temple, showing a hieroglyph-covered stele.

A few years later, Lara Croft bought this particular stele, during an auction sale in London. Its owner told her where the object was from and told her its story, talked about the evil-spell for a while, for it had killed the archeologists who had discovered the temple entrance. He also mentioned a thousand-year old paramilitary group, the Corpus Fatalis, which, since the stele's discovery, was trying to get it by any means. This group, as the legend said, was made from former Templars' descendants who might have taken refuge in Egypt after the Temple Order's falland might have sealed a pact with the Osiris Priests' sect, hence becoming Osiris' army on Earth, protecting the temple and its secret since several centuries. Nothing more could have triggered Lara's curiosity...

After seeing several Egyptologists specialised in hieroglyph's decoding, she didn't manage todecode the message and put the stele in her parisian flat.
Even if it's not so interesting archeologically, it will make an Egyptian touch in my living...,she thought.

One night, while she was coming back home,she saw a light coming by the hole between her flat's door and the ground. Fearing a robbery, she took her guns and broke the door with her feet. A big light appeared then, triggering in her a very violent electric shock. Petrified, she fell to the ground and, before fainting, saw the stele, its symbols emitting a blinding light. When she woke up, she felt cold and a furious violence wave got through her. Getting back on her feet as well as she could, she entered her bathroom to clean her face with water. She saw in her mirror that her face, but also most of her body were covered with hieroglyphs. Oddly,they reminded her of those which were on the stele, but they now meant something to her.

She started translating them:
'Since milleniums, I learnt to handle new powers, unknown from both mortals and immortals. I'm the God of the Dead, and my wife Isis, blinded by the love she has for me, reconstituted me after my brother Seth had cut me into pieces. My unworthy son Horus mislead the hope I had for him when he chose being with my wife instead. They sealed me forever in the Kingdom of the Dead, sealed by the stele. Now, thanks to you, poor mortal girl, and to the unwise who discovered the temple, nothing will stop my revenge!'

'Oh no,there it goes again!' thought Lara, 'after Seth and Apophis, I need to clean up the ancient Egyptian Gods... OK, dear Osiris,if you want me to, I'm coming, but this time I will finish the job!'


author's comment

I wanted these levels to be reviewed together because without the limitation of the level editor it would have been only one level. :-) I really wanted to contrast with the two TC 14 levels which precede and follow mines. The levels of TC 14 are full of enemies, puzzles and traps and it is really easy to die every two minutes... So I wanted to build a quiet level with only a few enemies and a few traps where the main word would have been exploration. I'd like to give a lot of freedom to the player so he can do what he wants in the order he wants. Lara arrives in a unknown place and has to explore it to discover what she has to do. It's why I didn't put a lot of cameras, but I thought I placed enough to indicate to the player where he has to go after he has understood what to do. I added a lot of timed runs to have some gameplay because I didn't want to place too many traps... The two main passages where there is a bit of action or the two fights. The first one against the bird magic monster and the other one against the knight. The two passages the players really didn't like were the underwater huge caves and the maze. I admit that I should have placed a bigger air hole and maybe a hint for the lever in the caves... Concerning the maze the main problem wasn't the time which was sufficient but the collision of the objects which is sometimes weird underwater and which prevented Lara to go ahead and forced the player to start again. If you don't swim on the floor and in the middle of the corridors you are sure that Lara will be stuck. I admit that I was a bit machiavellian when I removed the air holes after the maze when Lara opens the exit door. I happen to die in these two areas several times even if I knew them by heart, lol! I really didn't think that my levels were so hard. When I build a level I have difficulties to imagine how I'd play this level if I didn't know it. I'd have liked to not give any rating to this review as this is my own level but I think that if I was a player I'd have really liked it for atmosphere, textures & lighting, objects & secrets and enemies, but the gameplay would have surely frustrated me a bit. ^^ TimJ