trle.net ::: Level Reviews

Level:	The Forgotten Adventures
Author(s):	Byte Buster

total rating:	4.50	Gameplay & Puzzles	Enemies, Objects & Secrets	Atmosphere, Sound & Cameras	Lighting & Textures
	eRIC	2	2	3	3
	Gerty	3	4	4	5
	herothing	9	8	8	7
	manarch2	2	3	5	4
	MichaelP	4	5	5	4
	category averages (5 reviews)	4.00	4.40	5.00	4.60

Reviewer's comments

"This huge levelpack doesn't include many new ideas, levels like the Playable Tutorial Level or the Semerkhet one were remade with even worse textures. I didn't find a finish trigger in some of the levels, which mainly consisted of searching levers and sometimes some papyrus scrolls. In the level "Water Pyramid" or so you had to shimmy kilometers to get on, which was very annoying. Despite of this, sometimes the rooms looked very good and atmosphere wasn't so abominable. But unfortunately just sometimes." - manarch2 (19-Jul-2010)

"What could possible be added to eRIC's extensive review? He really says it all. The author mentions in the readme that these levels are about "running and finding things" and he is dead serious. In this huge pack of 30+ levels this is essentially all you do - a LOT of running through huge areas and a LOT of items you pick up and then soon after use to open the next door for progression. And as such it gets tedious already in Level 2, not even mentioning Level 5, 10, 15 etc. On a positive note, this package really has enough solidly designed rooms and even a few ideas on how to reach items and enemy placement here and there, to put together a decent level or three IF (and that is a big if) the author would have cared to focus on bringing out a coherent level vs dumping his harddisk content of what must have been many, many hours of building into this set. A pity really, as this could have been some good classic raiding. As it is presented here though, it is only a painful and tedious experience and full of bugs too, as levels do not connect with each other and several of them cannot legally be finished. Only for those among us who really want to play each and every level out there..." - MichaelP (07-Feb-2010)

"This is such a shame that this level set is released in one huge level set instead of one at the time (or even a couple at the time) as it still is full of bugs. This is a first for me that after playing more than 1800 level, I had to use the position editor to proceed. It starts quite promising though, going from one level to the next and then the level jumps are not possible anymore, you have to choose them from the menu. No problem, you hear me mutter, apart that you loose everything you gathered in the previous level (guns and ammo), the artefacts you get in every level. Do save at strategic points as I found out that picking up one key, the other I already had, disappeared from my inventory. All in all one can see that there is no beta testing done, textures although sometimes quite eclectic are stretched, squashed and sometimes not even there. Invisible blocks in front of doors, paperthin walls and a lot of huge, huge rooms, so running back and fro is a must. Lighting was poorly done and the placing of enemies rather random. I even came in a room where I didn’t trigger the guards and saw them waiting behind pillars to be triggered. Can’t even remember all the levels I have played and I know there are some I couldn’t finish. All in all a brave endeavour but alas such a waste of time and effort for the builder as this isn’t it." - Gerty (12-Dec-2009)

"A huge levelset , 36 levels , well in fact 33 for [The search goes on ] and [ Part_08 ] are the same , [ Part_06 ] is a replica of Max’ s Symbol of the world , while [ Part_11 ] is a remake of the official Guardian of Semerkhet TLR level textured differently and not for the best. The levels use mainly the original resources , with sometimes new textures. Only a few of the levels linked together while the great majority are stand-alones. You have a few Coastal towns, Catacombs and Libraries, Egyptian levels, various Cities , levels more “mystic” looks wise or others which are a wild mixing of textures throwing all sense of atmospheric realism and/or harmony out of the window. They last between 20 and 30 minutes generally. It was certainly not a good idea to release all these levels in one go, the author should have released them as they were built so to have appropriate feedback to improve his/her work. For there is every type of flaw you can expect in this level set, although of course not all flaws are in all levels : the settings are generally not good looking except for a few rooms which are nice , the lighting is absent the majority of the time and too bright but there is also dark areas, there are doors not placed in portals, thin walls , missing textures, stretched textures , disappearing textures [map in the lowest right corner of the editor grid], some of the enemies appearing out of thin air , unintended shortcuts [you can reach the end of Pyramid of Water in no time], and all the “see through” textures that are not placed in portals should be absolutely avoided. The author has tried to come up with settings that are too much ambitious for his skills. About the types of gameplay you can expect here , there are mainly two sorts of them, some levels offer a straightforward course, and others consist of exploring a huge area. Some common traits to many of the levels are a symmetrical design, the use of too many artefacts needed for progression, and a lot of uneventful running. Almost no puzzles or things interesting to perform, it is a lot about running , with also the basics abilities of Lara for climbing , swimming , sometimes jumping or shimmying. I can recall only one ropes swinging and one pole climbing, but I may have forgotten another. The author has also incorporated some ‘mystic’ ideas in a few levels with jump/fall or swim through apparently normal textures ; or gameplay ‘mysteries’ such as the climbable walls [in Library of Mysteries and Library of Mysteries III] which look exactly like other walls not climbable , unmarked trigger tiles [ at the end of Search for Hamunaptrah ]. As if the basics actions of the regular course were not long enough, there is also in a few levels parts of areas or ladders that unnecessarily prolong the gameplay time, or maybe they are red herrings. There are the occasional good idea , such as the jumps from spider web to spider web in the Tibetan level [End of Beginning] , the effect in the water at the beginning of [The other way], the safe translucent path in another level, the use of the swinging chains and the use of a boulder trap to open a door in one of the Library wakes up the player a bit from the monotonous constant search for horseman gems, golden stars, knots , hands, music scrolls , guardian keys and other keys ad lib and infinitum. Now the worst parts is that some of the levels can’t be finished no matter what [Lara’s forgotten adventures , Museum of weapons, Temple of Mystery] , it seems that the author has not made the levels beta-tested, while for a few others you need to be lucky in your choices to not be stuck for good : in [ Jungle temple ] you’d better use your guardian key to open the door where there is a timeless sands artefact , and farther on don’t dive into a pool before spotting the opening with a switch. In [In the dark II ], if you don’t pick up the horseman gems, you ‘ll be stuck for good later on. The placement of the objects is sometimes very bad indeed, with key artefacts or puzzle_holes that do not need any puzzle_item to come to the end , which adds a lot to the confusion of the levels that are not straightforward. What about the placing of the artefacts in [the Search goes on] ? You can finish this level in no time by only placing the hand of Sirius and not the hands of Orion. According to all logic so that the gameplay makes sense , the hand of Sirius should have been placed where one of the hands of Orion is , so that the 2nd cartouche be not useless, and even so there would still be a shortcut to get it as you can go there from above without using the cartouche to open the door ! And I am speechless the author has not placed the good kind of Fuse so to finish [Museum of weapons] properly , too bad as this level was better and pleasing without big areas and endless staircases where you can consume two or three flares in a row without seeing the end of it. Sometimes you use two guardian keys to obtain two guardian keys + a few pickups or you use a horseman gem only to get the crowbar that you already have in the inventory ! I finished [Temple of Hope] with three different artefacts in the inventory ! What is the use of the first couple of stars in [In the dark II] ? Aside from the few levels that can’t be technically finished although you don’t miss a lot of these when you get stuck for you are almost at the end, I also did not finished a couple of levels in the last third of the set [ Part_02 and Part_03 ] as I could not cope anymore with the boredom of these mazes like areas and unfinished aspects of these levels which are probably the worst of the set, so don’t even bother with those. I give credit to the author to have tried at times to come up with some originality , also with some resources of his own such as the nice orange Turkish textures for one of the City levels [Part_07], and some of the levels weren’t unpleasant to play. But I repeat that the levels should have been released as they were built so that a learning curve would have been visible, and no need to say with a minimum of beta-testing." - eRIC (13-Nov-2009)

"I can see the builder has spent possibly a lot of time on this. Some of the levels are better than others with some being rather empty and lacking objects and lighting etc. Some of the levels contain rather detailed versions of this but seeing as though they have all been incorperated in one big file, i have to ruin the overall score to match the worse done levels. In my opinion i don't think some of the textures fit in a few of the levels and i had a few problems with cameras. Lighting looks ignored in some of the levels, as shown on the pictures Michael has placed on the information part of this level. Puzzles are once again just something you would see in normal Tomb Raider games, although some of them got me thinking. Some of the objects i picked up didn't actually register, but that was possibly something to do with my computer. I think that next time, the builder should not have so many levels comprised into one big folder, seeing as though some of the levels has nothing to do with other levels, in my opinion i thought it looked a bit jumbled up. Take this advice when you make your next. Grade = B" - herothing (29-Oct-2009)