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The Nightmare Curse by Colin Benson

Adrian 9 10 7 8
Cerebralfire 10 10 10 9
DJ Full 6 9 8 7
Drakan 8 9 8 9
Feder 7 8 5 9
Gorty 8 7 7 5
Jay 8 9 10 10
Jorge22 9 10 10 10
Jose 7 8 6 9
Josey 9 8 9 8
manarch2 5 7 7 8
Phil 8 9 9 8
Ryan 8 9 8 8
 
release date: 05-Sep-2017
# of downloads: 92

average rating: 8.21
review count: 13
 
review this level

file size: 208.00 MB
file type: TR4
class: Egypt
 


author profile(s):
email(s):
hh33@mts.net

Reviewer's comments
"1st level interesting especially with the jumps on the breakable slabs, a little less the 2nd with too many labyrinths and teleportations too numerous for my taste. The 3 rd is a succession of pieces to open with the same puzzle, I liked the last big area before taking the motorbike." - Drakan (27-Nov-2018)
"This mega adventure was somewhat of a mixed bag. On the upside, the sceneries are crafted tastefully, the Egyptian textures are nicely used, the optional quests for the coins and Secret Sapphires were well thought (although somewhat dragged out later on in the game) and the gameplay has its enjoyable parts in the form of a few nifty timed runs and exploration sequences, plus a couple of block puzzles. But then you have very little variation in the environments and I got a bit weary of the same textures over and over again. Atmosphere and audio was also somewhat lacking, and I found it was just each level's default background track playing continuously, which got annoying after a while. The backtracking and having to repeat different gameplay sequences just to find the needed items far outstayed their welcome too. Enemies are nicely used early on, but they tend to gang up on Lara as you progress, so you'll be glad every time you unlock one of the secret gates. The good and bad parts generally balance each other out, so it might be best to try it yourself and see what you think." - Ryan (04-Sep-2018)
"For a secret hunter it's a nightmare indeed. The main gameplay is much better but if I didn't have a betatester in my stream audience, I bet would be struggling until now, precisely because of the lazer eye room which looks like it isn't solved but in fact is. Multiple forced rope swings to get to every ledge on the water room were brutal but it was the third part, with never ending trial-and-error combat which made me truly exhausted. I'm so glad I have it done. For any sane player I recommend the first two levels plus a screenshot of the final location which somehow contains no gameplay despite of looking the best of the entire game. Also, regarding the ambience... Next time, PLEASE use more than one chord per level. P L E A S E ." - DJ Full (02-Jan-2018)
"I loved this game. It is full of creative gameplay and interesting actions. Perhaps the author loves ropes a little too much; a series of them, above a beautiful lake, was the only real difficulty I found in the game, for sometimes it seemed that Lara couldn't reach her objective, while another times reaching it was quite easy - I can only think that this was due to some kind of unknown bug. Nevertheless, using the flycheat corrected that (thanks, Phil!). I was also compelled to use the all weapons' cheat from the first level onwards, because that search for buttons in order to grab a shotgun, with a skeleton chasing Lara, was too much for me. But except for those, and the darkness, the first two levels of the game were pure joy, with not very tight timed runs, well constructed rooms, a variety of actions and some interesting novelties, as the room of the murdering Eyes. As to the last level... use the walkthrough, please, because it is mightily repetitive in terms of gameplay. The walkthrough must also be used if you want to find all the secrets, specially the precious stones that give access to a lot of items (another welcome novelty) - because I found quite impossible to devise where some of them were or the sequence of actions necessary for opening the doors of the cubicles where they were hidden. All in all, congratulations and thanks for a very good game." - Josey (03-Nov-2017)
"This builder has been around for quite a while, and his relatively sporadic releases have an epic quality to them. The Nightmare Curse is no exception, consisting of three levels that took me just a bit less than five gaming hours to complete. The surroundings are much more eye-pleasing than in the builder's previous levels, but there's a great deal of tedium to be endured. Dutchy has provided a walkthrough that enables the player to get through the game efficiently without wasting time opening a plethora of irrelevant doors (mainly in the third level), which I greatly appreciated. The builder has not disabled the flycheat, so I used it in several areas, not because I was unable to proceed legally, but just to save time. For example, navigating that quicksand room via the monkey bars to reach a button on a pillar at each corner was so bloody boring that I flew from corner to corner so I could get the hell out of there. Picking up 50+ coins is a fun exercise, but with no way to make practical use of them I can hardly see the point. The secret sapphires were more functional, and Dutchy has done a great job of documenting their locations. This builder definitely likes his levels dark, so I made good use of the unlimited flares that come as a secondary benefit of using the flycheat. On the other hand, there are a number of inspired gameplay elements documented in the walkthrough that compel my relatively high scores. Hopefully the builder will use the wide-open outdoor spaces finally attained at the end of this game as a springboard for his next project." - Phil (05-Oct-2017)
"I liked the gameplay overall. However towards the latter parts having to sift through the many similar enemy-laden small rooms to find the few that had the important button/artifact was okay for a one-off, but having this as the gameplay 3 times soon after each other was unnecessarily repetitive. I thought the puzzles & jump sequences were well thought out. The secrets were paricularly well-placed and having the choice of secret booty left to the player was a nice idea. The coin quest was also an encouragement to explore carefully. Music was monotonous but cmaeras were ok. Atmosphere/lighting a little dark until my gamma was turned up - but there were plenty of flares and copious weapons (esp if you found the secrets)." - Adrian (29-Sep-2017)
"Not a great experience for me. I mean, the architecture and texturization was excellent, can’t argue with that, and even the gameplay was fun at times with some interesting tasks and original puzzles (already mentioned by previous reviewers), but to me the greatest problem this levelset faces is the repetitive and monotone environment that follows you from the beginning to the end. It was nice at first, but then you start to see very similar rooms, with the same design and the same textures through the entire game. The lack of cameras and soundtracks didn’t help in that regard, and those are very important elements on a TR game (cameras to show you different angles and soundtracks to add some emotions to the journey). It took me 3:30 hours, but I grew tired after the first half of level 2 and basically forced myself to finish. There were plenty of enemies (the dogs were harder to kill than usual), but that's fine by me because you also pickup quite an arsenal along the way, especially if you find some secret sapphires. If you’re going to play it, I recommend you find some sapphires and open the gates of the powerful weapons first, like the grenade launcher." - Feder (27-Sep-2017)
"The net playtime for me at the end was 2:40 hours but I think that this was at least two hours too long for the actual content this game provides. There are a few nice ideas in the first two levels, as the platforming parts like the breaktile run or the appearing/disappearing platforms in the first level and the elaborate timed runs, a few lever puzzles and of course the Infinata eye maze in the second level, but those are, as so often, far between fairly tedious parts where you just pass through endless corridors, ladders or monkeyswings wondering why the builder doesn't present his ideas in a much, much more fluent and entertaining way. But the true gameplay killer was the third level; if it was a standalone level I would've given it a 1 or maximally a 2 in the first category as the only thing to do here is that you basically have to open dozens of rooms only to find something worth in a few of them, and that three times in a row. I think that part was just designed to prolong the gameplay time. Very, very boring. Enemies are also excessively used here, not too hard when you find at least a few secret sapphires (you know I'm not a fan of this) but as the gameplay it's getting fairly repetitive and feels just like prolonging the time rather than a real challenge. The atmosphere of the levels is quite nice, with huge rooms being quite well done, the only thing I missed was music - in some parts the level was completely silent - and cameras are also quite sparsely used, with only a few flybies (that also suffer from no audio guidance). Texturing is done quite clean and especially indoors the visuals are quite well done, while the lighting, mostly in the outside areas, was rather flat and could've been improved; some objects are also not so well lit. So overall the first two levels are enjoyable (but still too long for their own good), while the third level should've better been cut off as it leaves a very bad aftertaste. For those who are interested, I found 48 gold coins." - manarch2 (23-Sep-2017)
"At first it seemed that the game would turn out very good, but I was wrong. The author did a really good job to camouflage his level building skills in the darkness of the cursed temple. It’s a quite long journey which proves again to be a wrong approach to put quantity in front of quality. The room design is actually very basic, sometimes shocking how cubic and uninteresting things looked. It’s not that obvious while exploring the inside parts, but everytime I got outside the temple the game literally dies. Texturing was good, but often some very obvious and fixable texturing errors catch my eyes. The inside parts are just too dark and after a while gets very monotone, flat and repetitive. The only light are the torches. The author tried to make some diversity with the second level placed on few occasions outside but, as I already mentioned, it just made things a lot worse, killed the whole game. It still had many inside parts, but those outside had no light, no imagination, looked like they were made by someone else with catastrophic design. Most of the second and third level continue in the same repetitive environment. I have to say, I barely could play the third level as thing got really boring. Overall, a too long game considering the fact that it mostly plays around the same environment. The gameplay was ok, but light was just terrible bad. Room design was often too basic, screaming to the player ˝I’m made in less than one minute˝. I think I noticed near the end of the third level some slight improvement in the room design and lighting which could mean that the next level could me more fun. I can’t really recommend the game, but Cerebralfire must have been so thrilled with the game that he made an account only to review this one level and sweared to never review again, just like HaseebLeon. So many new reviewers." - Gorty (23-Sep-2017)
"Ambivalent feelings about this one actually. It's a three part adventure and I absolutely loved part one. After a while however, it became more and more of a battleground, with enemies besieging Lara en masse and at one point I almost gave up. Anyway, playing in fairly short stretches so as to give my nerves and my patience time to recover, I did manage to get through it all. There is a fairly generous amount of ammo and medipacks throughout the game and I suggest you try and get all you can - you'll need it, and oh what I would have given for some explosives to deal with all the pesky skeletons. On the plus side, it's beautifully made and some of the agility tests, puzzles and timed runs are really well devised and great fun. The last section with multiple choice doors to open would have been completely hit and miss for me and I certainly welcomed the walkthrough at that point." - Jay (22-Sep-2017)
"This adventure is better than the last I've played from this author (Dwarves); at least I could finish without problems this time. There are some original puzzles, like the Infinata mazes with the eyes, or the room with multiple levers and buttons in the final level, but in my opinion there are still too many buttons/levers to pull and certain backtracking if you choose the wrong path. In the second level there are some tedious tasks, like the very long monkeyswing to press all those buttons, and in the pool with the ropes I was forced to repeat a second time all the swings, to use the key and later to get the artifact. The architecture is not bad and the textures are well applied, but the rooms are still very huge, often empty of objects and Lara needs to run always long distances. The enemies are well balanced, and I found enough guns, ammo and medipacks, but in the last level with all those small rooms I got tired to shoot enemies, and what I did was, use the items to open the doors, go inside avoiding the enemies and if I didn't find a button, reload and try with the next door. What I think could be much better was the atmosphere; where are the musics? Also there's only a background music for all three levels and no much appropriate that continuous "ruuuum, ruuuum" hour after hour; even the flybys have not music. The cameras are perfect, and very well placed in all tiles when triggering something important. Definitely, an adventure worth to play and recommended for players who like exploration and pick up items. Good work." - Jose (20-Sep-2017)
"Every once in a while there comes a nice Egyptian offer. I thoroughly enjoyed playing the first two parts and even the last one to a certain extent. The fact though is I couldn't find the gemstones in the first two levels, which made me virtually pre-defeated in the face of the zillions of enemies in the third and final level (but mostly the skeletons who, to make it worse, didn't jump across gaps in most of this third part). So, shame on me but I had to use the blessed guns cheat to be able to make it all the way to the end. Then it became doable and even pleasurable to blow them all to pieces (poor creatures, innocent victims of a cheat, really). Still, the third level felt too long and repetitive although I guess the idea per se was good. It's this third, hardly doable level, that makes me have to downgrade the gameplay and puzzles category to 9. Other than that, it's all really great, maybe a bit on the hard side at times (but not necessarily so), filled with great architecture, general atmosphere and gameplay (excepting the last level for the aforementioned reasons). It's always a challenge to build a really nice Egyptian level. Therefore, most certainly recommended." - Jorge22 (20-Sep-2017)
"This is one of the best level builds I have ever played. Very good gameplay with puzzles that weren't too stressful (loved the eyes maze). Plenty of enemies which kept me on my toes. The atmosphere and sounds gave me a very immersive experience. Textures were good (though found some very tiny glitches), lighting was good, but would have loved to have had binoculars for peering into distant dark spots, but there are plenty of flares (I ended the game with over 140 left). All in all, a brilliantly put together game which took me almost seven hours, though I did spend time standing around while I boozed up :). Thanks to the level builder for an awesome level." - Cerebralfire (09-Sep-2017)