Level reviews

"Good classic tr3 thing. Of things to fix, graphics could be more vibrant. And it dragged a bit - it wasn't even about slow puzzle parts, but maybe it's just the size I'd shrink, as it took a ton of time to check everything everywhere. Good thing is you don't really have to, as the critical interactions are always close, so if you chill, you should enjoy more than I did." - DJ Full

"I liked this level because it reminded me a lot of TR3, and me being a fan of the first three games, I decided to play this one just for that. There's a lot of exploring to be done, and also lots of traps to avoid. Some of them were fun, but those with the tightrope (or tightpole?) were a bit tough, especially since at first Lara refused to walk and fell every time, but I soon got the hang of it. I liked fighting the Shivas too, but some block puzzles got a bit boring. Also, I got that bug where Lara was stuck after loading a saved game, but luckily the walkthrough provided a solution to it. It was a good adventure." - alan

"Great looks, amazing atmosphere - both indoors and outdoors, but especially the rainy outdoors - , and gameplay is quire engaging with a lot of searching to be done, a fair share of platforming and some trap gauntlets along the way. There are several nice touches here, such as pushing blocks off edges and boulders splashing into water, and I was really glad to see a trlemake version of Thailand from Underworld, or parts of it anyway: the main temple courtyard mimics its general layout and despite the obvious limitations it's not hard to see it. Some of the traps might have gone a bit overboard, like the underwater blades towards the end, but generally speaking the only hard bit was one slope jump which required steering midair to avoid another slope. 85 minutes, 4 secrets. 06/22" - Treeble

"This surprisingly lengthy jungle level is quite involving in terms of gameplay. The puzzles are quite ingeniously laid out and satisfying to solve, despite the block puzzles being a bit tedious. There's also some nicely executed torch puzzles to solve, engaging trap sequences and a fun negotiation of a huge temple room filled with lizards and Shivas. The tightrope walks were maybe too precise to time though. The lighting is a bit too dark in the indoor areas, but the jungle scenery and atmosphere is pleasing. I had an enjoyable two hours here." - Ryan

"A quick and fun jungle levelset. Really enjoyable with original interpretations of jungle settings. The torch puzzle at the start was quite a challenge to figure out but the rest was not so much, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I do kind of wish the game had been longer or even if it had a few more enemies simply for the reason of letting rip with both the revolver and the uzis, plenty of ammo was given but not much opportunity to use these awesome weapons. I was a little confused with the secrets - the walkthrough guide states there are 4 which are not very well spread out, but the statistics screen states 8, which makes more sense as they could potentially be scattered a little better. A brilliant game! Took around 2 hours to complete." - izzynoodles

"This (almost two hours) long single level set in India is quite the tour de force. Plenty of things to do and a well balanced mixed of thinking and action required, as you get a few tricky jumps, sneakily hidden crawlspaces, creative torch and push block puzzles and much more. Everything flows quite well without ever being too obvious and there is lots to do as you open up the place and dive deeper into it before returning back to almost the start. The setting overall looked a little too much the same with partly careless texturing and relatively flat lighting, but the gameplay made more than up for it, including the four clever secrets. You also get to fight a few shivas (always fun) and shoot plenty of tigers, spiders and bats along the way. All in all, classic raising at its best with many good ideas, but like others have said, I could have done without the tightrope walks." - MichaelP

"This level is great! The view is wonderful at some big areas. The gameplay isn't linear, very well-made and the puzzles aren't so easy. I got stuck at the pushable boxes for a while. The torch-puzzle was nice too (I had to use DOZY cheat to get to the other side of the river, but it's my fault). The traps were good too. I still don't know what to do with the Shiva statue's head. I rotated it again and again, but nothing special happened. The atmosphere was really good and the lighting was perfect (colorful and interesting). I enjoyed the game very much." - Matie

"A very long level with a lot of work behind. It took me several hours to finish it. There are not really very difficult tasks, but sometimes it's easy get stucked 'cause the invisible ledges, invisible cracks... There are some bugs, but not important. As usual, a dangerous jungle full of traps, many dark rooms and huge areas to explore in the temple, some interesting puzzles, variety of enemies to shoot and some tricky movements. I couldn't discover all four secrets. Convincing environment with good details and well lightened and textured with enough flares for the darker areas. Worth to play." - Jose

"A Tr3 India styled level that has a very eye-candy beginning and looks promising. Jean created a wonderful opener with the beautiful green grass, brown earth and rocky surroundings with the river and temple right across. There is jumping on trees and temple ledges around and a torch puzzle to solve and even an unexpected pushblock task before you enter the temple. At this point the surroundings took a very unfortunate turn for me as they became repetitive with the rooms looking quite similar. However, Jean managed to maintain the good level of gameplay right to the end with spike traps, boulders, jumping and dodging fire traps while performing a new move. The Shiva temple was a breath-taking area, albeit inspired by Tomb Raider Underworld. The atmosphere was not neglected at all and the rainy weather contributed to an even more absorbing atmosphere. Here's your chance to live the Tr3 India experience with great quality ! Thumbs-up, Jean !" - Shady Croft

"This is a very ambitious level and I have a feeling that it didn't pan out as much as it should. Your goal, to get the two swords for a Shiva, will take you in, out, under and up this vast temple complex and maybe even twice as there is some back and fro over quite some distance. Traps, puzzles and exploring and of course, meeting some nasty creatures, yes plural. At the moment I am not sure if I like this level that much, as I have been wondering around way too much, questioning what to do next or where to go. The tight rope was definitively the pits and to do them twice is even worse. Also what that rotating head was for is still a mystery for me. Encountered a few bugs throughout. Textures good use a bit more attention though." - Gerty

"This is a very pleasant, full-bodied Indian jungle-style raid that took me nearly two and a half hours to complete, even with the assistance of Val's excellent walkthrough. The surroundings, and the light to see them by, are quite pleasing, and the tasks aren't too difficult for the average player. The timed runs are reasonable, some even easy by my standards (especially the boulder runs, as these rocks move along quite slowly). I didn't particularly care for the tightrope walking past intermittent flame blowers, which you're obliged to do several times throughout the level, but they were just an occasional annoyance. I had a good time here, and I hope to see more from this builder. Highly recommended." - Phil

"Inventive, clever, intriguing game play, but also somewhat unpolished. The start is good: we have the India textures in the rain again, and a gorge to cross, and a nice torch puzzle. Being able to push a block off an edge was unexpected, and is used to good effect a couple of times. There are many good puzzles and challenges, but I wish the author would take more care. Lara comes to a sloped room, and jumps to the left--then I realized that she was supposed to jump to the right and make her way around the edge of the room, that my way was a shortcut. This situation repeats again later on: Lara comes to a room with hanging boulders and is supposed to jump to the right and make a complete circuit of the room. But if she simply jumps lefts she can climb straight to the exit. After walking over a balance beam, avoiding intermittent flames, Lara came to a huge area. I had no clue what the author intended, so Lara climbed down on vines, went sideways to a crawlspace with a medipack (which seems unreachable), then climbed down and drops by the edge of a roof to the ground without health lost. Only later did it become clear the author intended for Lara to go through a long involved sequence where she throws three switches, which opens up a pool far below, so Lara can dive down into the water and reach the floor. Once again the intended play was completely bypassed. Then Lara comes to a giant statue and jumps past the head to reach the other side. Later she descends to the statue base and finds a capstan-like device to rotate the statue head, so that she can jump by it--even though she has already done that. I reloaded a save and ignored that whole part. Then in leaving this area Lara comes to a crawlspace, where some bug prevents her from getting out. Either she ends up inside the wall, or else she falls a huge distance to the floor, actually goes into the floor, then pops out unharmed. Eventually I used the fly cheat to get Lara out of the crawlspace, and along to the ledge to which she was supposed to shimmy. So one can enjoy the enthusiastic and original ideas here, but it's hard to ever lose oneself in the game. Just because some rooms are extremely dark--and too many rooms are dark--doesn't mean that players won't pull out the binoculars and notice the sloppy texturing. Recommended, because this is mostly enjoyable." - dmdibl

"Good game by Jean , all TR3 memories come back to my mind visiting the good old indian locations one more time. My lowest rate for this game is an 8 in gameplay & puzzles , simply because I could not think of any other slot to place my comments on the various bugs that unfortunately still have not been amended by the author even in the latest newly revised issue of the game. I had wiped this game off my computer once a couple of weeks ago because I got so frustrated about the never-ending problem with frozen savegames. I fired it up one more time cause I found it a really interesting game. As a conclusion I recommend the author a little more practice with the NGLE to overcome the minor nuisances in this issue but I still find it a game well worth playing ." - Ruben

"A level full of interesting and challenging puzzles - most of which you should be able to solve on your own if you are patient. Included amongst these is a very clever and original pushblock puzzle that took me about half an hour to figure out - then it took me nearly as long to complete the very lengthy and complex pushings. This could put off some players, but I liked this puzzle a lot. In fact, I loved the whole game up to (but not including) the final section, the Shiva temple. At this point I was forced to check the walkthrough twice: once to figure out how to get past the flame emitter whilst walking a plank (tightrope) - It's easy once you know the move and maybe I should have been aware of it - so I'll let that one go. I then got stuck shortly after thanks to a perfectly well disguised shimmy crack - and that I do not consider to be legitimate gameplay. Because of this, the game-playing experience was somewhat soured towards the end. Many sections of the level are dark, and you will need flares to explore and spot pushblocks etc. Sadly, I only found one pickup of flares and so had to ration mine throughout the game, typically checking somewhere with flares and then reloading in order to keep the flare in my inventory. Throughout the level there were numerous glitches with the cameras, and I put this down to the fact that too much was crammed into this single level; it should have been split into two, or, ideally, made shorter. Overall, it's a good game that sometimes impresses greatly and occasionally annoys greatly. To be fair, I was impressed far more often than I was annoyed." - Dick

"Well a surprizing good second game from Jean after that 5.81 rank at his first game well this one is a major step ahead in quality /dificulty /and ideas .i was very surprized that this builder could make such a improvement at so short time ........ hehe someone top one should be behind - but is ok - lets go at the review ... this on is a mix off jungle areas with tample outside and inside ones ....the texturing is almoust same but the temple area is very nice builded puzzles are great . u should open ur eyes cos the levers have same patern with the surrounding textures so u can miss it easy ......wich i dont like it very much was -too much blocks pulling & pushing puzzles ..... but apart from it was some very difficult rope cross with burner traps on it .... are also fairy tuff timed runs .. (not very tufff but challenging )enemyes not manny some bats / tigers / lizards also some challenging boulder chase on it ...... sometimes the areas are too dark not all but some and cos this u can miss a lever or a opening in the darkness ......the aim is to get the 2 swords for shivas at the begining off the game ....... well for a second game from this author to support him a bit - cos see is very talented one - i may give a bit higher marks maybee that deserve i write it here the real ones wich i think worth and at official place i give a bit higher .... (7/8/8/8) good game overall" - Jack&

"Lara's business takes her to a temple area in a very beautiful surrounding. The atmosphere of the level is very good, though texturing of the temple area is quite repetitive with the same textures over and over, but the outside parts are very nicely built. I never experienced pushing a block down into a pit before. Most of the level is puzzle and trap based and there is a couple of hard tasks to do like running past spiky walls, tightrope walks past fires, and spiky ceilings coming down. Besides there are enemies like tigers, bats, spiders and lizards and all of them attack in numbers. I would have given this level a 9 in gameplay if difficulty range had been more moderate with less of deadly traps, most notably those moving knifes even underwater, and if the level had not been so buggy with a crawlspace I could not get out, and one key that didn't work, so I could continue only by a savegame from the forum. I needed 2.5 hours to finish." - Jerry

"Excellent level! Usely i don't like jungle level like TR3 but this one is brillant. About the bad things, the waterfalls in the beginning don't seem well and some puzzles with the puish pull blocks is a little long time. For the rest, there isn't any mistake. The animation with tightrope and the the fact we can fall down some blocks are amazing. I've found 3 secret and the fourth is in a location where when we go out there isn't thing to be killed by a falling. This level is enjoyable!" - Glouglouton

"Temple of Shiva - Jean 9/9/9/10 What a lovely jungle setting this is, although, as usual, I hated having to kill the tigers. Still, it definitely was a lot more peaceful without them bouncing about. I really enjoyed this level - there's lots of exploring and a few timed runs (not too hard), some good puzzles and torch work and it just all blends together nicely. Apart from the tigers, there are bats, jumping spiders, lizard men and, of course, Shivas to content with as you search for two Shiva swords (or possibly scimitars 'cos they are curved). The only thing I found a bit difficult was the tight-rope walking and jumping past the fire emitters - I got quite sore fingers from trying and re-trying, but I got there in the end so do persevere, it's well worth it to finish such an enjoyable level. One word of warning though - I found problems with savegames freezing when I was playing this level on Vista. I transferred it to XP and it ran perfectly. If you get similar problems and have a choice of operating systems, hopefully that will work for you too." - Jay

"Your task is to find two swords missing at a shiva-statue in the starting area to get access to an artifact - and the exit. A first torch-puzzle gives a taste of the creative gameplay of this outstanding level. When you solve puzzles with pushables you shall keep in mind that they can be pushed down from the floorel they are, timed sequences are not hard to do, balancing tasks as well, the storyline is coherent; one central area is obviously dedicated to the builders of "Underworld", the reconstruction of the temple-area in Thailand is outstanding. It's like a book you can't lay aside." - Christian