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Tomb Raider - Book of Life (Demo) - The Temple of Duality by StudBuddha

DJ Full 4 5 5 4
JesseG 5 5 4 6
Jose 3 6 7 7
manarch2 4 4 5 5
Phil 8 7 8 6
Ryan 7 7 6 6
 
release date: 17-Jul-2018
# of downloads: 66

average rating: 5.58
review count: 6
 
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file size: 42.50 MB
file type: TR4
class: Egypt
 


author profile(s):
email(s):
studbuddhaofficial@gmail.com

Reviewer's comments
"This is like a raidertom's level but completely out of control. Before I even begin: flares with burn time reduced to 10 seconds. If this isn't enough to skip this level, add pitch black rooms with flare bug, binocular bug and a control set which makes lara as slow as possible, traps grouped into 1) unfair, 2) fair but too many, 3) fair but you still die - and anytime you die, you risk a crash to desktop. Because of all those issues I needed two days to play what should be a two-hour map, but the real gamechanging horror was the multiple hintless pushblock - that's when I eventually gave up the rest of hope, opened the walkthrough and decided to never close it until the end. If only the visuals of this game were at least mediocre, but they aren't - you are lucky if you get 3 textures per a draftly modeled room. It starts to get better towards the end of the game, the spike platforming in the blue room is impressive but you need to wait for this single good room for 90% of the game and forcing the multiple climb through it is annoying anyway (just like many other repetitive activities earlier in the level). The only constantly good aspect is music, the author can use it well. I can only hope he takes a lot of practice before the next release because he clearly had good intentions and it's a pity they weren't materialized a bit better." - DJ Full (12-Jun-2019)
"We have to recognize the effort from this builder to create a long level with a good gameplay, but precisely that's the problem, the tedious gameplay with very long and repetitive tasks where you'll have to save and reload hundreds of times. Excessive ladders and monkeyswings, excessive fire emitters (flare bug) and sometimes a very slow progress when you know what to do but you need to carefully advance to avoid numerous traps. Another times the puzzles are very obscure, like in the area with 5 movable statues and translucent ledges: where should be placed? Really a very long demo (It took me several hours, and thanks to Phil's walkthrough), but the author should think about a more fluid gameplay and avoid repeating tasks. Sorry." - Jose (02-Dec-2018)
"Lara searches for a crystal in a temple which is being exploited by villainous people. Gameplay is heavily tilted towards dodging traps, especially monkey-swinging around flames and dodging hidden spike traps. It quickly gets tiring and I would have welcomed either a shorter level or having these traps replaced by other activities, such as puzzles. Enemies are a bit engaging but there are too many mummies which make you expend explosive crossbow ammo quickly, and also too many wisps that you have to backtrack many times over in order to get rid of them in a pool of water. Decorative objects are a bit sparse. The chaotic and maze-like architecture does not lend itself to an immersive atmosphere, which is further impaired by several major bugs and corrupted animations. Audio is okay but sometimes repeats itself inappropriately. More camera cues would have helped the player determine what switches changed, if anything (there are some red herring switches, some of which kill you). Although textures are different from area to area, they are very wallpapered within those areas. There are also many untextured spike traps and climbable walls, and other climbable walls that are not actually climbable, leading to unnecessary trial and error on the part of the player. Lighting is similar, diverse between areas but a bit flat within an area, it is also too dark at times which is unfortunate when the flare bug kicks in. Overall an ambitious level, but it is plagued by too many issues for me to say I would recommend this to anyone. 2 hours 29 minutes." - JesseG (24-Nov-2018)
"The builder has put a great deal of hard work into this first effort (Demo, my foot) most of which adds up to quite a painstaking but involving raid that took me 135 min to get all the way through. Were it not for a few missteps I encountered, it could have been really good. As it is now, it will certainly please the experienced raiders, but may be a bit much for casual players. The gameplay is actually quite varied, and there's plenty of timed runs, acrobatic sequences, traps and more swimming that you could ever wish for. But I did find the maze sections torturous, the blade traps in close quarters irritating and one boulder trap too tricky to pass to be fun. Enemies are well placed although ammo and medipacks are scarce, so be prepared to either jump around a lot or devise a reliable strategy to get through. I came across one secret, but maybe I wasn't looking hard enough or they just didn't register for me. The surroundings are rather mixed, as a few of the rooms are huge, bland and repetitive to look at, but other areas have a quite pleasing appearance. At the end, you're left with a level that is certainly worth a look, but falls short in some ways. Still, give it a go if you dare..." - Ryan (12-Oct-2018)
"I tried this one late after I realized no one was going to step forward and claim walkthrough writing rights. By this time the builder had released two or three revisions to fix assorted game-stopping bugs, so thankfully I encountered none of these while painstakingly making my way through a rather grueling adventure. I have no idea why this is billed as a demo, as it provides a full-fledged raid and then some. The usual suspect has weighed in with his predictably negative early review, and this may explain in part why mine is only the third review to date. And by the way, whenever manarch2 tells you how much time he spent in a level, double that and you'll be in the ballpark. Even with the bug fixes this is no walk in the park, and there are some crippling flaws that I'll get to in a moment, but on the whole this is a well-planned and rewarding raid that most of us will spend at least three hours trying to navigate. Vimmers helped me through some of the rough spots so I could proceed in the game. No thanks to the builder, however, who ignored a PM and two emails I sent to him asking for help. The most irritating flaw is the flare bug that kicked in for me in the room with blue tiles floating in several sections in a lava room. What's more, in that same room if you don't do things in a specific order you won't be able to complete the tasks there and move on. Finally, some of the objects are misnamed, and the noise of the spikes and teeth doors in the final room is nothing short of deafening. These complaints notwithstanding, this level will present a challenge even to the more proficient raiders among us, and I can give it a definite thumbs up." - Phil (11-Sep-2018)
"The main problem of this game lies in its over-ambitiousness. It has many decent gameplay ideas, traps and puzzles, but the whole setup is so confusing and tedious that it just doesn't pan out. Just too much of everything, actually. Way too many enemies, not that there's not enough ammo but they appear in the most unfair situations, like crocodiles and sharks in water where you can't kill them, wraiths that don't follow back to the water room, annoying bats and the like. The choice of enemies is also borderline random if you ask me, but that's another problem of this level. The settings are designed in a patchwork style without much sense of location, texturing is eclectic and wallpapered and the object design pretty random as well. The gameplay could've actually been the level's strength, I really enjoyed some of the passages, but it is strongly marred down by the annoying enemy placement, the affinity to mazes, booby traps and puzzles without hints, tedious to and fro with endless ladder and monkeyswing parts and missing camera hints. The flare bug also appeared somewhere in the game making life even harder here. Less is certainly more especially for debut levels, but as talent is certainly present, I'm sure that with more refinement and testing the builder can do better next time. Spent 1:35 hours in here and found only one registering of intendedly six secrets." - manarch2 (03-Aug-2018)