Level reviews

"I have to say that if this level was half the length it is, I might have been more lenient on my ratings. As it stands, I was bored long before reaching the end, sorry. It's quite predictable in the sense that you go from one large boxy room to the next looking for a lever to open the next door, but there are just so many more levers than you'd usually expect. In addition to that all the common beginner issues feature here, such as untextured spots (all over the place, not just one or two), compressed and stretched textures, unmarked climbable walls, oversized and generally empty rooms, enemies popping out of thin air, a looping fly-by (luckily you can break out of it with the Look key), and a weird non-functional water room - the sound and visual effects were there, but Lara behaved as she would on a normal dry room. To add insult to injury there were also about half a dozen bikes spread around to navigate through narrow corridors, this is quickly becoming a pet peeve of mine. The one thing that I really wanted to get a good look at was the custom artifact at the end, which seemed to be a brand new object as far as I can tell (and not one which gets used often as I say 'brand new' for a level released well over a decade ago) but as soon as you pick it up, the level ends. Sorry. 50 minutes. 03/22" - Treeble

"This may not be among the worst levels out there, but I'm struggling to find much to recommend it all the same. Apart from a couple of bike rides, a bit of swimming and a couple of trap sequences, for the majority of the time you pull lever after lever to open countless doors, making for a bit of an unfulfilling experience overall. I didn't keep a running total of the amount of levers there actually was, but Michael's guess of 40 sounds about right. The texturing is also quite a wild mixture, although not in a good way. Many are missing altogether and all of the rooms have rather lurid combinations of green and orange. A small lever "puzzle" added a slight hint of variety, but it wasn't enough to compensate for the negatives." - Ryan

"After spending what felt like an age trying to get this level to work properly, I was disappointed to find that the builder had not really gotten much better in terms of general quality from Cain's Home 2, with a lot of the same issues present unfortunately(outside of some slightly improved gameplay.) So in conclusion, best to give this one a pass." - Ceamonks890

"Strange thing with these portals in the beginning. Probably gabiza7 wanted to create two paths, with one switch (above the pool) opening the cave portal, and two switches (behind the crawlspace) allowing you to exit the place you're in, and then changed his mind, so the parts of both ideas can be seen. But in general, the gameplay is surprisingly good as for the beginner. I've seen gabiza7's first level and, despite of its bad rating, I thought it's too good to be a remake of one of Cain's levels. And here, things are yet more interesting. I really like the fire bridge part, or the switch set puzzle, which I didn't expect to find in a game rated so low. But then, I encountered the next switch set puzzle. And yet another switch set puzzle. And one more... and this lasted for 3 hours, what, divided in 3 (walkthrough time factor) gives 1 pure hour of throwing switches and going through the newly open doors. BEHOLD! This results in the game seeming to be endless, and a player wondering how big a single level can be. Truly, this is the impression this game makes - you start to think what happened to the room limit, which should be 255 for the old engine, as it seems to be exceeded at about 450 rooms ago. And, after this 1 hour of switches, you find what? THE CROWBAR! A true COMBO-BREAKER! Texturing is more interesting than in poor customs, lighting is a little bit changed, but still nearly the same in every room. Enemies are crocodiles, dogs, scorpions and SASes - not well placed, but there's a variety of them, so I give 1 point for them. I decided not to give any points for objects (doors, switches and pickups only). I assume there is a lot of secrets in this level, even if each of them is very easy to find, and none of them is marked. So have 1 point for this as well as for the enemies. Atmosphere a little bit convincing, but not very much. Well placed sound, but only a little of it. Cameras flow smoothly, but they are unfinished. So I cane give max 3 points for AS&C. SUMMARY: gabiza7 improves his gameplay in this project. Unfortunately, he overdoes it a lot. Too many switches and doors can scare off impatient players, as the level seems to be too long, and the fact Lara obtains a motorbike doesn't help it at all. And that's why I can't consider this gameplay (and the whole game) as good. The whole rest is just average, more or less. Optional custom." - DJ Full

"Apart from millions of switches to pull, dozens of guards and a few crocs, dogs and scorpions to kill, and some bike rides there is not much more to do here. Regarding the tedious gameplay with running around looking for the next switch, the level was much too long. Rooms are bare and empty and very badly textured with many inappropriate or missing textures and paperthin walls. Lara on bike got stuck and even vanished halfway in the rough ground. One room was supposed to be a water room, but Lara could walk on the ground. Camera hints are rare. Not much more to say about this level, which is an obvious first try, but should not have been released before going over it again, and maybe practicing the level editor a little more." - Jerry

"This level's chaotic nature gave me a headache each time I played it. Imagine taking a room of whatever size, applying the random floor feature several times without fixing any of the missing faces, and applying textures just as randomly. Repeat and add the rooms together and this is the result. The best way to describe how it looks might be a mix of old ruins, a castle, a military base, and a bunch of hay. For gameplay the author added a bunch of doors (including crowbar doors not used as crowbar doors) and levers for these doors. The only sense of structure comes from finding the next lever to open the next door (usually not indicated with a camera, much to my frustration). There are also some pointless traps, flames, smoke emitters, and enemies that appear out of thin air, and some pickups and motorbikes that cannot be used for too long. DOZY was not disabled so I had no reservation using it to get past some parts with way too many enemies, but I could not bear playing any longer when I reached a maze with a bunch of switches outside of it, none of them opening a particular door to let me pull the lever inside it. No lighting exists and a few sounds are missing. Not recommended for anyone." - SSJ6Wolf

"Patience, you will need a lot of patience. :-) I liked it, though textures are, what can I say, strange? Game-play is straight forward, you can't miss a thing. Hundred of levers and doors, water tunnels with enough air, shooting guards, dogs, crocodiles and little scorpions, motorbike drives, one good puzzle to extinguish the fire, one good surprise jump over spikes, some avoiding from rollingballs and finally reward in the end - this beautiful cube. It was worth it. :-) - About making level prettier I suggest more realistic textures at least for water surface and to repair all walls which architecture is made that way that they cannot be textured. Everything else is left to the author." - Oxy

"It seems that this builder didn't lose many time applying textures, there are a lot of missed textures, paper walls, ilegal slopes and environment has a bad aspect with square and empty rooms with no furniture. All that I did was pull too many floor levers to open a lot of doors push buttons to open more doors, shoot some enemies, some rides with the bike and few more; well, near the end I found the crowbar! Pickups are only some medipacks and shotgun ammo, but I couldn't found it perhaps it was too much hidden or I didn't want to waste my time looking for it. And that's all; it's what I found in this bored level." - Jose

"An ambitious debut in the sense that it will keep you busy for just about an hour or so and you will continuously be on the move - from lever to lever to lever to lever. I think there are about 40 of them. Add to that about a dozen guards, a dozen dogs plus some crocs and small scorpions and picture a very rugged boxy landscape with many squashed and stretched textures applied in patchwork style (plus many black triangles where textures are missing entirely) and you know what will expect you. Crawlspaces, swimming, some short backtracking and several bikes to use plus the occasional boulder, spike and burner trap add the slightest bit of variety, but you will probably still breath a sigh of relief when you finally reach the stone and thus the end." - MichaelP

"We've been blessed with a plethora of wonderful releases lately, so maybe this level has that as a bit of an unfair disadvantage, but I think it's not a shining example of level building by any standards anyway. With taking almost an hour to finish - it certainly has a number of interesting gameplay bunnies along the way showing that the author's imagination works - but it might have been better if the level had been condensed down to those moments only, as the author has not gone through the standard manual/tutorial experience (at least not thoroughly enough) and it shows. The looks are patchy and uninspired, lighting practically non-existent - along with the interesting gameplay moments - there also are numerous stuck moments (though easy to avoid, to be fair), a trial & error lever puzzle, some elements whose purpose I still don't understand, and a lot of running to and fro - it all just basically feels like the author is stumbling through a dark room in an effort to build a level and the results are mediocre to say the most. It isn't the most exciting experience - so I'd recommend to turn to other levels for your entertainment. As for the builder - he certainly has some potential for making great levels - I'd just suggest to take the manual/tutorial seriously." - eTux

"Haven't played Cains level 2 by the same builder, this has all the classic newbie's mistakes like paper-thin walls, un-textured bits and bad applied textures. Also enemies appear right in front of your nose out of thin air. Lightning is pretty bright. But all in all there are some good ideas in here. Textures that are used aren't too bad and with careful lightning it could be even better. There is also the bike you can use, and there are a couple of them. Some nice traps are thrown in but the main thing is locating levers. In the mean time you can find the Shotgun and even the Revolver and Sight. If by any chance the flyby starts looping in the room where you have to jump the columns, just hit the"look" key. The lever puzzle is just plain nasty as there is no hint so going back and fro every time to see what happened is not funny. So back to the drawing board and learn from this experience." - Gerty

"Having just finished the superb Himalayan Mysteries levels, I suppose pretty much anything was going to suffer by comparison. Having said which, this is a somewhat amateurish offering, with plenty of the 'first time build' faults. Unless your taste in raiding runs to shooting guards and throwing a lot of levers, there really isn't a great deal to recommend here (well, in fairness you do get a bit of swimming, a boulder or two to avoid, a small puzzle and some rather under-used motorbikes but it doesn't quite make up for the lever fest in my opinion). It's a brave attempt for a debut level, but the gameplay really needs far more variety and the builder's use of textures is absolutely manic - most of the rooms look like patchwork quilts and made me feel dizzy." - Jay

"Lasting one hour, this stand alone level accompanied with a new title , is quite long as there is not a lot of puzzles or enjoyable moves to perform here. Do not expect the classic quest for the 4 elements by the way , although there is a good dose of swimming and some fire. One spiked ball trap was good, and at one point you get a multi levers and fire burners puzzle. Aside from that, it is a linear raid , finding the next switch and the crowbar at the end so to put your hands on the Stone. Interesting textures used, a pity their applying is not well made. In fact the setting suffer from the syndrome of what is called"the beginner mistakes" with a few thin walls, stretched textures and worse : missing textures in some of the chaotic rooms. Enemies are mainly SAS in the beginning , then crocs and at one point a big pack of dogs, some of those enemies appearing out of thin air. If the camera flyby in the title tend to go through walls, the author has made a good work with the cameras in game : there is not a lot of them , but generally the most important are shown. If you like your levels easy and don't mind chaotic looks..." - eRIC