Level reviews

"This is a half-an-hour shooter level in a manor house not unlike Lara's own. I had difficulty finding an entrance covered by an opaque texture but other than that it's all very straightforward: You run around looking for switches and keys a lot. The Ninja on the property don't like it when Lara touches their switches and keys and try to kill her a lot. That's the whole story. The game makes use of some cameras to show opening doors. The lighting is too drastic for my taste and there are barely any sounds. Other than that, the atmosphere is rather pleasant." - Sponge

"The gameplay loop in this Croft Manor level comes down to two things: finding the next button/key, and gunning down at least two ninjas after each one. With Phil's walkthrough there wasn't much room for doubt so no pointless wandering around, and even going straight to the point I still left this short level quite undone. No scripting and some crucial SFX are missing too. 15 minutes. 11/23" - Treeble

"What an odd but interesting layout! i cant say much else was interesting here because its just another very simple and short home level with a lack of any traps or interesting puzzles. its once again finding keys and switches to open more areas and rooms etc with some ninjas along the way to spice things up. but i have to admit despite the same old gameplay here, the original and interesting layout of the house and rooms kept me interested in exploring it more so credit for that oh and very clever with the swim through texture in the bathing pool i almost had to look at a walkthrough. textures are mostly ok although stretched in a quite a few places and also nothing original here and as for the lighting: ok so what was going on with that because in some of the rooms like the main hall for example there was this odd blue tinge which was weird! you've got the assault course outside again and this time there is two swimming pools inside but no gym, i liked looking out the balcony's and windows and wondering how do i get to that area or where is that? pretty good idea there to invoke some intrigue" - John

"This version of the mansion has some really, really weird architecture and a rather odd layout. The main hall is pretty much the same, but nearly all of the walls are paper thin and the bathroom seemed to have been modified to a medium size sewer. Odd layout aside, this was pretty much business as usual for a Mansion level, running around, pressing buttons (wrong animation) and searching for keys while performing tedious backtracking. I felt that the massed ninja attacks were an unnecessary addition, considering they appeared in packs and started to shoot before Lara could react. The textures and lighting aren't too bad, but I can't really recommend this one unless you're a big fan of a) mansions or b) ninjas. Sounds were messed up in my download too." - Ryan

"You can easily avoid the hunt for the first key by doing a swan dive from the training course upon the balcony and so get access to the bathroom and of course take the same way to get back. For the rest it is just a house level and there is just so much one can do in the house. Key hunting is high on the list though. Some paperthin walls, some oddly coloured tiles in the kitchen, no sounds from Lara's guns at my end." - Gerty

"No much to say about this house level; there are missed sounds, paper walls, wrong animation when Lara "push" a button... The uzis appear too late. The player will only activate buttons and use keys to open doors; nothing more. Well, except that when you touch a button or pick up a key, one ore more white ninjas appear. Bored." - Jose

"Another mansion level. This time with plenty of ninjas to kill. Mercifully ends already after about 20 minutes. Actually, despite the earthquake, I thought the ending was not badly set in scene, but apart from that a rather unnecessary and uninteresting level." - MichaelP

"This is one notch below the previous mediocre level I played. This one seemed to be an exercise in pushing a button and summoning a ninja (or multiples thereof). I was able to access the upstairs pool room very early on by jumping to the balcony from outside. Since there was an open window conveniently nearby, I'm acting under the assumption that this was intended by the builder. On the other hand, there were two closed underwater gates in the main pool room downstairs that never opened for me. Whether there was anything to do or get behind them remains unknown. Nevertheless, the gameplay flowed in a logical, lineral fashion for me, so hopefully I did things in the right order. Not a waste of time by any means, but only for a rainy day." - Phil

"Once read about the ninjas and home invasion, one can suspect at least three things: 1) lots of blood and gore, 2) another home remake, 3) linear door-to-door gameplay. And here this is all true. The game is constructed exactly like most of shooters are: pick up something important and be sure a bunch of thugs will appear willing to slaughter the main character. This is surrounded by minimalistic yet decent lights and tiles, and I must admit I like the different room layout more than a classic one, however many of those compartments seem to be inaccessible. Cameras make things easier and the object usage is quite interesting, so the author has proved some devotion to the project, and I think if he was aware about fixability of the sound glitch, this game would turn out better. Also, some CD triggers would do. SUMMARY: Nothing unusual to expect, and missing sounds spoil the atmosphere a lot, but if You're opting for a shooter, You'll get it here." - DJ Full

"Is this an improvement on the builders previous levels? Perhaps;if only because the playing area is pretty compact and occasionally well designed,(putting to one side the swim- through floor and the odd geography of the bathroom)and that the back-and-forth progression is pretty snappy and easy to follow.The use of objects is good enough,and the textures are applied inoffensively.It's the preposterous use of enemies which simultaneously weakens the level and,at the same time,adds a certain comical flavour;a device which almost certainly wasn't intended,but allows a degree of entertainment value. 25 minutes was all it took for me,and is probably about as much as most players are able to tolerate." - Orbit Dream

"Loading up the game, we are given our first look at what is meant to be some sort of ninja stronghold that just so happens to be an old mansion(which looks eerily similar to Lara's own), as she has come here to retrieve the Dagger of Xian, which has been stolen from her possession by this infamous ninja clan, in the hopes of getting it back. But besides this brief description in the readme, there isn't any real story to behold in the game. Now, after three previous releases from the author, you would think he would have started to master the basics of what the Level Editor can do by this point. That's not the case here, as there are still many beginner mistakes shown throughout this 24 min adventure. Gameplay is pretty simplistic, involving you exploring the mansion for buttons to open a door or collecting some keys to unlock a room, containing yet another key to retrieve or some more switches to... you guessed it, open even more doors, the catch being that it'll trigger a ninja every time you do something important. My message to the author is this: Constantly having enemies trigger whenever we do something, is not good game design and just becomes irritating more than anything! With no secrets to find and barely anything to do, this can make the exploration aspect start to drag on and become quite boring after a while. The atmosphere is practically non-existent, with the few sounds used being typical TR4 fare, outside of one new track created by the author but it just feels like it was added in as an afterthought and has no real impact on the game's bland atmosphere whatsoever. Lighting is far too bright for many rooms and texturing has a wallpaper effect throughout, with objects being mostly low-quality and not at all affected by the lighting in the current room, coming across as rather jarring. In conclusion, it seems as if the builder has just released another level out the door, without doing any further research into the works of the TRLE at all, and comes across as nothing more than another dull beginner level. 1/10" - Ceamonks890

"A little level in the mansion. Quite easy (except the way in the pool). A lot of classic textures and BTB venise objects and horizon. This level is nice too play but lighting and textures (and wall papered) have to be improved." - Glouglouton

"Obviously, who ever owns this mansion Lara's infiltrating must have used the same architect as the raving nutter who built her ancestral pile - I mean, having to access a bathroom via an underwater tunnel might surely negate the whole purpose of the visit. Yes, I know 'reality' is a relative concept in a video game, but come on! Anyway, apart from pondering the vagaries of the architecture, there's a lot of button pushing, key finding and ninja shooting for approximately 35 minutes before Lara finds the dagger and goes home. I can't honestly recommend playing this unless you have a real fondness for quirky mansion layouts or a strong grudge against ninjas." - Jay

"As we start the level, we are shown what seems to be a nice front lawn to a mansion much like Lara's own. Things looks nice so far here, but things are generally not what they seem from a first glance. This takes the cake for just that. I wasn't sure what to expect walking up to the front of the old mansion, but pressing the button to open the front door (Which, as it turns out, was an invisible switch cleverly disguised as a button. That, or the builder forgot to add the right animation) and walking inside, I got a good idea of what to expect. The lighting applied on the interior, which could be called "pretty" by some, nearly gave me a headache as I traversed the rather dull and empty mansion to find something, anything, to get me from Point A to Point B. A hidden tunnel in the pool leads to the first of many "ninja" battles. A few missing sounds here (i.e. the pistols are silent, and the ninjas shoot water!) and a few seemingly pointless uzi clip pickups later, we are given a set of keys, which have yet to be named. More door opening, a blatant push block, rather long and annoying button sequence, and multitudes of the same enemy make this level almost a task to finish given the strange, yet frightfully dull atmosphere the builder has to offer. Another thing that annoyed me were the plenty of stretched and unaligned textures that surrounded the home. I would have thought that this level was the builder's first, which would at least be more acceptable, but this is not the case. But, I am getting off topic. After about 40 baddies are dead, we finally get the key that matters the most (Though this can be a rather easy feat, seeing as players can just DOZY their way straight to it.) and we make our way into the basement full of pointless shatter objects. Other than some flares and more ammo yet to be used (Did I miss some secret?) we see that these ninjas have stolen more than just the Dagger of Xian. It seems they have raided most of Lara's trophy room! After picking up the dagger we so desperately need, but not picking up any other stolen treasure OR the very same Dagger in the display case RIGHT next to it, the house seems to fall apart. A bit of running and unskilled flame dodging and we get to leave the accursed ninja mansion in the middle of nowhere, free to leave with the Dagger and safety of knowing that this (hopefully) will not happen again. The builder clearly needs work with atmosphere; music and sounds were absent in many places and lighting was strange enough to make me think this was some sort of joke level. Hopefully next time, the builder will take more than an hour to build up on the atmosphere and make sure everything is the way it is supposed to be. I will not give up hope!" - Quinn

"I gave this one nearly the same ratings as the builder's previous level, because they are roughly the same, even if the mansion is different from the one before and in some areas one can see the building skills of this builder ever so slightly picked up a bit. So the only reasons why I'm not giving this one the same ratings as the others are the odd window textures (partially paper thin walls) that did not fit in much and a swimthrough floor in the bathroom, which kind of "replaced" the invisible levers from the last level, and even the slightly better lighting efforts were too slight to change the rating for me. Another difference: The last level didn't have any fights but in here there are a lot, though the level is overloaded with them (and there's only one kind of enemy - the ninjas - which is even more boring). Unlike one of the other reviewers stated, there are definitively no BtB objects used in this level - only a few classic TR 3 house objects - and they are more or less fitting to the (worn-out) setting. Gameplay is still as boring as usual with levers to pull to find a lever and so on, without anything else to add a little bit creativity or fun in this game, so after 25 minutes I was (yet again) happy that Lara could exit this level through the garden doors." - manarch2