Level reviews

"This 3rd part of this series is very lacking in good gameplay and puzzles and i found this one easier and quicker to complete than the other 2 so far." - JoeTheCrazyGamer

"I rather enjoyed running around a Karnak setting again; it feels quite some time since I last did. It's nicely made and fun to explore, which is just as well because the gameplay is a touch underwhelming. Basically, there's nothing wrong with it, but it won't blow your socks off either." - Jay

"Well, it was at least a nice change to see daylight again after the darkness of the previous level. The Karnak setting is pleasingly put together but it's a shame that the gameplay isn't more involving. Putting aside the issue that you can end the level in under a minute, I felt like I had left places unexplored (which didn't turn out to be the case) and there are also no real puzzles short of the usual item hunting and button pushing, although it was nice to see the Canopic Jar sequence again. It's OK enough, I guess." - Ryan

"I am usually biased towards Karnak styled levels so while I see many shortcomings in this one, I still managed to enjoy myself. It's a bit of a simplified version of the original Temple of Karnak, with side areas revolving around a simple quest for two vraeuses to reach a key which in turn leads to the exit. The exterior areas, especially the one leading to the vraeuses, are generally poor in design, with repetitive texturing and random shapes, and gameplay is especially simple, with nothing overly taxing and even what could have been a deadly hallway filled with traps is essentially pointless as it's wide enough to run past them all safely... 25 minutes, 5 secrets. 02/18" - Treeble

"Nothing special in this short level, looking for some objects, press some buttons and few more. There are enough enemies, ninjas, crocs and scorpions, but not enough ammo and extra guns if you don't find the secrets; very easy to find, of course. I found some odd features, like the sight with no use, the row of scissors blades you can avoid or the room with many ledges and the monkeyswing where you can choose two different routes. The final key I got I think it could be useful for the next level of the series... (?). Playable but not very enjoyable." - Jose

"I must say that I am a little bit disappointed. Compared with LNHAR 2 this level is a backward step, respectively there is stagnation. The outside areas do not look, for example, so good. Particularly I have not liked the area around the lake. The lighting was already better sometimes. However, the inside areas are well built again. The Flyby's have become a little bit better. Nevertheless, the care is still absent a little bit. The sound feels well again. A problem is the place where one should climb up onto the roof of the temple. One cannot recognise at first sight which should be there a passageway, because it looks in such a way as if there was a wall. This "wall" disappears if one looks of another place to the passageway. Well, not always. Though the level quite feels still well, but, nevertheless, I have expected more." - Scottie

"This episode of the series is for me the weakest. Without speaking of the fact you can end the level in less than one minute, it does not have a lot to offer in terms of puzzles or satisfying tasks. You just have to make some jumps in a room (the monkeyswing ceiling is completely useless there by the way) explore and find a few key artefacts , and flood a pool. I think you spend half of your time here collecting pickups and swimming. The big scissors alley was a non event , you can avoid them all. So if you want, there is plenty of pickups to collect , and some secrets to find , which can add some interest. The looks suffer from the big distance , there is also textures of different adjacent rooms disappearing because the portals between the rooms are probably not correct , and the lighting is greatly lacking in the biggest outside areas. Some of the inside halls have some atmosphere, I like the camera showing the pouring of the water." - eRIC

"To me this is the least satisfying level in the series. For starters, the builder has made it possible to reach the ending trigger in a matter of seconds, which would be wonderful if the Tomb Raider experience was geared to speed and not quality. The next major irritant in my mind is the large room with ledges, many of which have no apparent function at all. Moreover, the player is able to enter a roof area via this room where nothing productive can be done until a couple of essential pickups are located near the end of the level. These complaints aside, the gameplay is progressive and interesting, and the beginning to intermediate player will have an enjoyable hour or so working his way through this level." - Phil

"Part three of the series, and what a nice adventure this was. You will be exploring Karnak type areas, all of which were well done, nice to look at and fun to be in, if you like scorpions, crocodiles and ninjas that is! Items to collect are the canopic jars, guardian key, golden vraeus x 2, and the hypostyle key at the end which Lara gets to take home with her. There are five secrets in this level, and one is an absolute bugger to find, but I came away with all five happy and content. No traps as such, and no puzzles either, there is a blade run but it can easily be avoided by running either side of it, but there is a lot of hunting, shooting and climbing to do, plus some cages to lower and buttons to use. All in all, this was quite a simple level, but effective as I finished wanting more." - Moonpooka

"Even though not a big leap but this is an improvement from the previous level at least in graphics but then again - all the Karnak levels always seem so professional don't they? You can actually finish the level in less than a minute as you can simply jump over the sand mound and run to the end what I did and was mighty confused so resorted to the reviews to find is that was only me. Reading that that's not a recommendable way to go went on and explored the other parts of here too. You can still reach the end of the world and end again from the roof too if you didn't notice the earlier shortcut but rather don't do it as the key you see in the middle you carry on to other levels and it wouldn't be great to realise by a keyhole that you've missed one in a previous level. The hardest thing for me here was to evade the crocs and spot the guardian key receptacle in the monotonously looking room. The flybys are a bit buggy as in the previous level and some tasks like the scissor blades can be easily avoided by simply going past them on the side. Nothing overly challenging or interesting but looks good while it lasts. You can surely find out worse levels than this out there but you can also find more appealing ones so I leave it to you whether you play it or not but if you've started the series play this one for the full effect." - eTux

"A pretty standard Karnak adventure but (if you ignore the jumpable slope and the harmless scissors) a well put together one with excellent Black Ninja placement and some generally easy to follow but enjoyable gameplay. The crumbling Temple looks genuinely ruinous and it's a good 30-40 minute piece of fun." - Orbit Dream

"I managed to play all five 'Rest' sequences together. Each took me about 90 minutes of play time which I got through in five days from Sunday through Thursday. I would not have known '...Rest 1' was a first effort if not for the comments of other reviewers. I highly recommend any and all of the 'Lara Never Has a Rest' series for beginners who are tired of getting stuck a hundred times or having Lara die every ten minutes. The gameplay is not challenging nor are the puzzles. But the games are fun. Expert level players might find the games a bit too simple but I think we all like to give our minds a rest every once in a while and just play a nice simple game. These games can be enjoyed by the expert who doesn't want to be challenged but just wants to have a little fun. The author did a good job of taking existing environments and with minor modification (sometimes major) developing new areas. I spent a lot of time thinking '...isn't this ...' which I enjoyed (I have a terrible memory). The author's story skills do improve by game 5 and her feel of the flow improves quite a bit also. The puzzles remain at a less than challenging level and an oddity or two remains. (Lara pried four beetles off walls and picked up a beetle but she ends the level with 3 beetles -- 2 black and one mechanical. What happened?) I enjoyed the games and recommend them." - Dougsan

"From the Tomb of Seth climb out to a Karnak temple. I liked the look of this place very like but not the same as the original Karnak. Right in front of you is a cage and key inside that's you're goal. Actually everything here is pretty obvious you see a dry pool - you must flood it you see a cage with a switch inside - you must lower the cage. A swim brings you out to a very big lake area with more temples to find canopic jars and vraeus. There's lot of sand to explore around this lake and plenty of crocodiles and scorpions. Oh and a ninja who follows you into a crawlspace cheek! Anyway the vraeus are placed high above in the first temple and now you can get that key. There's a little ground shake but I noticed no difference hop over the sandpile and jump down into the hole. When I played this first I innocently hopped over that sandpile and down the hole and ended the level after a couple of minutes and without the key so this is something to look at Emoeke don't make our lives that easy lol. There are no puzzles here it's another explorer's level to find things and push buttons. Nice easy level." - CC

"Our third adventure is based on the sunny 'Temple Of Karnak', with its bright and scenic areas and it's definitely hot weather...All in all, I found the gameplay better than it was in the first level, but it wasn't as good as in the previous one; although I really liked the puzzles and the big areas to explore. The level has 5 Secrets, and they are better than in the previous levels. Note that, only the Secrets contain weapons: the Revolver, the Crossbow and the Grenade Gun. The start seems to be a bit complex, as there are some routes to explore, but it clears suddenly. The gameplay is still easy and quite linear (I liked the progression though): Lara has to find a Guardian Key, two Canopic Jars, two Golden Vraeuses, a LaserSight, and finally the Hypostyle Key as a 'bonus item'. My best part is the large 'sea-bay' with its 'neighbour-areas', because I like swimming and exploring a lot, and that area has so much enemies - red ninjas, crocodiles, scorpions - and three Secrets too...I'm sad to say that the design of the level still needs some refining. It still has 'drunk flybys' through the columns, untextured or wrongly textured surfaces and walls, texture-flickerings and non-animated water-surfaces, repetitive and stretched textures, and illegal slopes. And finally the end - the final slope to the next level - is easily accessible, because Lara is able to jump above the sand, so She is able to finish the whole level within just a minute...The atmosphere and sounds are still great, although I didn't like the fact that how the 'end-sound' stopped suddenly, because Lara reached the next level; so, I grabbed the edge and climbed up first, instead of sliding down into the darkness. I liked the lighting, as the level has some darker areas, but none of them are too dark...So, I still had a great time with this third trip, and now let's see the last one..." - Sys

"Ohh what fickle business this rating is. As I couldn't help noticing a steady rise of the average marks as the restless Lara progresses from the Tutorial to the Coastal environment I somewhat expected a certain raise of quality to go along with it. Well maybe there is but to me The Derelicted Temple appears to be in the same vein as its predecessors. Meaning a solid if rather ordinary setting that hosts a fairly straightforward and easy gameplay. Having said that it is still a highly enjoyable adventure and it works really well in connection with the previous levels. I particularly liked the way you could just walk around the row of big scissors cause I usually only save before the first and the second then get careless as I manage to pass the first two without a scratch and inevitably get cut in half by the last pair of blades. Off I go to play the final part of this series." - Dimpfelmoser

"After a little exploring I found that you can actually end the level in about a minute if you just run on through the first room. If you want the prize though the key it will take you a bit longer. This is a nice looking Karnak level with both indoor and outdoor play that includes a huge outdoor water area with lots of nooks and crannies to explore as you search for a number of objects including canopic jars and Golden Vreaus. Enemies are ninjas scorpions and quite a few crocs - especially in the already mentioned water area. The puzzles weren't as good as in the second level in my opinion but it was very enjoyable to play and fun to look for the secrets." - RaiderGirl

"This is more like it. Not one who likes to squint through a level this the third in the series thankfully is set mainly outdoors in a simple but very effective Karnak environment that conveys the surroundings beautifully. When I started this it seemed as though it would be more complicated than it actually turned out to be in fact it was not difficult in the slightest but still made me feel a sense of achievement at the end. I possibly would have liked a little more danger in this level as with the amount of firepower I had from the previous levels the crocs and ninjas were more just time consuming to kill rather than deadly and traps are a little light on as well with a very useless small but wide hallway with rows of clanging blades that you could just walk around. With 4 secrets found this 30 minutes level was a welcome sight after the darkness of the previous and I hope the 4th continues in this vain." - Sash

"In this third level the task is to get your hands on a key that is safely put away in a cage. In order to do so you have to find two canopic jars two golden vreaus and a guardian key. In one of the rooms you have a real shootout with a group of ninjas and there are a lot of crocodiles in this level. Watch out for illegal slopes as there are a lot of them there is also some missing texture here and there. As Kristina I expected an improvement from the second level but it isn't there.....well - on to the next one! :)" - G.Croft

"Vast improvements in this 3rd installment of a 4 part series. Using the standard Karnak wad very nicely I might add Lara works a bit harder now for 2 canopic jars 2 vraeus and a guardian key in her quest to pick up a key to carry into the last level of the series. She faces some scorpions ninjas and a fair amount of crocodiles as she climbs jumps and swims her way to achieve her quest. I found this to be highly entertaining in the quest to drop cages around switches or to acquire key items." - Momster

"I am afraid this one is not better than the first one and less good than the second one. I was expecting to see an even bigger improvement but I didn't. A couple of guardian keys two vraeus in a karnak setting and buttons to push to lower cages and proceed into the game. Ninjas and scorpions plus a few crocodiles are your enemies. An area needs to be flooded and by collecting two canopic jars you get a laser sight and a vraeus place the two vraeus and you get a key and the way is opened to slide to the next level which I hope it will be better than this one." - Kristina

"Well a major design flaw here as you can simply jump across the slope and end the level in less than two minutes but if you go for the long way home you get about half an hour of standard but solidly built Karnak entertainment with two canopic jars a guardian key two vraeus a Hypostyle Key as your prize and the obligatory ninjas crocodiles and scorpions. The technical execution of the flybys still calls for improvement and the large body of water was a little tedious to explore. Found three secrets and kept on with the trend of usually missing out on two of them as there are allegedly five. On to the next one..." - Michael

"Karnak is the third level and I liked what has been done here. Although there are still some parts that look remarkable like the original one. There is some nice jumping and finding items like the 2 Canopic jars 2 Vraeus a guardian key and another key. Enemies are the usual ninjas crocs and scorpions. Lowering cages to get certain items and also a lake to explore not only underwater mind you. There is some backtracking involved but nothing that hard. Found 4 secrets. 04-01-2003" - Gerty

"I like the third level quite a bit - the atmosphere was like in Karnak. It is obvious the author puts quite some effort into her levels. Puzzles were well thought out and Lara had to work a little more this time. ;-) She has to find the two canopic jars and two golden vraeus. Switches to use and a lot of diving and a few ninjas and crocodiles to battle. Graphically this is well built three secrets to find among them the grenade launcher. At the end Lara picks up a key and carries it into the next level :-)." - Navi