early early Underworld thoughts
»Q«
Probably a few posts around the last game I played, which I think was
called Legends. Nice to see a lot of regulars from years ago still
around here. :)
I thought Legends was so-so, and I skipped the Crystal Dynamics remake
of TR1. Once I saw Underworld for under USD 20, I couldn't resist
picking it up. I'm still not in love with Crystal Dynamics, but this
one looks like it's less on rails than Legends was. I've really only
played a tiny bit, only swum around some and solved the very first,
very easy puzzle. But even the appearance of any puzzle at all was
encouraging, and the undersea area was extensive enough to give me hope
this wouldn't be as boringly straightforward as that last one I played.
And I think enough time has passed that I no longer will compare every
TR game to those first three -- the era of those thrills is just gone.
I'm giving it a rest until my new video card arrives this week, but I
thought I'd pop in and say hi. So, hi. :)
Paul Gardiner
> I skipped the Crystal Dynamics remake of TR1.
Aghh! You skipped the best one!
stellalune
> »Q« wrote:
> > I skipped the Crystal Dynamics remake of TR1.
>
> Aghh! You skipped the best one!
Hi, Q. I have to agree with Paul there. Underworld might be the
prettiest, but Anniversary is the least linear and most in the
"spirit" of the classics. CD did make some plot changes in order to
create some continuity with the Legend-Underworld story, but as long
as you keep a slightly open mind and don't expect a room-by-room
remake of TR1, Anniversary is quite enjoyable. You might consider
giving it a try when you finish Undeworld.
McG.
"�Q�" <box...@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:20090905225...@bellgrove.remarqs.net...
I think Underworld is a good one, but you skipped a pretty good one too on
Anniversary!
You'll see a lot in it that does take you back to the original Tombraider.
They did give us our due on that. But it isn't the same game at all. Both
are beautifully rendered and the feel of the game is a lot more 'open' than
Legend is.
I'm playing both on Steam, taking my dear sweet time to just enjoy all the
visuals and explore everything I can reach.
Enjoy the new vid card!
McG.
»Q«
<news:598f4d10-b277-400a...@d21g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>,
stellalune <stell...@tombraiders.net> wrote:
Thanks, you two and McG. I'll give it a spin when I run across a
cheap copy somewhere.
Regarding plot changes, IMO almost anything would be for the better.
I know a lot of people loved the plots in the early games, but I
generally found them weak. I was never even able to understand them
in-game, having to rely on printed material to make any sense of them.
»Q«
McG. <McGran...@NOThotmail.com> wrote:
> Enjoy the new vid card!
Heh, I see the old PC-vs-console controversy never ends. Now it's
taken over a thread that's supposed to be about how cute Stella is!
(Very cute, IMO ;)
I tend to stay way off the bleeding edge, but I think I'll now be
closer to it than ever before: a GeForce 260 GTX, which was hard to
resist with a $20 rebate and a free download of Arkham Asylum, which I
was going to buy anyway.
New games don't drive my upgrades any more. There are more games that
I want to play than time to play them, so I fall behind, and I'm just
as happy playing a game from 2006 as one just released. (I just
replayed PoP: Sands of Time, which is still great fun, then Warrior
Within for the first time, which has some fun gameplay but horrid
plot, script, acting, and art design[1].) I just had some money
burning a hole in my pocket and it felt like time to upgrade. The most
annoying thing is figuring out what the different cards actually do so
I can find my price point. I no longer enjoy reading about shaders and
stuff, and I'm done with that for a few more years. :) I've got a core
2 duo (E6750), and once the higher-end core 2 quads fall to $100 or so
a processor upgrade will probably be the final one for this machine.
[1] I'd read that Warrior Within was supposed to be darker and more
mature than Sands of Time. Darker, yes, but basing the art design on
heavy metal album covers does /not/ make it feel more mature -- quite
the opposite. And, man, was that script ever bad, particularly
shocking because the previous one was done so well.
John Whitworth
"stellalune" <stell...@tombraiders.net> wrote in message
news:598f4d10-b277-400a...@d21g2000vbm.googlegroups.com...
> On Sep 6, 9:13 am, Paul Gardiner <p...@no.where> wrote:
>> �Q� wrote:
>> > I skipped the Crystal Dynamics remake of TR1.
>>
>> Aghh! You skipped the best one!
>
> Hi, Q. I have to agree with Paul there.
And I'll third that. I really enjoyed TRA. Apart from the weird combat
stuff - but I could live with that.
JW
»Q«
»Q« <box...@gmx.net> wrote:
> Once I saw Underworld for under USD 20, I couldn't resist
> picking it up. I'm still not in love with Crystal Dynamics, but this
> one looks like it's less on rails than Legends was. I've really only
> played a tiny bit, only swum around some and solved the very first,
> very easy puzzle. But even the appearance of any puzzle at all was
> encouraging, and the undersea area was extensive enough to give me
> hope this wouldn't be as boringly straightforward as that last one I
> played.
Well, I'm done. (I shouldn't have waited on the new vid card -- for
this game, all it let me do was crank up the AA setting.) Disorganized
thoughts follow.
I quite enjoyed Underworld. Though it turned out to be a lot more
straightforward than I'd hoped, there were some nice level designs and
puzzle designs. I thought it did a lot to capture some of the elements
that have made the franchise great, and I'm no longer unhappy with
Crystal Dynamics. (I see from the credits that they consulted with
Toby Gard, which can never hurt. I assume they did that for
Anniversary too.) There were several places where I couldn't see where
to go next and had to try to make jumps that looked impossible, as in
days of old.
Combat is still clunky, but the slow motion option makes it tolerable.
And the slow motion sequences when something unexpected happens are so
much more preferable than the Dragon's Lair-style
click-at-the-right-time stuff in Legend.
The art design is wonderful and actually enhances gameplay. All the
ground cover in the jungle areas was great, and I never stopped
worrying about what might be hiding there. I'm not a big fan of the
art design towards the end, with glowing symbols everywhere, but even
that's brought off well.
In the first level, when the sharks only bite if they happen to get
close, I thought perhaps Lara had finally reached detente with the
animal world. What a relief when I found later that big cats still
bear a burning hatred for her and attack on sight, in packs. And all
bats are still willing to sacrifice their lives just to annoy her for a
few seconds. And every bug in the world attacks her now. I don't know
why the sharks are so nonchalant about it, but everything else wants to
kill her.
The blotches that develop on Lara's skin are an awful idea. I thought
it was actually a bug with the textures, so I googled and found that
they're supposed to be dirt. I don't have a problem with Lara showing
dirt after she's been stirring up dust and crawling through dank tombs,
but this implementation is so bad they should have left it out and
worked on something better for the next game. Rather than look at Lara
with what appeared to be a skin disease, I went back to an earlier
savegame and then chose long pants to wear in the jungles. At least
her legs weren't blotchy after that, but her arms were still bad.
(It's also a bit disconcerting that if she's covered in blotches, they
all disappear when a cutscene starts.)
Lara remains schizophrenic about why she's doing things. She tell Zip
she's going after the powerful artifact/weapon (how do you like my
spoiler avoidance?) so that she can kill her enemy, but then she
immediately writes in her journal that she's not doing it for power but
only for knowledge. I actually think this is good, leaving it unclear
to what extent she's an archaeologist and to what extent just a
raider/adventurer.