I realize the duration between releases is getting longer and longer, but that's to be expected, after all. The delay this time was the result of a confluence of factors - including a variety of health issues; the advent of spring which accompanies the changing of the clocks, coupled with a few early summer-like days that already have my mind wandering away from the computer and toward the great outdoors; and a domestic battle with ants which has caused me to (at least for the time being) relocate my bedroom and study. It's a flurry of distractions amidst a change of scenery, and I'm trying hard to recover my focus.
On top of all that is the dramatic scene at the start of the fourth act of my game, to which I've had to devote a lot of attention. I want to do justice to the emotional weight of the scene, while still efficiently moving the plot along, and not getting bogged down in melodrama. It's a delicate balance, but if you don't get it right, the narrative suffers. I keep going back and forth in my head, telling myself that I'm not an experienced novelist, and that one of the appeals of the old school VG RPG format is that you can create a good gameplaying experience without a super sophisticated narrative. But on the other hand, I don't want to use that as an excuse, and cop out of trying to tell a good story. After all, some of my favorite moments in my favorite RPGs are character-based story moments.
All I can do is try my best. And not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I was finally able to tie up those loose ends with regards to weather effects I mentioned several updates ago, but we're far enough into the story now that you won't be able to experience them unless you really dig into the game progression - and I'm still maintaining that these releases aren't meant for you to do that. So at this point, they're really just checkpoints to back up my work. Which is fine. It means progress!
I actually didn't get the full act completed for this release, as I was intending to. With everything slowing my progress down this time, I reached a good point where I felt I wanted to hit the proverbial "save" button, before diving into the last portion of the act. If progress continues to be sluggish, I might very well follow up with another release when I get the act completed, before starting on the final act (which itself may ultimately involve more than one release). I know it seems like every step we take is smaller than the last one, but it still gets us closer to the finish line!
Dragonfaith (Pacifism 7.0) - A World In Peril
Download (426 MB): Windows
Thursday, April 10, 2025
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Review: Tomb Raider IV Remastered
As teased in my review of Tomb Raider III, remastered versions of Tomb Raiders 4-6 were released in February, and I've just finished the first one - Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. This was the first Tomb Raider game I played retroactively - eight years after its initial release in 1999 - so I don't have the same nostalgia for it that I do for the first three games in the series. Whether or not it's a result of that bias, I feel that this game begins to step away from what made the classic Tomb Raider experience what it was, even as it self-consciously seems to take a step back and say, "we've sent Lara adventuring all across the globe, let's take her back to the pyramids and focus solely on that in this game." As such, the game takes place almost entirely in Egypt. Unfortunately, this translates to less diversity in level environments (although they do what they can within these constraints - including a level that takes place on a moving train, straight out of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), and a conspicuous lack of alternate outfits - which may only be a superficial detail, but is one that has always enhanced my enjoyment of these games.
First impressions being what they are, The Last Revelation does not get off to a strong start. Although it sounds fun on paper, guiding a 16 year old Lara in pigtails through Angkor Wat is dragged down by what quickly becomes a tedious string of awkward dialogue, as mentor Werner Von Croy patronizingly instructs Lara in the most basic of maneuvers (that most players will have down pat by the fourth game in the series). Yet, frustratingly, he neglects to explain how to use the one new mechanic that is introduced (the rope swing). The fact that this tutorial sequence culminates in a satisfying opportunity to beat Werner in a race to the finish line doesn't redeem the unforgivable fact that none of it is skippable, and therefore - like sitting through a dry university lecture on archeology, punctuated by humorless jokes spoken with a bad accent ("is enough comedy"), and peppered with vaguely inappropriate innuendo - it must simply be endured every time you start a new game. I already miss Croft Manor.
I also miss the old three-ring inventory system. In this game, weapons and health pickups, key items, and system settings are all placed in a single row, causing you to spend an inordinate amount of time cycling back and forth in a game that - for no good reason - the developers decided to burden you with an overabundance of key items you must collect and hold onto for large portions of the game, that serve no function other than to take up inventory space until the moment you need to use them (which is more likely than not going to be the last level of the game). Exacerbating this problem is the new function of being able to combine inventory items - a good idea that's abused to the point of absurdity. For example, you're tasked with digging a hole, but instead of just giving you a shovel, you have to find a metal blade and a wooden handle and put it together yourself. Like, seriously - who takes their shovel apart?
What I do like is the ability to add a laser sight to certain weapons - including the crossbow, which is a welcome addition to Lara's armory - enabling you to hit targets with more accuracy. But other than being able to switch between regular and explosive-tipped arrows, I found little use for the different types of ammo available for some of the weapons. Also, target locking in this game is broken. You can no longer hold the button down and continue to track a target once it leaves your line of sight; you'll just start firing aimlessly, wasting your bullets. On the other hand, if you're locked onto a shambling mummy, and a bat or a scorpion rushes up to you, Lara will refuse to target the more imminent threat even if it's right in front of her face. I also don't like that you have to manually holster your weapons before lighting a glowstick (this game's version of a flare). And look mode is sluggish with your weapons drawn - too many times I've stumbled over a cliff thinking I would just be moving my head and not my whole body. It's always a risk when you add new mechanics, but there's no excuse for breaking something that's worked fine in the past.
Improvements in this game are few and far between. I glory at finally being able to shimmy and climb around corners, as well as perform an about face while hanging on the monkey bars. And being able to roll and drop off a ledge from a crouched position saves so much time compared to slowly rotating 180 degrees and backing out. That's about it. The binoculars were a novel idea, but seem to have limited use (in a few heavily contrived cases, there are clues hidden in dark, distant, out-of-reach corners). The traps are becoming excessively complex - I know they're trying to be creative, but it's beginning to stretch my suspension of disbelief. Also, some of them are so elaborate that it's not clear how to navigate them without simply soaking up a ton of damage - that's not so much a test of your agility/dexterity as it is a punishment device. On that note, the plagues of locusts (on the labyrinthine streets of a wartorn and apocalyptic Cairo) were less intrusive than I remember them being, but the beetle swarms that will rapidly ankle bite you to death were an absolute nightmare.
Once again, I have to complain about the lighting. You're given more than enough glowsticks (the biggest treasure in these tombs is going to be the recycling refund collected from all these spent glowsticks after Lara's done in there), but this isn't an atmospheric survival horror. Rooting around in the dark because there's not enough light to see anything isn't a good way to do "exploration". It's to the point where I've finally switched over to using the original graphics by default (partially for this reason, and partially because my folder already has almost 2,500 image files from the first three games, I'm not including screenshots with this review). Yes, the new graphics look amazing, but the lighting balance is out of whack. The only advantage is a new feature that causes item pickups to "glow" when you approach them (it's frustrating missing an item pickup you walked right over without seeing, because it camouflaged itself into the floor). But what's also frustrating is that you're no longer told how many pickups are in each level, making it effectively impossible for completionists and badge hunters to play this game without consulting a walkthrough.
On that subject, I won't hide the fact that I just wasn't invested in this game enough not to consult a walkthrough periodically. The dune buggy chase - and "buggy" is the right word for it - with its questionably racist machine-gun wielding desert nomads and irritating soundtrack, particularly tried my patience. And aside from the giant scorpions, and the fun of climbing up the side of the Great Pyramid (albeit on a dark and stormy night), the game's conclusion and final boss "fight" is somewhat of an anti-climax. I just didn't enjoy playing these levels enough to justify going back and forth through them repeatedly, just to find all the secrets, or to figure out the solutions to some of the really convoluted puzzles (I heard a rumor that the developers did this intentionally, to sell more strategy guides), which are in part inspired by the superficially non-linear nature of this game. For the first time in a Tomb Raider game, you can move (somewhat) freely back and forth between levels. There are restrictions (I wouldn't quite call it a Metroidvania-style game) - it's more like several "chapters" of connected levels that, in some cases, require a certain amount of backtracking between them.
Perhaps it's for that very reason, but I'm really incensed that there are fewer save slots than there are levels in this game. There's really no excuse for this. The way I play, I like to maintain a save file at the beginning of each level - kind of like a manual level select. But I can't do that here - and I didn't find that out until I got more than 3/4 of the way through the game, after it was already too late to strategically ration the slots available. Mercifully, the expansion to this game consists of just a single level. But unlike the other games, it feels like an afterthought, and not a carefully constructed labor of love that expands upon the core game (as before).
During the course of my play - which included a fair amount of time spent in a web browser looking at a walkthrough, or searching hopefully for commiseration from other players complaining about this game's many flaws - I was surprised to find a community of players who count it among their favorite titles in the series. So opinions will vary. But it's definitely not one of my favorites, and for me marks a significant downturn in the series. If you're looking for some classic Tomb Raider action, don't be fooled by the exclusively Egyptian setting. Any one of the first three Tomb Raider games would be a better time investment over this one. But fear not - I'm still committed to completing the next two titles.
First impressions being what they are, The Last Revelation does not get off to a strong start. Although it sounds fun on paper, guiding a 16 year old Lara in pigtails through Angkor Wat is dragged down by what quickly becomes a tedious string of awkward dialogue, as mentor Werner Von Croy patronizingly instructs Lara in the most basic of maneuvers (that most players will have down pat by the fourth game in the series). Yet, frustratingly, he neglects to explain how to use the one new mechanic that is introduced (the rope swing). The fact that this tutorial sequence culminates in a satisfying opportunity to beat Werner in a race to the finish line doesn't redeem the unforgivable fact that none of it is skippable, and therefore - like sitting through a dry university lecture on archeology, punctuated by humorless jokes spoken with a bad accent ("is enough comedy"), and peppered with vaguely inappropriate innuendo - it must simply be endured every time you start a new game. I already miss Croft Manor.
I also miss the old three-ring inventory system. In this game, weapons and health pickups, key items, and system settings are all placed in a single row, causing you to spend an inordinate amount of time cycling back and forth in a game that - for no good reason - the developers decided to burden you with an overabundance of key items you must collect and hold onto for large portions of the game, that serve no function other than to take up inventory space until the moment you need to use them (which is more likely than not going to be the last level of the game). Exacerbating this problem is the new function of being able to combine inventory items - a good idea that's abused to the point of absurdity. For example, you're tasked with digging a hole, but instead of just giving you a shovel, you have to find a metal blade and a wooden handle and put it together yourself. Like, seriously - who takes their shovel apart?
What I do like is the ability to add a laser sight to certain weapons - including the crossbow, which is a welcome addition to Lara's armory - enabling you to hit targets with more accuracy. But other than being able to switch between regular and explosive-tipped arrows, I found little use for the different types of ammo available for some of the weapons. Also, target locking in this game is broken. You can no longer hold the button down and continue to track a target once it leaves your line of sight; you'll just start firing aimlessly, wasting your bullets. On the other hand, if you're locked onto a shambling mummy, and a bat or a scorpion rushes up to you, Lara will refuse to target the more imminent threat even if it's right in front of her face. I also don't like that you have to manually holster your weapons before lighting a glowstick (this game's version of a flare). And look mode is sluggish with your weapons drawn - too many times I've stumbled over a cliff thinking I would just be moving my head and not my whole body. It's always a risk when you add new mechanics, but there's no excuse for breaking something that's worked fine in the past.
Improvements in this game are few and far between. I glory at finally being able to shimmy and climb around corners, as well as perform an about face while hanging on the monkey bars. And being able to roll and drop off a ledge from a crouched position saves so much time compared to slowly rotating 180 degrees and backing out. That's about it. The binoculars were a novel idea, but seem to have limited use (in a few heavily contrived cases, there are clues hidden in dark, distant, out-of-reach corners). The traps are becoming excessively complex - I know they're trying to be creative, but it's beginning to stretch my suspension of disbelief. Also, some of them are so elaborate that it's not clear how to navigate them without simply soaking up a ton of damage - that's not so much a test of your agility/dexterity as it is a punishment device. On that note, the plagues of locusts (on the labyrinthine streets of a wartorn and apocalyptic Cairo) were less intrusive than I remember them being, but the beetle swarms that will rapidly ankle bite you to death were an absolute nightmare.
Once again, I have to complain about the lighting. You're given more than enough glowsticks (the biggest treasure in these tombs is going to be the recycling refund collected from all these spent glowsticks after Lara's done in there), but this isn't an atmospheric survival horror. Rooting around in the dark because there's not enough light to see anything isn't a good way to do "exploration". It's to the point where I've finally switched over to using the original graphics by default (partially for this reason, and partially because my folder already has almost 2,500 image files from the first three games, I'm not including screenshots with this review). Yes, the new graphics look amazing, but the lighting balance is out of whack. The only advantage is a new feature that causes item pickups to "glow" when you approach them (it's frustrating missing an item pickup you walked right over without seeing, because it camouflaged itself into the floor). But what's also frustrating is that you're no longer told how many pickups are in each level, making it effectively impossible for completionists and badge hunters to play this game without consulting a walkthrough.
On that subject, I won't hide the fact that I just wasn't invested in this game enough not to consult a walkthrough periodically. The dune buggy chase - and "buggy" is the right word for it - with its questionably racist machine-gun wielding desert nomads and irritating soundtrack, particularly tried my patience. And aside from the giant scorpions, and the fun of climbing up the side of the Great Pyramid (albeit on a dark and stormy night), the game's conclusion and final boss "fight" is somewhat of an anti-climax. I just didn't enjoy playing these levels enough to justify going back and forth through them repeatedly, just to find all the secrets, or to figure out the solutions to some of the really convoluted puzzles (I heard a rumor that the developers did this intentionally, to sell more strategy guides), which are in part inspired by the superficially non-linear nature of this game. For the first time in a Tomb Raider game, you can move (somewhat) freely back and forth between levels. There are restrictions (I wouldn't quite call it a Metroidvania-style game) - it's more like several "chapters" of connected levels that, in some cases, require a certain amount of backtracking between them.
Perhaps it's for that very reason, but I'm really incensed that there are fewer save slots than there are levels in this game. There's really no excuse for this. The way I play, I like to maintain a save file at the beginning of each level - kind of like a manual level select. But I can't do that here - and I didn't find that out until I got more than 3/4 of the way through the game, after it was already too late to strategically ration the slots available. Mercifully, the expansion to this game consists of just a single level. But unlike the other games, it feels like an afterthought, and not a carefully constructed labor of love that expands upon the core game (as before).
During the course of my play - which included a fair amount of time spent in a web browser looking at a walkthrough, or searching hopefully for commiseration from other players complaining about this game's many flaws - I was surprised to find a community of players who count it among their favorite titles in the series. So opinions will vary. But it's definitely not one of my favorites, and for me marks a significant downturn in the series. If you're looking for some classic Tomb Raider action, don't be fooled by the exclusively Egyptian setting. Any one of the first three Tomb Raider games would be a better time investment over this one. But fear not - I'm still committed to completing the next two titles.
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