Boredom Post™ ahoy.
by AC - permalink
I finally got around to beating Tomb Raider: Anniversary early this morning. I got a little sick of the game just after reaching the final chapter (the Lost Island) and took a detour into some Call of Duty 2 before plunging back in for the final laps. I'll admit that I ended up referring to a couple of guides at GameFAQs (this one by ipino and this one by rikku4788) when I got stuck. For more than three-quarters of the game I wouldn't let myself do that, and I made it through fine, but eventually the jumping puzzles get so ornate and Mario-esque, and the combat becomes so frequent and tedious that I just wanted it to be over so I could start going back and replaying the earlier levels for more unlockable content.
Just like the original Tomb Raider this is based on, combat is far and away the worst part of the game, and it sucks that it becomes more and more focused on the fighting late in the game, I guess in an effort to make it progressively harder. It all culminates in a couple of big, fat, 16-bit-style boss battles. The first is actually pretty fun, but the final one, against Natla herself, is the gaming equivalent of root canal: it went on forever, was painful as all hell to get through, and left a very bad taste in my mouth. TRA is a beautiful, simple game with a lot of depth and exploration-oriented gameplay, and it's polished off by a long, idiotic combat sequence and a short, forgettable cinematic.
So that sucked. But the good news is, there's still a lot of replay value here. You can replay every level individually to try to find all the artifacts and relics for some really nice unlockable content, and try to beat the time trials for even more. There are developer commentaries accessed by using crystals styled after the save points in the old games, and while they're scarcer than I'd like, they are fairly long, and surprisingly fun to listen to. It's like a two-man DVD commentary, much better than the scripted (if informative and much more numerous) commentary tags in the Half-Life 2 series. To sum up three posts worth of rambling about the game, it's easily a buy at $30 considering its relatively generous length and above average replayability.
Okay, moving on. I finally got around to upgrading to a new build of Avant Browser (11.5 build 12), and I like what I'm seeing. The overhauled UI from the 10 series has been significantly tweaked, and the integrated ad blocking is even better. It's just a remarkably full-featured and polished browser for such a small project. Once I've had more time to play with it I'll post a more detailed review.
by AC - permalink
I finally got around to beating Tomb Raider: Anniversary early this morning. I got a little sick of the game just after reaching the final chapter (the Lost Island) and took a detour into some Call of Duty 2 before plunging back in for the final laps. I'll admit that I ended up referring to a couple of guides at GameFAQs (this one by ipino and this one by rikku4788) when I got stuck. For more than three-quarters of the game I wouldn't let myself do that, and I made it through fine, but eventually the jumping puzzles get so ornate and Mario-esque, and the combat becomes so frequent and tedious that I just wanted it to be over so I could start going back and replaying the earlier levels for more unlockable content.
Just like the original Tomb Raider this is based on, combat is far and away the worst part of the game, and it sucks that it becomes more and more focused on the fighting late in the game, I guess in an effort to make it progressively harder. It all culminates in a couple of big, fat, 16-bit-style boss battles. The first is actually pretty fun, but the final one, against Natla herself, is the gaming equivalent of root canal: it went on forever, was painful as all hell to get through, and left a very bad taste in my mouth. TRA is a beautiful, simple game with a lot of depth and exploration-oriented gameplay, and it's polished off by a long, idiotic combat sequence and a short, forgettable cinematic.
So that sucked. But the good news is, there's still a lot of replay value here. You can replay every level individually to try to find all the artifacts and relics for some really nice unlockable content, and try to beat the time trials for even more. There are developer commentaries accessed by using crystals styled after the save points in the old games, and while they're scarcer than I'd like, they are fairly long, and surprisingly fun to listen to. It's like a two-man DVD commentary, much better than the scripted (if informative and much more numerous) commentary tags in the Half-Life 2 series. To sum up three posts worth of rambling about the game, it's easily a buy at $30 considering its relatively generous length and above average replayability.
Okay, moving on. I finally got around to upgrading to a new build of Avant Browser (11.5 build 12), and I like what I'm seeing. The overhauled UI from the 10 series has been significantly tweaked, and the integrated ad blocking is even better. It's just a remarkably full-featured and polished browser for such a small project. Once I've had more time to play with it I'll post a more detailed review.
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