Rebel wrote:So...this is the "final" version, then? Shall I give it a complete runthrough and then crush you under the weight of a pattented T.I. 10,000-word review..?
You're gonna let me have it with both barrels, huh, T.i.?
Well, all I can tell you bud is that
I always give it my best. Whether that's enough to evade your wrath, well . . .
TIME TO FACE MY WRATH! AHhahahahaaaa!
But seriously, time to embark on another excessively long and detailed review of mine...don't worry, I quite enjoyed the level.
Ruins
By Rebel
PLAY-BY-PLAY:
- Spoiler: show
- Ruins opens up like a lot of Trespasser levels - your plane has crashed somewhere, everyone has died but you, and now you've got to find your way out. However, it's immediately obvious from the moment you leave the plane that you're somewhere new and unique that we've never seen in a Tres level before: turns out you've crashed outside an enormous ancient Roman city. From the moment you enter the mammoth city gate, you find yourself wanting to explore every nook and cranny of it, something which this level allows you to do in full! You'll explore abandoned houses, market stores, a temple, and even a mill, but ultimately your objective is to escape the city and move onward toward the massive mountain in the distance (which happens to be a disguised Mount Watson as this level uses a well-disguised IT terrain as its base - something I usually am not a huge fan of, though I'm happy to say is done well enough in this level that I didn't initially notice). Every corner of this city is detailed richly, although the buildings are a little bit empty interior-wise, and you'll spend a lot of time wandering around checking out everything you can. I cannot stress enough how cool this city is!
Once you've explored the spectacular city and potentially encountered a mysterious portal with a denizen even more ancient than the city itself, you'll probably be wondering what you need to do to move on. This leads me into one of my few gripes with this level - the puzzles. Now don't get me wrong, I love puzzles in games and am always hoping to see some good ones in Trespasser, but I did find a couple of these puzzles to be somewhat difficult to find the solutions to, even with the provided Tomb Raider-esque cutaways (which are really cool, by the way). This first puzzle had me scratching my head for quite a while until I discovered that you actually have to climb to an off-the-path area which is quite hard to notice, which I fear many other players might not even realize is there. The rest of the solution to the puzzle isn't that hard, but finding that one item - the torch, spoiler alert - was a bit trickier than I think it needed to be.
Eventually, you'll solve this puzzle and say goodbye to the city (and the nearby wild boar, your only friend in this level) - possibly with sword in hand - and find yourself journeying down a long valley over which towers a huge aqueduct, one of the most impressive things I've seen for a long time in Tres. Skeletons of long-dead Roman soldiers occupy the valley -as well as some unwelcome company in the form of velociraptors - leaving you wondering what exactly happened here that killed them all off, and you'll find some more corpses in a hidden cave-barracks which only makes you more interested in finding out why all these Romans ended up dead without signs of battle. Near the end of this valley, you'll also stumble upon a small temple, which, once accessed via puzzle, contains a fun little platforming segment and one of the more major puzzles of this level. The solution to this puzzle isn't immediately obvious, but astute observers will figure out the solution soon enough and, after a bit of a backtrack which didn't feel too tedious but could have used some more action, will find themselves advancing toward the final part of the level. I do think the solution to this puzzle could be misconstrued, however, and might result in a player backtracking substantially to retrieve an item they obtained earlier only to find it isn't the right answer.
Passing an excellent new machf-made creature that I won't spoil and with a new/old key in tow, you'll soon find yourself at the last challenge of the level - a simple puzzle, but a good one nonetheless. With that out of the way, you enter a dark, eerie passage - some sort of catacombs, from the looks of things - and hear the door slam shut behind you to reach the level's end, leaving you on a cliffhanger that ultimately made me wanting more after journeying through this excellent adventure!
SUMMARY:
Map Design: 7/10 - Some great environments and locations that take you from place to place seamlessly as well as a complete redress of an original Trespasser terrain make this level feel very natural. A few difficulties in navigation and some backtracking however do slow the level down and occasionally leave you scratching your head, and it's a bit disappointing that there wasn't really much to do in the massive Roman city.
Gameplay: 8/10 - Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles in this level, which range from medium-to-obscure in difficulty. I'm hugely fond of puzzles in levels, and I really liked a lot of what was done here, but there were some which felt a little bit too obscure and difficult to complete, in particular due to the out-of-the-way placement of key items. Still, I hugely commend the originality and challenge these puzzles created.
Story: 7.5/10 - There's some really cool stuff going on here - a time portal, dinosaurs in a Roman ruin, bodies mummified like those at Pompeii...so many interesting things which make you eager to investigate and want to know more. The only thing I wish for was a little bit more evidence hinting at what really happened here, as by the end I was really wanting to get a few more answers (I'm aware that there may be sequels to this level and am willing to change my score here if some of that is cleared up in later levels).
Creativity: 10/10 - This level knocks it out of the park with its original environments and scenery. It's one of those rare few levels where almost every model is new, and those that aren't are used very well. The puzzles and mini-dungeons encountered around the level make it all the more interesting and unique, earning a perfect score from me here.
OVERALL:
8/10 - Turns out the true barbarians that brought about the fall of Rome...were the DINOSAURS!
Will also post this one to my level review thread!