Posted by Paul on Dec 9, 2008 in
Gaming I started this weeks back as a review/overall closing on TR:U, I can’t be bothered to write anything detailed anymore so I’ll post what I had done.
“So, 1000/1000 thanks to a forum thread advising to load an old save and do the dives on that as they are all close together, just a 20 minute job. According to mygamercard.net that puts me 19th in the UK to 1000 and 59th in the world to get to 1000. At the time of writing only 14762 people are on that leaderboard, a suprisingly small amount of people compared to other games, I think most of the market share on this one was to the PS3.”
Yeah not much but to close I’ll do a quick overview. I would have played it again but I couldn’t be bothered, the game in the end was a disappointment really. Adding the blog entires up it suprisingly comes to about 17 hours 45 mins (to round it off) of play. It didn’t seem anywhere near as long as that. I think the treasure hunting part did bump that time up a lot, if I played the core story I reckon it would have took half the time. It’s a sad fact a lot of games in this generation rely on silly repetitive side missions to squeeze extra hours out of the game. The majority of games I have played this year have all seemingly followed the same pattern, short and thin story with a lot of side and/or collecting missions to pad out the game.
The Collector’s Edition is nothing special, I haven’t bothered to watch the DVD, it doesn’t look very long at a glance, probably good so I don’t get bored if I do watch it one day. What I find really disappointing is that the soundtrack is on the DVD and not separately like Anniversary, sad, but I like the music, it’s ok to stick on PC. It’s nice to have, it wasn’t much extra in cost. That’s another trend games have these days, throw in a Limited Edition usually filled with rubbish, but hey they might actually be limited and collectable in the future.
The next big release I will get will be RE5 out on the 13/03/09, a friday 
Until then I’m going to step back, attempt to finish some of my backlog which I must get around to collating and enjoy some last gen games on the Gamecube I just got. If they do suck then it’s not as bad as blowing £40 on a single game.
Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld
Posted by Paul on Nov 27, 2008 in
Gaming 
Hurray. Got the missing treasures at last, about 3 hours of play a lot of it unnecessary. I was looking in the wrong places in those caves on the first level. Thankfully people have enough patience to make guides. Oh and I got a swan dive achievement in Treasure Hunt (in the last posting I musta went to the wrong place) but I can’t get all three as there’s no way back to Amanda’s boat in this mode. Damn. New game here I come.
Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld
Posted by Paul on Nov 26, 2008 in
Gaming This level took about 2 hours 45 mins, about half an hour easy must have been spent on collecting that stupid relic, eventually got it along with all 30 treasures, I used a guide to keep me on track to help when I was a few short going into certain sections.
The level wasn’t the best end of a game I’ve seen. Swim, slaughter some enemies and get slightly aggravated during the final puzzle when the tables turn a bit. Overall the story was thin.
Missing just 4 achievements. All the dives ones as I didn’t realise these had to be in one “adventure” aka a save of a run of the story, treasure hunt doesn’t allow you to get them. And of course the Masture Treasure Collector one, all 179 of them. Not sure if I’ll go back and get them, seems like too much hassle. The extras were unlocked too, for some reason on the 360 the game doesn’t actually load when you select the storage device on the main menu so nothing appears but they are unlocked when playing a level.
I’ll provide a full review of the game as a whole sometime shortly.
Oh and treasure hunt has no enemies? Try telling that to the panther that just jumped out on me in Southern Mexico.
Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld
Posted by Paul on Nov 26, 2008 in
Gaming Almost the last of these postings, thankfully. Well this was a cheap level, a recycled “map”. I was expecting more but it never arrived, a bit of a joke really. Nothing to collect and only about 3-5 minutes of play time. Disappointing.
Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld
Posted by Paul on Nov 26, 2008 in
Gaming So this one it took about 2 hours to complete and all 30 treasures were found plus the relic. It appears that the Speed 3 achievement glitched and was impossible to get so I’ve got some checkpoint loading up to do when I finish, that infact took maybe 15 minutes extra of trying making this quite a short level. It did make up for it because so far it has probably been the most challenging in terms of jumps and climbs. Shame the “boss” type creature was taken down so easily with a grenade and a few shotgun shells.
A good moment was when the spider got squashed, ha. However still no extras unlocked.
Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld
Posted by Paul on Nov 24, 2008 in
Gaming Ugh that was a long one, very big, in total: 1 Relic and only 47 out of the 50 treasures, bummer however I had a sneaky look at a guide, sneaky because I’m trying to go it alone, and I appear to have missed 3 in the opening Jungle part somewhere. Musta spent in total about 3 hours 15 mins on the level. Nothing exactly rememberable although when you exit the last chamber on the way out three spiders line up ready to ruin your day in front of the door you need to exit, just a bit random, wonder how long they waited for you. Oh and what happened to the days of burning to death? Walk into fire and you die instantly, right.
Still none of the extras unlocks on the main menu have actually unlocked yet.
Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld
Posted by Paul on Nov 23, 2008 in
Gaming Ooh, Deja Vu. About 50 minutes to complete. 1 relic found and all 13 treasures.
Interesting story developments.
Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld
Posted by Paul on Nov 22, 2008 in
Gaming Ah the demo level. Nicer looking level than the first, I think just because it was lighter. Definately more challenging than the first, more nooks and crannies to look in.
Took about just under three hours, 1 Relic but only 26 of the 30 artifacts 
Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld
Posted by Paul on Nov 22, 2008 in
Gaming Just finished Level 1 after two and a half hours of exploring, managed to find the Relic and 20 of the 26 artifacts, which amazingly Lara smashes old vases to find, ironic. Perhaps the treasure hunting achievements won’t be as bad as I though, finding that many on my own is an achievement itself. I usually leave it to guides. Hey it’s not exactly like the uninspiringly boring and frustrating pigeon shooting of GTA4 (biggest disappointing game of the year), I might actually enjoy getting these.
The story well, it’s involving opening with a scene that is mysterious and ending on possibly the most unexpected section of a level on Tomb Raider ever.
As predicted, I’m liking it.
Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld
Posted by Paul on Nov 12, 2008 in
Gaming The Tomb Raider: Underworld demo was released a week or so ago on XBL and PC, apparently according to some forums it’s never due out for PS3 users, well there isn’t long ’til the full game is out now anyway.
Upon loading the demo the first thing that have changed a lot is the menu system, it’s a sort of directional selectional circle, push and hold the stick to whatever menu option and select it, it’s different, but it works. For the actual game itself the first thing I noticed when loading up the game were the graphics. To me graphics aren’t everything, I want a game thats fun and entertaining as opposed to graphical genius, of course I don’t want it to look garbage, but wow the game looked excellent, very pretty and detailed.
Difficulty seems beefed up not just in the jumping and leaping but against the tigers dotted about they seem to take a few rounds before dropping and are very fast, I need to get used to that precise aiming thingy on a console. The interactive elements are more hidden, they blend with the environment a lot more than before making you think about jumping. Speaking of jumping a new element has been added of leaping backwards and forwards between walls (I forget what it’s called, monkey jump?), to get to where you need to go. A new touch is also the fact when running through bushes Lara pushes them aside with her hands as opposed to walking straight through them like they don’t exist.
One annoyance was what seemed like every 10 seconds a bat or spider would latch on to you and take off health until you pressed to shrug it off.
Above all I was impressed with the demo and I very much look forward to playing the full game even more than before.
Tags: Tomb Raider: Underworld