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Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness


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Originally posted by Homoludens

it looks like I'm gonna have to use my AOD money to buy Ghost Master instead. :p

 

HA bought it some weeks ago and its really good...Funny but also terrifying...(you have to see the ghosts from a closer look and look throught the eyes of your vivtims...brrrrrr)

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If the only thing causing difficulty is the performance (speed) of the game on the ps2, then the pc version should be fine. You can only ask so much of the graphics processor in the ps2. That they didn't tone down the game to perform adequately on the ps2 architecture is a shame for ps2 owners, but actually a positive for any other platform out there. The pc wont have to compromise as much just so the game will run on the ps2.

 

Think how poor splinter cell would be on the pc if it came from ps2 land first.

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from that ps2 tomb raider review on gamespot

Stealth elements are rapidly becoming overused in games

 

*scoff*

 

Uncultured, uneducated, philistine filthy ps2 whore!

 

There is NO SUCH THING as overused stealth elements (if done properly). Heaven forbid games offer variety and challenge to gamers other than how long they can stomach the same old !@#$$% hour after hour.

 

*deep breath*.

 

 

... sorry about that :amidala:

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i totally disagree...this game is a new beginning to the TR series.

I have been enjoying it immensely.The story is very intriguing;controls are a bit hard at first but once you get used to it its total butt kicking action :)

graphics are top notch too....lara looks more human for once.The newly added elements have made this game very more enjoyable and more like role playing.It was definately worth the wait and delays.

 

as far as glitches,slow mos and bugs go...i havent encountered any problems with those yet, and ive also had ps2 since its launch date :)

 

worth the buy

 

edit: oh and pleto the game lives up to those promises :p

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I simply don't understand WHY is it that in a platform game like Jak & Daxter (or Ratchet & Clank for that matter) the characters movements are quick, precise, and smooth with little to no reaction time; and yet in AOD, Lara moves with the agility of, to aptly quote Gamespot "a cement truck". It reminded me of the slow motion jogging in "Disaster Report", and the kind of clunky movement of the main character in "Headhunter".

 

Okay, so it's a different engine. Supposed to be revamped, better. Yet the only thing this has successfully established to this gamer so far is that newer doesn't always mean better. Couldn't Core at least mimicked some of the technology of these platform games?

 

And the worlds in these platform games, even though quite massive at times, allow free roaming access with no load times. In AOD, you walk around a corner to pick something up or talk to someone, and your treated to a load screen. You turn around to go back a second later, and guess what. I would have come to expect much more with the technology that's available and in use in more than just the two games I mentioned.

 

The game is enjoyable to a greater degree, and I think this series still has potential, but AOD is far from a new beginning; though going back to the drawing board might not be a bad idea.

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LOL you guys!

 

Well, the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it" really applies to my life today. ;) I just got assigned to review the PC version of TR: AOD for my employer. Doesn't it just figure?!

 

Um, if it's any consolation, it definitely looks better, has no slowdown problems so far (I'm only in the third level now, though) and the controls seem a little bit less touchy than in the PS2 version. Of course, I have an Athlon XP 2000+ with a gig of DDR RAM, and an ATI AIW Radeon 9700 Pro with DX 9.0a installed, too, which beats out the PS2's specs by just a tad. ;)

 

 

Well, I'm in it for the long haul now, so I hope this great adventure story I'm hearing about starts to rear its head... Some good puzzles would be nice, too.

 

Anybody made it through much of the game yet?

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Originally posted by Skinny Minnie

Um, if it's any consolation, it definitely looks better, has no slowdown problems so far (I'm only in the third level now, though) and the controls seem a little bit less touchy than in the PS2 version.

 

This puts me at ease :D . Thanks, and it's good to hear (read) that you get some more joy out of it now, too.

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:( Oh, man! Gamespot lumped it a mere 6.1:

 

In development for years, this new Tomb Raider was intended as a reinvention of the series, with a darker edge and all-new gameplay elements. That is indeed the case, but unfortunately, it's easy to tell that Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, despite all the time spent in the making, shipped before it was completely finished. Much like in the just-released PlayStation 2 version, numerous glitches, some superficial and some serious, as well as a cumbersome and often frustrating control scheme seriously hurt this game, making it considerably less enjoyable than it could have been. Nevertheless, hard-core Tomb Raider fans and other particularly patient players should be able to overlook some of these flaws and enjoy this new installment for its engaging storyline, death-defying action sequences, and impressive locations.

 

Full review

 

I'll be waiting for other reviews. I've even jaunted over to CompUSA during my lunchbreak at work today just to look at the box, but it's now definitely languishing on my list of titles to get when they're really cheap. Ah well....

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i dont think anyone cares but one of my favourite german vocal trance artists Alex C. Feat. Yasmin K. have a new single about the new tomb raider game and lara.Song is awesome :) and the video is cute :rolleyes:

 

angelofdarknessbig.gif

 

:D

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  • 1 month later...

this might explain why tomb raider: angel of darkness sucked so much:

 

According to our connections at Core Design, Angel of Darkness should not be on the shelves yet. The release date they were shooting for was Christmas 2003, probably a November release date as most of the rest of the TR games have had. Then, in Summer of 2002, Eidos told the Angel of Darkness team to have the program ready for release in Christmas of 2002, full twelve months before their original projected date of completion. Naturally, this was all but impossible, so Eidos backed the date up to February of this year. In the meantime, two of their staff quit due to a disagreement and the remaining AI programmer was, according to my informer, "not exactly the best programmer we've ever used." In addition, there was major slowdown plaguing the NTSC version and a slew of other bugs that needed to be worked out. What it boiled down to was the entire staff pulling four days of all-nighters for no extra pay in an attempt to get Angel of Darkness out before the end of Eidos's fiscal year so they could report a profit to the shareholders. It was very heavily implied that if it was NOT ready by July of 2003 that they would all lose their jobs.

 

 

quite sad really... I never thought that of eidos, but they are a bunch of greedy bastards afterall, like all the other companies out there...

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I'm suprised that they stooped to that low, talk about incompetent! Coupled with the messes they've been in over the last few years that feisar has posted about, I'm more suprised the shareholders haven't sacked people. I'm not a fan of Tomb Raider myself, but I feel sorry for the fans and developers who seem to have been abused by eidos' management to save their own necks. Not for the first time and probably not for the last.

 

I agree Ys, it was greedy in the short term, and it shows lack of sense in the long term. Tomb Raider would likely have made alot more money for them if it came out on the original shedule.

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There are actually two sides to the coin here. The first is that Core had *three years* to work on this game, so whether it shipped in June 2003 or not, why was it still such a mess in June 2003 after three years?

 

The other side of the coin is that Eidos, who forced it out the door in the end, wound up taking away the franchise from Core over the shape it was in when it was released. And if Core was really threatened with losing employment anyway if it *didn't* release in time for the end of Eidos' fiscal year, they were put into a catch-22 situation...

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Ultimately the side of the coin I'm interested in is the one that's face up when I plunked my hard-earned cash down on this game, and then took it back after logging a mere 2 hours of gameplay only to get 16.00 trade-in credit on a 54.00 purchase. Ouch. My new mantra is "Rent, not spent"!!

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Originally posted by Skinny Minnie

There are actually two sides to the coin here. The first is that Core had *three years* to work on this game, so whether it shipped in June 2003 or not, why was it still such a mess in June 2003 after three years?

 

The other side of the coin is that Eidos, who forced it out the door in the end, wound up taking away the franchise from Core over the shape it was in when it was released. And if Core was really threatened with losing employment anyway if it *didn't* release in time for the end of Eidos' fiscal year, they were put into a catch-22 situation...

 

Sadly Core didnt really get three years to make the game.

 

They developed, Thunderhawk: Operation Phoenix, Project Eden and Herdy Gerdy from scratch between Tomb Raider: Chronicles and the new game. Core didn't have a full team working on the game until recently, also the company was working on Fighting Force 3 and Nightfall alongside TR:AOD because they thought they had more time than they were given.

 

Core are/were hugely talented one of the most profilic developers in the world behind a string of massive hits before Tomb Raider came along. Eidos on the other hand were just a video compression company who had a big pile of cash from floating on the stock exchange... :rolleyes: :

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NovelT and Feisar, you both make some excellent points, and feisar, I didn't really know that such a limited team was doing all that at once. However, NovelT really does make a strong statement, and all the talk in the world about why what's there is there doesn't change what you're paying for. :( Hopefully, Crystal Dynamics will take all this into consideration when they try to bring Lara up from the ashes.

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Because they were stupid. There were so many possibilities for a complete rehaul of Tomb Raider (including redesigning Lara's look), but Eidos and Core misconceived the whole thing, unable to figure out which elements to leave alone and which ones to throw out and re-do. For one thing, the new RPG system was horribly done, no less surprising that Core had never done upgradeables in the TR series before and should have consulted more experienced designers. But as it stands, the RPG system is superficial at best - you have no idea how improved Lara is after each upgrade, and you never get to find out because there's no tangible gauge.

 

I seriously think they should have built an entirely new engine or licensed a powerful existing one that can scale up for PC and down for PS2. For inspiration look at 3rd person action titles like Max Payne, Jedi Knight 2 and Jedi Knight Academy, Indiana Jones and The Emperor's Tomb, and the upcoming Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. But instead of using a new engine they continued to screw around with the existing engine, which was several years outdated, the same engine used in the original Tomb Raider game in the mid 90s! There are other obvious major screwups as already discussed here, so your bringing up the possibility of using Angelina Jolie's likeness for Lara is pretty much marginal comparatively. That should be the least of our worries.

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