How's it going folks, I hope those that celebrate it had a great Christmas, and for those that don't I hope the day was still great anyway. In between my familial activities, I played the 1998 expansion of the first game Unfinished Business, and it certainly exists alright. I already covered most of the mechanics and general layout of the levels, as well as how you're able to play this on a modern PC, in my review for the first game, so this is just gonna focus on what I liked and didn't like about the expansion's four levels.
RETURN TO EGYPT: A remixed version of City of Khamoon, this does the best job showcasing the strengths of the expansion: Taking the familiarity and design of the first game, while incorporating fresh new gimmicks and even some gameplay elements from the sequel (again, this came out in 1998, so this would've been after 2 and it launched a little after the third game). It also has some great setpieces such as seeing the crumbling remains of the Sphinx, numerous times where you observe a cat statue and it transforms into a panther, a spiked encounter where you have to walk across in order to get by unscathed, and a set of jumps you make across bridges in a boxed room. It's also, funnily enough, where you get all the weapons and a good chunk of the medpacks here, including one irritating yet simultaneously cool discovery where you can hop across the final spot of the level, going behind the area - there's instakill tiles to stop you from going too far, but they're pretty easy to figure out - in order to find the Uzi. As you can imagine, it peaks here.
TEMPLE OF THE CAT: So I briefly went over the combat in my review, because that was sort of the point. It's the weakest part of the game, BUT it doesn't get quite frustrating until a few spikes at points, cause even the original team knew to focus more on the exploration and platforming elements, saving the combat encounters for special occasions or to keep the player on their toes, and generally the difficulty curve of these encounters felt natural. This expansion goes against that cause it feels like for ever one puzzle or room you do, you're immediately bombarded with a fight against numerous enemies in tight rooms/corridors, which means frequent times the camera freaks out and goes all willy-nilly. There's a section where you have to fight eight mummies/Atlanteans, not at once mind, while you barely have time to reach a high platform to avoid their attacks. Not like the exploration aspect is much better either, aside from a couple of neat jumps and tricks, it's very rote and the rooms tend to feel samey and loop around too much. The last secret here is an incredibly boring series of block pushing! I guess the statue at the end is cool? Thankfully this is the worst it gets.
ATLANTEAN STRONGHOLD: Aggressively mid. Starts off promising since it's following up on the last level of the base game, along with a very great camera setpiece, but it becomes too rudimentary about halfway in to the point I'm kind of struggling to really remember it. There's a lot more water this time around though, which is both fitting since Atlantis, although odd since I preferred the esoteric, flesh horror layout in the base game. Surprising enough, this is also where combat becomes easier due to more breathing room and chances to dodge, even if you decide to focus on just the pistol. Then again, this was the point I decided to stop doing my checkpoint-like save usage, and decided to abuse the feature as much as possible, so that's probably why it felt too easy. I don't really have much else to say about this, it exists and I had some enjoyment here and there.
THE HIVE: This one's pretty cool, and it's also the shortest of the bunch which would probably explain why this is the only other level I'd call good. It focuses more on a centralized room layout, having to squirm around and go through different elevations in order to destroy the place creating these mutated Atlanteans. There's not that many setpieces this time around, but the rooms and things to do in them are at least fresh enough that it sticks to my head rather well, and there's encounters here that finally felt like how they were in the base game, or hell the first level of this expansion. Again, don't really have much to say due to the shocking yet appreciated short length of this one, other than having about half the time being spent swimming around got rather annoying.
So... yea. With this expansion you get as part of the Tomb Raider Gold bundle on PC, you get a great level, a really bad level, a forgettable level, and a decently entertaining level. Not uh, exactly worth it, especially since you now have to go out of your way to make sure it's even available on your computer, but I suppose you could do worse. I still plan on playing Anniversary next, but that's not gonna be until a little later since I have other stuff to finish and replay, which will probably help avoiding burnout for the series. Have a good one!
NEXT TIME: TOMB RAIDER ANNIVERSARY
RETURN TO EGYPT: A remixed version of City of Khamoon, this does the best job showcasing the strengths of the expansion: Taking the familiarity and design of the first game, while incorporating fresh new gimmicks and even some gameplay elements from the sequel (again, this came out in 1998, so this would've been after 2 and it launched a little after the third game). It also has some great setpieces such as seeing the crumbling remains of the Sphinx, numerous times where you observe a cat statue and it transforms into a panther, a spiked encounter where you have to walk across in order to get by unscathed, and a set of jumps you make across bridges in a boxed room. It's also, funnily enough, where you get all the weapons and a good chunk of the medpacks here, including one irritating yet simultaneously cool discovery where you can hop across the final spot of the level, going behind the area - there's instakill tiles to stop you from going too far, but they're pretty easy to figure out - in order to find the Uzi. As you can imagine, it peaks here.
TEMPLE OF THE CAT: So I briefly went over the combat in my review, because that was sort of the point. It's the weakest part of the game, BUT it doesn't get quite frustrating until a few spikes at points, cause even the original team knew to focus more on the exploration and platforming elements, saving the combat encounters for special occasions or to keep the player on their toes, and generally the difficulty curve of these encounters felt natural. This expansion goes against that cause it feels like for ever one puzzle or room you do, you're immediately bombarded with a fight against numerous enemies in tight rooms/corridors, which means frequent times the camera freaks out and goes all willy-nilly. There's a section where you have to fight eight mummies/Atlanteans, not at once mind, while you barely have time to reach a high platform to avoid their attacks. Not like the exploration aspect is much better either, aside from a couple of neat jumps and tricks, it's very rote and the rooms tend to feel samey and loop around too much. The last secret here is an incredibly boring series of block pushing! I guess the statue at the end is cool? Thankfully this is the worst it gets.
ATLANTEAN STRONGHOLD: Aggressively mid. Starts off promising since it's following up on the last level of the base game, along with a very great camera setpiece, but it becomes too rudimentary about halfway in to the point I'm kind of struggling to really remember it. There's a lot more water this time around though, which is both fitting since Atlantis, although odd since I preferred the esoteric, flesh horror layout in the base game. Surprising enough, this is also where combat becomes easier due to more breathing room and chances to dodge, even if you decide to focus on just the pistol. Then again, this was the point I decided to stop doing my checkpoint-like save usage, and decided to abuse the feature as much as possible, so that's probably why it felt too easy. I don't really have much else to say about this, it exists and I had some enjoyment here and there.
THE HIVE: This one's pretty cool, and it's also the shortest of the bunch which would probably explain why this is the only other level I'd call good. It focuses more on a centralized room layout, having to squirm around and go through different elevations in order to destroy the place creating these mutated Atlanteans. There's not that many setpieces this time around, but the rooms and things to do in them are at least fresh enough that it sticks to my head rather well, and there's encounters here that finally felt like how they were in the base game, or hell the first level of this expansion. Again, don't really have much to say due to the shocking yet appreciated short length of this one, other than having about half the time being spent swimming around got rather annoying.
So... yea. With this expansion you get as part of the Tomb Raider Gold bundle on PC, you get a great level, a really bad level, a forgettable level, and a decently entertaining level. Not uh, exactly worth it, especially since you now have to go out of your way to make sure it's even available on your computer, but I suppose you could do worse. I still plan on playing Anniversary next, but that's not gonna be until a little later since I have other stuff to finish and replay, which will probably help avoiding burnout for the series. Have a good one!
NEXT TIME: TOMB RAIDER ANNIVERSARY
FallenGrace
1 year ago
Hope you had a good Christmas mate 👍🏻