Guardian of Light is 3D Trine-esque

Ok, so I didn't really say this, so I can't take credit for the comparison.  My roommate first compared Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light to Trine before I got the chance to touch it.  In all fairness, this was a few minutes before I had touched it.  And yes, that thought was polluting my mind to make every platform puzzle appear as such (perhaps "polluting" is a tad strong on the wrong side of the spectrum, since it's a great game and an equally great comparison. But kudos are in order to my roommate for planting a thought in my mind that I can't remove).

I'd never personally played a Lara Croft game outside of a demo, but it is clear that GoL is a different sort of game from its predecessors.  It's a 3rd person, 3D platformer, which... ok, I suppose this does describe its predecessors, but the important thing is the overall feel.  The camera is much farther away, making Lara Croft seem small.  It feels very similar to something you'd expect at an arcade.

The crux of the game is not its sex appeal, despite what most seem to think about the series.  My roommate was the one who bought this over Steam, and it came with a deal that included Tomb Raider: Legend.  I was watching him play that just yesterday, and it looks rather enjoyable to play -- if Uncharted's main character were a female Nathan Drake?  Although I suppose the comparison there should be the other way around, considering who came first in the matter.  And really, despite the media's belief, sex appeal is a rather poor justification to buy a game.  And there are plenty of games that have heroines I don't understand why anyone in their right mind would find attractive but are marketed with sex appeal in mind regardless (I'm sorry for targeting you, specifically, Umbra Witch, but don't turn me into anything... unnatural).

I didn't play GoL single-player and I didn't play as Lara.  Rather, I played as Toltek, an Aztec-looking male character who was a statue meant to guard a mirror.  Lara arrives on the scene on top of some evil dudes, evil dude leader grabs mirror, evil God-like thing is freed from a prison and Toltek is no longer a statue.  Lara and Toltek have to re-imprison evil God-like dude before the sunrise, when for some unexplainable reason he will be invincible and control everything (or something).

Guardian of Light shines with its platforming. In essence, there are quite a few ledges that utilize the following:

• I throw javelin at wall
• Lara jumps on javelin
• Lara jumps on ledge
• Lara throws me a rope
• I walk up wall

A note on that: Toltek can't jump on his own javelin's as they will break under his weight.  Perhaps if Toltek had waited to fully de-petrify before setting foot outside the temple then this wouldn't have been a problem, but no matter.

While I didn't have a rope, either, there were some areas that I could get to and Lara couldn't because of the rope.  If there were large metal rings attached to a wall or the ground, Lara could use her rope to grasp them.  Depending on the angle, I could jump on the rope and move across.

Placing bombs, killing waves of enemies with a large arsenal of weapons, avoiding fire, avoiding poison, fighting bosses, solving puzzles with pressure plates, etc.  Each level doesn't seem too long, but there's quite a lot of replay value there.  Each level has challenges for getting a certain number of points, beating the level in under x minutes (for which our first play through a level was averaging double, sometimes triple, the target time), and doing all manner of other things.

The storyline may have been cheesy, but the gameplay was really enjoyable in all respects.  Whether I get the chance to do any of the challenges now that we've beaten the game...?  That depends on how anxious my roommate is to play the game while I'm at my full-time job.  There's little sense in striving for accomplishments that have already been completed.

My co-op experience: 9/10

Programmer Gamer Writer Returns

Seemingly ages ago, I set off with what turned into a half-ass attempt at chronicling side projects and gaming experiences.  Well, perhaps that's giving myself too much credit, as the attempt has turned into not even halfway.  But such is the dilemma with a blog: we begin and have a seemingly good thing going until we miss one deadline.  We realize that our aspiration is futile, as we broke a dream that was meant to be perfect.  Rather than keep the dream alive, we toss it in the trash to laugh at and hope to forget.

To be honest, I never had deadlines.  But not much was really happening in terms of "change," and I stopped working on personal projects for a long while.  This had been assisted by my acquired job from January that started out as a contract position and moved into full-time.  The beginning of that time I had only public transportation to get to and from work, which turns a manageable trip by car into something abysmally long, and I dared not purchase a vehicle until switching to full-time.

So I have no excuses to not return to the blog, other than that I haven't made an entry in so long.  I am a full-time employee at Mission3 and I have a car that gives loads more free time.  Recent experience can vouch for the "inaction is the same as failure" line of thinking, and I'd rather try for the chance of success than give up on this little endeavor here.  And hey, that's something I need to tell myself for my personal projects as well.

Not anything really meaningful here.  Just a note that the gravestone is postponed on this project.  What's to come?  Expect the topic of "Gamer" to be the focus of the next post -- I'm not yet ready to disclose my personal project plans.