Archive: 2 posts

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It's unnaturally rare that I find myself completely unable to finish playing through a level out of frustration. I played it the first time to the point of running out of lives (very cheaply, I might add), played it again to the point of getting hopelessly stuck (a good 20 minutes in), and a third time to the point where the object needed to proceed to the very end was forever lost. I spent a solid hour trying to play this level, I don't know entirely how it ends, but I was just too **** frustrated and angry at this level. I could probably stop the review right there, but I'm just getting started. So the level starts you off on this really weird, stringy block on stone with a lazily crafted background, all held high in the sky by a very obvious piece of dark matter. An NPC tells you that there's a key in front of you that needs to be carried to some place, and tells you to be careful because it's heavy. Truth be told, the key is fairly large and reasonably heavy for sackboy, so carrying it around turns out to be a giant pain in the ****. It wouldn't be too bad I suppose but the area you need to take the key is on the other side of map, way the hell out there, and with the key being heavy as it is this is incredibly time consuming and annoying, like wheeling around an elderly person who does nothing but nag at you for going any faster than a mile an hour. Carrying the key around also gave me a general idea for how the creator thinks about design. The key is 3 layers thick making it much tougher to carry around and much more likely to get stuck on something, which it does on occasion. There are a few areas where oddly shaped fiery bits will shoot out holes in the ground, restricting your movement to a single layer. That may not sound that bad, but I hope you weren't carrying the key on a different layer when you came across these odd intersections because otherwise you will either fall in one of the two holes and die, or you have to reposition yourself while getting shot at. After making through the lazy background, you need to traverse across an even lazier background, which is to say nothing. You now need to carry this key along much uneven terrain and a couple of rickety bridges (which is total *** by the way), only to drop the key off in a friggin pit. Making matters worse, dropping the key off doesn't actually help you much because in order to get any further you now need to backtrack to the beginning of the level to carry another object, only on the bright side of things the new object is much more likely to **** you off with it's horrible shape. Oh, wait, that's not better. Alright, for the next couple of paragraphs, everything I say will be mildly incomprehensible, and might not make a lot of sense. I'm pretty much gonna be rambling about this level that I really couldn't get myself to like in a whole lot of ways, so I ask that you listen to this track while reading the rest, I guarantee it will make everything funnier. Also, remember that I'm angry, and try to imagine someone angry reading this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHOBw6XwqRo So, while attempting to cross back over, the bridge collapses when a random nonexistent force throws a ton of rocks at you. You fall in a giant pit where there are alternating layers every five steps and springing scorpions everywhere. No worries through, the only chance of getting hit by one is if you jump, and there's really no reason to do that. Just mosey on over, hit the switch and jump through a thorn infested gate to reach easily the most frustrating part of the level. You need to climb up an elevator. The only way to raise the elevator is to stand on a button on the elevator. While you are rising up, there are bombs being shot at you. Since the only way to reasonably dodge them is to get off the button, making upward progress is horrendous. Even better, sometimes you will time the bombs as best you can, yet the blast from the bomb will still push you off the button. This entire section was where I died the first time, and at no point was there any satisfaction in beating it when I finally did. Instead of a shout of courage and achievement, all I ended up doing was shouting at myself in anger, and thinking to myself "thank ****ing god it's over". I'm not an especially big advocate on parts of a level that are pretty much designed to be not fun. If you are still playing this level for any reason, you keep climbing upward until you reach the top, placing you near the start of the level again. This time you will have to carry around a prism instead of key, although I say prism very lightly. The level says "It's a prism", but all I see is a terribly constructed pitch black circle with a triangle in it, making this thing incredibly unwieldy and somehow even more frustrating than the **** key. This thing is far worse if only for reasons like "it got stuck in between two pieces of wood on the bridge, and now I can't get it out." That's where I had to restart the second time by the way. God why can't this stuff be smaller and easier to carry around, what's the gain is ******* off the players. Anyways, get to the end, put the thingy in a thingy and make the bottom go kaboom, just don't be there when it happens cause apparently the whole place gets nuked to kingdom come before you have to climb down. So there are two paths or something, so I tried the left path and found the equivalent of nothing. I mean, there was stuff, and I found a mine cart that I had to ride to the bottom but the mine cart that was supposed to roll downhill didn't roll that well and as soon as I reached the bottom it flipped over so I got stuck. I had to kill myself and get a new one, but upon riding the new one everything went well until I ran into the flipped over cart from before, so that didn't work out. Wait, why the hell didn't the previous one disappear? In fact, I waited for a while and it never did. That really flipped my lid, what the hell is the point of putting this ride in the level to begin with? And I guess the point of the mine cart ride is find a dude at the bottom to tell you some stuff about an ancient treasure that isn't actually on this path as far as I can tell. He gives you a new mine cart to ride down, but it does the same thing and never works. God ****** this level is terrible. Alright, well after I found NOTHING going left, I tried going right to find probably the only part of the level I can remotely praise. There's a puzzle here in which you need to get block across a ravine by loading them into a mine cart and than flip a switch or something and it sends the block over and you need to unload it, only you're on the wrong side or something. Well, after dying once I can tell you there is no way to shimmy a ride from the cart. You have to swing across a series of very subtle lamps to get to the other side to unload the blocks so you can swing back to the first side and hit the switch to get the cart back to the beginning to load up another block so you can send that block over and you need to do this about 6 more times so I highly recommend a nice glass of cocoa or something. I guess I kind of like the concept behind this puzzle design, but it takes too ****ing long to accomplish everything. I finally got to the end and found a really nice looking sun thingy that's apparently a priceless treasure so I shouldn't drop it or anything to which I responded "oops" cause I ended up dropping it in a hole. I guess that means I can't finish the level, but instead of trying it again I ended up ragequitting. Bad times for me folks. So anyways, that incoherent mess is pretty much my experience with The Great Aztec Adventure. I bet some of you are wondering what I actually thought of the level, to which I respond "How does it feel to pass a kidney stone?" Well, from what I hear, it takes forever and hurts like a *****, and there's really nothing admirable to say about it, kind of like this level. If you want a bottom line from me, here's what I got: This level is horrendously long, overly complicated in organization, badly executed, and is completely frustrating. Almost everything about the level is frustrating. The only good thing about the level was that puzzle as a concept, but just like everything else in this level it overstays its welcome by a lot. Final Score: 2.5 / 10 I can't fault for not being a level. It is a level, it is finish-able (I think), and there was probably a fair amount of work put into it. But, that stuff doesn't matter when the end result is crap. I think WangMajor really needs to play the original LBP levels again and really analyze what makes those levels fun. On a side note, you can turn off the music now.

2011-01-15 20:10:00 Author: Shining Aquas Posts: 353

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That's a long review man for the no good level. You put so much effort to your reviews even level is not the best . I have to play some levels what you reviewed to be sure what kind you like the most and how critic you are. Then I will know what can I except if you will review my levels, just starting afraid . Updated: ok I've played this level and it is really frustrating so I couldn't even finish. I agree with the reviewer, I have to check few more your reviews Shinning Aquas. Do you like temple style levels? What do you like more fast action or puzzles?

2011-01-16 09:21:00 Author: GILUPL Posts: 102

Posts: 1077139    Threads: 69970    Members: 9661    Archive-Date: 2019-01-19

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