Archive: 1 post

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My first level on LBP was the Trial of Skill (Ver 1.00), and it was designed to be a challenge level to test the platforming skill of the player. Unfortunately, it was very negatively looked down upon and is still plagued very much today by the fact that in the earliest releases of the level, the entire thing was made out of dark matter and caused most people to avoid it for the better part of forever. In my opinion, I'd receive more plays and hearts on my level if I hadn't made the silly error of letting it get flooded with really bad ratings right off the bat. It's those massive amount of 2/5's that prevent the stage from ever shining, even though the current version (Ver. 1.05) is a masterpiece in comparison. I know that ranting about how unsuccessful my level is sounds like a bad way to start this review, mostly for reasons of arrogance and pride, but it's not intended for either of those reasons. I'm starting off the review as such for reasons of sympathy and warning. The Room of Doom is a level designed for the purpose of giving the player a sense of daring as they must clear some incredibly tough challenges in this race stage. Overall, it's a challenge stage, so it will automatically contain a very select group of players within its regard. I happen to be one of those players, and enjoy a decent challenge so long as there is a sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately, TROD doesn't give me that for a number of reasons. First of all, design. Yeah yeah, laugh it up, SA is going to lecture us about why having design in a challenge stage isn't necessary so long as it's challenging, and ultimately that is the truth....mostly. Yeah, the design is something I'm willing to overlook for a level like this one, unless the design is either really amazingly good or horribly horribly bad, and it's a shame that this one falls under the latter of the two. A grand majority of all the platforms are composed of dark matter, and it's terribly obvious dark matter at that. There was clearly no attempt at making any kind of design in this level at all, just randomly placing platforms all over the place. Heck, it doesn't even feel like the creator made any reasonable attempt to make the platforms reasonably difficult either. It should be noted that just because all the small platforms happen to be floating high above a death trap does not necessarily make it difficult. Then, there's the actual challenge, you know the part of the level that actually matters here. It also happens to be one of the problems I have with this stage, particularly because the challenge feels incredibly midline. It wasn't really that difficult, especially since I only died a grand total of 3 times playing through the first time, and it didn't hold enough of a challenge within it to really make me want to ace it. The positioning of the platforms just didn't seem very well placed or organized, everything just kind of seemed slapped on there at the last minute. Not hard, can't be much harder than the last couple of storyline levels. It's just tough trying to enjoy this level when the entire background is solid black, all the platforms are very sloppily placed with no actual challenge kept in mind when placing them, and the fact that there are enough prize bubbles to reach 1,000,000 points kind of defeats the purpose in having a race portion at all. So yeah, the level is bad, pretty darn bad in fact and for the moment I don't recommend playing it. For the moment. I'm taking advantage of this review space to warn the creator (if he's reading this), that he needs to spruce up his level by quite a bit, or else it may not have any chance at recovery. I just don't want to see anyone make the same mistake I did. Final Score 4.0 / 10 Obvious Dark Matter everywhere, very messy and sloppy, no visual appeal at all. As far as challenge is concerned, it's certainly tougher than most stages and overall the challenge is pretty good, but there were quite a few parts that were just irritating. Although the challenge is there, there isn't really a sense of accomplishment afterwords. On a side note, relish the challenges people. Savor the victory when you reach it.

2009-02-09 06:21:00 Author: Shining Aquas Posts: 353

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

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