[Christian IV]

OK, finally had time to make some progress in completing in full TR Legends, very cool ending and the graphics throughout and the scenes were awesome. I still felt a bit let down at the ending, I felt like I would have liked a bit more of a cut scene to wrap it up and get Lara back to civiilization, but overall I give this TR a 9 out of 10 for many reasons, it is not a higher score because Eidos keeps putting in timed elements, speed runs you have to do to get through a level and that is expert level consol work that I just do not think should be forced on every gamer. I want to enjoy and explore and am not going to race the clock, run to jump on a sinking pillar, or do timed stunts to fit in with what some younger designers think is the cool things to do, and have us as gamers do. It is NOT fun for some of us and no amount of trying again and again is going to convince me or the other 40% of gamers I would guess, who do not enjoy timed stunt puzzles. That can be included in higher levels of difficulty very easily with some branch tree coding and everyone can be happy. I think this will apply to Anniversary too, because I see some similar timed and hurry up elements in some of the levels, but so far, it seems a bit better than Legends. The "fragile and falling " icicles in the last level were almost the last straw for me, and I had to really work to go through that particular step.

Working through TR Anniversary, after a very heavy month at other things, got to the Greek levels, and the settings of the Roman ruins are just simply awesome, right on for accuracy and scale and feeling and Lara is a blast in thie remake, I think they did the re vamping very well, and were intelligent about what could work and what would not....so I am really enjoying the way this game unfolds.

I have gone back and playing some of the older TR games for comparison, and history, TR III and Chronicles, other than feeling at this point that I am not getting as good a graphic result in terms of texturing and resolution as the games can provide (trying to tweak my XP system) they are interesting but dont hold a candle to the most modern ones.

I had to put Jade Empire on hold, ditto Riddick, as other duties and work have precedence, but I continue to spend time in Oblivion as I can and just explored the Snow Dragon Temple, an add on mod in same vein as Cloud Ruler Temple and SNDT is just incredible, I recomend it to anyone who enjoys the 1. Oriental Ninja theme, 2. the Blades as a faction....3. beautifully rendered and designed mods.

More as there is time.