Level: Dangerous Fragments
Author(s): Bamba
total rating: 7.52 Gameplay &
Puzzles Enemies,
Secrets Atmosphere,
Sound &
Cameras Lighting &
dmdibl 7 8 8 8
eRIC 6 8 8 8
Jay 7 8 8 8
Jorge22 7 8 9 9
Jose 2 5 7 8
manarch2 6 8 8 8
MichaelP 8 8 9 8
Phil 8 8 8 8
Rambo 6 8 8 7
Ryan 5 7 8 8
sonnyd83 6 9 8 9
category averages
(11 reviews) 6.18 7.73 8.09 8.09
Reviewer's comments
"Cleverly constructed? Of course. Challenging? Most definitely. Fun and enjoyable to play? Not so much, I'm afraid. The atmosphere in this Steampunk style level is well caught, texturing is pleasing to the eye, and while the lighting is relatively dark, it is not annoyingly so and plenty of flares are provided. But oh dear... the gameplay is blatantly annoying and frustrating. There are plenty of challenging sequences, but most of these overstepped the line between "challenging" and "frustrating" once too often. Allow me to elaborate further on this subject. While I never personally needed any savegames, the majority of the jumps and timed runs required far too much precision and "die-reload-try again, repeat 30 or so times" for my liking which isn't good gameplay in my opinion. Additionally, the enemies are far too overpowering to take down with very little weaponry as a defence, so more reloading was on the list. It's fine for experts, but for others, it'll be too frustrating to enjoy fully." - Ryan (04-Jan-2018)
"After several hours I finally was able to finish this long level, but completely disagree with the gameplay. The player never knows the shortest route to avoid the dead ends, so in my case the backtracking was terrible, going back many times to the same places repeating always the same movements; I found also a couple of impossible tasks (the jump to the ladder and the timed run with the rope where Lara trespassed a solid metal beam) so I had to download 2 savegames to continue playing. The enemies are too hard to kill, and even when there are many medipacks, was tedious for me shoot them for a long time always jumping, rolling, escaping, to save health. The atmosphere is good, but most of the rooms are too dark and even when there were more than a hundred of flares in the inventory, it was not good for me explore continuosly with flare in hand. Sorry but not recommended for anybody." - Jose (14-Sep-2017)
"Somehow I got through this easier than my vague recollection of the demo made me believe I would. It is still a fairly tough level with quite a few curved jumps to manage, tough battles with hard to kill soldiers and cyborgs in close quarters and a challenging timed run that includes a rope swing, but I was lucky enough to never need more than a handful of attempts to master a task, hence kept moving along with a decent sense of accomplishment for the 80 minutes this lasted for me. It is all quite cleverly constructed, but unfortunately involves a sizable amount of backtracking that did get a bit tedious. The block puzzle was fun, the elevator and the explosions nicely set in scene, the laser traps tricky as always and I ended up with only four of the five secrets, as I really could not be bothered to backtrack yet one more time for the last one. An ambitious level for the more seasoned raiders out there to put their teeth into." - MichaelP (16-Aug-2015)
"Gameplay & Puzzles: I liked some tasks here which are rather clever, but just like in many other levels the gameplay is boring, backtracking and no clues in a confusing environment is not really fun. Enemies, Objects & Secrets: Good enemy placements and the objects used in here are very well chosen but everything is a bit repetitive. The secrets are very tricky and fun to find on the other side. Atmosphere, Sound & Cameras: Choice of objects, textures and dark ambience fine - the atmosphere is good here. Architecture is a bit too simple, even in a warehouse, yet sounds and the existing cameras (many missing) are nice. Lighting & Textures: The lighting: The choice of textures is good but I didn't like that all rooms looked very much the same, there's a very equal look, there are also a few mistakes. The dark lighting creates atmosphere but is not very good for the gameplay, it effects too much confusion. Total: 7,25/10, okay but too dark level with too much emptyness between better tasks." - Rambo (07-Mar-2015)
"This must have been one of the toughest and less player- friendly levels ever built both in "back-and-fro-find-a- direction" terms as in almost impossible to terminate enemies (most especially those firing multiple grenades), some of the traps but not so much, basically the box puzzle everybody who's played certainly remembers well and a few jumps that make me ashamedly confess I did use both savegames provided in the walkthrough or I might still be lost somewhere along this gigantic maze. It's dark but everything is perfecly visible, so that's just the atmosphere and it fits. Did I like it? Yes, the general feeling I get is the author clearly knows how to use the level editor and is clever enough to imagine quite a few mostly original situations. Still, that's it: it's not that kind of level where you can feel there was some sort of sadism involved (and sadly they do exist) but it's just too tough despite how well conceived and built it may be. I say play it with the walkthrough's aid if you find you're simply getting desperate while losing track of your every action..." - Jorge22 (06-Oct-2012)
"I started this level and quit as I was completely lost at what had to be done next after a while. In the first duct system with the laser, there is 2 ways to proceed , I went down by the first trapdoor that opens automatically and further down there I did not had the appropriate keys , and was discouraged (and appalled) by the puzzle with the movable crates and booby spikes trap. It seemed to me the level did not made any sense at all. The second time , I decided to follow the walkthrough made by Phil and taking the other way described in there and stick to it. The level presents good ideas , like all the gameplay around the torch puzzle , and has some challenging tasks with precise curved jumps , or traps , and timed tasks , the kind of which you fail a few times but know that you will make it eventually. Bad ideas also with the movable crates puzzle , there is even a booby trap reserved for you with the shotgun secret if you don't pull the crate the way the author has intended. How fun and how fair does that sounds ? Speaking of crates , it would have been good if the movables ones were different from all others that are not. There is some bugs too , like the place where Lara grabs a (intended by the author) ceiling when she is doing a jump. The level looks good , not dark at all on my bright PC , only a few textures are compressed. Good atmosphere with the"atlantean" beating heart loop and good sfx sounds too. Enemies are few and enough medipacks are provided. All in all , a level of good quality , quite long , which would have gained a lot if it was not that confusing and a bit unfair at times. A challenging mission for Lara for sure." - eRIC (23-Sep-2012)
"In fairness to the author, this is technically a quite advanced level displaying superior knowledge of the level editor. The base is awfully gloomy, but has a solid design. Yet I can't help but feel that this is one level to play when you want to feel inept. Now that the walkthrough is out--and this is quite an accomplishment by Phil--it is clear that I did things in an inefficient and backwards manner. I couldn't get to one corner lever except by cheating: press Lara against the side of a push box, then use CTRL to have her pass through the corner of the box and into an alcove behind it. I could never find any other way to move the box aside, but that alcove lever is critical. At one point after pole swings and a pressed button there is a shot of a platform going down, presumably to reveal an artifact, but there is no clue where that platform is located. Most camera shots here are like that. Then there was the time Lara was stuck on a ladder, with a monkeyswing overhead...a very suspicious monkeyswing. Finally I did a google translate of the author's readme file, and found there was a way to grab a monkeyswing from a ladder. I quit at a discouraging timed run over trapdoors. Now, after reading the walkthrough, it's clear that this was only a few minutes from the end. Lara gets a circuit board, and if she goes down an elevator, then at the bottom she finds where that mysterious platform lowered to reveal a second circuit board. The walkthrough says Lara can now do a final backtrack for a secret, but I took the easy way of just using the two circuit boards for a flyby end. Elapsed time from start to finish: over a month. With walkthrough in hand, this level is much more approachable." - dmdibl (12-Sep-2012)
"I became so hopelessly lost in this level that I had to wait for the walkthrough before I was able to finish it. Yes, it can be that confusing! I find little need to revise my markings too much from those I gave the demo version as the full version still entertains and irritates in fairly equal measure. There are some good laser traps to negotiate, fun timed elements and an intriguing block puzzle to master, but the overall rather gloomy environment can tend to be depressing after a while, however well built. My real niggle though is with the extreme toughness of the enemies; it's virtually impossible not to lose health at each (increasingly dreaded) encounter and I didn't manage to find any significant fire power. Luckily, medipacks are generously supplied so you shouldn't have any trouble finishing the game. It really depends how much you do or don't like shooters." - Jay (04-Sep-2012)
"The main difficulty with nonlinear levels is the confusion they cause for the players in deciding where to go and what to do next, and this leads to the possibility of doing things in the wrong order and finding yourself unable to proceed (unless the builder has foreseen the potential problems and has allowed the means for the player to go freely back and forth along the affected sections of the level). A secondary problem with nonlinear levels is that they inevitably require considerable backtracking over previously explored territory, and that's definitely the case here. That being said, I had a fun time playing this level, and I'm surprised that there haven't been more reviews after more than a month following its release. I learned after playing much of the level that there was a posted video, so I used it to prepare a written walkthrough. Along the way I saw that the video did not cover the block puzzle until quite late in the game, whereas I encountered it very early on. That's a perfect example of what I said earlier, although I can see that my way would nevertheless have eventually gotten me through. The only gamestopping moment for me was that sequence where you have to make a rolling jump, bounce off a slope and curve to the right in midair to grab a ladder. No matter how many times I tried, Lara refused to make the curve, so I was obliged to resort to a savegame (which I have included with the walkthrough). There was also a difficult timed run near the end, where you have to jump off a wildly swinging rope to the first of three timed platforms, then accomplish an angled running jump from the third platform to activate a jumpswitch with only a millisecond or so to spare. I was able to accomplish this after a number of efforts, so others should be able to do so as well, but I'll hang on to the savegame for a while just in case someone needs it. Although I'm not really a fan of the Steampunk package, there have been relatively few levels based on it since the most recent BbB competition (which seems to have been ages ago), so it was a welcome change of pace for me. Dangerous Fragments presents a challenging and memorable raid, so I can recommend it with some enthusiasm." - Phil (04-Sep-2012)
"The first thing I noticed about this level was the quality of the lighting and texturing. It has the feel of a secret Soviet base in my opinion, I can easily imagine something unpleasant lurking deep within. The level mainly consists of several large rooms with crates and interconnecting corridors. The objects also add much to the level design with pipes, fences, some nice looking switches etc to make it look much less blocky, which it isn't anyway, there's plenty of areas to explore, and get lost in. The music at the beginning is pretty good and quite edgy and suits the level well, sound in general isn't bad, I think some of it is taken from TR2. The baddies are quite tough and fire grenades, they do appear to be partly robotic. There doesn't appear to be much to do to begin with other than shoot baddies and avoid lasers, then a push block or two and lever, there's much more of a focus on exploring, which is great. Not impressed by spikes appearing after pushing some blocks, no warning given - would've been quite an interesting puzzle if not for that. The cog well to power the lift is just pure genius, Lara even dies if she steps on it too early and hits her head on the ceiling! The watery area beneath this building contains some ridiculous jumps, some involving avoiding setting on fire, and one almost impossible one involving a jump switch, this doesn't appeal to me, although the overall flame lighting puzzle was good. The area with the machine gun, laser, and 3 robots was challenging as robots were probably immortal, I just waited until the laser was in front of me, rushed to the end and jumped into the safe spot, the return journey is almost impossible unless of course you force yourself through some mesh. There's plenty of tests of Lara's acrobatic skills in this game. An unfairly placed jump switch is under a steam under further on. There's a difference between challenging and plain unfair. The next area with toxic water is also unfair as the timed trapdoor is after a bend in the ceiling which appears to have a monkey swing wrongly applied to it! Shortly afterwards Lara is responsible for a large explosion which looks good, and back to the machine gun area we go (again). The next bit has pole vaulting but Lara won't grab the poles! Had to resort to forum save game to get past that. Now we have invisible spikes on the monkey swing, whatever next. The gameplay at this point has become tedious and am sorry to say, I gave up at this point. There's several bugs - getting stuck in the grating in some of the air ducts, and one of the baddies disappearing if he walks through an object, collision missing on door frames, in the area with the water, the climbable blocks sometimes cause Lara to climb into the centre of the block if she climbs around whilst dangling, and finally, enemies walking through objects. Overall, a well built, albeit buggy, and well textured level, but is let down by incredibly sadistic game play and too much backtracking. Net gameplay over 2 hours (prepare to spend all day on it though)." - sonnyd83 (06-Aug-2012)
"Plenty of creative ideas and gameplay elements? Surely. A good game and large improvement over the rather unpolished demo? I don't think so. This is a longer version of the demo released one year ago and while there were some nice tasks in this game like the torch puzzle, the elevator and the few timed runs and tricky jump sequences, this level felt rather uneven after the 70 minutes it lasted for me. The ever-present darkness is still present in this full version (luckily this time there are plenty of flares right from the start) and I really disliked the trial-and-error block puzzle where you have to deactivate spikes (or be surprised that Lara suddenly dies), there still are way too overpowered enemies as it takes way too long to kill them, the builder added some really annoying traps and it is near-impossible to not loose a lot of health. The shotgun was only possible to find in secret places - this was not a great idea as it takes a lot of health reserves to finish this level. Add to this a lot of missing camera clues which caused a lot of running around and heavy backtracking. I also found the omnipresent sound of closing doors pretty annoying. Still liked the texturing and the objects, this time enhanced with the latest BtB wad, but it takes more than all those for me to enjoy a level. Found three of five secrets and pretty much liked how they were hidden. The ending was rather abrupt and I didn't feel any sense of achievement. Hopefully the builder creates a rather player-friendly level next, as I am sure he can create great levels." - manarch2 (03-Aug-2012)