Into the Realm of Eternal Darkness (2023)

Name:Into the Realm of Eternal Darkness
Number:4
Year:2023
Mod for:Tomb Raider
Modder:BlackWolfTR
Genre:Third-Person Shooter/Platformer/Adventure
Difficulty:5/5
Time:13 hours 00 minutes

I don't really feel like having some big fancy out of chronology game like I usually do around this time, as I'm actually making progress on my 1992 list. So instead, let's have something small and low-key, something we all know and understand. A very not Christmas-esque Tomb Raider mod I've had on my backburner since...well...Tomb Raider. I mean, I started this on Christmas week, but uh...yeah, I wish I picked a higher number on difficulty back when I started adding difficulty.

The story is told both in the manual or in-game through Lara talking. I think the latter is AI, since it sounds good but oddly stiff. Yet it also has awkward phrasing, so maybe it's stitched together? We are told that screaming and weird noises are coming from under her mansion, so she decides to find out what's causing it all by finding the key to the door leading there.

After this cutscene, which I would admit is mildly impressive, we get control of a yellow shirted Lara in her bedroom. We don't start with pistols, but they are nearby, next to a medikit. There's also her bathroom, which has some shells in the shower for some reason. It looks well-made for TR, but I don't know if it's original or taken from a different TR. There's also piano music which creates a subtly creepy effect.

There's an attic, clockwise from the bedroom. At first I assumed the lever was for show and this was just some neat room, but then I realized that I can push crates across crates that are lower. At least that seemed right in theory, I can't remember if I did that before. The lever opens a door in the pool.

Next up is the music room/library. We're got a little self-reference in the form of a PSX next to a TV. There's a suspicious panel behind me, no doubt a secret passage from somewhere else. In the library there's nothing but some magnum magazines. Honestly, I don't even remember if that room is a library in the original, because I'm always out of it fairly quickly. Downstairs there's a door-textured wall, and then...wait, there's a switch on the door outside? What does that open...?

I thought this was going to be a quick jaunt through the house. Wow. There's a door I can't open to my right and to my left, past the fountain, is a door which needs something. There's another switch on the gate out. On further out...? This seems risky. I don't buy in that much to the liminal space theory, but this seems really weird, even if there's a limit to how far you can go. I keep expecting some foul beast to chase after me for breaking through the bounds of the game. Which probably isn't too far from the truth. It's like playing a creepypasta. Not the kind where everything bleeds and everyone stares at the screen saying my name, but the kind where something subtly goes wrong until it suddenly goes really dark.

Not visible, gold pressure plates with spikes on them and the path to the other side.

There's a hole into a secret underground tunnel, a flooded one which has bones. Feels really fitting that Lara Croft would have a tomb under her house. After this there's this room, there's a rat and then there angled blocks you have to go over. The way back up on this side is sort of hidden, and I need to find a switch to open the door on the other side. Back up, I guess. The only other thing outside is a locked mausoleum. Back inside, past two locked doors and into the ballroom, which is separated into two rooms here.

Past the pool is this place. I see we're starting off kindly. These are collapsible floors if you weren't aware. You get a safe space halfway through, but you're still expected to do a jump off one collapsible floor past a swinging blade. This leads to a...rat and a pressure plate. There's a tricky jump back and I'm left wondering what I just accomplished. At least I don't have to do that again.

Next up is the dining room, containing nothing much, and then the kitchen, which has a key. Time to check all the locked doors. Or not, because the key is silver and there's only one lock like that. A storage room...which just has Uzi magazines. So I recheck most of the mansion again, finding a medikit in the dining room, another outside, shotgun shells in the ballroom, and no other keys. Crap. Maybe there's something I missed past the pool area? Oh, the trigger wasn't working and the pressure plate opens the passage in the music room.

Inside are some more magnum magazines and...a gear. What? Where can I place that? I guess that's later and this section just ends here...but where can I go next? The answer was in the library, there's a pushable block behind a prop object. Kind of cruel and we're leaning hard on the adventure aspect of action-adventure.

There's a switch behind me, which opens one of these trap doors. You go through them in sequence. Each is a single block hole with a lever, sometimes an item. Each lever closing the trap door its in and opening another, ending with a key. Kind of tricky, kind of not. This key opens the closet in Lara's bedroom, which has ammo and a timed switch. This opens the door I thought was a texture below me, and boy is it short. So short you have to make a damaging jump to reach the door before it closes.

Inside is a medikit and another gear. I'm sure going to appreciate these whenever I figure out what they're supposed to go to. This leads to a problem, because I really don't know what else there is to do now. I check the pool room, since I just jumped in before, but nothing. I then check most of the first floor, but there's nothing I missed. I go outside, and eventually find myself going down the passage with the spike platforms and realize that I need to jump on those carefully to advance.

This leads to the gear room, and two rats that got me before spotting them. I need another gear before I can advance here. I decide to check everything carefully this time. Ledges, walls, anything. I found the gear in the storage room, under a crate I overlooked. Damn. Now I can use this thing and find out what's changed.

It flooded the room behind me, and spawned two rats. I know where this leads, there was a crack too small for Lara to enter while standing, and it leads to this jump. Oh, wow. Did I mention this was supposed to be for all players of Tomb Raider? I'm really not getting much of that here. It gets better, I only made it through with zero health, but because of the game's quirks I can use a medikit here and survive. Then boulders go by, only one you can see at first. I got that on the first try, but I can see this annoying a lot of people. Took me a few attempts to do it without getting hit by either the boulders or the scythe. Then I get nailed by a third boulder as I jump onto the one passage forward. In here, past a rat, is the Tomb Key. Which activates some dart guns. There's an easier way out, thankfully.

The tomb has two doors inside and a switch, the opens one of the doors. Ah, a flame trap. Takes me a moment, but the switch is on my left. This is a series of timed jumps, but in small chunks, that if you're too slow on will result in flames from an earlier lever arriving after activating the next lever. Because the regular flame trap wasn't difficult enough. This took me about an hour. To get across you have to be so precise that even Tomb Raider is having trouble keeping up. I'm going to tell you how to do this in the hopes that if you play this, unlikely, you can get past this.

Use the lever, then back hop and turn left so you have the entrance and have one tile. Do a running jump to the first two flame platforms. This is the easiest part to screw up, but you won't know it until you're in the drink. Climb up the gold platform, then back hop and roll, do a running jump onto the next flame platform and hopefully another onto the final. You'll have less time if it's a regular jump, but not no time. Climb up, do a running jump over the pit, roll onto the gold platform, then do a running jump over the pit again. Try to land on the right side, turn left, then running jump. You should have enough time to do the final running jump onto the safe platform.

This opens the other door. It's a series of ledges over the void. This is a lot easier than it seems, and a welcome respite after the last section. It's fairly simple, even counting a part where you have to rotate Lara across ledges you slide down on, so she doesn't fall into the void but lands on the higher safe ledge. Even accounting for a random boulder that lands on one side, which seems like it was intended as a joke.

This leads to a hallway where you have to outrun boulders. Now's a good time to point out that the readme informs the player that the running jump is faster than running. This is helpful, because if you don't outrun the boulders before they reach the room they end up in, Lara will combust. This gets a gold bar which opens another door in the mansion.

Her treasure room, containing all the cool stuff she's gotten over the years. Didn't the Scion explode at the end of the game? I haven't finished any of the others yet. There's nothing you can pick up here, instead you have to walk past the fireplace into a secret underground area.

This leads to a place that looks like Greece, after I clean up the vermin, I look around. Two gold pressure plates and a trap door, under is water and a lot of doors. It's an underwater maze full of levers and doors. Okay, I understand why the level is going full adventure at times and why it's getting really hard. Why the busywork? You don't need busywork here. I feel like every time someone makes a water level like this, you need to ask yourself. "Would this be really boring above water?" In this case, it absolutely would.

 

This gets me a weird-looking Thistle Stone, which then shows me the door to a garden maze. You know what I like after a maze? Another maze. You know who says that? People who are playing a maze game and not Tomb Raider. You have to find a lever, then a grate, which leads to a small room containing a key...the basement key. Hallelujah! To the basement!

I'm not surprised that Lara has a Scrooge McDuck gold pool. This is pretty much where the level ends. Official ending score, under 2 hours, which isn't counting the massive number of reloads I had to do. It's just under 5 by my count. I didn't get any of the three secrets, and I suspect I never will. This is a bit obscure for an action game. I daresay at several points this violates the rule that action games shouldn't require you to figure out secrets to win. Even if it doesn't technically count as a secret.

The basement starts off with some shells and a shotgun. I sense danger, but outside of Lara apparently having a small chasm in her basement and a lot of tires, you drop down from here, seemingly no way to get across. Two paths, I go right from the entrance, after picking up a small medikit.

This leads to a mining room, with a black Atlantean. Uh-huh. This seems to be vaguely the puzzle you got in Natla's Mines in the original, except presumably harder. There are two buildings, one with a rat and a small medikit, the other with a switch activating a mining drill. So, find three switches, then whatever's in the building. Time to explore some of these passages then.

Left from the side I entered from is a passage leading here, a room with many exits. Don't be fooled by what's at the end, that's a crate blocking a passage, and I'll need to push that from the other end. Passages on the sides are unreachable, so down it is, after taking out the rats. Some more shotgun shells, hopefully I won't need them. Down there are only two passages, one on the right leading back in, and another on the left leading to...

...a series of hanging blades over spikes. This gimmick is getting a little boring, endless death pits below. This is a bit tricky, but after the ones you see here, it becomes a series of slopes. That's less obvious when you screw up, but it's not too hard to figure out either. It's about positioning early on, then knowing when to stop holding down the jump button. Then of course, there's collapsible floors and slopes. This part is only hard for one jump at the end, where you have to make an awkward 120 degree turn off collapsible floors. Pretty sure there's only one way across, and having to use turning that precise is not playing to this game's strengths.

This leads to a clever puzzle. Lara looks up for reasons I didn't initially grasp, so I jumped into the pool, only for Lara to fall off an invisible ledge. Turns out those are where invisible platforms are. The switch pulls up some grates from the areas I just went through, not that I see anyway of reaching there yet. I go out, and end up through the door I passed entering this section, returning to the room full of passages. At this point I nearly assume I've been put in an unwinnable situation, until I realize that I can do a running jump off the passage with the collapsed hallway.

The grates allow passage through a long hallway above that area, it's a bit risky despite this, but just a bit. There's a puzzle to reveal a secret area with magnum magazines, but it was a bizarrely complex block puzzle and I couldn't get it. Continuing onward, bats and some uzi magazines.

This leads to a room with some chess pieces and some movements they can take, then another room with a chessboard. This is both one of the easiest puzzles and one of the most annoying. It's easy because there's no penalty for failure. It's annoying because you have no idea if you're even doing anything. At first I assumed that I was supposed to do two jumps when it said x2 on some pieces, but I guess it's x2 tiles. Even that did nothing, and it's the right option, I checked a walkthrough afterwards. I guess something activates it. I go back to the mine area, and go to the other hallway, finding the mining drill revealed a passage and another one just lying there. I go to the area the mining drill opened up.

There's a gotcha trap here with some boulders, and then a weird climb up. Fun fact, you can actually get stuck on high floors and low-hanging ceilings in this game. This leads into a big room with a hole in the floor and a black Atlantean. There's a locked building and nothing on its roof. Guess that would be too obvious. It's also having something hanging there, which I'll probably have to drop somehow. Onto a side passage.

This leads to here. This doesn't even look like something you can get past, what the heck? But it is. It's also something I'm impressed is here, because I couldn't even begin to think of something this difficult. If this is for all players, I shudder to think of what's challenging.

This continues with this jump. A running jump from here, angled a bit to the right at the start, then angled to the left in mid-air so you face forward down the slide. Jump off that angling to the right, and hope you don't bounce off the wall or get run over by a boulder. At this point, I check a video walkthrough since the text walkthrough said nothing about this. I'll get back to the chessboard in a minute, but it's very telling that there's a cut in this section. It's that bad that even people showing off a walkthrough have to reload. You want to know what I've been doing wrong? You can just jump across. THIS IS BALONY!

Anyway, after the boulders, there's a now unmemorable jump over a pit, and another black Atlantean. I see another room. A suspicious looking room. Hang on, I think, this is the room that lead to the nightmare tunnel I was in. It is! I check where I've just been, and there's nothing there. Have I really come this far for nothing!? No, this leads to a single pillar I can jump to, which requires you to reach the very longest Lara can jump. Here is a switch which opens the door below. Jeez. Inside is a key and a pressure plate which drops a block to another pillar in the room I was just in. This opens up a door I didn't spot in the room before. Unfortunately, I need something to open a door inside it.

I head back to the area with the chessboard, spotting the door that my key opens first. It's a relatively quick hallway to here. Which looks safe to swim in. It actually is, and has a fuse. That's it, there's no trick here, outside of another black Atlantean spawning. Now, back to the chessboard.

This is a terrible puzzle on every conceivable level. I mentioned the issue figuring out what exactly the game expects you to do, but this is nothing to how you actually do it. You really just can't step outside the black and white squares and win, you need to be mostly within those to make it through. It is impossible for Lara to do this as the ruleset has been explained to the player, well, maybe just barely. Instead, you need to exploit a quirk in order to do a shorter running jump. Lara can do one of these if you hold shift to walk, then let go and jump. Until I saw three different walkthroughs do it, I assumed someone was just cheating. This is just terrible, considering I wasn't even aware of this before now, and I knew about the jumping trick.

For doing this, I get a switch and a pressure plate. Pulling the switch shows one of the collapsed areas and then a door elsewhere opening. It's the collapsed area on one of the pathways in this section. It doesn't do anything I can work with yet, but I do take the time to get the secret I couldn't solve earlier. There were a few more blocks I didn't see. This gets me the magnums, mags for that and the uzi. Onto the other side of the bottom of the chasm I fell down at the start of this level.

It's a waterfall area. Seems like the water isn't actually black, just dark textures under it. There's another black Atlantean, a rat in the pool, and a package of shells. I've been ignoring the weird in-game logic of this until this point, but why does Lara have an abandoned coal mine/industrial waste dump/Atlantean outpost under her house? I'm sure the realtor "forgot" to mention it, but some of this I would think would need to be mentioned; and Lara's smart enough to figure out that there were mysterious disappearances resulting in a coal mine being abandoned in the area she's buying a mansion in.

Anyway, this are has some switches I'll need to find a route to, and two locked doors, one I'll need a key for, one concealed under the lake which I don't know anything else about. My path forward is a hole in the lake leading to another small cavern leading upward. There's a door I can't enter, but one passage is available, and it's the way to the switch. Saying this part is annoying is an understatement, you have to jump over slopes at a weird angle. I also discover that if you land and continue into a running jump Lara will jump over higher gaps in the floor than if you just do a running jump.

This activates a pair of collapsible platforms. Not the kind that Tomb Raider has that can be used once, the kind that do it in a sequence. Unfortunately this sequence is so fast you need to have a plan of what you're about to do before you get on. You barely get enough time to jump off after Lara's landing animation. For something that's as well-made as this is, it's really delighting in making players have precise knowledge of how this game works. Though sometimes I wonder if this isn't just incompetence, there are a lot of new objects around and it isn't always obvious what you can interact with and what you can't, and there are a lot of scenery objects that block Lara, sometimes in unwinnable situations. Here, if you fall down the first platform, you'll land on a slide which if you don't jump away, will result in Lara getting stuck.

After too much time at this...there's another pair. Well, just one, but you have to go across it twice, as on the other side is a switch that opens a door I spotted in the last room. I really don't know how someone got so good at this game that this seems reasonable, I'm pretty sure at this point I died more than I did in both the base game and the expansion levels. This is that bad. I also nearly end up having to do one of the previous platforms again, until I get lucky with a jump down the cavern.

There's some shells and a rat inside the room that was unlocked. Until I spot the switch...and it causes a boat to come out into the lake. I nearly ragequit until I realize that the boat has something, a key. The door in this room! After killing more rats, I get some magnum magazines and another fuse. I then check a walkthrough to see what it is I'm missing. Because I've exhausted all I can here. It turns out I missed a big chunk, never went left at the drill.

It's another death chasm, at this point this is a cakewalk. I've been through the ringer so much that this doesn't even register as anything. It's like reaching the top of the temple in The Lost Valley. Easier even. This leads to a small area with two buildings, a black Atlantean and some TNT in the corner. I find a detonator in one of the buildings, but I'm going to need something for it.

Further in that building, I end up in this cutscene, two rats attack me before control is returned, thanks game. The important bit is this leaky pipe, it actually hurts Lara, I think it's reskinned lava. (Since a lot of stuff is some sort of remix based on the base game's puzzles) What you have to do is push crates in front of the holes. This opens a door in here, which has a switch which opens the door to the other building. That has some ammo and the detonator key, which opens the path forward.

This is where I opened the door after the chessboard. Compressing a bit, this is where the final fuse was, I don't remember anything special about it. With the three fuses, I get the building down and find a circuit board inside. I know where this goes, so I go back to the area with the floating stone slab, put it in the place nearby, and the slab lowers.

This allows me passage across the valley, basically I spent several hours trying to go about 50 feet. There's some more minor enemies, then another tedious jumping fest up a large slope. There are boulders too, because mercy is for the weak. It's not the most difficult section, but come on, that's like saying it's less painful getting shot in the hand than in the nuts.

Finally, we see this. I keep expecting the level to end, because this is long in the tooth, but there's a portal in the corner and two black Atlanteans. Finally, the realm of eternal darkness I've been promised for so long. This better be good.

This places looks like it's in eternal darkness all right. Mind you, so do a lot of places in Tomb Raider. Right away there's a flying Atlantean and a shooting Atlantean. Both black of course. The shooting one is on a castle wall to the right. After they're both dead, I take stock of the area. There's the endless void on my left, and the castle on my right. The door there is unopenable. In front is a cave.

This has a small medikit and some ammo, in addition to another shooter. There's a door at the end I need two...uh...things to unlock, neither of which are visible here. I do spot a niche with a switch I can't yet reach, but despite searching the entire room, I have no way of reaching there. I go outside and check around again, no dice, so I look it up. Turns out I can be on the central pillar.

The inside of the place looks very nice, more Atlanteans, now they're all shooters or flying. There are a lot of locked doors, as well as two stairs to a cellar. Nothing I can do there beyond pick up a small medikit and some ammo. Upstairs it is. There's not a lot up there, but you can go out onto the wall from here.

It's a nice level, but these are some thin walls. On one side is a graveyard you can jump down to, but can't easily escape from. It's probably some sort of puzzle, but I'm not doing much beyond shooting the two Atlanteans down there. There's also a flyer, and another one which spawns once I find the way onto the central building's roof, but it's surprisingly small and straightforward. Get some items and there's one pressure plate. Where does it open?

Uh...here, probably. Everything upstairs is either still closed or locked with a key. There's another Atlantean down there, which I didn't spot before, oh, and a boulder suspended by a rope. That's not foreshadowing. One path's still closed, another is to a pool of water I have no path across. (But might, because this is for the "average" player) The third needs me to activate water to go any further and the last is where I have to go.

It leads to a storage room, more stuff, but then I spot something that looks important. Is it a tile? No, it's a book. Which causes Lara to teleport to this. Strange. I don't know if this is going to be helpful or not, but it's kind of clever.

The puzzle here includes pressure plates behind Lara. Three under the word activate, then one under reset. You're supposed to match up the colors of the plates to the color of the walls by a boulder, which then goes by and possibly activates something if you did it right. The strange thing is, you need to reset the puzzle at least one to win. This gets me access to a switch which causes the hanging boulder from earlier to fall through the floor.

This just reveals a key. The silver key. Bit overdramatic, if you ask me. This eventually leads me to the ground floor, where I go through the entire area ending up on another stupid multi-storey block puzzle and a timed switch. This opens up a door on the floor above me, which has a very convoluted path to reach. I nearly quit, but somehow manage to beat it. Inside is this gem. That's it. I assume this works on the door in the cave, but there are two places for that and unless this pulls a weird trick, will help me no further. Now what? Well, I didn't check the water room.

This is a weird room. There's a grate on the platform in front of me I need to raise, two on the right of me, and then flame platforms on the left. This levelset has a way of being too clever for its own good. Since brute force is out of the question, I try just seeing if I can jump further than I think. It worked before. Yes...and no. There are levers under the water, two of them. One opens a secret, and one raises the grates on the right permanently. The secret is some uzi magazines in a secret tunnel. There are about as hard to spot at first, actually, and when you're searching about as easy to find.

Then we get to the timed jump over the flame pillars. Yeah, another of those. Through several angled jumps. I don't understand this levelset's obsession with completely breaking nearly everything good about Tomb Raider into some endlessly aggravating series of suicide jumps. The people making the walkthroughs for this are using saves, how are us mere mortals supposed to get by without save scumming? I have 74 now, that's like half of the game in the original for me. I eventually survive, using up a large and small medikit on my one successful attempt. The final switch opens up some rooms nearby.

This is actually the key, obvious in screenshot form, not so much when I'm walking around.

They're bedrooms, full of corpses, one Atlantean and some goodies. More importantly, I spot a a moveable block in one. I drag it out, only to discover I've opened the pathway to a grate over water. Once again I'm stuck. Oh, I missed a key in one of the rooms. Because it's white against a skeleton. That's not annoying. It really is, because in your inventory it's a darker color. It opens the dungeon.

This is a...charming place. The switch at the end opens the doors, which each have holes in them, mostly filled with water. The first one I enter is kind of tricky, and leads back into that area I needed to pour water into. There are two areas above water in this one tunnel, each with a pressure plate and a rat. What I need to do is activate one, turn off the water in the central area, then pull a block out of the way and then activate the other.

With that, I can use a switch in this area. It's a simple set of jumps. I'll take easy after what this levelset has put me through. The switch opens up a grate over water I couldn't enter earlier, but before I do that I decide to check the other holes. Oh, they don't have anything in them. Figures.

The hole is a very short tunnel, leading to this. Oh, it looks hard, but it isn't, sidestep to one side, wait for the axe to go away, then walk on through. I wonder what's on the other side, seeing as it's been a while since I shot something other than a rat.

Ah, a repeat of the mansion section. There's another behind me. It's easier than it looks, but not that much. The swords mostly just look intimidating. Getting past the swinging blade from a running grab jump on a collapsible platform is easier than it sounds at this point. What nearly got me were bats that activated after I got near the end, then a blow gun that activated when I got near the pressure plate hiding near the end. After that, it's a jump onto a grate, then a tricky jump on a slope and do it all over again.

Actually, that last one was the trickiest of all, because you have to do that stupid angled jump off a slope again. I don't know which way the designer expects me to do this. But I do know that I failed often enough that I legitimately saw the bottom of the pit a lot of times. I can slide down one and Lara is fine, this is terrible design because the game doesn't expect this and come on, the absurdly difficult levelset isn't planning for this? I'm not saying I would enjoy it, but I could handle a level that expected it now. The actual jump requires you to go from the edge facing the wall on Lara's side, to the highest point of the slope on the left, then moving so Lara faces forward on the slope and can jump a bit to the left.

All this for a gold key, which opens a door on the second floor. Inside, I find a bucket of black water. I have no idea why I needed this, so clearly I missed something. There is a door still closed in the basement, but I check a walkthrough. I missed something on the side. In my defense, after previous attempts at exploring the edge of the area, I assumed it was all empty.

It's a cavern with a flame blocking progress. Oh, and another Atlantean. The bucket puts out the flame and I get the other crystal. The real trouble is climbing back up, takes a bit to find a path. I also make the connection between that pressure plate on the castle wall and the door I hadn't opened. It's tricky, but you can just reach it, netting me a medikit and some shells. Onto placing the crystals in the cavern.

The level is done and...wait, another pressure plate? It crashes my game the first time, but the second time, it opens one of the tombs on the other side of the keep. Right, this leads to the end of the level...which is technically true, because it's another puzzle. That sliding pillar puzzle from the original. I should be thankful, because some of the original puzzles have not been good at all. But this has the L jumps against a wall, so that makes it all the better! Eventually, I make it through to a...key.

Another key, which means I have to get out of here, which means. Grr...Well, at least I know where to go, I missed a locked door near that boulder puzzle. It's not that difficult to get back, far less than I gave credit for before. Another flyer spawns, which ends all enemy threat on this level. Surprisingly, I got two secrets and most of the pickups.

Chamber of Tortures. Yeah. A jump down some water and then I'm in another castle locale. Pretty mundane, but I'm treating this akin to a cover shooter, don't want to get jumped suddenly. And I do, by this thing. Surprised there's a new enemy, but not unwelcoming of it. The room it was in has a timed pressure plate, which opens a door on the other side.

Inside is actually two rooms, the wall was broken down and there's a watery hole. Naturally, this has a challenge, those sliding saw blades. There's a lever which opens another door and spawns another of those things. In another spooky chamber, we get the uzis and a block to pull out of the wall. Curious. There are two holes high up in the first corridor of this place, which I missed. Each has a switch, pull both to open a grate in here. One is completely safe, but the other has a spike trap in it.

Don't be fooled by how impressive this area is, it seems to be the same kind of puzzle as the second level in Greece, except the floors are of slightly shoddier construction. That is, sometimes Lara will pop up in the air for no reason, sometimes the camera goes under Lara for no reason. The top floor has nothing I can do just yet, but the next one down is a series of rooms and pressure plates.

Resulting in this. It's another fun section of timed jumps over water! There's a deceptively long amount of time on the first grate down here, because the first switch activates two grates! At least, that's what I think at first, until I reach the second before the first is down, and shockingly, it's in the down position before the other is down. After a couple of tries I sat there, wondering why I was continuing to do this when I picked it out specifically because it should have been fun. So, I quit here.

There's some cleverness going on here, but it just isn't fun. It's a very frustrating mod for us mere mortals and none of us have any hope of completing it in a reasonable time frame. While this is properly spooky, many bad design choices make it unfun. Not just in the form of difficulty, but scenery objects often prevent you from doing what you want to do, even when you're in no real danger or time pressure. As such, I would give this a 3 in levels and 8 in atmosphere, for a total of 11 out of 20. It's just not worth it if you aren't really good at the game.

I should note something, the manual says that it's for all players, but the page it's on says that it's challenging. I suspect most people aren't taking years between downloading it and playing it.