Hello all! Hope you are all well. We're going to hop back in with a round-up of changes on the VL website within the month of May.
New Pages:
Updates:
That's all for this update. Have a great weekend!
We've played the game since it's worldwide release and as of today, our stats are: Player level: 86 | Attack: 12907 | Max HP: 63155 | Preferred Outfit: Classic, level 38. Gear: Legendary Dual Pistols, level 37 | Legendary Long Range Ammo, level 31 | Legendary Anti Ground Ammo, level 32 | Legendary Fire Bracelet, level 38 | Legendary Lightning Strike Mask, level 35 | Legendary Light Supplies Backpack, level 39 | Legendary Precision Amulet, level 40. We'd like to point out that this loadout is pretty much the exact same that we've used since release, apart from the odd ammo swap and the upgrading of the Gold Dual Pistols, but we haven't put coin into upgrading anything else. We have collected all the relics, and have almost levelled them up to 15 out of 30, with a couple of exceptions. Right, let's get into the pros and cons:
NEGATIVES:
IF WE HAD CONTROL OVER THE GAME'S DEVELOPMENT:
And so to conclude...
We aren't big players of mobile games; we only play the Tomb Raider ones, so maybe we're not all too experienced in that genre of gaming, but I'm curious to know what this product's life cycle is. How long can it last in its current state? In its basic form, it is a series of chapters with a certain number of stages, but how long can the developers just keep adding more chapters with more stages in? It would be almost identical to the mobile game 'Candy Crush', where more levels of the same task is added. Then there's the events, which most of the time repeat every 2 weeks, giving out virtually the same rewards; how long can this pattern be kept up before people lose interest entirely? Without any big changes or special rewards, I can only see this game lasting a year. This was supposed to be a 25th anniversary gift for fans and yet, two years after that franchise milestone, this game doesn't quite feel special enough. Perhaps it was teased too early. Despite this, I'll still carry on playing it as it is fun if you don't take it too seriously. We only play in dribs and drabs and won't dedicate hours and hours to playing it. I believe that casual mobile gamers would find it hard to progress or achieve much, and maybe not even participate that seriously in events, and I feel that you are expected to put hours into it if you want to do well. I also believe that this game is intended for the Tomb Raider fan rather than the general public, as they will be more willing to grind and put the effort in. Do we prefer Lara Croft Relic Run? Yeah, I think we do, because it felt more complete and how you progressed depended on you learning the obstacles, not on the lack of good enough gear and grinding to get the most basic of gear to upgrade. Would we recommend this game? Only to Tomb Raider fans, not to the general public, but I have read of even TR fans uninstalling this game due to bugs and lack of fresh content. If this wasn't a Tomb Raider game, would we still be playing it after 4 months? Maybe not, as I think we will have noticed that the pattern of gameplay is repetitive. However, we are not yet at the stage where we no longer want to play, perhaps working on this website keeps us coming back to it as we want to keep others as updated with it as we can, but I do know that I like the art style and the sounds. Also, it is the only new Tomb Raider content we have as we aren't interested in most of the crossover events that have happened this year and the last. But regardless of all the negative points, we'll still be here, writing it up for the website. This blog post will try to delve into the history and the origins of the below image, providing pros and cons for whether this image is an official render, and allow you to make your own decision on it. We'd also like to state that we have not found this image on any 'official' TR page, nor have we found it to belong to a certain person or to have a certain name attached to it; we simply want to talk through our thought process on what we make of it. Now that you've had the chance to see the image, let us begin with how we came across it. Many years back, whilst going through old fansites, we once came across an image of Lara that we had never seen before. This was back when we hadn't seen the official Style Guide or the official wallpapers that were given out. This was also back when we were younger fans who saved everything that was Lara Croft (we must add that as we have gotten older, we decided to keep mainly anything official and the odd fan thing that we liked). Then sometime later, we had found this it again, and this time, we took the weblink of the fansite that we had seen it on. This render shows Lara happily in a state of undress. It is a rather risqué type of image, and obviously brings Lara's feminine features to the forefront. Images like this weren't too uncommon in the marketing side of Tomb Raider, where they would show Lara wearing little whilst she was still covered or hidden in the important places. We have seen two versions of the same posing: one on a green background where Lara has a plait over her left shoulder, and one on a white background where Lara is either wearing her hair in a bun or the plait is hidden out of sight. We're not sure which image came first; they both are seen on websites that date to around 1999. We think maybe the green background version came first as the Lara on the white background seems to have a greenish glow on her left side. If this is true, then someone must've altered Lara's hair and added in the skin over her arm and shoulder. Looking at these places, it looks really well done - no sudden colour difference, no obvious repainted marks, the shape of the arm looks good, and the hair fits the orientation of the head well too. Maybe this could mean that both versions were real. The version with the white background has a noticeable mark that doesn't appear on the green background image, which can be seen on the lower right portion of her hair, around by her jaw; a white line that could've been added in when the person added this section of hair. We personally think that it is official as the quality of the model used is really good, and we believe that some old fansites back the theory (See Link 0 and Link 4 below), however we don't have a reason as to why it would've disappeared like it had. Maybe it was too suggestive and that it conflicted with the cease and desists of 'Nude Raider' content that Eidos was handing out to fansites promoting nude Laras; Eidos couldn't be seen as being contradictory to their lawsuits, so it was removed. Maybe, the speed in which it disappeared is also why there are few instances of this render being shown and why it isn't available in normal sizes at the time. We also wonder if this image was repurposed into other Lara renders as she poses very similar in other renders. Here are some fors and againsts that we've been mulling over as we tried to work out the legitimacy of the image. For:
Against:
These are just a handful of points that we've come up with. It would be fantastic to be able to find the original source or the original artist so that we can know for sure, but somehow, I don't think either will be possible. With the current rediscoveries in the past month or so, who knows, this could be another. SourcesLink 0 - 100+ Desktop Pictures of Lara Croft
https://web.archive.org/web/20020225161257/http://cgi.afkamm.force9.co.uk/larawallpapers/official4.shtml Link 1 - Driber's Homepage http://web.archive.org/web/20020708041224/http://driber.geckokid.com/tr/wallpapers/index.html Link 2 - Lara in Motion https://web.archive.org/web/20021015161018/http://www.larainmotion.com/NETbufgal.htm Link 3 - Visions of Lara Croft http://web.archive.org/web/19991013070950/http://volc.ctimes.net/pg17.html - render #889 Link 4 - Unofficial Tomb Raider Gallery http://web.archive.org/web/20010617102117/http://home.freeuk.net/vsv/thumb1024.htm Link 5 - Lara's World Wallpaper Archives - Group 03 http://web.archive.org/web/20000618171901/http://www.tombraider.com/larasworld/wallpaper_archive3.html Other Instances of This Image: Lara Croft Picture Page http://web.archive.org/web/20010618075049/http://home.wanadoo.nl/broek/gallery09.htm# - Seems to sort renders in games release Planet Lara http://web.archive.org/web/20030816193219/http://www.planetlara.com/pic_page_32.asp - Used alongside other official renders, TR2 & TR3 eras The Croft TImes http://web.archive.org/web/20001110114100/http://www.ctimes.net/wallpaper/ - You have to go through the JavaScript Gallery, to find #017 April was a quieter month on the website but there were still plenty of pages and updates. Let's get right into them.
New Pages:
Updates:
One last thing to mention, we have been trying to figure out how to make our website look good on mobile devices. We still haven't been able to fix the home page sidebar (which looks squashed) but we have managed to move the content section back up to the top of the page so that it sits underneath the navigation bar and beside the sidebar. We've tested this with a mobile device held landscape. Hope this helps a little to make the site better to view and use, and we will continue to look into it again. Thank you for visiting our website and take care all! So it turns out that there were 8 renders specifically created for the 1999 story that was released to supplement The Times Exclusive level. There was always that one render, of Lara stood in a library looking through a book, that has been synonymous with the Times level, but since we bought the newspaper that featured episode #7 of the 'Down Among the Dead' story, we had this theory that some others were made for it too. We had touched upon this in a post we made on our Virtual Lara Tumblr back in February 2021. The said issue then confirmed that the image of Lara stuck in a spider web in an Egyptian setting depicted the story being told. For many years before, people, including us, assumed that the render was created for TR4 and somehow represented the game. No one knew who the man in it was but we could only loosely guess that it was Werner Von Croy, somehow, even though you could see that it wasn't. However when you read the 'Down Among the Dead' story, you'll learn that it is in fact a character called Alvin Blackmore. Our theory was also based on the fact that in the Tomb Raider Style Guide, the set of renders that are numbered TR5001-TR5009 (although we aren't sure where render #TR5007 comes in) were labelled under the Tomb Raider Chronicles set of renders, even though they thematically don't belong to Chronicles. When we acquired the physical Style Guide, we could seen the dates of the renders on the disks; they all date to November-December 1999 - around the time when the story was printed, and what's more, they pre-date Chronicles. When building our website, this was enough proof for us to create a Renders page with these images on, even though we had only seen 2 episodes.
This theory was proved correct when UroshUchiha accessed the Times digital archive and found out the remaining episodes. From this, fans can now understand what the renders are showing, and we can now see where and in which order the other renders were used. For us, this is another Tomb Raider mystery solved! Throughout March, we have updated the website with some big things relating to several parts of the franchise. Here is a summary of the additions:
Thanks to all who have dropped by and visited the website. We are almost constantly working on it, be it with new pages, additions to current pages or correcting errors. It still amazes us that people are interested in the content we have created, and we still get a buzz from creating new content and sharing it. Take care all! Hi there,
We've decided to test run a blog feature on our website as it gives us a place to discuss anything related to the Tomb Raider world, and leave the website to containing facts. Of course, if this doesn't work out, we may abandon it, but so far, we are excited! We've never used a feature like this before so it may take us a little while to get used to it, and the design and layout may change a few times also until we find something suited to us. Well, here goes! |
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