Mystery Manor Adventure Forum

Downloaded the Demo from Steam. Not my favorite place, but if I purchased the Demo, I got the Lara Croft Legend game for free. I love the Tomb Raider games, so it sounded good to me. This Lara Croft game is going to be a multi-player game, which sounds fine for those who like multi-player. Personally, I just wanted to play single player.

I really liked the game and ended up buying it ($14.99), but I hate that they didn't allow the PC gamer to control Lara's movements with both the Gamepad or keyboard and the mouse. The other games allowed the mouse to change the camera angle with the WASD keys controlling movement. Using only the WASD keys doesn't allow much precision for the jumps, evasive moves and other action typical in an action/adventure.

I'm doing OK in the game, but I wonder why they do these things? It was the same way in Dragon Age Origins. I got used to it, but I sure don't like it. Does it have to do with the fact that this Lara Croft game is a console game and the PC version is just an afterthought?

Yes, I think for sure you are right. So you are saying it will be more difficult to play this game only on a keyboard?? The first Lara Croft was one of the first games I ever played and for those days way back then, for me it was absolutely mind blowing the way you could control her movements. Can you believe? That game got my heart racing oh so much!

I have never heard of Steam - What dont you like about it?

I don't like Steam because they force you to install their client on your computer. Plus you have to connect to the Steam site before you can play . But the worst thing is I have to go into Task Manager to stop the Steam process even after I close a game.

But this deal was too good to pass up. I am in the mood for a little new Lara Croft and am really liking Tomb Raider Legend. YAY! I can control the camera angle with my mouse!!

I would have to say there is no way I could play any of the Tomb Raider or the new Guardian of Light on a keyboard. There are too many keys. I'm using my trusty CyberSnipa gamepad which makes things SOOOO much easier.

Drac, you shouldn't need to use task manager to close Steam - there should be a little icon in the system tray (on the right hand end of the taskbar) that you can right-click and tell it to close. The fact that it leaves itself running when you quit the game is a little annoying, but it does mean that if you decide to restart the game or play another steam game afterward the startup will be much quicker.
And you only have to connect to the server to activate the game - once that's done it should run quite happily offline. A lot better than the 'protection' systems used by a lot of games these days!

I do have to agree with the Steam system beating some of the horrible copy protection out there. I can close Steam in the system tray, but a couple of times I've sat down and noticed my internet connection is a tad slow - sure enough, Steam is open again and grabbing anywhere from 40,000 on up in my processes. Now, why that little bit should cause me to notice a slowdown is mystifying to me. But it does.

My Steam games are fully activated, but nope, it has to connect to Steam before it will play each and every time. And this is even if I've left Steam running in the system tray. Maybe I'm missing something on how to use Steam, but anything that doesn't let me have full control of my games on my computer is really aggravating. Left 4 Dead nearly made me tear my hair out because even though I bought the disk at Wal Mart, I had to go through 2 hours of machinations at Steam before I could play MY game. Maddening...

I probably need a primer in using Steam!

That's odd - it shouldn't be starting up again if you haven't launched another game that uses it. You definitely used the close/exit on the menu rather than just the X to close the menu?

If you're online it will connect to the server each time you launch a game. But if you're not connected to the net everything should still run happily as long as it's been activated. It's possible you can configure it to run in offline mode by default even if you have a net connection, but I'm not certain of that. You wouldn't be able to use multiplayer mode without being online.
Two hours does sound excessive - was it actually installing the game from the server rather than the disk?

I agree that it's a bit odd to find it running when I haven't started a game. I wondered if the Steam client was "phoning home" for some reason. And since I'm on wireless broadband, if my computer is on, I'm connected to the internet. Launching a game connects me to Steam whether I want it to or not. I need to check into my Steam settings to see if I can set it to play only off-line.

It was a nightmare with Left 4 Dead that night. Even though I purchased the disk, it wouldn't let me play without installing the Steam client. Fine. It tried to download and then found an older version of Steam which my grandson had installed, so that had to be uninstalled first. That's also OK and I don't even count that. Finally the current version downloaded and installed. Then when I went to start the game, it did ANOTHER update. So I picked up a book and read for awhile. The third time I tried to play after the update - whatever the hell that was - it started to download ANOTHER 300+ MB of something. I was so mad I just went to bed. I have no idea what all it was trying to do, but I was no fan of Steam from the beginning after that!

The Guardian of Light did the same thing. After I finished the 2,300 MB download, I clicked on Play and did I get to play? That would be no. It started another 386 MB download of something. Sheesh. Maybe I'm just too impatient! Or maybe it might not be so frustrating if they would give some kind of indication of WHAT they are downloading.

I decided to ditch it, yesterday I had some time and wanted to try the demo again. Steam took 57 minutes to do something before I could even start the demo. This I don't need and I have many games to play that I just can pop in the disc. This morning Lara and her friend steam were uninstalled from my computer. The running at startup I wasn't too happy with either and didn't like going to msconfig and changing stuff.

I know. I had an hour to kill the other day and sat down to play in Guardian of Light for a bit and sure enough - 386 MB of something starting downloading. I wanted to scream and didn't get to play at all that day.

Running at startup is definitely bad! You shouldn't need to go into MSConfig though - if you look at the interface settings in the steam client there's a checkbox for "Run Steam when my computer starts" that you can uncheck.
I suspect Steam is more irksome the fewer games you have on it - I have it set to download and install updates automatically, so if I'm playing one Steam game it can be updating any of the others while I play. If I only had the one game on there, I'd only have Steam switched on when I wanted to play that one game - so if that one game had a patch released the patch would only be downloaded when I wanted to play that one game and it would be rather less convenient. But as it is I have a fair proportion of my games on there (they have periodic sales with games at silly prices - I'd say it was worth joining just for those) and it works out fairly convenient.

I'm definitely going to go into my settings and see if there are some changes I can make so that when I want to play my games, I can do just that.

I'd say between my grandson and me we have at least a dozen games from Steam on my computer.

Phlebas there probably was but I just didn't bother since I had only the LC demo on and it was driving me nuts anyway. I already had a Steam account, it just had to be reinstalled. I may try it later on the laptop, I have way too many games to play and little enough time as it is to mess with this.

Did you look in the game's "control" options menu? There should be a way to configure the WSAD keys for movement and "look" with the mouse.

As for gamepad controls, you should be able to control movement with the left stick and "look" with the right stick. It's a matter of selecting the "axis" you want for each stick...via the gamepad control options.

You bet I did, but nope, no such option, Robert. Of course I was all over them when I played the Demo looking for such the option you mention. I liked the game enough that I got the full version anyway. When I was referring to a "gamepad," I meant one such as my CyberSnypa with no joy stick. I don't know how it's working with a joy stick - I would be curious though.

When I said "stick" I was referring to the "thumbsticks", like on a modern gamepad, like an Xbox or Playstation controller. A "joystick" is something totally different.

The full version of this game does not have an option to "look" with the mouse? That is very odd indeed.



The Cybersnipa is not a "gamepad" per se. It's really just a gaming keyboard.