The Cistern

The Cistern was a pleasant surprise.  For some reason, in my head, I remembered this level as seventeen punishing hours of swimming and getting chewed by crocodiles, but it was actually a fun, challenging, pretty little level that I completed relatively quickly (for me).

Here we have the start of the level.  As level starts go, it’s fairly average.

Another cute ‘n’ cuddly Tomb Raider enemy, with teeth that look like they could rip through your neck with one bite.

Like the velociraptors, the rats die a beautiful, symmetrical death.  The world of Tomb Raider must be full of corpses laid out in an orderly fashion.

The main room of the Cistern.  Apparently those Roman-Grecians shunned the practical-but-boring method of walking everywhere in favour of having to leap over a pool full of crocodiles to get to where they wanted to go.  Lara would have fit right in.

The 3D-modelling graduate in me is compelled to take pictures of any nice objects I come across.  Were other games this nicely decorated in 1996?  I know Duke Nukem wasn’t, unless you class semi-naked women as “nice objects”, you sexist.

I wasn’t particularly thrilled when Pierre popped up again but Lara seem really pleased to see him.  Really, really pleased.

This was the lovely camera angle I was subjected to after I picked up some shotgun shells.  I can’t help but admire how much attention they paid to shading Lara’s bottom compared to the rest of her body.

Another hole in the ceiling…*nostalgic sigh*.

Seriously.  Imagine if the keyhole for your front door was located above the first-floor window?  I suppose convention would have made for a boring game, but sometimes I can’t help but imagine the ancient residents actually setting this up and thinking it a good idea.

I had spent the best part of an hour swimming around and collecting keys, only to be presented with a chessboard full of lions and spike pits.  I thought I’d somehow managed to stumble upon the world’s most anti-climactical secret.

Then I found this secret tunnel behind a moveable block I’d used to reach a medipack.  Now, that was clever.

The end!  I’d like to point out that I actually got two secrets, but I had to reload after getting the second one and I couldn’t be bothered to go and get it again.  So I’m actually a little bit more awesome that these statistics make out.