Tomb of Tihocen

Thanks to the kind linkage by Stella and Matt, it seems my blog finally has some readers. This rocks, and I thank you all for the kind comments you’ve made. As a special treat, I’ve decided to break my usual habit of updating twice and then abandoning the blog for several months to bring you my third post of September 2011: Tomb of Tihocen.


The beginning of the level finds Lara floating in a small pond. It must be refreshing not to be in a corridor for once.


I was pretty sure Lara would be beheaded the minute I picked up these shotgun shells, but then I reasoned that such an animation would probably be beyond the grasp of the fifteen-year-old game engine.


Pierre makes an another unwelcome appearance, which mostly consists him banging into walls and taking the occasional pot-shot at Lara before evaporating.


Not only do gorillas delight in making creepy noises and jumping out at you, but when they die they spend their last moments fixing you with the cold, accusing stare of someone who’s planning to come back to haunt you.


Oh, look, some boulders. Haven’t seen some of those in a while. I love how, when Lara is flatten by them, the noise she makes is closer to “slight annoyance” rather than “extremely painful death”.


Some people would keep door keys and medical supplies in a cupboard or something, but not those Grecian-Romans, oh no. That would be far too convenient. If you ain’t willing to get a limb ripped off in order to get some paracetamol then, honey, you ain’t sick.


Is it just me or does that stone face thing look about ten years more sophisticated that the rest of the surroundings? I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw that thing in Anniversary.


The entrance of Tihocen’s tomb, guarded by two centaur statue. Of course, in the world of Tomb Raider, anything shaped like an animal has a 50-50 chance of coming alive and trying to kill you.


Sure enough, an Atlantean bursts out of one of the statues in what is, I might add, the campest manner he could have possibly chosen. He may as well have been jumping out of a cake.


Instead of stripping, however, Centaur decides to shoot fireballs at Lara, not even bothering to stop when she finally succumbs to death, and grinning like a Shinigami as he does so.


Inside Tihocen’s tomb, Pierre finally succumbs to death after helpfully running into a close door for several seconds so Lara can shoot him without getting hurt. He takes one last leering look at one of her thighs before he goes down, after which Lara prizes the second piece of the Scion from his cold, dead fingers. Well, actually, he just drops it on the floor and she picks it up, but that doesn’t make for a very artistic description.


Time for this post’s pretty picture, which is a view of the Scion pedestal from a balcony above it. The whole place reminds me of Tomb Raider II’s Temple of Xian.


Lara takes a moment out of Tomb Raiding to entertain us with her impression of a stereotypical gay man mincing around the room.


Tomb of Tihocen is a fairly short level, I was quite surprised when it abruptly finished. Her work in Greece/Rome done, Lara is now heading off to the unambiguous country of Egypt to continue her quest. We won’t be seeing Rome again until Tomb Raider Chronicles, and I’m pretty sure Greece won’t pop up until Anniversary. Let’s hope they’ve sorted out their identity issues by then.

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.

Palace Midas

Another year, another Tomb Raider-breaking computer problem.  This time the hard-drive decided to crash, forcing a complete reboot and the loss of all my degree work, and, even worse, my Tomb Raider save games.
Luckily, I still have the level-skip cheat engraved into the memories of my fingertips, and so I was quickly able to get back up to where I was, albeit with less health packs and ammo than I had pre-crash.
Anyway, on to Palace Midas, which is a fairly entertaining level; although, after Colosseum, running repeatedly into a wall could be afforded the same praise.

We start off by being pushed into a small pool decorated with pictures of dolphins, bastards of the sea.  Sad to know that people idolized them even in those days.

A cornerstone of the Tomb Raider experience is non-linear environments with multiple path-choices.  In theory, I support this method of gameplay, but in practice it makes me confused and a little angry.  I spent a lot of time in Palace Midas in a state of irritated befuddlement.

Behold!  Nudity in a Tomb Raider game!  It may not be Lara’s pointy breasts, but you can bet your life that someone, somewhere in 1996, was getting off on it.

Will the depravity never cease?!

Upon this pillar lays Tomb Raider’s unreachable medipack, something that Core Design included in a few of their Tomb Raider games.  According to this Tomb Raider Forums post by thevman, there was supposed to be a secret path leading to it, but I personally think that they put it there for a laugh.

The point of this level is to insert three gold bars into these holes to open the level exit.  The ancient Romans even provided a handy instructional poster to illustrate this.

Lara is suckerpunched by a gorilla.  I actually screamed when this thing leaped at me, which means I’m continuing to forget what happens in this game.  Yay!

This fire trap is one of the obstacles you must traverse to get to a bar.  I’m sure there’s a logical way to beat it, but my method (consisting of “jump like hell and consume a lot of medipacks”) worked just fine.

Remember that block I was scared of back at City of Vilcabamba?  This one is even worse!  Especially if you imagine those white bits are bone…

Here is a garden.  I include a picture of it because it’s pretty.  It made a nice change from rock and angry lions.

The blocks you collect through the level are actually lead, not gold, but thankfully you’re in the one place in the world where that don’t matter.  Although it suddenly occurred to me, staring at this statue; isn’t Midas a Greek god?  So, aren’t we in Greece?  Jesus Christ.

And here’s what happens when you jump onto Midas’s hand.  Note how Lara looks mildly curious, at best.  There’s that emotionless Kiriyama we all know and love.

Here’s another lovely little trap I found.  Believe it or not, Lara could put her head between these jagged blades without ill effect.

And we’re another level closer to the end.  Considering I started this blog in 2009 and have completed about seven levels between then and now, I should be done with Tomb Raider by 2014.

Colosseum

Do you know, I think I’ve found the reason (besides alcohol) to why I abandoned this blog for over a year, and it’s this level.  Although pretty, it’s just not that exciting to play and even less exciting to write about.  So let’s just get it over with and move on.


The start of the level, another corridor.  One day, when I really need something to procrastinate with,  I may do a statistical analysis of how many Tomb Raider levels start in corridors.


This is more like it.  The front of the Colosseum is truly a wonder of 1996 pixel architecture.  From here, you can’t even tell that most of the pillars are painted on.  And hey, we know where this particular set of levels is based now (hint: Rome).


Typically, it’s locked.  And seeing as the last person in here has probably been dead for about three thousand years, we’re probably not going to be able to go and nick the key off them.


Whilst find another entrance to the place, I stumbled by this crocodile pit that you can shimmy over without risk of being chomped.  I spent several minutes watching these adorable little creatures snuffle around and make funny grunting noises until I noticed there was a medi-pack down there with them, so I shot them both in the head and snatched it up.


Oh, good news; Pierre (the magical Frenchman) is back and is skirting the perimeter of the Colosseum pit, taking pot-shots and disappearing into thin air.  One time, he had a lion with him.  Bastard.


And here we have the absolute worst place to sit in the Colosseum.


You can keep your fancy modern animation with its la-di-da body part recognition and realistic physics, Tomb Raider has lions with the ability to get their heads stuck in railings.  This one spent a large amount of time running on the spot and gnashing at me if I got too close.  I put him out of his misery.


Did I mention that part of the Colosseum floor (where they have to fights and things) gives way to a spike pit?  I mean, come on.  Like trying to fight lions and apes isn’t enough.  That’s just dangerous.


Remember the worst seat in the Colosseum?  We have a challenger.


Well, that was a thoroughly entertaining level.  Lara joyfully heads towards the exit.


Except, it’s not.  The large double doors, which have become a by-word for “end of the level” in this game conceal nothing but a dead-end and a medi-pack.  You win this round, Core Design.


Lara attempts to use her hand as a key.  It works.


Doesn’t this look a hell of a lot like the last level?  Maybe it’s supposed to.


Lara getting pulled into a small dark tunnel by the current finally marks the end of the level.  Thank God.