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Review
I think this is the best TR level to date. Core must have had the same gut feeling, because they kicked Pierre out of this one perhaps on the basis they thought he might blemish their masterpiece. (Good for them). Palace Midas is epic, beautiful, complex, clever, mystical, and downright brilliant. You will not catch me moaning about bats and boulders in this analysis. I've got too much praise to get through about how good the good parts are.
The animal placement is perfect. None of the the actual species are different from the previous two levels, but every type present seem to get their most effective appearances in the game - The crocodile crawling out from the blind alley at the beginning. The tiger sprinting around the upper swimming pool ledge. Best of all, the room with all those gorillas. It actually looks and feels like a little ape pen you would find at the zoo. You do not need to design a new adversary for each level if you can find original ways to have the old ones come at you. That is what the designers have concentrated on here and it is tre magnifique!
The gold room is a wonderful place to stumble across. The music, the colours, the puzzle contained within. Even the giant legs of the statue going up into the cracked ceiling! I do not think I have ever got satisfaction from a video game like the type I got from figuring out what I had to do with my three lead bars. That was it for me - The pinnacle moment in my game playing career! Only the time I first bashed a wasp with Sonic the hedgehog comes close (j/k).
Another great puzzle comes in the form of five levers you have to either activate or leave deactivated in order to find certain door-opening combinations. This is probably the only part of TR1 where I wish we could have had binoculars. You cannot really see the combinations from up on the lever balcony, and you are not likely to take note of them before you get up there. I would be interested to hear how long it took people to find the roman numerals for this puzzle, if indeed they found them at all. When I first did it I did not even notice the clues above each door. I just tried every possible combination until I got the damn things to open something.
Three of these doors I speak of eventually take you to lead bars. I say eventually because the search for the third bar includes a clever detour around most of the level. It is all a bit madcap but more than a little enlightening. Shame on me for not previously spotting half a dozen carefully concealed upper walkways! The one bending around the swimming pool I certainly should not have missed when I was down bottom. Like many Tomb Raiding devotees, I pride myself on taking on the developers that create these worlds like a bull charging a red rag (or a bull charging a man with a minefield code, if you want a Last Revelation analogy). Palace Midas though can do you all ends up if you are not mentally wide awake with your morning cup of coffee already drained.
The two smaller challenges are creatively routine pieces of work that escape condemnation here because it is the first appearance for both of them. Jumping over pillars surrounded by spikes anyone? Well the first and final jumps at least make the task tricky, I suppose. Jumping over the row of Olympic style flames in the other room requires even more precision. Lara probably cusses under her breath whenever a player drops her into that reservoir. The heat from the flames might normally heat the water up a little, but the wretched things turn themselves off not long after she hits the water. Automatic timer coincidence, or giggling mockery from Midas the ghost? You decide.
Now then. A pointless point coming up, but I want to point it out anyway. The small temple boxed in behind the gorilla area ; It is better IMO than the one at the back of the Lost Valley. Both are disappointments when you initially explore them and find little substance, but the Midas one is at least on a slightly superior aesthetic playing field. It is the debris around the lever. It makes the temple wreckage look natural. The Lost Valley building containing cog#1 has been drawn with a straight line ruler and you have to wonder what the temple is doing there in the first place. I warned you that was going to be a pointless point, but it was just something I noticed. We do not need huge areas concealed behind those small places masquerading as temples anyway. The remaining amount of acres inside both levels I refer to are big enough already, especially in the case of Palace Midas. Oh well. Whatever. Cut to the reels and Palace Midas is a shot in the arm, a blast from a virtual anti-tank gun, a driller-killer in B and Q. Enough of the stupidity. The level's brilliant. It stinks of beauty 10/10.
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