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Review
Finally a means to an end rears its watery head, as Lara emerges from the submerged Maria Doria facility and (eventually) uses her breasts to rise up back to the ocean surface. Before that though, we’re forced to mooch around David Dickinson style in search of a fabled antique known as the Seraph. This, apparently, is what we’ve officially been doing since Snacker the shark chased us away from that diving vessel. Best hop to it then. For such a special and sort after item, you might have imagined the Seraph to be located on top of a circular pedestal in the middle of a grand hall filled with soon to be defrosted leviathans. Favourably however, it isn’t. Instead it can be found quite uneventfully at the back of a tiny dis-used storage room. (And if you’re the owner of a limited edition 1998 copy of the game, you’ll even find a naked charcoal drawing of Kate Winslet lying in the next grid over).
For much of the proceedings prior, out and out puzzles have been replaced by ‘where to go next’ conundrums. There quickly comes a point where almost everywhere in the entire level becomes instantly accessible, provided you’re prepared to hike it. In this respect, the existence of the storage room is rather clever. I say this because you’re very likely to stumble across it early on, which means you’ll be forever heading straight back there whenever you discover a new key. I like this. The concept of the first keyhole you come across being the last one you need is rather intriguing. From a challenge perspective, I much prefer being given the run around like this instead of having each door just around the corner from where I picked up the key for it. The Cistern still holds the crown for being the best ‘finding keys for doors level’, though.
The villains of The Deck are repetitive, stupid, loud, and annoyingly elusive to death by shark. The repetitive part speaks for itself if you’ve played this game before, not that I’m saying that repetitive is bad. So let us move onto ‘stupid’, and the quite obvious question of why a Lara-hunting frogman would dive into a small swimming pool and hide in its underwater cupboard. Surely it would be much less of a strain to hide in wait for her somewhere else? ‘Loud’ comes in the form of our baseball bat-wielding thugmuppet friends, who certainly haven’t let a few million setbacks in the previous levels dissuade them from turning up for another pop at Lara. This would be their last hurrah in TR2, however, unless you count the Home Sweet Home level. I guess everyone reaches a point in their pursuit of a girl where they just say “Awww sod it. I give up. Do what you like”.
One of the biggest windows for debate on this level comes courtesy of the yellow raft section, a setting which bears great similarities to one of Jason Vorhee’s stomping grounds in Friday the 13th : The Final Chapter. You’ve got the lot here; anguish for anti-heath pack veterans, sharks and frogman who just happen to turn up at different times, lazy secret placement, caves which begin in one place and just happen to take you to either a hole above the raft or right back to the top of the deck. The latter reminds me of that passageway based in the upper tier of Palace Midas, not that I’m being critical. The level structure of The Deck is a fantastic achievement, and the yellow water raft area one of its most prized ingredients.
I’ve tried to avoid too many Titanic jokes throughout these underwater sections, but sometimes they just slip out onto the page and it’s a bit of a wrench having to bother holding down delete in the aftermath. Mentioning that frogman in the swimming pool though made me recall Leonardo Di Caprio’s “I’m the king of the world” comment, and I’ve been trying to rack my brains as to where Lara would have had to have stood on The Deck to say the same thing. (albeit with ‘king’ replaced by ‘queen’). The best place I could think of was that platform you have to stand on in order to reach the secret tucked away behind the broken glass. The only trouble is, I should imagine it’s quite hard to feel like the king or queen of anything when there’s a big steel orange thing plonked directly in front of you. What is it supposed to be? The ship’s funnel? If it is it’s a bit big isn’t it? Never mind ‘Leonardo’ Di Caprio. Try ‘Lucky’ Di Caprio. He gets the ocean in front of him and Lara gets the big orange thing. I think I need to revise that queen comment even further. Try…. “If it wasn’t for that that huge orange thing, I’d be the queen of the world!!”. Hell yeah! Just be thankful Kurtis Trent didn’t exist in the days of TR2, though. I dread to imagine how tempted Core might have been to have him dangle Lara right over the edge of the platform I spoke of. (“Kurtis, I’m flying!”)
A conclusion for any Deck (the) analysis though deserves far less bulls.hit like that and far more in the way good solid praise. I get the impression some people don’t like this level because by the time they get to it they’re sick of being underwater. That’s fine. However, as a one-off entity this is a classic beyond any comprehensible replication. There’s great design, great atmosphere, great action, and you don’t need much more than that from a TR experience. Some of the cabin interiors could have done with a bit more imagination, but that’s about as damning as I can find it in myself to be this afternoon. Life in the reviewer’s hot-seat is never easy when you’re talking about something this enjoyably playable. Roll on Deepsea Dive so I can have a jolly good rant for a change. 10/10 (That score is for The Deck, not the Deepsea Dive)
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Scores
Best part - Falling onto the Raft, even though it hurts you. Second place goes to the shimmying hole you have to seek out on the big orange thing.
Worst part - Realising that your dream of a shark eating a frogman just ain't gonna happen, in this lifetime or the next.
Secrets -2/3 good ones. There's much better in TR2. The swimming pool one is the best, with the one underneath raft being just too damn samey to its Venice sister. The other one is so-so.
The 100th link I came across when I typed "The Deck" into the google search engine
Click here
Actually, that was a lie. This is the proper #100, and I'm not even going to begin to try and comprehend it.
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/6645/
This level is most like
Antartica (scoff)
Marmite - Hopeful pa.
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