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Review
“Annnnnnnnd welcome to Tibet for this crucial world cup qualifier between China and Italy. There’s a lot of bad blood between these two, so we should expect a real barnstormer of a game. Let’s take a look at the two teams. Italian coach Marco Bartoli has severe injury worries ahead of this fixture. Star striker, bloke from the end of the Opera House section, is absent with a hernia problem (caused by grenade launcher, not a stray tackle in a previous game). Thug with the bat also misses out, having picked up too many yellow cards recently and not enough fuses in sunken vessels. He’s suspended. If you think Italy have problems, however, just wait until I tell you about the selection worries China are besieged with. Due to a combination of injuries, suspensions, kidnaps, and dragon bites, China have only one player available from their entire squad! So, they’ve cloned him ten times over just so they can put a team out. Today’s referee is Miss Lara Croft from England. We’re just about ready for kick-off now, so enjoy today’s game. And remember, you can only see it here on Eurosport. Accept not substitutes blah blah blah”.
The level that opened up new possibilities within the TR world, the barking mad monastery of Tibet is a classic of its day. Find five giant corks and put them in five holes that are all shaped like a giant cork. It’s great fun. Along the way you’ll encounter several instances where terrorists and monks both come out of nowhere, and along with Lara, engage in a spectacular three way battle. If you want though, you can join the monks and make it a normal two way battle, only with allies. You just have to remember to make your mind up about what you’re going to do before you start the level, as firing just one shot at the monks makes them enemies for the rest of it. Even if you stealthily kill one monk with a combat knife in one section of the monastery, and then hide or cremate the body, every other monk still alive telepathically knows what you’ve done. Monk magic!
Still, I do love the way Lara gets a choice of how to handle the terrorists and the monks. Players can go for strategy or action. Strategy involves hanging back from a fight and then nipping in to finish things off should any of the terrorists remain standing in the aftermath. The action option simply imvolves you blowing the sushi out of anything that moves. And if you do that, you’ll finish the level with well over 50 kills, enough for any TR fan to get their blasting fix for an evening. The powers that be would be very wise to consider bringing situations like this back for future Lara games. The PS2 and PS3 capabilities can surely handle more than just five or six men fighting on screen at the same time. Imagine the Barkhang Monastery’s main hall swarming with twenty or thirty peeps from either side, with Lara either right in the thick of things are up on the walkways with a sniper rifle. Have I wetted your appetitie for a TR2 remake? I’ve sure wetted my own.
The five corks are predictably strewn around the map in the most annoying of places. Personally, I usually go for the one tucked in behind the three rows of fires, first. It’s an awkward one to get to, thanks mainly to a swimming pool that sucks you under the water on route. I had an idea that one of the terrorists could have been placed in this pool. Wouldn’t the sight of him struggling against the suction been funny? Most of the other traps lying around are just conventional ‘time your dash correctly to get past’ boobies. There are swinging cutlasses attached to walls, mish-masher doors, rolling boulders (In TR, even the house of the Lord is no sanctum from the curse of the rolling boulder! ), timed flames, large pit falls, and in one particular room, what can only be described as a pair of giant hub caps that roll from side to side. If you don’t know what I mean, think back to The Great Wall. They were in that, too.
All in all, the monks have done a pretty good job in doing their pad up so that no sod can walk five yards without tripping up on a stray roller skate. Macauley Culkin eat your heart out. In fact, I can just imagine Joe Pesci and that other fella dancing around like headless chickens when all those fires come on in the dark room that holds prayer wheel #1. What really takes the mickey, though, is the little closely confined assault course you have to negotiate in order to get the roof key (I think). Here we have more timed flames, more hub caps, and worst of all, at least two giant malevolent beanbags. It really is a bad day at boot camp. DROP DOWN AND GIVE ME 20 CROFT! AND THEN RUN PAST THOSE SWINGING BEANBAGS!
As much as I jest, I feel a bit sad writing this piece. You just don’t get levels like this anymore. At its most basic, the Barkhang madhouse is just one long chore that sets you off in pursuit of five “prayer wheels”, and then makes you use them all at one time in order to progress to the next level. It can be put that plainly. Where as the complete modern day aberration of this format, though, (Hall of Seasons) does everything in a mundane paint-by-numbers fashion more tailor made for a student project in artistic paralysis than a computer game, the level in question from 1997 screams ‘creativity overload’ at every given corner. You also have to concede in favour of monkworld just how thankfully unexpected each twist and turn is that lead to the completion of our objectives. Unlike certain other levels, Barkhang doesn’t needlessly segregate its sub-tasks into superficial bands of distinction named after weather elements, or obselete Greek gods. Instead, each prayer wheel, as it is in this case, is concealed in a non-specific and non-obvious way that actually requires a degree of (gosh!) brainpower to be spent. You won’t find any doors in here with a signpost reading “This is the fire room. You can find a vital item in here if you’re willing to complete a task based around...ummm...fire”. Zzzz
The Monastery also boasts a clever balance between the linear and the non-linear. You don’t have to go for each prayer wheel in a particular order, but there is the occasional one which can’t be found until you’ve found a certain other one in a different part of the level. I’m thinking here of the gems you find on the roof which enable you to take the prayer wheel from the top of the main hall statue. It’s clever as hell, and I love it. In fact, I love this whole goddamn game. I swear to god , if I was console-sexual instead of hetrosexual, I’d take this game down to the church and marry the ****er. A stupid sentiment, perhaps. But the important thing there was that I mentioned ‘marry’ and ‘game’ in the same sentence, and not ‘marry’ and ‘Lara’. Lara was a created to be a gorgeous woman, but she’ll never be as gorgeous as some of the levels she stars in when designed correctly, and, in this case, designed with a near bottomless pit of unadulterated class. 10/10.
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Scores
Best Part - The battle between the monks and terrorists on the main hall floor.
Worst part - There isn't one really, but I'll go for the tedious climb out of the Monk's courtyard.
Secrets - 2/3 good ones. The bad egg is the one in the main hall. Every player will venture around the back of that statue at some point or another, so the dragon hidden there will hardly merit the word 'secret'. The other two are fine, especially the one in the pool. Reminds me of a secret from the Cistern
The 100th link I came across when typing "Barkhang Monastery into the Google search engine
http://www.videogamereview.com/codes/Product-586.asp
It's actually TR related for a change. Isn't much use, though.
This level is similar too....
Temple of Xian, because of the textures.
Ronald Mcdonald Versus The Hamburgler - A great film idea of mine, inspired by the Freddy/Jason flick
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