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Review
There’s only so long you can get away with setting TR levels slap, bang in the centre of populated society. I don’t care how back your backwater hideout is. The gunshots are just too loud and too many. Hell, some of Lara’s firework displays almost give Gandalf the wizard’s performance at Bilbo’s leaving bash a run for its money. In most other countries, Lara’s antics would immediately tease into action a 6-star GTA-style covert op run by the local army. In TR2’s three Italian levels though, the local police don’t even afford its intimidated citizens the type of lame ‘black and white drive by’ we see get shot to sh.it in Die Hard. We shouldn’t be too shocked, however. Remember, this is the corner of Europe where the law and order once failed to barge Michael Caine’s three minis off the road. Useless sons’o’guns.
So, off we go then to an oilrig in the middle of nowhere, a structure type not seen by most of us in contemporary home entertainment since Blofeld and his cat were still in fashion. Marco Bartoli actually shares quite a similar personality flaw with Mr Blofeld, in that he doesn’t kill off his enemies when he has the opportunity to. Let me give an astute example of how both of those men would probably talk to Lara in such a situation…
“Well Miss Croft, seeing how you’re never going to get out of those handcuffs before you die, I might as well give you the secret code that disarms the bomb”.
And this of course is a stupid thing to do, because Lara is obviously going to free herself somehow and disarm the bomb with her new found code. This is just an example of course. In TR2 it’s assumed that no-one says anything to our girl during the time she’s captured. But instead of waking up dead at the bottom of the ocean like she ought to have done for committing the federal crime of not noticing Marco at the back of the plane, she wakes up perfectly live and well in a room full of giant Rubix cubes. And that’s where our adventure in the Offshore rig begins. Why it’s called the ‘Offshore’ rig heaven only knows. It’s not as if anyone has ever built an inland one and plonked it on top of the local Morrisons. But personally I’m glad it’s got a stupid name. A level called “Oil rig” would have totally rendered my 100th link section in this piece to be a total non-entity, not that it won’t be anyway.
The trick of temporarily stripping Lara of her weapons is quite a regular feature in the early TR games. Some people welcome it and others can’t stand it. I think I’m somewhere in the middle. Although truth be told, it doesn’t warrant much discussion either way in this case. You get your pistols back within minutes. Players making fast progress through the game will barely notice them come and go from their inventory. And even when you don’t have them, there aren’t any obstacles or enemies to get past that make you wish you did. There’s a giant fan, a drowning scare through a cramped tunnel, a ‘leap of faith’ onto to a swinging rotor that somehow doesn’t do you any harm, and that’s pretty much it. In the end it’s almost a case of…“Woah! What are these things on the floor of the plane? Are these my pistols? How long have I not had those?”. Usually, my motivation for getting through these early stages is not to get the pistols back but to turn off that annoying air raid siren that seems to serve the purpose of alerting to the scene absolutely nobody.
Viewing the level as a whole, this is the first in what I group as a trilogy of space-age sections throughout the five TR games on PSX. The other two would be Area 51 from TR3 and the Tower Block episode from TRC. I’m not going to go into which of those I consider the best here, but all three are distinguishable from other levels due to their futuristic graphic design and real-scale environment feel that almost make you wonder if you’ve stepped into an early AOD prototype. Only when you swim and run around a bit do you realize nothing has changed that much. There are just a few subtle substitutions in the standard TR game laws that have been made in keeping with the alteration from ancient temple to oil rig. For instance, ornate keys have been replaced by multi-colored swipe cards. Rolling boulders have been replaced by rolling barrels of toxic waste, and so on.
One element that hasn’t really changed, on the other hand, is the type of thug we get. We even get to see where they all sleep on this level. Although the thought of eight or nine of the big, burly mountains of lard all snoring away in that tiny corridor full of beds is enough to give me crabs. Bring on the divers already! Yes, divers. In slight contradiction to what I’ve just written above, there is at least one new enemy introduced in this level. It’s a kind of killer diver, or ‘frogman’ to give him a name I see a lot of people use. TR Frogmen dwell entirely underwater, use harpoon guns as their preferred weapon of choice, and judging by their rather erratic breathing, suffer quite badly from asthma attacks. It is genuinely quite creepy though to suddenly hear them coming after you when you previously had no idea there were any other people in the vicinity. I’d just like to know which comedian taught them how to do that stupid Irish jig on the surface of the water.
The second half of the level is mostly made up of swipe card fetching and assorted thug dispatching. It’s all good though, especially when the divers make their entrance. Also, bringing the player back round to the start halfway through serves to give the proceedings a sense of structure, and that’s jolly good too. (if I may say so). Now for the conclusion. Hmmmmmm. Ok, the offhsore rig is totally and utterly the dog’s bollocks. The end. 8/10
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Scores
Best part – The tricky navigation of the large room where we see divers for the first time
Worst part – Being forced to swim in manky green water for the second time in the game, and in a completely different part of the world, too.
Secrets – All three are pretty darn good. Even though it’s impossible to miss the second one, at least it gives is an opportunity to grab a rare whiff of fresh air. The third one is my favourite, however. Any secret that gives me two extra “up-to-no-gooders” to kill gets my vote.
The 100th link I came across when I typed “Offshore Rig” into the Google search engine
http://www.worldoil.com/InfoCenter/rig_intro.asp
*Flexes elbows*. God I hate yawning in the middle of the afternoon.
This level is most like.....
Diving area. It kinda reminds of me of the ending to Aliens too. Don't ask me why. I think it's something to do with the environment and the persistance of the air-raid siren early on
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