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Review
Once we’ve witnessed fire and brimstone having a rather detrimental effect on the rodent and crocodile populations, the opening FMV cuts to the hub of a small science expedition led by a rather flakey sounding Scotsman. The snowy terrain all around could easily be the landscape of Stirling or Hamilton on a cold winter’s afternoon (and believe me I’ve seen both), but future game dialogue tells us we’re in Antartica, that place that’s famous for…..being snowy. Not long after we join the scene, a mix-up in communications reminiscent of Tommy Boyd and Christian Dailly on a good day, result in a dramatic explosion. The dust settles to reveal a mysterious gravestone. “This place has a busy history”, the Scot remarks incredulously. What, one gravestone for the whole country? I’d say that suggests the place has rather an uneventful history, but maybe that’s just me.
The connection at this point between Antartica and the disease riddled belly of the Indian jungle isn’t clear, but India is where we the start game proper. The load-game screen shows us a picture of a cute looking monkey in the top right hand corner of the screen (as well as the token shot of Lara considering the entrance of a temple), and then we’re away. Here we go. It’s time to go raiiiiiiiiiiiiding. Ok, please pretend I really didn’t just do that.
Our golden girl has been doing some serious training since the last mission. She now has three brand new abilities she didn’t have before. Most useful of these is the sprint. No longer do we have to plod from one side of a level the other at the speed of a spaceman bouncing across the surface of the moon. The introduction of the monkey-swing and the crawl are somewhat slightly less desirable, as both tend to have the opposite effect to the sprint and slow the game up. This especially applies to the crawl, which seems to be me to serve the sole purpose of allowing pervs to get more glimpses of Lara’s arse. In this first level, the use of both the sprint and the crawl have been made compulsory so the player gets used to their availability. The monkey swing however strangely remains absent for the entire first section. Weird.
As well as new aspects to get to grips with, plenty of old ones still remain. You don’t have to walk fifty yards in this opening level, for instance, before a rolling boulder trys to flatten you. The things seems to exist wherever in the world Lara just so happens to be at the time. I swear she probably could go to a children’s tea party in Barnet, and a boulder would probably appear at the top of the stairs whenever she trundled off to the toilet. Spikes are also littered around ‘Jungle’ in abundance, the basic staple it seems for all games of this genre. TR3 also sees the return of secrets, levers, tigers (still seeking revenge on humanity for having had cheesy grins drawn onto them for the first game), keys, and most bizarrely of all, zip-lines, which appear to be exported by Croft enterprises not only to China and big floating islands in the sky, but also to the jungles of India. Who signs for these things on the other end remains a mystery, though.
Progression is more turgid here than in the previous games, the action more stop/start. An increased quote of blackened out areas contributes to this, as does the noticeably improved attention to graphical detail. It isn’t all down to the crawling you have to. Occasionally falling victim to “half a ton of mud-slide” doesn’t help either, but I rather like this new addition. It’s a shock when you appear to fall through the floor because you thought you were moving onto a solid surface and it turned out to be quicksand. Moving around in the stuff is welcomely unnerving. Are you stepping into a shallow patch or one that will swallow you whole? You won’t know until you try! Coolness. You know I’m dying to do a Pierre/Larsson sketch in relation to this, but I’m going to try and resist (“Errrr, boss!”)
The area design is clever enough to evoke discussion points aplenty. Concluding the level with its opening visible in the distance is rather effective, and makes me wonder if there is any way to get across to there (and back again) without drowning. I shouldn’t imagine there is, but has anyone tried out every single combination of routes through that giant quicksand pool? Who knows? Maybe there’s a way to complete ‘Jungle’ in less than a couple of minutes. Unlikely, but not impossible until someone tells me they’ve tried every which way across that mud bar flying (or by using stilts).
A decent adventure on the whole, and one with a strangely relaxed atmosphere (even the easiest level of all time, the ‘Caves’ from TR1, had eerie music implemented into it to unsettle you). You almost feel as though this level was designed and written during somebody’s lunch hour, or sketched from the comfort of a plastic sunbed in the middle of an indoor swimming pool. Where usually there would be unnerving orchestral chimes sounding off every time you approach danger, here we get the pleasures of a chilled out jungle beat. Some of the monkeys are so taken in by the aura of relaxation they don’t even bother to attack you. Beautiful if limited. 8/10.
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Scores
Best part - Exploring the indoor temple part of the level
Worst part - The slide at the beginning is a bit naff
Secrets - Woah, 6 of them! The first one is so secret you can’t actually find it unless you’re such a bad player you jump and miss the slide completely (Bad) I like the second one. It’s sensible and in a cool place to try and get to (Good). The third is too obvious (Bad). The fourth is cleverly hidden amongst the overgrown bush and fungi, kind of like the third secret in the Caves level on TR1, ironically (Good). The fifth is superbly hidden inside a giant log, and is really hard to find (Good). Number six can be spotted easily next to a hanging boulder, but is by no means a giveaway (Good). 4/6 good ones.
This level is most like - The Aztec zone on the Crystal Maze
Soap - Slippy
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