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Review
After the overly compassionate and visibly fatigued Lara of the South Pacific, the pre-Aldwych FMV sees our modern day Boudicca back to her most cynical best. Her verbal sparring partner on the bell tower might make Larson seem like Socrates, but it’s hard not to raise a chuckle at lines like "a commendable work ethic", and "happy retirement". This is Lara being not Indiana Jones, as she was once so often compared to (but thankfully it seems, not so much these days), but that other globe-trotting hero, James Bond. One can almost visualize Sean Connery or Pierce Brosnan pulling off the exact same quips. If there is a regret about this FMV, it is only a selfish one ; we don’t get to see doomed goon crash down onto the street pavement coyote-style in a haze of a dust and with the accompaniment of a slow, shrill whistle. Can’t have it all.
Only a lunatic would jump down a dark hole without knowing how far down the bottom is, so we will give Che Croft the benefit of the doubt and assume that polluted, muddy water really does shine fluorescent green. Cue, not long afterwards, our first steps into one of the most disturbingly lifelike Tomb Raider levels ever designed. Incidentally, it might be manky, dirty, smelly, disgusting, disease-ridden, and crawling with rats, but I happen to think the current London underground system has character. - chuckle chuckle. Aldwych was probably ditched to make way for it because of its stupid, random ghost trains that seem to exist for the sole purpose of mowing you down in your prime. I can’t imagine that any commuter was late for work back in the days Aldwych was still thriving. If this historical interpretation is to be believed, all the yuppies had to do was step on the track and the train would turn up!
Disadvantages to our forefathers include a lack of waiting rooms, cafes, and toilets, but if your train turns up whenever you want it to then who needs them? Ticket-related utilities do make the final cut, and it is with this mucking about that a great portion of the level centres around. Using a ticket to pass the ticket barrier might sound easy enough, but first you have to use a penny with which to buy the ticket, and way back before that it is expected you must turn on the station’s electricity to get the penny (Yes, I had trouble grasping the electricity/penny logic, too). It would all be immaterial if Lara could just slip through one of those not very MASSIVE gaps either side of the ticket barrier. However, where as shooting homeless people carrying nothing more threatening than a fire brand is considered perfectly acceptable in the land of Croft, dodging a one pence tax is just far too un-ladylike by comparison.
Despite the emphasis on historical realism, some silliness does manage to creep in. One section has you randomly trying to bludgeon your way through a series of doors that have fruit symbols on them. And if you think the penny is to be the most outlandish of the level’s ‘keys items’, think again. Enter the Masonic hammer, surely the most bizarre tool ever used to open a locked door? Well, it is until you jump through a mystical curtain and pick up this weird yellow star thing. Oh heaven forbid, Core! And another thing ; if you’re going to have sets of spikes beneath ram-shackled floorboards in a deserted train station, you might as well go the full hog and have rolling boulders coming down the escalators. Yes really.
One of the better sequences has you sprinting around two corners to beat a cluster of timed doors. Waste of time really, though. All the loot in the room has already been taken. Who by? Nobody knows. Another major plus point is the way that every now and then you hear the nearby rumbling of a ghost train. I think this happens in two set places, and provides for good atmospheric nerve jangling. You can take or leave the spiked ceiling that lowers down onto you. Personally I find it tiresome, this being the third game in the series. Others do not. It depends entirely on you. And I think that just about covers most of the stuff inside Aldwych. One important point remains to be said....
This is a truly fantastic Tomb Raider level, not because of its individual components (so much), but because of the way everything fits together so compellingly. I love it when Lara has to re-visit earlier parts of the level through holes in the ceiling she/you never previously knew existed. I also love playing a level that has a large degree of atmosphere, and on the score Aldwych is the finest creep-show since the Floating Islands. Now what score should I give it? 10/10, I hear you suggest? I concur.
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