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Review
For the second level running, Lara leaps down a bleak hole without first dropping her useless Catherdral Key to see how far down the bottom is. She then finds herself in some bizarro-furnace room surrounded by a flock of morose looking beastmen and a Geordie in a tribal mask. The surroundings might be fresh, but Lara’s confrontational approach to negotiating her way out of captivity is tried and worn. Brash, rude, or classy? Probably bears traces of all three that tone of voice. It also gives off a whiff of 'high maintenance', if all the proceeding FMV’s hadn’t already told us this. In fact, if Lara was Chinese her name would probably be "High-main", or "High-mein".
The Geordie, it transpires, has lost his face in a biological experiment gone Pete Tong, hence the mask. Now he and his buddies live underground, too fearful to go back out into the real world. I could tell that the Geordie was just about to reveal his childhood heroes as being Paul Gascoigne and Geoff from Byker Grove, but then High-mein interrupted him and he never got around to it. The price for High-mein being pointed in the direction of the young scoundrel behind the experiments is rather small-fry by her standards; she must fetch some embalming fluid from the nearby museum. Oh, and if she has time, some Gillette razors from local the off-license (for the beast-men).
I wanted to spend at least two paragraphs on the FMV because the level itself is very weak. It’s by far the worst of the Tomb Raider 3 'full length' levels and going some. I would much rather have had the smaller (but still better) All Hallows at this point in proceedings. Then Lud’s Gate could have been the bonus level and it wouldn’t seem so bad. My memory is distorted on this - However, I’m sure All Hallows was originally intended to be a main level during the development stages but then got ditched when either Thames Wharf or Lud’s Gate was invented (I can’t remember which of those two came in at the last minute). It's not easy to talk about Lud’s Gate and actually make it sound good. Just for fun I’ll give it a try....
- Lud's Gate contains a wonderful piece of stealth-work involving a museum guard and a scuba-diver. The task is so stealthy in fact; you will most likely bypass it completely without realising it was there. Now that's what I call stealth!
- Lud's Gate contains the exciting new underwater propulsion unit! Impractical and wayward, it’s a spluttering, whirring, nuisance to anybody hoping to make it back up for air. Still, this is good. Dying fifty times before you realise it's best to just swim everywhere is good for your character! I can honestly say I came away from this ordeal a better man!
- Lud's Gate contains a wonderful homage to the giant underwater statue from Sanctuary of the Scion. I say 'wonderful', because compared to the original it is utter tripe. You see, it would have been disrespectful on behalf of the new level to just go and produce something even more spectacular than its source of inspiration. Thrusting something vastly inferior in front of our eyes shows that Lud’s Gate has great humility and respect for classic games of the past.
Oh this is hopeless. I doubt I'm convincing anybody. The big problem with this level is its structure. High-mein bounds from one uninteresting room to another and always it seems in a perfectly straight line. There isn't the clever 'coming back on yourself' stuff from Aldwych, and on the odd occasion there is it's either pointless (handing over the fluid), or just not fun at all (swimming backwards and forwards). The whole exercise just feels very lazy and uninspired. There are scores of missed opportunities on behalf of the design staff, too...
When High-mein crawls through the long tunnel near the beginning, we sense that one of the future rooms we have to visit is directly below and to the left of us, probably the one where that tune comes on that was also prominent in Jungle and RX-Tech Mines, to name but two. Why not make the gap between the gratings so large that we might actually be permitted to view this room? Such teasing worked brilliantly in levels like City of Khamoon and Catacombs of the Talion. When High-mein tackles the long and tiresome underwater section, why not break up the torment that comes hand in hand with this bit by having a couple of divers humorously battling it out with the crocs? Missed opportunities.
"City" provides for more post-Aldwych disappointment, as High-mein emerges from an indescribable cross-section of leaps and tunnels to do battle with Sophia Lee, the brains behind the Geordie torture. Sophia Lee is basically Natla from TR1 all over again. Same personality. Same hairdo. It IS Natla, only reincarnated as a woman without the ability to drink Red Bull and sprout wings. Anyway, Sophia and High-mein exchange the customary FMV pleasantries, before both dash out onto the rooftops to have it out. Meow.
Sophia's weapon of choice is a electronic plasma gun (of a kind). Accurate and highly powerful, one smack in the mouth from this thing tends to leave you reeling. By contrast, High-mein's weapon of choice might as well be a water-pistol, because one thing I forgot to mention about Miss Lee is that she is completely invulnerable to guns, rocket launchers....Hell, even lobbing an atomic bomb in her direction would probably only make her do that stupid Tony-esque giggle. What's in that emerald rock stuff, anyway? Helium? Laughing gas? Give some to Set, I say. That would be funny
Yep, High-mein must use her wits and cunning to get out of the Sophia battle alive, not to mention half of that medipack supply you’ve been carefully building up. For me this meant shooting up the entire landscape until one of my bullets hit something that made laughalot scream and then die. I later discovered I had accidentally disrupted the electrical cables (or something). Of course, this wasn’t exactly what I told the forum the next time Joe Newbie was fed up of getting plasma-ized....
(Post made today, by Scottlee, 1.54pm, GMT)
"No no! What you need to do is think about the weapon Sophia is using. From this, a clever raider would work out that the only viable way to kill her is by electrocution. Now, with this in mind, hunt for something you can shoot or move which might make this a reality. That's what I did, Joe! Oh, and this should really have been posted in the TR3 forum, by the way, not in Tomb Raider Motion Pictures. Welcome to the forums!"
Level scores.....
Lud’s Gate - 5/10
City - 5/10
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