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Review
Long before Kurtis Trent was even a twinkle in his made up mother’s eye, controversy in the TR series already existed tenfold thanks to the “alternate route” system deployed by TR3, first seen here in level The River Ganges (which in future shall be referred to as “TRG”) It was meant to give the players more choice, more freedom, and a more satisfying feeling of exploration, but did it succeed in doing so? Well, no.
More choice?
When I first went through TRG I just bombed through the level without even realising there was an alternate route. I didn’t make any sort of choice. I think I took one look at that stretch of water separating the monkey route from the neutral bit of territory near the beginning and figured there was no way across, hence my jumping back on Lara’s green mobile and going the more obvious other way. A choice made I had not. Now if the designers had put some signposts in, things might have been different....
Well perhaps I'll have to wait a bit longer in my bid to join Crystal Dynamics as art designer
More freedom
What? If anything there’s even less freedom. With two maps running side by side, each one has had to be compressed to a thinner size than what it normally would be in order to get them both in the same level. This results in large periods of play spent either hugging rock faces on tight ledges or inserting keys in ultra thin corridors.
A more satisfying feeling of exploration
Well no, because if we want the full TR experience here we’ve got to play the level twice over.
Anyway, enough of that for the time being. Let’s look at the content of the level, because that’s of an awful lot better standard than the overall structure, despite the size restrictions. Proceedings begin with Lara escaping the Temple Ruins via a small tunnel, playing Dodgeball with a number of very heavy looking rocks as she does so. Predictably enough, none of them hit her. Meanwhile, Whadayacallhim (Thanks to Wantafara for that piece of genius btw. I love it) is making a break for it and disappearing down the river on the type of perfectly put together raft you only see in video games.
No worries, though, because there just happens to be a fully serviced, fully fuelled, abandoned jungle buggy sat conveniently over by the rock face where none of the falling bits of rock could get at it. A buggy with a brain. Brilliant. Nobody quite knows where it came from, and by the end of level and I can never quite remember it ends up, either. The buggy is the third TR vehicle to date, and easily the worst of the three. It seems to me like a cheap rehash of the snowmobile from the previous game, only without the cool machine guns built into the side. There aren’t even any large open spaces you can roam around in on it and have some fun.
The Ganges River itself is basically a long, twisting, one way trip to hell, at least if you happen to fall in it. Where as in previous TR games you could usually paddle around with your arm bands on to your hearts’ content should you have happened to fall in the water, doing so in this game more often than not either whisks you off to somewhere you have no choice in going, or freezes you to death. Doctor Scott says - “TR3+water=bad”. This equation comes into play most of all when you spend an hour and a half going off on an expedition to find secret #1.
So which is the most fun of the two routes on offer then, the one with the piranhas or the one with the banana’s? I’d say the latter, because you get to find keys and shoot things. The buggy route is all about split second timing and it feels a bit restricted. It also feels shorter. Unfortunately, if you want all the secrets then that’s the one you’re forced into doing. For some reason it’s been made impossible to do one route and then backtrack and do the other.
After the level’s over we move onto the Caves of Kilwaya, keeping up this section’s cycle of switching you from indoors to outdoors every time there’s a load-game screen. Kilwaya is unique in Lara’s history for any number of reasons, most noticeably the way that practically the entire level is set out in the form of a pure maze format. It’s also the first time in the series we get what could be labelled as an ‘end of section boss level’. The Dragon’s Lair I don’t count because it’s more of an end of game boss level than an end of section one.
Now here’s an example of how the existence of multiple routes actually works. I can’t put my finger on why that is, it just feels more appropriate for Kilwaya to have alternate routes than for Ganges to have them. Some people find the practice of Lara running around a dark and dingy maze to be tiresome and frustrating I am not one of these people. I used to be fascinated with mazes as a child. I loved to draw them, solve them, and even just think about them. In fact, I was a slightly disappointed man when this level ended as abruptly for me as it did. I could have been given a Kilwaya the size of Aldwych and not been perturbed in the slightest. It’s not that I’m especially good at mazes. I just love going through them. In that respect, I can’t critically review TR’s answer to Labyrinth in an all that unbiased fashion. Anyway, mazes are mazes. You either like them or you don’t.
A quick mention for our friend the rafts man before I wrap up. Now this guy’s a bit of an enigma. One minute he’s Joe geek, next he’s Meryl Streep, next he’s an extremely poor Meryl Streep, and finally he’s some sort of deity with the ability to throw fireballs whilst at the same time entertaining us with his stupid laugh. Good on the majority of us for not finding it all that hard in quickly shutting him up. Thanks for the kryptonite, mate. Goodbye. TRG (7/10), TCOK (8/10).
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