|
Review
“Did they ever discover why Hannibal Lector liked to eat his victims?”
- Skeet Ulrich, Scream
(Sorry London fans, but my order of preference has always been Nev/Sou/Lon)
Deceptively awkward pilgrimage through Australasian hellhole, the existence of basic human values paramount only to those unfortunate or stupid enough to get on the visitor’s list. Blue skies and Kew Gardens type greenery awash it may be, but this is a time and a survival system right out of the B.C age. Law and order is extinct and the dinosaurs aren’t, the bare notion of economy is still a distant dream, and the local football league has to rely on small orange stones to compensate for the lack of pigs in the region. The tomb raiding of this section is going to be intriguing, disturbing, and perhaps even a touch educational. Rock on…
This is another of those double-sided multi-route treks of the Ganges mould, but paths get merged a lot sooner here. It’s not even worth re-starting for the sake of the ‘full experience’. The first and most obvious route has you out in the open hunting for keys and enjoying the sunshine, where as the second sees you indoors and avoiding any number of Goonies style booby traps. The outdoor one is easier but less satisfying to complete. So, make your choice accordingly. Just bear in mind that if you take the indoor route you’re going to have to spend about two hours clambering around this crocodile infested cavern thing going this way and that just to ultimately get across to one side of the room from the other; South Pacific has plenty of bushes and it likes to beat around them, too.
The big gimmick of the Coastal Village is the presence of a group of hungry cannibals, the first and only time in the TR series we would see them. The Cannibals demonstrate just about enough variety in their attack strategies to make them interesting adversaries. Some charge you with a spear, others fire poisonous darts, and nearly all of them have a penchant for popping up behind you the moment you activate a switch. They practically always come at you in ones and twos, too, this despite the fact we can hear a big mob of them banging drums somewhere in the background for most of the level. It’s a bit like playing one of those old racing games with nothing but flat green land to either side of the road. In the background we can see mountains, but after a while we just know we’re never going to reach them. This is how it is with the mob banging the drums.
Ikea obviously haven’t yet got around to opening up a store in this region of the world, as none of the Cannibal ‘houses’ have any furniture whatsoever. One of them has a fire lit, and I guess this must almost make it the Buckingham Palace of the village. The Old Kent Road however is definitely the tiny little hut with quicksand in it. I’m harboring a bet that the market price for that place is not all that high. Strangely, the best property in the whole community (at least if you think about it) is the one given to the one legged prisoner. It’s high off the ground, it’s in a nice secluded spot, and it has a lovely view of the local swamp. The appearance of that prisoner incidentally makes for a delightful little FMV sequence. It doesn’t have any action in it, but the sight of Lara appearing to be emotionally moved by someone makes a nice change from her just doing her antagonist act. We would see no more after this of the endearing Australian with the grudge against mosquito-life, but his two minutes on screen here makes more impact on me than Scottish bloke wots-his-face did in the entire ninety of “TR:COL”.
Let’s go back to the hut with the quicksand inside it for a moment. Now you may have noticed that most TR games seem to have a pick-up that can’t actually be picked up. In TR1 there was the impossible to get health pack in the Palace Midas level. In TR2 there was the mysterious ladder/entrance thing at the beginning of Temple of Xian, as well as later on that same level a dubious small medi positioned in the middle of two moving, spiked walls. For TR3 we have a large medi this time placed at the back of a hut filled with quicksand, but that’s not all. Near the start of Coastal Village are two rope bridges stationed directly above your head, or if you took the Smuggler’s route you will actually be standing on the one that is lowest. Now if the highest up of these bridges constitutes an ‘area that can’t be reached’, then this level can proudly claim to have not just one unreachable perch but two. Fascinating stuff. The rope bridge is of more interest to me than the health pack, as this is something we just don’t know the origin behind. With the health pack in the hut the intention is obvious, to lure players into a one-off trap.
Other notable traps include a spiked gate thing that pops out of a wall, a fire grate that comes on beneath your feet if you activate a certain switch, and thatched hut roofs containing the very latest in spiked straw security. It’s very much a level with a theme of death running through it, whether this be suggestive (the cannibals), or in-yer-face (the traps). On the whole, though, the Coastal Village is just the appetizer for the main course of the South Pacific section, that being the Crash Cite. Weirdly enough, just about all of the individual sections on TR3 have a better second level than the first one. Strange but true. 7/10.
^Top |
|
Scores
The Canny Cannibal Convenience Store, Number 16, Coastal Village, South Pacific
Window plaque, special sale
Fingers – 2 pebbles each
Thumbs – 3 pebbles
Liver - 10 pebbles
Stuffed female head – 30 pebbles
Full Adult Male – 100 pebbles
(Warning – Shop lifters will be eaten!)
How in God’s name did I get here?
India – Lara begins on top of a huge enclosed slope. How she got there is a mystery for Jessica Fletcher and no mistake.
South Pacific – One minute we’re on the load game screen, next thing…..PLOP. Lara’s in a river and the level has begun.
London – She’s on the roof of a heavily guarded building, somehow. Did the secret Lara-copter drop her off or something?
Antartica – At last! An Intro! Thank god for small mercies!
If the Coastal Village level had been in AOD
Lara would have been caught by the cannibals at one point, if nothing else than for an excuse to stick another FMV in. I’m also guessing that a cut-scene of Eckhardt and his bald buddy (what the hell was his name?) would have made it in somewhere. “The final Obscura painting is somewhere beneath the village. Make the final preparations to eliminate the cannibal faction”……”Yes sir”.
Possible theories as to why there is an unreachable rope bridge in the Coastal Village level
- The level originally had an area up top that got cut from the final sketch.
- The bridge was included so a cannibal could sit on it and fire darts down at anyone using the ‘Smuggler’s bridge’, although if this is the case then the no-show of the actual cannibal can’t really be explained, unless he was scared of heights and bailed?
- The bridge was added to create intrigue, perhaps the most likely explanation, if also one that happens to be a little boring
- The bridge was included to add a bit of color to the scenery, another plausible but dull scenario.
- The bridge is the big clue as to where the “4 out of 3” comes from. Originally there was a secret passage that led up to that area up on top of the two adjacent hills, and this was meant to be a secret. However, for whatever reason it was omitted from the final game, and now the only evidence that it once existed comes to us via the “2nd rope bridge ghost”, who still thinking he has an official secret up there, gives off the standard chime whenever players are halfway through the level. Legend has it that only when over 95% of all TR players start regularly getting 4 out of 3, will the “2nd rope bridge ghost” finally be able to put himself into an eternal sleep and stop confusing everyone reading the stats screen.
The best part of the Coastal Village
The scare from the croc you get in the thin passage
Worst part
Realizing there is no way to get to the bottom of the waterfall.
Secrets
Uniquely I believe, it’s possible to get 4 out of 3 on this level and give yourself an ‘extra life’, so to speak, in your quest for reaching All Hallows. That said, the quality of the actual finds here is no better than average, although the first one does at least make use of an otherwise pointlessly large lake.
This level is most like
“Jungle”?
I'm easy on... sunday mornings, yeaaaahhh.
^Top |
