Tomb Raider

I have now finished playing Tomb Raider - Anniversary. It was great fun! Obviously I played on easy mode, and since I generally suck I made frequent use of those handy youtube videos... I could have done it without the help, but then it would have taken me twice as long. Plus all those broken game pads and mice that would have come out of it. So I cheated.

Now, the game didn't get easier by the fact that I learnt (somewhat) to do the dodge/headshot move at the second last boss, that big ugly blob with the stomp attack (except he does it with his but). Just like in PoP the limited camera rotation is the main cause of numerous Lara Croft deaths. As I remember it from Sands of Time the Prince usually jumps in a fixed direction depending on which button you press. Well, Lara Croft does not. When you're jumping around or swinging in a rope, trying to avoid spinning blades and fire, and you get to a corner the camera angle changes - without you noticing it! One second pressing left arrow when the wall is on the right hand side would make her jump horizontally out from the wall in a 90 degree angle, and the next the game decided that since she reached the corner the camera turned 90 degrees and you have to press the up arrow to make the same jump. And, there is no quick save, so if you're unlucky that jump was at the very end of a checkpoint sequence.

The other main cause of Lara Croft deaths is my general suckiness, which can make even Lara Croft seem clumsy. Once, for instance, I was standing at a pillar or bridge or whatever and at the bottom there was a pool. Quickest (and safest) way to get down is to jump into the water. Since I had (finally) mastered the swan-dive I had to use it. So Lara jumps head first down towards the water and... hits a ledge head first. I had jumped too far and reached the wall. Surprisingly she survived that one.

Then there was the machine guns on the Sphinx' head. By then I had downloaded a trainer (damn Centaurs) and it had a somewhat quirky quicksave. It worked, as long as there was absolutely no solid objects between that position and the current. Luckily, the Sphinx was one of the few of those places. I lost count on how many times she fell off that thing before I realized that I was jumping a fraction of a second too early for the grappler to work. But it made for some... interesting images. Once she actually bounced almost all the way back up.

The only place I got stuck was, to put it mildly - extremely annoying! First, you had to kill two flying mutants. Which is usually quite easy, except these threw fireballs that pushed you off the ledge and down into a lava sea. Once you'd killed those you had to reset a clockwork by shooting at a target - easy enough. Then you had to, in a perfect flow, 1) jump to a slope and 2) quickly jump back to grab a bar 3) jump to a second bar and instantly change direction and jump at once to 4) grab a ledge, shimmy around it fast as hell and jump backwards (remember that camera thing I told you) to 5) another bar and then jump backwards to 6) use the grappler and then 7) jump out from the wall and use the grappler again and then, finally, 8) jump and reach a ledge, then you can shimmy around and jump up to the next platform without hurry. If you do this to slowly the rings for the grappler goes into the walls and you die.







So how long did I spend trying to do that? Not very. I am quite aware of my limitations and quickly realized that if I wanted my laptop to survive our 6 month's anniversary I had to cheat my pants off. So I downloaded some save files. That was the only point in the game where I had to take to such extreme measures.