Tomb Raider 2
has always been a very interesting game to me. I can remember getting
easily confused and frustrated with the complex levels in the game
(Damn you, Opera House!)
and resorting to cheats to skip the level (often resulting in me
accidentally exploding Lara...which made me burst into tears). Now,
15 years after I started playing it, when I finally found some time
for myself, I got around to completing this game (after completing
the first Tomb
Raider)
and I am glad I didn't let my negative childhood experience interfere
with what I have come to find, though flawed, a pretty enjoyable game
(the first will always be my absolute favourite). Sure, I had some
help with strategy guides, but I'd like to think my adult logic has
helped me this time around as well.
So, this game (in terms of both graphics and storyline) is vastly
different from the first. For one, this is the first game where we
can see Lara's plait (or braid, if you prefer), instead of the weird
cut-off bob in the first game. Her figure is more realistic,
especially her breasts, which in the first game were pointy and in
this game are round. Her movements are somewhat advanced, she can now
roll in the air and light flares in dark areas. There's also some
awesome new weapons, such as a grenade launcher, M15 gun, automatic
pistols and there's the harpoon, which you may as well not have, it's
pretty useless as far as I'm concerned. Level wise, some may argue
that this game isn't really 'tomb-y' enough. The only 'tomb' related
level is Temple of Xian, but if you consider the shipwreck Lara
explored in the underwater levels, that could be considered a tomb of
sorts, although certainly not in the conventional sense. There's
still a lot of different locations to explore like the first game
such as China, Italy (Venice, to be exact) and Tibet and there are
still ledges, blocks, boulders, switches and keys and everyone's
favourite; the spikes and the developers being ever so kind, decided
to treat us with some broken glass this time around, too, which is
instant death if you fall on it.
This game is a lot more difficult than the first, so without being
familiar with the format and controls of the original Tomb Raider
game, you may struggle with this one. You do however get to practice everything in Lara's Home, where you get to run around her
gigantic mansion while her butler keeps offering you tea (really,
though? Obviously I'm not going to want to drink tea halfway through
an assault course). The puzzles are somewhat harder, and from the
third level onward, you may find yourself getting frustrated and
annoyed, resorting to a guide or even cheat codes to help you
through. The original Tomb Raider game, for me, started
getting hard at the Palace Midas level (level 7), so you could
get almost halfway through the first game before it became a real
challenge.
Opera House, the third Venice
level and fourth overall, is the level I struggled with. It would
have been far easier to complete had it not been for the constant
string of enemies. I will say that there are a ridiculous amount of
Marco Bartoli thugs in this game, sometimes you trigger three at
once, which take a lot of your health, so of course medi packs are an
essential, but in Opera House, you may not have an extensive
collection thus far, which is what makes it so difficult. Every time
I complete this level, my health bar is at the lowest, beeping away
in the corner of the screen and flashing red. Maybe it's my
technique, but in this level, it pays to have your guns out at every
corner. And that really goes for most of the levels from this point
onwards. And of course, there is the obligatory floating islands
level (creatively named Floating Islands),
where if you don't know where you are going, you will fall into
oblivion and die. But once you get past that, it is a pretty cool
level with the introduction of stone enemies, which slowly fly
towards you and upon death, fall apart.
My favourite part of this game is the underwater levels (levels 7-10)
which explore ship wrecks and this is where we come across sharks and
eels, and even some more flame throwers, making me grateful that
there are several pools of water. It was nice to see a costume change
in this game to suit the environments she would be in (we see another
change when we reach the Tibet levels). The loud orange and blue
colour scheme was oddly calming and it was a genuinely surprising
environment considering, again, it's not a conventional tomb, which
did make me re-evaluate the definition of the word. I found the
puzzles to be challenging, and not in an overly-complicated way, but
for the first time ever playing through this game, I actually wanted
to figure the challenges out without resorting to the guides. The
music, a booming heartbeat, is perfect for setting the atmosphere of
these levels.
The Tibet levels (levels 11-14) made
Lara change into an awesome bomber jacket, and if you didn't struggle
with the earlier levels, this is where you may start to. The
snowmobile, while awesome, can become instant death if you land at
the wrong angle or fall down a pit. There's also a ridiculous part of
the first level, Tibetan Foothills,
where after picking up a key, a thug comes along and runs you over on
one of Marco Bartoli's fancy black snowmobiles, which is pretty
annoying. Barkhang Monastery
is an interesting level, the monks help you, but you really have to
be careful not to shoot them when your enemies show up, because for
some annoying reason, Lara targets them, and it gets very messy when
they're all attacking each other. It pays to stand back and watch and
only intervene if the monks don't manage to kill them. The subsequent
levels introduce us to a new breed of antagonist; yetis. Now these
terrified me as a child, I skipped Catacombs of the Talion
because I was too scared to go down the when the yeti was angrily
howling at me. The last snow level was pretty forgettable, but the
weird giant chicken boss was pretty funny.
After these levels, you are pretty
much coming to the end of the game. Temple of Xian
is a very long and complicated level, with spiders and dodgy traps
and annoyingly, more springboards (as seen in the previous level).
It's a trap a minute, so you need to expect danger with each step and
have a lot of medi packs, otherwise you might have a bit of trouble
getting through this game. You also have to have jumping through mid
air perfected at this point, or you may struggle to reach compulsory
parts of the level and despite being good at this technique if I do
say so myself, sometimes she just doesn't seem to do it. After the
Floating Islands
level, you get to fight the Marco Bartoli dragon, which is pretty fun. You get
plenty of water to hop into if you catch on fire. But this is not the
last of it, once Lara is at home and settled with her new artefact,
more of Marco Bartoli's thugs come with their
bats and guns and dogs to take it back. You only get your shotgun in
this level with only three medi packs (you have to unlock her
cupboard, conveniently at the side of her bed) to top your health up
with so you must be careful, as there are way too many of them with
guns. But once you've completed that, you get a nice clip of Lara
beginning to undress for a shower, before telling you nicely to piss
off before shooting the camera.
Overall, despite its flaws (excessive number of enemies, sometimes
awkward controls, lack of conventional tombs), it has an original,
interesting concept and it's part of the franchise that really
changed the way we play games today. It is a thought-provoking,
challenging game that although exceptionally difficult, makes us feel
proud for being able to power through it.
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