Meagen
10-07-09, 07:53
When the first Tomb Raider came out, I read about it in my then-favourite games magazine. (This was so long ago, the CD full of demos was sold separately because not everyone wanted it.) This magazine had "walkthroughs" that were 1) beautifully written, in first person from the perspective of the game character, 2) massively unhelpful to anyone trying to actually play the game. They were basically descriptions of the story with mentions of a few puzzles dropped in.
I've since thrown out my old gaming magazines to make room for new stuff, but I can still remember parts of it. The part about the Colosseum which went "to get to the royal box I had to drop down into the spiked pit" (which is a massive shortcut that I could never get to work, but okay), and the following about Palace Midas:
"To proceed, I had to find three lead bars. The first two were easy to find, but the third was a problem. To obtain it, I had to risk an extremely dangerous jump from the highest point of the aqueduct. I jumped parallel to the structure, trying to land behind a stone on the lower level. I found myself in an alcove with a passage, beyond which lay the important third bar."
I'll skip over the fact the walkthrough never mentions the torch room, which is a much more difficult puzzle than the walk around the level, and concentrate on the jump. I don't know how the author came up with that one. Is it even possible? Every time I've tried it I ended up landing on the boulder and slipping off to certain doom.
I've since thrown out my old gaming magazines to make room for new stuff, but I can still remember parts of it. The part about the Colosseum which went "to get to the royal box I had to drop down into the spiked pit" (which is a massive shortcut that I could never get to work, but okay), and the following about Palace Midas:
"To proceed, I had to find three lead bars. The first two were easy to find, but the third was a problem. To obtain it, I had to risk an extremely dangerous jump from the highest point of the aqueduct. I jumped parallel to the structure, trying to land behind a stone on the lower level. I found myself in an alcove with a passage, beyond which lay the important third bar."
I'll skip over the fact the walkthrough never mentions the torch room, which is a much more difficult puzzle than the walk around the level, and concentrate on the jump. I don't know how the author came up with that one. Is it even possible? Every time I've tried it I ended up landing on the boulder and slipping off to certain doom.