Tomb Raider II ditches the measured, procedural quality that made the first game special to make an action-heavy sequel, and while the results don’t compare to the first game, this is still probably the most the action-blockbuster direction for the series has ever paid off. This is a shotgun blast of a Tomb Raider game. Setting the oil rig levels and the warehouse levels aside, everything in here is cool as hell: the pseudo-James Bond cold open sequence at the Great Wall of China, the abandoned opera house, the temple full of monks in Tibet (the series’ first friendly NPCs!), the bizarre metaphysical space temple at the end – A+. Tomb Raider II isn’t the best game in the series, and it contains approximately 300% much combat as it needs, but the stuff that’s good here is really, really good.
The best sequence of levels in Tomb Raider II all center around the Maria Doria, a shipwreck lodged within a massive rock under the ocean. A clear sign that the Core Design team were into the Titanic craze surrounding the James Cameron movie, these levels set a decidedly haunting tone. I think there are four or so levels in the Maria Doria sequence, each one taking you deeper and deeper into the ship, starting Lara just outside the wreckage of the ship with nothing other than a diving suit, then progressing through the engine rooms, living quarters and into the captain’s cabin. While the original Tomb Raider went underappreciated for how vivid and dynamic some of its levels could feel, the quality of the visuals during these levels is undeniable. Once you encounter the collapsed hallways and you’re trudging through the ship at a sideways angle, looking up out of a window to see the open ocean, with all the deep blues of the ship and the worn, muddy reds of the furniture, the game starts to feel almost impressionistic.
Unlike the first game, though, anything nice I have to say about this game is complimented by the caveat that it is sometimes ridiculously difficult and obscure. After having played through the first game only occasionally turning to a guide to figure out where to go, I completed probably like half the levels in Tomb Raider II with a YouTube playthrough. It feels like Core Design got the impression that everyone who would buy a sequel to Tomb Raider would be like a hardline, expert Tomb Raider fanatic or something, which I am not. The game punishes you for not remembering the location of every switch, hidden passage and locked door – getting stuck on a puzzle is therefore bleak, because anything other than a perfect mastery of a level means you may as well be totally directionless.
Tomb Raider II is also the game that makes the best use of Croft Manor, which is an open-ended tutorial area where the player can explore and learn the controls. In the first game, Croft Manor was a linear sequence, but in the sequel it’s a fully featured space with its own hidden secrets, challenges and puzzles. It makes a re-appearance at the very end of the game, in which the remaining bad guys do a home invasion, shutting off all the power and converging on Lara in the middle of the night. It’s an amazing little twist, taking the tutorial area and giving the player a bunch of ammo and supplies to not only prove their mastery over the game, but also to reinforce how dangerous Lara Croft is in her own element. At least, it makes for a more dramatic use of the space than, say, blowing it up for pathos’ sake, which is what many of the later games do.
The best sequence of levels in Tomb Raider II all center around the Maria Doria, a shipwreck lodged within a massive rock under the ocean. A clear sign that the Core Design team were into the Titanic craze surrounding the James Cameron movie, these levels set a decidedly haunting tone. I think there are four or so levels in the Maria Doria sequence, each one taking you deeper and deeper into the ship, starting Lara just outside the wreckage of the ship with nothing other than a diving suit, then progressing through the engine rooms, living quarters and into the captain’s cabin. While the original Tomb Raider went underappreciated for how vivid and dynamic some of its levels could feel, the quality of the visuals during these levels is undeniable. Once you encounter the collapsed hallways and you’re trudging through the ship at a sideways angle, looking up out of a window to see the open ocean, with all the deep blues of the ship and the worn, muddy reds of the furniture, the game starts to feel almost impressionistic.
Unlike the first game, though, anything nice I have to say about this game is complimented by the caveat that it is sometimes ridiculously difficult and obscure. After having played through the first game only occasionally turning to a guide to figure out where to go, I completed probably like half the levels in Tomb Raider II with a YouTube playthrough. It feels like Core Design got the impression that everyone who would buy a sequel to Tomb Raider would be like a hardline, expert Tomb Raider fanatic or something, which I am not. The game punishes you for not remembering the location of every switch, hidden passage and locked door – getting stuck on a puzzle is therefore bleak, because anything other than a perfect mastery of a level means you may as well be totally directionless.
Tomb Raider II is also the game that makes the best use of Croft Manor, which is an open-ended tutorial area where the player can explore and learn the controls. In the first game, Croft Manor was a linear sequence, but in the sequel it’s a fully featured space with its own hidden secrets, challenges and puzzles. It makes a re-appearance at the very end of the game, in which the remaining bad guys do a home invasion, shutting off all the power and converging on Lara in the middle of the night. It’s an amazing little twist, taking the tutorial area and giving the player a bunch of ammo and supplies to not only prove their mastery over the game, but also to reinforce how dangerous Lara Croft is in her own element. At least, it makes for a more dramatic use of the space than, say, blowing it up for pathos’ sake, which is what many of the later games do.