Tomb Raider - Colosseum

An excellent level with perfect placement. After the non-linear Lost Valley, Tomb of Qualopec and St. Francis Folly we get a linear level to mix things up. However, it's one of those "linear progression in an open, interconnected space" levels which preserves a sense of player-directed exploration in the first playthrough. The game has been ramping up the levels in scope, size and openness and despite being the first linear level in while, it continues that momentum by being the largest-scale level so far. I remember feeling the levels getting bigger and better for a surprisingly long stretch of the game. I kept wondering how the game was going to outdo itself this time, and somehow it would, up until the end of the Greece chapter just as the constantly increasing scope was starting to get exhausting. The levels of TR are expertly paced. The spectacle of first walking into the colosseum, an area bigger than the draw distance, accompanied by the music is brilliant. The colosseum is a perfect historical structure to translate into a level. There is a reason it was constructed the way it was, it served specific purposes, and as such this feels like the most logically and realistically constructed space in the game. There's the stands where people watch, the pit where people fight, the basement where the animals are kept, the hypogeum (the tunnels that serve as the backstage) and the gallery where the emperor (or in this case King Midas) would watch. All that's left to do is dictate a path that winds through all of these locations and that's exactly what they did: making sure that path would bring you back through areas you've been to to make it all feel less like a game level and more like a real space. And there are so many sensible choices in terms of challenge; of course you fight lions in the arena, of course there are lions in the cages, of course there's a mechanism to lock the cells (used for a puzzle), and of course there's a locked door in the gallery (presumably Midas had the key). This isn't the only level that succeeds in regards to depicting a sensible, "realistic" place, but I'm not sure if any succeed to the same degree as Colosseum except perhaps Cistern. The rest feel at least a touch more gamey. Shame the Colosseum isn't Greek. This level also has strong connective tissue to the next level; the passage to King Midas' palace is found in the gallery where the King would sit, behind a locked door because obviously he doesn't want just anyone to come in. It's odd that the passage is underwater... You could hypothesize that the King had an affinity for water since his palace was built atop the cistern, which requires gold to access. Perhaps he was in charge of distributing drinking water to the people. It's not hard to theorize about the layout of the Peru levels and the story it tells either, but I think it is to do the same for Egypt. Regardless I think Greece is the strongest in this regard. Even this deep in, the game is still able to surprise me with how far Lara can jump. I remember seriously doubting I could make the jump at 10:30. I think the trick here was that the target was a tile lower than I was which adds like another half-tile of distance to the jump arc. I think this is the first time the game asks for a sprinting jump to a lower elevation. It's a neat way to make progression feel obscure even though the right way is staring you in the face. I remember not considering it an option until I couldn't find anywhere else to go. Even without the change in elevation, the length of Lara's sprinting jump is deceptively long. This benefits areas that you re-explore from different heights; at ground level, looking around at the places above you, it's very easy not to see how things might connect: things look too far apart. I mostly give a pass to the Pierre fights, despite their jank, because of how charming the concept is. Since cultural sensitivity wasn't much of a priority in the 90's I'm surprised they didn't make your rival tomb raider Japanese, and have him disappear with a ninja smoke bomb once you've done enough damage. It certainly would have been more clear what's happening, and more effective than having the player intuit that they're supposed to let him run offscreen to despawn. I bring it up here because it really doesn't work well in this level. It turns out letting him leave the draw distance isn't necessarily considered offscreen. I've let him run away into the distance, only to find him still running around aimlessly minutes later, evidently because the game never registered him as offscreen. It's cheap that he can still hit you even though the fight is over. As the last post-completion run, I'm of course happy with my performance. The only snafu is at the end where I pull a block instead of pushing. It keeps me up at night. I didn't find any of the secrets my first run, and while I found one this time, I didn't bother with it because I couldn't reach it consistently.