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Rise of the Tomb Raider: completed!

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I decided to play on. Ammo was a little depleted, but I had plenty of materials to craft arrows, and I was sure that soldiers would provide me with plenty of bullets. In fact, as I arrived atop the tower, I saw multiple ammo drops in any case, and started to run towards them.

I didn’t get there before the cutscene started. I am not averse to big end battles, as they can set the end of a game nicely. I don’t like huge difficulty spikes, and I don’t like when the skills required for the boss are completely different to those in the game as a whole. To a minor extent, these both applied here. Konstantin appeared in a helicopter, guns blazing, trying to get rid of Lara. Luckily Sofia was still at the trebuchet; unluckily she was unable to hit the moving helicopter. Instead, in a massive nod to realism, after she fired a blazing barrel towards the helicopter, I had to shoot that barrel when it was nearby, causing an explosion that rocked the flying menace. And I had to do that three times, because we all know that helicopters can survive two explosions. And between the helicopter’s appearances, the Deathless Dumbos and Trinity Tosspots all swarmed around the structure trying to kill me.

Luckily I soon found ways to avoid them – running away to an outer ledge, shooting the burning trays over the tops of their heads, and using poison and exploding arrows. It was intense, though, and I was glad to see the helicopter finally on fire and about to crash.

Into me. Into the tower. Oh dear.

So I end up in a burning room with Konstantin, who has obviously survived the crash, taking all my weapons. I have to avoid his machine gun fire and grenades, while running around finding tin cans to craft into explosives and then hitting him with my ice pick. Luckily there were some clear instructions on what I needed to do.

Eventually he submitted to multiple stab wounds, and I took my stuff back from him. And then he begged me to not leave him to die. I had a choice – there was the symbol over his head indicating a kill, but instead I just walked away.

And then the building collapsed on him anyway. Oh well.

Off to the Chamber of Souls to find the Divine Source, and there I find Ana who is desperate not to die. She has the Source, there is a fair amount of back-and-forth, the Deathless Dimwits appear in force and everything is going to be awful. Until Lara lifts up the Source over her head and smashes it. The Deathless become Dead, but so does Jacob, and everything is a bit sad. Game complete.

All being completed, I travel back to the geothermal springs valley to tidy up some loose ends, and hear some interesting post-game conversations. I may return at some point to find the secrets I missed, and complete the side missions left over, but this feels like a good time to stop.

Aero the Acro-Bat: diagonal attacks

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In the rash of character-based platformers following the rivalry of Sonic and Mario, there must have been many which were unfairly overlooked. Aero is not one of these; it sold well enough to get a sequel, so was not overlooked; and if it had been so it wouldn’t have been unfairly.

Maybe I am being a little harsh; I have only played the first five levels to far, but they are all in the circus and I am longing for some variety in the setting already. My main complaint is with the way that Aero attacks enemies, and controls in general. The control layout indicates that button A is reserved for “fire”, but I have found no way to actually fire anything. Instead, I am forced to use a drill-type attack that goes either diagonally down or diagonally up, and half the time doesn’t hurt the enemy at all (but still hurts me).

A great platform game lives or dies on the accuracy of the jumps and the momentum the character has. Aero is competent enough, but it’s not fun to control – plus there are frequently unavoidable deaths from going too fast or due to trampolines launching you into spikes off-screen. Luckily for present-day me, save states make this a lot more bearable.

Little Kitty Big City: not a great start

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When I first heard of Little Kitty Big City, in a Nintendo Indie showcase, I thought it looked fun – it was obviously inspired by the excellent Untitled Goose Game, but allowed you to play as a cat across a wider and more vertical area. The fact I had only heard of it at this point (in late 2023) rather than back in 2021 when it was first announced, in undoubtedly due to my bias to console games. But anyway.

The game is fine. The cat is well animated, but there’s an odd lag on the controls which makes it a bit finnicky to do anything. This is particularly disappointing given how graceful cats are when moving around – you’d hope that would translate to the game. In the announcement video linked above, you see the cat doing stuff like climbing up ivy and jumping into boxes, which doesn’t seem possible in the hour I’ve played so far. Instead you have the option of holding down the jump button to steer where you land, which glitches all over the place, onto the edge of ledges, and only gives an indication where you’ll end up.

There’s also little consistency on interacting with humans. Sometimes they will react to you jumping at them, dropping their phone or falling over. Sometimes they’ll just ignore you. The shopkeeper get very annoyed with me for knocking a bottle of jam off the top shelf, and picked me up and put me outside the shop – but then I walked back in and she gave me a stroke.

The missions to complete are varied but not overly inventive so far – scoring goals with footballs placed near them; knock flowerpots off walls; pounce on birds to collect feathers – but the difficulties I’m having with the controls overshadows the fun these could be. When getting the pink football around the corner to the pink goal, the ball randomly bounced off a wall into a puddle and then there was no way for me to get it – any contact with water sees the cat freaking out and jumping away. I had to wait until someone came along and kicked the ball out of the puddle, which was a couple of minutes later. While I thought that was annoying, it was nothing compared to when I fell off a wall into a puddle and the cat got wedged between the wall and a pipe, constantly jumping away from the water it was stuck in.

There’s fun to be had, investigating how the world reacts to you, but the glitches and controls are difficult to get past. I might wait and see if there’s an update soon.

Rise of the Tomb Raider: it’s not that lost

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Well, Jonah didn’t last long. Trinity had the atlas which meant they looked to see where the Divine Source was, and discovered it was under a glacier. A shootout saw Jonah badly injured, and Jacob demonstrated his marvellous healing skills. Turns out he’s a bit special. This set up the thrilling climax of the game – our objective is in the Lost City; I’m going in through the secret entrance, and Trinity’s going to try going in by force through the glacier. It’s a race against time.

Well, except it’s not, because the next urgent thing doesn’t happen until you reach the next checkpoint. But still.

I was warned about the Deathless Ones. I’d seen them briefly before, when running up a large statue of the Prophet which I’d caused to fall over, but the Lost City is where they protect. When I first heard the villagers talking of the Deathless Ones I must admit my eyes rolled – yet another game where you get to fight zombies – but having encountered them while progressing through the city they’re really just another faction of soldiers, with less advanced weaponry but better armour. Because of the checkpointing system, I spent a lot of time sneaking up on the enemies and killing them from behind, or using the handily-positioned fire jars to explode them. There were a couple of big fights where hiding was not an option, but even then using the bow meant that few got close enough to actually fight.

I fought through the lower city, using a trebuchet to break down a gate; I then found another gate which also needed to be destroyed, using two different trebuchets in the area. Lots of Deathless Ones abounded. I reached a tower, at the top of which is the Divine Source – and then Trinity broke through the glacier.

The last half hour has been action-packed, with Trinity and Deathless Dudes fighting each other and me climbing the outside of the tower. Sofia turned up to help, firing one of the trebuchets at the advancing Trinity soldiers. I am concerned that I’ve reached the end of the battle with severely depleted ammunition, although I can at least craft arrows using my stocks of wood and feathers. Only the last battle to go.

I do appreciate the signposting of the point of no return. I am now in two minds – do I travel back to another area to stock up with ammunition, or do I play through as the story demands, straight to what I assume to be the point at which Konstantin gets his comeuppance? Something to sleep on.

Rise of the Tomb Raider: a battle and a discovery

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I journeyed through the mountain and found the geothermal valley, where Jacob’s people live. This was a large area to explore, with some parts barricaded off with obtrusive spiked gates. After running some varied errands, including helping to reinforce guard towers, a big battle occurred with helicopters dropping waves of enemies, none of whom seemed to be able to kill Lara. They killed many others, it seems, but that was a pre-ordained conclusion, and I felt no sense of urgency while pushing through the linear path. Indeed, I knew there’d be no progress in action until I reached the next checkpoint, so with the sounds of gunfire and screams of torture around me I frequently went looking for coins or relics I’d passed, or spend time reading random documents left on the path.

Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider

While the game is overall relatively coherent, there is a clear distinction between different gameplay types. There are combat sections, exploration sections, and puzzle sections. The last two of these are slightly combined, with the need sometimes to climb on certain things to progress. The second one has the occasional danger from wildlife, but you can tell when this happens because Lara suddenly crouches and moves stealthily rather than just running as usual, and the music suddenly gets all exciting. Similarly, during the combat sections, once you have killed the last enemy, even if you aren’t aware it’s the last one, Lara will suddenly stand upright and the music will finish. At least this meant I wasn’t swimming under the ice for hours waiting to see if anyone was still there to shoot me.

I am compelled to continue through the story, partially because I am intrigued as to what the Divine Source may be, and partially because it will mean that I’ve unlocked all the equipment and abilities and I won’t, for example, spend ten minutes climbing up a wall and jumping between platforms to get to a cave entrance, only to find I need breathing apparatus to swim along the tunnel.

Speaking of which, guess what I’ve got now. I’d better go back and find that cave again.

Anyway, I have travelled into the cathedral and found the atlas, which isn’t a Collins reference book, but instead is a pentagonal dodecahedron which shines light through and projects a map of the city. That shows you where the Divine Source is, and a secret path to get there. Jacob seems to know already. I’ve also met up with Jonah, who was saved from the storms by Jacob’s people, but who was then captured by Trinity. I’m back off now to rescue him from the gulag.