《古墓丽影8：地下世界》竞速通关，作者： Jarek 'j.calling.2bad' Hanzelka，通关完成时间: 0:25:26，2009年02月20日发布。利用了游戏跳关BUG，分成12段进行录制，是目前最快纪录。
Author's comments:
Hello and welcome to Tomb Raider Underworld speedrun comments. This is my first complete speedrun here on SDA, but I can pretty much promise it is not the last one.
Since the demo version of this game was released, couple of passionate players already managed to find some generally cool stuff within the game (including mine truly), such as bunch of shortcuts, bugs, useful glitches and even several ways to break the limits of the demo and explore entire area. Luckily, the full version didn't come anyhow fixed and not even that large patch released soon after didn't seem to fix anything from the useful half of all the glitches of the game, and so it didn't come as a surprise that once the full version of the game came, the same group of people managed to find different uses of the old tricks found in the demo version, but also completely new stuff. Most notably, few of the chosen ones found a ways to rape this game to almost nothing. So what did I do? I was planning to run the game from the very beginning, but I decided to wait until the game is raped as much as it can be (which I helped to a bit too). So, let's get it going.
First of all, I'd like to give my special thanks, before I forget them:
•Tl2ophy - for finding a way to skip half of the game
•Soul - for finding granade fall cancel trick, for recording the huge-and-cool glitch in Arctic Sea and for finding the OoB spot from which it's possible to enter the underwater temple, and for couple little shortcuts.
•Lady_eu - for finding the huge-and-cool glitch in the Arctic Sea
•MMAN - for pointing out the thread about the huge-and-cool glitch in the Arctic Sea
•xRikux89 - for raping almost entire Mexico and for plenty other minor shortcuts and tricks AND tips
•Storm - for his glitchless run, which disappointed me a bit, and forced me to at least consider giving a try to a glitched run
•Niepanh - for couple of his/her runs for this game, from which I used two routes (only with few slight improvements)
•And then to everyone who's been supportive, to guys from tombrunner, and to all the verifiers, who accepted the run.
•And of course thanks to everyone, who I forgot to mention (and sorry if I did).
Now that it's done, it's time to share some general notes:
•Sprinting is the fastest motion in the game (who would've thought, huh?). When Lara gets exhausted, swan diving or jumping until her energy returns is the best bet.
•Lara's weapons magically reload themselves just by hosltering and redrawing (just like in previous CD Tomb Raiders), which is actually pretty faster than the actual reloading animation.
•Lara's health is fully restored after anytime-anyplace reload.
•Swan diving from a survivable height seems to cause less damage than regular jumping.
•When jumping normally from a higher height (in fact any survivable height), the stumble animation can be cancelled by simply holding down sprint+forward keys during the fall.
•Unlike in Legend, here the granades are sticky, which actually makes them easier to use (unless Lara instead of throwing them just waves her other free hand - yep, it really does happen).
•The camera and Lara herself are your worst enemies in this game.
•Walljumps can be extended by swan diving between the two walls.
•There is one and the same key used for interact command and kick command (this gets utterly frustrating from time to time).
I also thought you might be intersted in all the tricks that were actually found, and how many of those were used in this run. Here they are:
•Slope bug - In Thailand, you can sprint up one slope and with precisely timed kick get higer on the slope and with another precisely timed jump get on top of it. This is very minor and it can be used only in that one location, which just happens to be one of the locations totally bypassed by Tl2ophy's shortcut. - USELESS -
•Crouch drop bug - This one is a lovely glitch allowing Lara to fall down any height and survive without any health loss. Used three times in the run. - USEFUL -
•Delayed swandive - This isn't really necessary, as regular swandive provides the same function (that is rolling into thin air and giving enough of time to jump after the roll), but it makes such tricks a whole lot easier (in fact, it makes them possible - I highly doubt there is a person that'd be able to pull off these tricks with regular swandive. It sure would be faster, but I dare to say it would be one success in a million of unsuccessful attempts). Used twice in the run. - USEFUL -
•Granade fall cancel - This is both an alternative to crouch drop bug for console players (because crouch drop bug works only on PC version), but it also is the key to rape ENTIRE outdoors area of Mexico. It's tough as hell, but god damn worth it. Used once in the run. - USEFUL -
•Enemy Stucking - There are few ways to force group of enemies to gather at some place and get stuck in there, which sometimes allows you to either kill them without ever getting hit by them in return, or it allows you to simply ingore them and do what you have to do without taking them out. However, everytime it's possible to free them from being stuck - in Thailand, if you fall along certain wall and land on a certain spot, the group of tigers will gather behind Lara but won't attack her, as long as she doesn't move, so she can kill them without them reacting anyhow. In Thailand, it's useless, since this area is bypassed completely with one shortcut (oh wait, entire Thailand is bypassed by the half-of-the-game skip shortcut, actually). But, in Mexico, there is a spot where group of spiders gather by Lara's bike and are stuck in there as long as Lara doesn't fire her weapons or approach them. The bad thing is, I have *NO IDEA* why they get stuck in there, but it seems like it has something to do with reloading from a certain checkpoint and being extremely lucky afterwards. It's used in the run, so for more details, just keep reading :-P. - KINDA USEFUL -
Ok, that's pretty much everything I can tell you about the game itself. Now let's take a closer look on the segments:
Prologue
No Illusions (Croft Manor) - 1:09
•Segment 01
•Nothing to write here, really, as this is just simple straight run through.
•Segment 02
I segmented the level here, because both shortcuts used are fairly random.
00:00:58 - Riku found out that you can swandive over this "fire hill" from the left side, but I never managed to pull off his method, and so I had to find my own. This handling is not only slightly faster than his, but it also is a lot easier. As a shortcut, it can save up to 10-20 seconds, because unlike in previous CD Tomb Raiders, pushing movable blocks in Underworld is a *VEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERY* slow process.
00:01:02 - If you're lucky here, Lara will start some standing animation just before the floor breaks, which prevents her from falling, and eventually can save about 2 seconds. I wasn't that lucky.
00:01:15 - The infamous half-of-the-game skip. Normally, you're supposed to jump to the ground, thus triggering a cutscene, which would lead to Mediterranean Sea. After finishing that, you would get to Coastal Thailand. After finishing THAT ONE, you would get to Croft Manor again to go through the events that happened just before the explosion in the beginning of the game. As you may guess now, at that point you would go through the same stuff as you did in Prologue, except that after jumping to the ground here and after triggered cutscene, you would still be in the manor and now would have to use those ledges to get to the control room. So, I simply jump at those ledges immediately in Prologue, and guess what - the trigger of that nice cutscene with Dopplehoe *AND* of Mexico is there :D. Now, in order to pull this one off, you most likely must perform delayed swandive (as described in tricks list) and then jump from mid-air in the right direction (which requires pretty much precise timing). Now, again, if you're lucky as I was NOT, Lara would grab the higher ledge straight away, which would save her from one jump-climbing animation (which, for some reason, also is kinda slow - not by itself, but Lara pauses for unreasonable period of time between each jump-climb). Instead of this tricky method, you can also jump over the nearby "fire hill" just as I did previously, but for this one, you'd need 4 relics or so, because that doubles Lara's health, which I of course didn't have when started the run.
Southern Mexico
The Unnamed Days - 2:00
•Segment 03
Possibly the single most boring segment to run, and also the easiest one. There's barely anything to screw up here (if you don't count in the actual bike driving, because riding it is quite a pain in the ass, but you definitely can get hang of it).
00:01:59 - This flyby gets skippable just at the point where it ends, which is something I wouldn't know if Riku didn't point it out, so I'm sending him thanks (by the way, this game is FULL of cutscenes and flybys that are either unskippable, or get skippable after some period of time, which is simply *EPIC*).
00:03:20 - This guy had to be taken out, otherwise he would kill me while moving the block (I told you it's such a *FAST* process to get the block from one place to another), and using a granade is not only the fastest way (at least on this difficulty), but it also provides a great advantage, because particularly THIS guy is just incredibly smart ("oh, a granade! A sticky granade! What should I do? Should I kill her when she started ignoring me before I die?! Should I jump at her so that the granade will take both of us down?!! Or shouldn't I consider trying to get the granade off my jacket? No way, I'll just stand here and I will scream, it sure will help something!...somehow...may-KABOOM").
00:03:33 - Since object detection (or whatever) in this game is just *EPIC* (just as EVERYTHING in the game), Lara seems to have problems deciding whether she should jump OVER the block, or climb up on it. Honestly, I have never managed to work myself to regular climbing animation, that wouldn't look wierd or wouldn't make Lara react strangely. What you see here is regularly looking climbing animation, but notice what Lara does after climbing it. I reckon that if the block wasn't that close to the wall, she would climb up on it, but then continue in jump-over animation. That happened to me hundreds of times and it stands out as one of many demonstrations of so called "magic shit", of which Underworld is full.
00:03:39 - Thanks to Riku for the handy tip about jumping off the pole immediately. It saves about 2 or more seconds.
Xibalba - 0:24
•Segment 04
Now we're talking about BIG stuff. I repeated this segment over and OVER and *OVER* again, but it was hell of a pleasure to go through that pain so many times (besides, it's very short).
00:03:47 - These swandives look easy, don't they? Well, they ARE NOT! Each one of them must be timed correctly, in order to gain enough of... um...enough of...actually, you don't have to exactly gain somethin', it's just about the fact you must swandive from mid-air a little (it's easy to notice that when Lara jumps, she's already not standing on anything solid).
00:03:55 - I can't describe this one. Basically, all you have to do is throw a granade so it sticks on the right spot, and then jump at the right time in the right direction from the right point, so that the explosion touches Lara, thus cancelling her falling animation and allowing her to survive the whole thing. This was found by Riku, and I just can't imagine how much lucky he had to be to find the *RIGHT* combination of all the things I mentioned above. He's almighty, he owns my soul, and he knows that :D.
00:04:08 - You gotta go that far to trigger the cutscene, and you gotta trigger the cutscene so that the bike appears in the next level, because you'll need it there. I admit I could've triggered the cutscene a little faster though.
The Midgard Serpent - 8:38
•Segment 05
Not too much to screw up (except for the bike ride, because riding the bike is quite a pain in the ass, but you definitely can get hang of it...oh wait, I already mentioned that), and for few of the actions in the room with the seal.
00:05:10 - In order for the granade to kill both of the spiders, you can't sprint all the way otherwise the second spider takes different path to come after you. This pretty much awesome discovery was made probably by Niepanh, so I owe him a thanks for this (actually, this is one of the two routes I "steal" from him, just with few slight modifications/improvements).
00:05:32 - Geckodust pointed out that you can leave the statues once they are already turning, as they turn all the way they must turn by themselves then. This could potentially save good bunch of seconds, as there are four statues total in the room, but unfortunately Gecko pointed it out when the run was already done, and I surely didn't want to go through the terror of this segment again.
00:06:01 - Initially I didn't want to pause at all before the swandive up the slope, but for some reason, without pausing I never managed it, so I paused. It doesn't cost any time really, anyway.
•Segment 06
I didn't necessarily have to segment HERE, but the walljumping sequence after leaving the first room is a *BIG* pain in the ass, and so I did it anyway.
00:06:46 - This brilliant little speed-up was found by Soul. It's worth mentioning that not always Lara swandives over the blade - sometimes she hits a sort of an invisible wall and drops before it. Good thing I got making her do it reliable.
00:07:00 - The walljumping sequence itself. The goal of it is to land IN FRONT of the slope, not directly on it, thus allowing me to jump down that slope and to the room immediately. In order to achieve that goal, you must combine regular jumps with swandives between the walls correctly, and you also must start it at the right spot, of course.
00:07:56 - Now it's time to clear out the fact that with each and every key you collect, the total number of those nasty and *SUPER* bothering white spiders grows, and so, if I keep ignoring them, it's just a matter of time when do they manage to bite on Lara's ass. In my situation, it always is right here - I never managed to completely avoid these two spiders. To me, it was impossible to jump over them or run around them without getting hit, and so I would either get hit, but get up quickly and keep going, or I would take my time to kill them. No matter what I would do, I would still loose some time, and killing them would be even slower.
•Segment 07
There are two reasons why I segmented here - first of all, this fire room happens to be the hardest of them/is full of stuff that's easy to screw up, because single short small contact with the fire instantly kills Lara. Second of all, there's enemy stucking used after leaving the room.
00:08:38 - I know it looks like I could've jumped immediately because the fire above Lara went off like 1 second later, but in reality I couldn't, because the fire has to be only activated to kill Lara, it doesn't have to be in it's full beauty to cause full damage.
00:09:18 - You say something like "why the hell don't you shoot those lil' bastards!" And I reply - If I fired my weapon, all the spiders would be free to come and have a dinner with Lara being the dish of the day. There's enemy stucking going on there, I'll get to it in a moment. Now of course I wouldn't bother with them, if only the command key for KICK wouldn't be the same key as the key for INTERACT. Don't blame me, blame CD!
00:09:49 - This is the only point where you can see the example of enemy stucking in it's full beauty and if you really wanna know more about it, pause the video here and read on. All the spiders, that spawned in the area as I collected all the keys, mysteriously gathered by my bike and got stuck in there, being unable to approach me, as you can clearly see if you repeatedly watch 9:48-9:49. However, what is even more mysterious and magical, if I fired a weapon, or if I approached them a bit too close (as I will, cause I need the bike), they would get free and I would have to deal with them. Now why or how do they get stuck? I don't know *EXACTLY*, but I can give you my theory - First, you must reload from specific checkpoint, here being the checkpoint after entering the fire room. Second, a god has to throw a smile on you. If both steps are accomplished, they will be stuck. Seriously though, it seems to be about the spiders trying to follow you all the time - after reloading from any checkpoint, the enemies respawn in their original positions, which is why you have to reload that specific checkpoint, so that those spiders have enough of time to gather by the room, and then you just must be lucky. If you are, they will be stuck after leaving the room (they aren't while you're still inside, because when you're in, they're running towards the entrance of the room, but they get stuck while turning to the opposite direction, and you just *NEVER* can say how exactly they gather, because they must gather in such a way it will make them get stuck while turing). Now, this is just my own theory, but I did some research, I messed a lot in that area, and I believe the theory is true...or at least kind of...
00:10:00 - The jump makes the plate go down faster, thus opening the seal a little sooner. Thanks to Riku for this tip.
•Segment 08
This segment was made for a brilliant shortcut allowing you to skip entire Land of the Dead and then for leaving this terrible burrow once and for all. It was done, because that brilliant shortcut also just happens to be totally random.
00:10:29 - This walljump is actually pretty hard, as you must hit the precise spot in order for Lara to determinate a presence of a wall there.
00:10:40 - Here, I swandived into the flyby trigger in order to stand closer to the tiger head thing after the flyby ends, saving around 1-2 seconds. I'm mentioning this because later on I perform more swandives into cutscene triggers in order to trigger them sooner.
00:11:04 - And here we have teh shortcut. If you never tried it, you can't even imagine how hard it is to actually jump over this rock, and how easy it is the *FAIL* here in an epic way. I managed to find kinda perfect spot, from which it's quite reliable, but I still need to take my time to set Lara for it. If I challanged myself to keep repeating this segment just to manage to jump over it immediately, without any setup, I would probably break my keyboard in an *ULTIMATE* anger and aggressiveness before accomplishing it, thus meaning I wouldn't be really able to finish this run (not that I would care if I would reach that level of frustration, of course).
00:11:40 - Can someone explain me, how the hell does this gate get open? What kind of technology was applied in that place?!
00:12:48 - If it was troubling you, no, you can't ride the bike until the path is completely clear. And, if that was troubling you as well, no, the tiger head thing from Xibalba or Unnamed Days wouldn't work here, it had to be this one.
Jan Mayen Island
Gate of the Dead - 1:24
•Segment 09
Before anything, let me give you the facts - I leave the bike behind in this segment, because it allows me to finish this level *MUCH* faster than if I made it with the bike to the bottom of the tower. Yes, indeed Valhalla takes longer than it would with the bike, because going through the labyrinth on foot takes painfully long, but it's still done pretty quick, because I start the level already at the bottom of the tower by the gate. How? Well, Valhalla starts as soon as the last of the four wheels of the tower is turned, regardless which one of them is it. Normally you're supposed to turn the wheel at the top floor of the tower as the last one, but I turn the bottom one. Keep reading to find out how many advantages does that really give.
00:13:26 - And here you can see the first usage of crouch drop bug, possibly the easiest glitch to perform ever.
00:13:28 - However, this ain't easy at all. In order to swandive from mid-air like this, you (your fingers) must be extremely quick, as you must let go of all the keys, and instantly press forward+jump+crouch (in that order) before Lara starts her falling animation. This is very hard and unreliable even on that low framerate (here being something around 25 fps). I reckon that with 30+ fps, it's totally impossible.
00:13:40 - Here I start the "classic" crouch drop bug sequence to get from floor to floor on the tower more quickly. I could've used the poles, which would be a lot easier, but also quite slower, because at the last one I would have to shimmy towards the ledge and drop on it and then drop to the floor. That sucks, and this way also looks much better :-P. It's worth mentioning that it's a bit tricky, though, as Lara tends to grab the edge of the floor instead of dropping, and more importantly the camera goes ridiculously mad during the drop, and so you have to gain control over it so that you can take action after dropping fast. From the last floor, I use swandive crouch drop bug, and although it's very easy, you still can screw it up, because sometimes Lara tends to grab the nearby ledge if you jump a bit too close to it.
00:14:12 - There's no way to speed this up. After getting to the bottom, you just have the wait for the cutscene. I made that waiting a bit more pleasant for Lara by a little dance.
00:14:18 - I stand here for a moment in order to get attention of all the thralls so that they come after me from that direction, thus Lara has enough of time and space to turn the last wheel. It also sets all the thralls for a quick liquidation :D.
Valhalla - 1:38
•Segment 09
No, I didn't write it wrongly. I actually accomplished both levels in one go! YAY for me! No?...nevermind. So, now it's time to clear out how much I saved Lara from by solving the tower from top to the bottom. First of all, the thralls - I would have to kill them anyway, but since I kill them at this point, I don't waste basically any time by it, because the gate is still in it's unlocking procedure while I'm taking them out. Second of all, climbing the tower - if I wanted the bike to be down there for me to blast through Valhalla faster, I would have to first collect those sort of "magical" stones scattered around here and place them to their holes thus activating the poles, and then climb the tower to the top via the poles, which of course takes a lot of time because you'd have to wait for each pole to make it's way below the higher one and so on. At the top, once Valhalla would start, I would simply crouch drop bug all the way to the bottom, get on the bike and blast through Valhalla, finishing her faster than I did in the run, but that would also mean I would have to accomplish Gate of the Dead a *LOT* slower than this. Eventually, the total time of Jan Mayen Island wouldn't be 3:02 as it is now, but something around 4-5 minutes.
00:14:37 - This is something I really loved about this game - once you sticky a granade on an enemy, you can yet shoot at him and make the explosion come sooner. This is actually the only place where it's abused, and the granade was meant to take out all of the remaining thralls, but...
00:14:45 - ...luckily it doesn't matter, because I managed to beautifuly dodge the attack of the last thrall survivor :D.
00:15:38 - This was supposed to be a swandive, which would prevent that annoying climb-up animation, but I "whateverzed" that after all that luck I had, and I bet neither of you will find it as a mistake worth mentioning.
00:15:52 - The infamous trigger skip allowing me to cut off all the nasty stuff Lara would have to go through in order to get to the other side. It always requires a bit of setup, because it's extremely easy to either roll into the trigger after the delayed swandive, or you can also still trigger it by swandiving from mid-air into the trigger, but here I managed it pretty quicky. Oh and the thrall had to be granaded down, otherwise he would chase me down at this spot and who knows where that would lead.
Andaman Sea
Ritual's Old - 0:51
•Segment 10
This level is just ridiculous. They create a pretty big ship, and the only task for it is to get on top of the containers, then run to the other end of the ship, get to the doors that just had to open themselves (like, why didn't they include some key finding or...EVEN ONE FREAKING BUTTON FOR A CHANGE WOULD DO! (it can happen, that the fact everything you have to do is so *SIMPLE* drives one insane...) Well anyway, it's the shortest level of the game (along with God of Thunder, which is one of the levels bypassed by half-of-the-game shortcut, and which just happens to be exactly the same as this one, just without the rain, set in daylight, and with little different position of the containers. Oh, and jumping to the water in God of Thonder ain't deadly, while here it is, which of course makes perfect sense just like everything in this game).
00:16:16 I figured out this might be worth pointing out. Remember the kudos to the *EPIC* object detection (or whatever) I mentioned earlier? Well, here you can see what exactly was I talking about. Despite a larger box being in front of the small one, Lara still wants to just jump over the small one, but doesn't seem to make it. And then there seems to be no climb-up animation for the large box. In fact, there aren't these animations for any of these larger boxes, which makes *PERFECT SENSE*!
Arctic Sea
Helheim - 4:19
•Segment 11
This one starts off *REEEEAAAALLY* boring, as unlike in Legend and Anniversary, here Lara can't "sprint swim" constantly, which makes the swim all the way to the "sea-exit" point truly long and painfully boring. Feel free to skip this part. Also, I will babble about swandiving into cutscene triggers a lot later on, just note that they save almost nothing, but there are quite many cutscenes there, and in total I reckon I saved some 3 seconds or so.
0:18:43 - And this is the huge-and-cool glitch I've been babbling about in my special thanks list. I've done some research, I messed around in the sea a lot, and this still seems to be the best spot the exit the sea. The reason I run sort of around an empty space while I seemingly could run straight forward to the hill or mountain or whatever it is, is because after leaving the sea you can still enter it, and the space I run around is actually full of water :D.
00:19:19 - If you can't tell by yourself, the reason I didn't swandive up this hill here is because the roll would make me slide down and pretty far (if not completely out of the map). When I start swandiving again, notice the hill ain't by far as oblique as the one on which I didn't swandive was.
00:19:37 - I'd like to clear out that despite the look of this glitch, it saves *ONLY* around 2 minutes. Anyway, here I swandive back to the water and enter the tunnel immediately. When you enter the tunnel, you must keep swimming down until Lara disappears, and then swim carefully back up until she's free to swim towards the textured part of the tunnel (you gotta be careful otherwise Lara will appear inside one of the towers outside of this underwater temple or what it is). Riku pointed out the possibility to swim along the tunnel towards the textured part and enter there, instead of entering it straight away, which could save several seconds I spent being stuck, but he pointed it out once the run was completed, and I didn't want to go over this boring segment *EVER* again, so I said "no no" to myself when I considered redoing it. Besides, it would save only couple of seconds I assume, and there still would be good chances of Lara appearing inside one of the towers, anyway.
00:20:00 - Here we have another TAD boring and long labyrinth wandering, so feel free to skip this one too, there ain't anything interesting about it (duh).
00:21:06 - Remember how I mentioned I will perform several swandives into cutscene triggers in order to trigger them sooner? Well, here it comes. You see, in this level (and in Yggdrasil too), when you sprint into the cutscene trigger, Lara stops sprinting herself and instead runs very slowly into the trigger (which is *EPIC*, and makes *PERFECT SENSE*!), and I'm pretty sure that swandiving into the trigger is a little bit faster after all.
00:21:21 - Since I just kept swandiving throughout the run, I wanted to give you at least one example of stumbe cancel, and here it is. If I didn't hold down forward+sprint during the fall, Lara would land and bend in knees, and you would have to wait for her to get up again. (If you pay an extreme attention, you can actually notice she wants to bend in knees after landing, but keeps on sprinting instead). This isn't anyhow slower than if I swandived, so I didn't loose any time by showing it.
00:21:30 - Here I accidentally missed one swandive. At least you can see what I meant by the slow run she takes into the cutscene trigger.
Yggdrasil - 1:05
•Segment 11
This "level" doesn't deserve it's own segment, and so I did it along with Helheim in one go. Not hard.
00:22:03 - Another swandive into the cutscene trigger. Also, notice how Lara hops after I skip the cutscene. Lovely, isn't it?
00:22:27 - I really didn't want to get hit by this gorgon, but luckily Lara made it back on her feet very (and surprisingly) quickly.
00:22:38 - And one more swandive into the cutscene trigger.
Out of Time - 3:23
•Segment 12
YAAAAAAAY! Final level, final segment! JUST *EPIC*! This level is full of various magic shit, and I reckon you'll be quite entertained by this one :D. This is the second route by niepanh I gladly copied, just so you know.
00:22:43 - This crouch drop bug shortcut can save up to 30-60 seconds, which is a lot more than I thought when I recorded this segment.
00:23:02 - It's worth mentioning, that the reason I swandived here is because commonly the big gorgon you can notice at the left side of this "bridge" jumps up at it, and the swandive makes him/her look for Lara on the other side, so that I'm free to move this stone panel, while he/she's looking for me on the other side of this "bridge". It makes *PERFECT SENSE*, but you can't be amazed by his/her intelligence, because now, for some reason, he/she didn't jump up. He/she jumps up a bit too late, but you still can notice how confidently he/she first looks for Lara on the other side :D.
00:23:25 - The most notable *MAGIC SHIT* demonstration in the run, and guess what, I have an explanation for you! Noticed the floating platform to the left? Good. There is another floating platform behind that one, and it also floats on a lower level than this one. Well, when I jumped, Lara probably thought I intend to grab the edge of that platform (the one you CAN'T see), not the edge I clearly aimed on. If you pause the video after the jump, you will notice she's turned in the opposite direction and is about to grab on something. That's what I'm talking about. But, despite her thoughts and desires, she eventually grabs on what I wanted her to grab. (by the way, if you wanna a bit of laugh, watch that short jump sequence in slow-motion.)
00:23:45 - The single *MOST* annoying and random jump in the game! But don't get me wrong - it isn't hard or random to jump on the platform, but it's greatly random what will happen after the jump, because the camera shows it's ass on you at this point, you just can't predict whether will Lara shimmy left or right. Luckily, she shimmied left eventually, but that definitely isn't the end of all the troubles. Now, you must press up just when the other platform approaches Lara, and when it does, you yet have to press crouch. Most typically, Lara just falls to certain death, and if she doesn't and you manage to get her on the second platform, she yet most oftenly rolls on it, making her magically slide back and grab the edge of it. Here, she rolled, but I still made that jump afterwards. Yep, I'm epic :-P.
00:24:20 - Have you ever wondered why the hell doesn't Natla fire one of her mighty balls on Lara while she's busy with the stone panel? I have, and never came to any reasonable conclusion. I suppose Natla is simply just as clever as all of the enemies in Underworld. But this really is wierd, as during all of your actions in the level, her only purpose is to fly around and *SHOOT* fireballs on you, so why the hell doesn't she use THIS in her advantage or why the hell doesn't she fly a little closer to Lara so that she wouldn't miss every single time? Oh well, everything in this game is *EPIC*, and such a stuff is probably not meant to be understanded by some average player.
00:24:30 - Could these big thralls be even more dangerous than that?!
00:25:16 - Second of the sort of magical jumps in this level, but this one is much less problematic and even the camera is less unfriendly here. Anyway, even on this platform, there is some wicked magic shit going on from time to time I don't even want to describe (or don't know who to).
00:26:04 - *THE END*. You expected something more...dramatic? More exciting? Some boss fight perhaps, which would make sense since there were boss fights in *ALL* of the previous Tomb Raiders? Expected something more challenging from the final level? Some confrontations with those big cute thralls? Expected I will show off the epic power of the hammer on some enemy? Well, that doesn't happen. This game's ending is TEH LOLZ, it oughts to disappoint everyone (although anyyone can see it coming after all those previous levels), this whole final level is ridiculous and definitely doesn't satisfy my expectations (especially after all those EPIC interviews and promises), but as far as the run is considered, it also oughts to be one of the most interesting levels to watch (certainly more interesting to watch it for all of that magic shit and *HOPEFULLY* fluent playthrough, than it was for me to actually play it so many times :-P). The rest of the video is just final cutscene I left there so that you have at least some idea about the plot of the game, and the credits, which are nearly 7 minutes long.
If you read through this tiring text all the way down here, then GOOD JOB! and thank you for making my effort at least a bit meaningful :D.
I hope you will enjoy the run even more than I enjoyed making it, and thanks for watching, if you did. Also, thanks to SDA crew (I'm sure we all know what for :-P). Hopefully you'll get to read through some more tiring texts written by mine truly in near future. Bye for now.
