CAVES

Notice the wolf tracks in the snow, and take a moment to wonder what Lara is doing high in the frozen Andes in shorts and tank top. Follow the tracks past the pipes shooting darts; if you run most of the darts will miss you, or you can walk up to them, watch the timing, and run past when it's safe. Continue around the corner. Lara will look up at a ledge on her left, indicating the way to go; but first continue ahead into a large square room with a chamber in the left back corner above a bit of slanted rock. Go around behind the slanted rock and climb up; you'll immediately slide down the other side, and if you jump at the bottom of the slide you'll be able to grab the ledge and climb up into the chamber. Behold, SECRET #1! Pick up the medipack (i.e., stand almost on top of it and press Action). There are two kinds of medipacks, small and large; the small ones are khaki rolls with a Red Cross on them, the large are khaki backpacks with a Red Cross. You'll soon get very good at spotting them. Returning to the other cave, climb up and head down the passage. If you listen carefully, you'll soon hear a leathery flapping and perhaps a high-pitched squeak or two; it's bats, very large carnivorous bats. Your first enemies! Draw your guns (by pushing the spacebar) and wait for Lara to point them, then hold down the Fire button (Ctrl) until she stops turning around. If the bats get on your head and start to attack she can't shoot them, so run or jump forward, then turn around and blast the little turds. There's three of them here, so keep your guns drawn till they're all toast. Bats die easily and don't do much damage (though they can kill you if you don't get rid of them), so these guys are good practice for what's to come. (BTW, the pistols have unlimited ammo, so don't worry about using them up. The indicator that shows when you draw your guns is your health, not your ammo. The more powerful weapons that you pick up later need to be reloaded -- but more on that when we get there.) Turn left and proceed to a cave with snow drifted into one corner. Climb the drift as far as you can, then use the Action key to grab the ledge and pull yourself up. Shoot another bat and grab the medipack for SECRET #2. Return to the bat cave and continue, turning left twice. You will eventually end up in a large grassy cavern sloping down to the left. Make your way to the bottom and drop into the tunnel. Go down the stairs and use the bar switch to open the door. (To use the switch, position Lara smack up against it and push the Action (Ctrl) button. If nothing happens, try shuffling right or left till she's right in front of it and try again.) Draw your guns as you enter the next room (a good practice till you scope out the threats in a new location), and kill a bat. Wander around and look at the bamboo door. No, you can't open it, jump over it, crawl under it, or pull it down, though of course in real life that's exactly what you'd do. Whenever you come across an obvious door that you can't open, it means there's a switch, a puzzle, or another way in. Okay, fine; be like that. (And don't ask me how they got bamboo in Peru, or how it's lasted through the centuries. It's just One of Those Things.) In the far left corner, there's a pile of blocks up against a wall. Clamber up it and then scale the wall by holding down Action and Forward. (Nice of them to make her grunt with the effort once in a while.) Make your way to a large room with two rope bridges; if you were walking instead of running, you can now draw your guns and shoot the two wolves from above. (If you were running and fell into the room, you can still kill them, but now they can kill you too -- so you have to be a lot faster and better with your pistols to do unto them before they do unto you.) When they're both dead, turn left, jump across the gap, then walk over the second bridge; on the other side, turn left and go through the door. Stop at the edge of the chasm here and notice the large brown bear below. Sorry, Smokey; you're history. When he's dead, put your guns away, turn your back on the chasm, hold down Action, and take a step backwards. This will allow you to drop down and grab the ledge, then let yourself drop gently the rest of the way. This is a safety drop, and it will let you fall quite a way with no damage. Go through the door you see and shoot two bats. Grab the medipack and walk over the pressure plate to open another door that takes you back to the room with the two rope bridges. Climb back up the bridge and retrace your path back to the gap with the dead bear. Jump across this time and proceed down the stairs, stopping to pick up a medipack on the left before you do so. Enter the next room and shoot two wolves (gee, you're getting pretty good at this). Notice on the left wall there is a door cleverly hidden high up in the vegetation, with a ledge extending from it. Climb up the blocks on the right of the door and do a hanging jump to the ledge, and you've found SECRET #3 (a large medipack). Pick it up and do a safety drop back into the large room. The way out of this room is a door on a timed switch. Notice the two platforms on the other side of the room, with a door on the left one and a switch on the right one. Climb up to the switch, throw it, then turn left and run and jump and climb to get to the door before it closes. (This may take several tries until you get the hang of navigating with the arrow keys, but keep at it. Running into a wall stops you dead; running into a wall while holding Action will make you climb up it if you can.) Continue up and turn the corner. Run past two dart-shooting pipes and into the next room. A single wolf is waiting for you, so draw your guns and go in blazing. In the center of this room, you'll notice two floor panels that look funny, with odd striations across them. These are broken floor tiles (you'll see them again, be sure), and though you can run across them safely, if you stand on one it'll break and you'll fall into the chamber below. In this case, that's what you want; so stand on either one to fall through to a block in the room below. Jump down and walk through the pillars to look at a large grey canal-type hallway with a door at one end. Don't go down there; it's filled with darts, and you can't open the door without throwing a switch on the other side of the hall. Turn right and go down to the other end of the hall, where you'll see that we're now on the other side of the bamboo door we couldn't open before! Amazing. Run and jump across to the other side of the hall, where you can shoot the last wolf on this level and pick up the medipack. Continue on and around the corner to find a switch. Move it to open the door, then slide down the sloped wall next to the door and EXIT this level.

NEXT LEVEL