PALACE MIDAS

You're swimming when you start this level; head for the surface and climb out of the pool into a room with three visible exits. Draw your guns and enter the room straight ahead, where you get to shoot two gorillas. At the end of this room are two doorways; go through the left door and pop three more gorillas in a room with a temple-type building. Pick up the medipack and enter the door. Throw a switch that opens a gate into a park, then go back through the other door and shoot two more gorillas. Return back to the pool where you started. Turn left and shoot a large and fast crocodile, then go down this passage to an area with stairs on the left. We'll come back to them; for now, walk next to the stairs and into a large area that looks vaguely like a stable. Turn right and walk to the very end; turn left and shoot a gorilla, then get some magnum clips and back out. Turn right and walk forward until two lions attack. (you may want the shotgun -- these are big guys) and continue to the end of the room. Turn right and shoot three bats, then get a medipack from the next to the last alcove on the left. We're done in this room for now; there's lots of stuff over your head, but you can't get there from here. For now, retrace your steps and go up the stairs. At the top, turn left and advance cautiously until you have shot three gorillas. (Where the heck is this monastery anyway, that it has all these African animals wandering around in it? Never mind, never mind. Forget I asked.) Take a look around the room. There's a series of pillars, four doors around the outside walls, and a platform in the center. Notice that the doors have a combination of omegas and upsilons (looks like a Y) on them, a different combination for each door). Starting from the door on the right wall and going clockwise, they are: 1. YOOOO (where you hear a buzzing a little like bats) 2. ?OYYO (the first letter is obscured by a red blotch) 3. OOYOY (behind which you can just glimpse some spikes) 4. YOOOY (under a smaller platform with a rail around it) Well, they're all locked, so we'll have to find a way up to the center platform. At the far right near door 1 is a bright orange column that's a little shorter than the others. Climb up it, jump to the next column, then turn left and jump to the ledge over door 1. Turn right and do a running jump-and-grab to the ledge over door 2, where you can get a medipack and some magnum clips. Return to the pillars and proceed from pillar to pillar with running jumps. At the last one, turn right and jump to the central platform at last. Here we have a pit in the floor and five switches. Huh -- five, just like the number of letters over the doors. Do you suppose it means anything? Well, if you push just the first switch to make the pattern down-up-up-up-up, door 1 opens -- so Y=down and O=up. Drop into the pit, push the switch to open the gate here, then proceed around to door 1. That buzz wasn't bats after all; it was fire, huge torches in pillars in a pool. Step on the pressure plate in front of the first torch and watch the torches go out, how handy! But once you step off this plate, they turn on again in fifteen seconds. You have to get to the other end of the room, and you can't swim there; you have to jump across these columns. And they aren't even in a straight line. Blast. While you're thinking what to do, go down the steps at the right and shoot three huge rats in the water, then return to the pressure plate and save your game. This may take you a large number of tries. (And there's no point in saving halfway across; when you reload the game the torches will be on and you'll go up like -- well, like a torch.) But there is a way to do it. It turns on the fact that you can make Lara change her trajectory in midair by pushing the direction keys. What you need to do is to run and jump off the first pillar, then hold down the Jump key for the rest of the journey, using the right and left arrows to get her headed in the right direction once she's airborne. At the last pillar, you'll have to grab and pull yourself up; if you dawdled along the way, the torch will come back on while you're hanging there, in which case you can shuffle to one side, pull yourself up, and run across the side; this hurts but doesn't kill. In any case, give yourself three huzzahs -- you made it! Grab a bar of lead -- lead?! I went through that for a bar of LEAD?! Yes, you'll see. Pocket the thing and swim back to the stairs. (And no, for some reason the lead doesn't make her sink in the water. Why do I keep trying to intrude logic into this business?) Return to the pillar room and shoot another gorilla. Go via the gate to the central platform and reproduce the pattern of door 2, which is something-up-down-down-up. Turns out the door doesn't open unless the first switch is up. Drop down and go out door 2, which leads to a room with a pillar in the center and a number of flying buttresses. Nothing to do here just yet, so go through to the door at the back. Here there's an up staircase at the left and a down staircase to the right. Turn right and go down to a room with a movable block. Pull it out and hear a tremendous crashing thud. Oops. Go back up and go up the other staircase and through a dark tunnel until you see, um, the remains of the room with the pillar and the buttresses. Butterfingers! On the opposite side of the room, however, you can now see a doorway, through which you must get. Stand at the edge and look down and right; you can just make out a small dark ledge. Jump to it. From here you can do a running jump-and-grab to the central pillar -- yes, you can. Really. Once you get there, you can do another running jump-and-grab to the sandy ledge beside and just under the doorway. Jump into the doorway and follow a rocky tunnel to a ledge that overlooks an aqueduct. This is the top of the room where you shot the lions earlier. Shoot two gorillas and two bats, then jump across to the aqueduct. Walk along it and to the right and shoot two crocodiles in the water, then jump in and swim under the rocks to a rocky room. Get out at the shelf on the right. You want to make it to the left side, where there's some goodies. Walk forward, then turn left and climb up the rocks and walk forward as far as you can. Now jump over the next slope and hold down the jump key to instantly jump over the next slope and slide to a stop in the corner. Turn left and clamber over the rocks to reach SECRET #1, a medipack and some magnum clips. Cool. Jump back in the water and swim out, then climb out and walk back to the place where you first jumped over (where the dead gorilla bodies are). Look over the edge and see a small medipack below. Do a safety drop below to get SECRET #2 - shotgun shells, Uzi clips and a medipack. Draw your guns and jump out of the pit to kill the gorilla you've been hearing grunt at you for the last ten minutes. Walk straight ahead and pick up a medipack from the second alcove on the right, then walk back and jump over to the other wing of the structure, where you'll have to kill two more gorillas (one in the second alcove, one in the next to last). Be careful of the edge here as you jump for room to shoot; it's too far down to survive a fall. Stand in the next-to-last alcove and look across the chasm to the ledge with a medipack you can just see. Back up as far as you can, then run, jump, and grab to get to this ledge. Face the wall and jump to grab onto the crevice, then shuffle to the left and drop onto the ledge. Kill a bat, then turn and jump over to a door. Proceed up a long tunnel until you reach a hex-shaped passage with a collapsible floor (that will drop you into the pool at the end of the aqueduct if you're not careful). Run down this collapsible tunnel and get the medipack, then turn and climb out of the tunnel. Skid down the long slope and climb back down to a ledge above the pool room where you started this level. Draw your guns, because there's a lioness up there with you, whoopsie! Put her away, then run along the ledge and into the door on the other side. Follow the tunnel, then jump into the left window and out onto a ledge where you can turn right and make a running jump across to another ledge. Turn right and go up to the pool and take a swim into the next room, avoiding the big crocodile swimming in here with you (by swimming deep -- they like to stay near the surface). Exit the water and climb up to a spot looking at the roof of a temple. Shoot a bat, and take some shots at the lions below if you get a chance. Jump to the roof and pick up another lead bar, then shoot the lions and drop down. Go down the stairs and into the tunnel, then turn left and go to the pool room. Go left and make your way back to the room with the five switches. Set the switches for door 3, up-up-down-up-down, then drop down and go to the open door, where the floor is full of spikes. Well, not full exactly; they seem to be in patterns. Hmm. Well, there's one door at floor level; go over there and find a ramp and a movable block. Pull it twice to reveal a tunnel with a switch at the end (the which you should pull). Go up the ramp and the stairs at its top to find that the switch raised tall blocks inside the spikes. Do a running jump to the nearest, then to the one on your right, and so on counterclockwise around the room. At the last one, draw your guns and jump in and immediately back, because there's a really ticked-off gorilla in here. Calm him down the hard way, then go on in and get a last lead bar. Jump back to the pillar, then jump over the spikes to the ground and return to the 5 switches. There's one more door in here, but we'll do it later. For now, head back to the pool room and through the tunnel opposite the one you just came out of with guns drawn. It's the garden gate that we opened in the first room. Shoot two gorillas, then go to the back of the room where there's a small roof-type arrangement. Climb onto the ledge on the right, then jump over to the roof and get a medipack. Go to the right side of the roof and walk into the dark at the back, which turns out to be a passage to the Midas Chamber. Cool. You wondered why this level was called Palace Midas, didn't you? Stand next to the stone hand and use the lead bars one by one to turn them to GOLD! (For an usual way to die, try climbing or jumping onto Midas's hand yourself.) Return to the garden and go to the right corner next to the gate. Walk sideways behind the tree, face to the wall, and push Action until Lara pushes a switch you can't see. Shazam! A gate opens to your right, SECRET #3. Enter the gate and walk up to an arrangement like a vertical bear-trap. Eidos calls it a slicer, and this is a particularly nasty one -- two in a row with a collapsible floor between them that drops into a spike pit. What you need to do is wait for them to shut, then jump through them as they open. Pick up shotgun shells, magnum clips, and a medipack, then return as carefully as you came. Make your way back to the five switches and set them for door 4, up-down-down-down-up, then drop down and head for the last open door. Shoot a lion, then head up the stairs to the top and out onto the ledge. Get the shotgun shells, then go down the stairs and through the right door. Use the gold bars in the three slots, then enter the open door and slide down the ramp to EXIT.

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