ATLANTIS

Once more fully armed, you now face -- um, Atlantis, it says. See, I thought Atlantis was under water, but 'tis not so. This Atlantis is more under lava than anything else. The first thing you might want to do is hit Escape and turn off the "music," unless you really *want* to listen to a slightly rapid heartbeat for however long it takes you to finish this level. Pick up some Uzi clips (that's a hint, BTW -- use your Uzis from now on) and walk to the entrance of the tunnel to a large room with red floor and six large green globes. As you walk forward, one on your left bursts with the sound of crashing glass, and there's a flying demon. Kill in and move forward -- oops, there's another one. Kill it and run to the end of the room -- oops, one more. Pow! Facing the door at the end, pick up some Uzi clips, then turn left and run towards a door that opens as you approach. Go up the stairs to a red webbed floor overlooking the one you were just on. Turn right and walk forward; pick up a box of shotgun shells and shoot another demon or two that just hatched. When they're dead, go all the way to the end (upstairs at the same end where you entered this level) and turn right. There's an alcove here, though it's very dark and you might not think so. Run forward till you hit the wall, then turn right and throw a switch you might just be able to make out. (If you have trouble with this, check to make sure you're on the right side of the hall. It's easy to get turned around during the fight with the flying demon.) Turn around and run into another alcove on the other side; when you hit your nose, turn right and throw another switch. Get back out to the webbed floor and run to the other side, where a door has opened on the right. Go in and throw a final switch to open the door downstairs. Run down and turn right to enter this door. You're on a ledge at the bottom of a very tall shaft, with another ledge invitingly within reach. Draw your guns and shoot a flying demon. (The safest way to do this, by the way, is to stand there till Lara aims at him, then back up into the tunnel; he can't follow you in there, and you can fire at him every time he flies by.) Holster your guns, then go to the edge, turn around, and drop down to hang on the edge. Drop and hang again, then pull yourself up into SECRET #1, magnum clips, Uzi clips, and a medipack. (What's in those medipacks anyway? Tylenol, Bandaids, and gin is my guess.) Follow the tunnel up and around till you come to a hole, where you can drop down to the tunnel you were aiming for originally. Cool, because I don't know how you'd climb back up that drop. Walk forward to another webbed floor, this one a bridge over a pool of lava with another green globe. There's a door on the other end of the broken bridge, but it's locked, so we'll have to try something else first. Walk to the end of the bridge and turn right to face the wall, then jump and hang onto a crevice. Position yourself over a doorway, then drop and hang and climb up. Go up to throw a switch, then walk up and get two Uzi clips and jump back to the webbed bridge. Take a good long running jump to hang on the edge of the other side of the bridge. The globe hatches as you hang, so pull up quick and shoot that flying demon. (He's trying to lure you out onto the bridge so he can get behind you and push you off. Sneaky little bugger.) Go on when he's dead or you're tired of waiting for him to come within firing range; he won't follow you. You now emerge into a room with a pillar in front of you, a pool of water at the right, and a pyramid slope at the left. This room is the bane of my existence, containing as it does a secret that can be glimpsed but not (as far as I could tell) reached. Jump to the pillar, then to the nearest wedge on the pyramid slope -- and immediately to the next wedge, because there's a boulder heading for you. Jump and slide down to the next one, then immediately jump to the next (another boulder). Jump up to the last one, and wait here for a second. See that bit of a ledge you can just make out in the upper right corner? That's SECRET #2, and there's no way I can discover to reach it; it's too far to jump and the slope is too steep to climb, and there's no crevice or ledge nearby. Eidos's hint line says, "Make your way to the upper right corner," but exactly how one is to do that remains a secret between Eidos and God. I tried every form of motion Lara can do and never hit on the right combination; if you manage it, please let me know how. Anyway. Jump at the wall and slide down to the ledge with the closed red door. Jump into the water and swim across to the other side to pull a lever that opens the red door for about 45 seconds. Swim like mad for the first pillar. Jump-jump-slide- jump-jump-slide, then run in the door before it closes. I hope you get it faster than I did; I almost lost my mind before I finally got it. This room has a series of columns over to a switch, with an unreachable doorway on the left and several red doors at the right. Drop down and go climb up the ledge and throw the switch to open a door back into the other room. Run/climb to this door and jump up the pillars to the top (picking up a medipack on the middle one), where you can pick up some Uzi clips and throw a switch. Jump back to the room to find that you just opened the red doors and flooded the room with lava, pushing the ledges against the far wall so you can now reach the left door (as long as you can jump over the lava). Jump into the doorway and walk up the tunnel, jumping over a pit of spikes. Jump into a pool and dive down to get some shotgun shells and pull a lever. Swim through the open door and up. The new room has four globes and six alcoves; we'll call the first alcove on the left as you swam in 1 and number them clockwise. Alcove 2 leads to an underwater passage with three gates. Three of the switches here open gates, and two of them hatch demons. You can do this yourself by trial and error if you like, but if you'd rather you can take my word for it that the switches in alcoves 1, 4, and 5 open the gates. Run and dive into the water (as the other two globes hatch) and swim through the tunnel. Surface on the far side and breathe a sigh of relief. Follow the tunnel up until it forks, then go right. Pull the switch here to open the door, then walk in, get two Uzi clips, and watch a boulder roll across the main door out of the room. The other way out of the room is the passage at your left, which takes you back to the fork you didn't take -- and see, the boulder resets every time you do this. You can't outrace the boulder, but you can out-think it. Over by the boulder ramp is a movable block. Pull and push it till it's against the wall right next to the boulder, then go around and re-enter the room. Shazam! The boulder is blocked on its way down. *Aren't* you smart. Go through the door to find yourself on a ledge in the central shaft again, this one with some Uzi clips and a slicer that's triggered when you're standing on the ledge. Shoot a flying demon, timing carefully a jump back through the slicer if you have to, then pick up the Uzi clips and jump across to the next ledge. Walk up to a room with two globes that hatch one at a time; pop them and walk forward to see a long slope down to some spikes, with slopes on the other side. Position yourself opposite one of the red ledges and slide down, jumping at the bottom. Pick up shotgun shells, a medipack, and two Uzi clips and go through the door. This next room is complicated. There's a globe on the left wall, lava under foot, and a path that looks like a roller coaster in the middle. Walk to the right till a flying demon appears, then jump back to the safety of the tunnel and shoot it. Go back to the beginning of the center path and get an Uzi clip. The path is too steep to traverse here, so go back where you started and jump to a ledge on the left. Jump to the ledge next to the globe, which immediately hatches; kill the flying demon and go up the path to get an Uzi clip. Do a running jump to the center path, which you can just reach from here. Immediately turn to your left and shoot two projectile-spitting demons in the far left corner. The slope is still too steep, so turn around and stand on a ledge on the other side of the path. Look down; orange lava is death, but pulsing red tissue is safe to stand on, so walk across to the ledge on the other side. Turn right and go up to throw a switch, then go left and pull out a movable block to reveal an open door. Go through and up to the slicer that guards the head of the center path. Run or jump out and turn right to jump to the tunnel where the last two demons were. Climb up to another ledge on the main shaft, shoot a flying demon, and get a medipack and an Uzi clip. Take a look up; you're getting close to the top. Jump across to the next ledge, where there's a lava room with pillars that are rather too far apart to be useful. Jump to the only ledge you can reach and walk around to pull a switch, then return to find that the pillars have moved. Jump across them to an opening in the left wall. Throw the switch here and return; leapfrog pillars to the ledge at the top right. Draw your guns, max out your health, and save your game. Now here you have one of the hardest-to-get-to secrets in the game. The passage opens onto a long upward-sloping tunnel with two panther demons. What you have to do is run across the bottom of the tunnel to the slightly darker patch on the right (which represents a hidden pressure plate), then turn and run up the hall, blasting like mad at the demons. You don't have time to stop and kill them, however; just shoot them enough to get past them and run into an alcove on the right that just opened and is about to close. If you make it you've found SECRET #3, and congratulations! If not, you'll have to reload a saved game and try again. The door doesn't reset, and you can't kill the demons at your leisure, then step on the plate and go up. At any rate, once the demons are dead, go up and through the door at the top. In front of you is a door and a switch, but forget them; the switch just releases the lava, which flows right over your pretty little head. Instead, turn to your left and jump up. Walk forward into the dark that represents the last ledge at the top of the shaft. (No flying demon this time.) See the Uzi clips at right? That's the other ledge. Jump over there, get the clips, and go. Ah, here's the flying demon. Shoot him and then take the Uzi clips. Walk forward to a ramp leading up to a slicer, with three red dart pipes on the wall. Walk up to trigger the first dart, then run past it to trigger the second. Run past to trigger the third -- and immediately jump to the right, because you just triggered a boulder. When the boulder's gone past the slicer is disabled, so go forward under the last dart pipe and pull yourself up the ramp and through. The new room has large gates on three sides with the letters N, T, and Q over them. Go to the left gate with the N on it and push the movable block twice, then run behind the fence to the right and into the area behind the T gate. You see a gate and two switches. Throw the right switch and fall into a pit, ouch! (Forget the left switch; it's just a trap with no goodies.) Turn around to see a pit followed by a ramp and a boulder. Jump over the pit to trigger the boulder and immediately jump back again to let it roll into the pit. Jump across again and follow up to throw a switch and eventually drop out of a tunnel behind the Q gate. Walk around; the door is open now. This next room has three globes, a large door, and a switch on the far wall. As you go forward, the globe on the ground hatches; kill the sucker and get four Uzi clips on the ground. Throw the switch and step back into the room; the nearer globe hatches. Kill him, but don't let him lure you into the room, which will make the other globe hatch, and you'd really rather take care of one at a time if you can. When they're all gone, go cautiously down the tunnel and shoot two more panther demons. (Horrid things. Where's Orkin when you need them?) Walk forward and watch Lara aim her guns again -- but don't shoot! If you fire at this one, it fires back, and it hits you every time. Walk forward to the center of the room, and it'll do the same. My God, it's a demon version of Lara, gag! It mirrors your every move, which is your clue to how to get rid of it. Notice that the room is more or less symmetrical? Climb the black columns and jump over to the platform with switch, trapdoor, and door. Throw the switch and the trapdoor opens for a short time to reveal a fiery pit. Now run, jump, and climb like mad to the ledge in the opposite corner of the room, and then laugh hysterically as your doppelganger falls into the pit. Go back to the platform with the switch and go out the door, which is open now. Pick up an Uzi clip and draw your guns. At the second Uzi clip, turn and fight a centaur. Get another Uzi clip and walk forward to a lava pit -- then turn right and shoot a demon. Now take a look at this room. There's a door on the other side of the lava pit, a path running around the room, and switches on either side of the door. Go around to the left and get some Uzi clips, then go around to the other side. (Hear that mechanical clanking? It's coming from the other room.) The left switch activates a bridge to the door, and the right switch opens the door; but the door stays open about twice as long as the bridge, so we have to do the door first. (The door next to the right switch opens eventually, but there's nothing in it, so don't bother with it.) Throw the right switch and run like the wind to the other side; throw the left switch and run around, across the bridge, and through the door. Be careful not to over-compensate and go into the lava! but you can't stop running or the bridge goes down with you in the middle, which is unpleasant. Pick up some Uzi clips and take a look around. You're in a room with large columns and a strange rotating gear-looking thing. On the other side of a huge chasm is a large platform with a massive globe over it. You can't get over there yet, so don't bother trying; this is what was at the top of the shaft we've been climbing ever since we started this level. Go back to the rotating thing and walk up the ramp at one side. Take a close look at it; there's something floating between the teeth. Gosh darn if it isn't the Scion! Now max out your health, turn the music back on (if you had it turned off to silence the heartbeat), and hit Action to reach for the Scion and EXIT this level.

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