A Series of Unfortunate Glitches
The bugs were getting in my way in my attempt to play normally the game, to perform simple tasks as to grab a ledge, or make a jump. For instance, a ledge that appeared to be a ledge, but when you tried to reach it, didn't function as a ledge, you couldn't grab it, and you fell to your death, or when you were 'mountain- climbing' on some tall wall, when you touched a special "no-touch" area of the wall, it made you loose your grip and fall. It was like some kind of a hidden "enemy" really that I had to deal with too. I will never forget, there was this moment in the first stage, where I was on the top of a platform, and Lara started to slowly slip away without moving her feet, or any other animation, and at the end she would always fall off the edge of the platform like a tree log and die. I had to continuously press the left stick at the opposite direction so that she didn't fall. I was fighting with an invisible force that wanted Lara Croft dead. Anyway I couldn't much go on with this game. These glitches of the first level tired me to a point that I completely lost my enthusiasm and quited. But this was only the beginning of my trial.
For some reason I was pretty confident that the game was a good one and I needed to play it in a current generation console, without all those bugs of the PS2 game. So I did, and I bought the PS3 version too. The first four levels were ehhh... okay, I didn't notice any particular problem, besides the boring environments, the uninspired story, the goofy soldiers, the annoying huge spiders, the respawning monsters that I had killed just two minutes before, and some minor glitches that didn't stop my progress in the game. But in a later stage, the "Jan Mayen Island" after the second half of the game, suddenly all hell broke loose! The game glitched really bad there!! To spare you with the details, there was a huge three storied hall with some kind of deadly blue liquid at the bottom of it and a series of switches that you had to pull to drain that liquid. Anyway at some point I got lost in the level, I didn't know where to go, or what lever to pull, and I was going in circles, jumping from platform to platform, to figure what I was supposed to do next. I didn't understand exactly what triggered it, but all of a sudden the floor that I was standing on, flooded with the deadly liquid and I died instantly. (Note that I was standing on that same floor for more than 5 minutes and nothing had happened.) The game reloaded automatically, and I realized that the system had created an auto-save file at the exact moment of my death, with the floor flooded with the liquid, meaning that as I started to play again, I died instantly and the system was reloading the same file and I was dying again, over and over, without being able to interrupt that loop. Inevitably I had to entirely switch off the system, and reboot the game. I chose to load a file, but as I was depending almost exclusively on the auto-save feature, I didn't save much too often, so I found one save file at a distant previous point, meaning that for the next hours I had to replay the game (and after that, manually save all the time of course) to reach the point that the game glitched. Note that although Underworld is divided into separate chapters, you can't select from the menu screen one previously played stage, but you can only do it after you have fully completed the game. So in other words, if the auto-save feature goes crazy and you haven't manually created a save file of your own, you have to start the game from the beginning!
Anyway I played again a big part of the game and managed to reach again the point of my death, and this time I miraculously survived, only to discover the next unbelievable glitch. In that same room with the blue liquid there is this massive stone statue that you must climb to the top of it, and then do a series of jumps to leave the room. The thing is that there was no way that you could climb to the top, unless you walked through a block of stone! Yes you read correctly, the game doesn't let you go any further, unless you literally walk through that block of stone! And how do you do this magic? You press the circle button to duck and Lara goes inside the stone and then you release the button and Lara is inside the block, but she can't move. (naturally) Then you press the left stick randomly at all directions and at the same time repeatedly press the jump button, until Lara finds herself on the top of the stone! And only then, she can do the series of jumps that she needs to do to get out of the room. It may sounds difficult, but after thirty, or so tries, I finally got the hang of it, and the whole walk-through-stone procedure became my second nature.
Another very interesting glitch that I want to share with you happened in the "Arctic Sea" level, the last stage of the game. There is a sequence where you had to descend a spiral shaped road to the bottom of a huge pit riding your motorcycle, running over some monsters that you encountered in your way, and jumping over some big holes. After you successfully finish that "mini race" and you reach safely the bottom of the gorge, then the game auto-saves as you would expect. But I had this tremendous idea, to try to walk again all the way to the top of the cliff, in order to collect some goodies that I have missed. At the first gap that I encountered somehow I failed to jump correctly, and I fell into the hole and died. But guess what? The infamous auto-save system strikes back! After the loading screen I found myself on the top of the cliff (with all the monsters alive again, although I had first killed them all, and then the game did the auto-save) and with my motorbike at the bottom of the pit!! After my death the game had created an auto-save file, combining two different "realities"; the fact that I did reach the bottom of the pit with my bike, so the bike was still there at the bottom, and the fact that when I died, it counted as if I hadn't reached the bottom, so I re-spawned at the top of the cliff! I tried to get back on foot, but you can't descend that spiral road on foot because there are big holes that you must jump with the help of the bike. A dead end. The system went crazy because the programmers never thought of the possibility that a player might want to turn back and walk on that spiral road again. It didn't cross their mind! And they didn't think that you could die while trying to do it. Again, like the previous auto-save glitch, if you didn't have a manual save, you were doomed, you had to start the entire game from the beginning, and we are talking about the last stage of the game!!! Of course after my first disaster I did manual saves in multiple files, so I didn't have any problem.
These were some of the cases of malfunction of the game, there were many other minor glitches that I can't remember all of them right now. Also I could say a lot about the levels design of the game, and other aspects of the title, but I believe that there is no point in criticizing any further a game, that nobody bothered to test it if it works! Just to give you an idea of what a professionally made video game means, the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 was delayed 6 whole months so that game was double-tested from the beginning, although it had already been tested and was ready for distribution.
This is simply inexcusable for a franchise like Tomb Raider and a company like Eidos, (Square Enix, or whatever). I will not close with the cliché expression: I want my money back, but I want my time back.
Oh, I almost forgot: In fact there was one beneficial glitch in the game.
The "Speed Demon III" trophy: to get it you needed to drive through the Valhalla Maze in under 40 seconds. I did it in over than 10 minutes and I still got the trophy. :)