The level designs are a little too much on the mismatch side and besides, it's two years too late.
It's a little bit of an odd sensation that Tomb Raider 2 Gold was released when it did back in 1999. To put it into perspective, 1999 saw the release of Tomb Raider 4 –The Last Revelation; so basic maths tells you that it's already two years behind. That's a big deal considering that computer game technology changed so much during those two years. So is it worth buying Tomb Raider 2 Gold in 1999? I'm not sure what was the recommended retail price however I sure hope there was a decent discount otherwise you will feel ripped off considering.
So this review will be based only for the gold content – other words, dubbed as 'The Golden Mask'. The plot goes something in the like of Lara, during her research somewhere, located several clues of an island of the Bering Sea. And as quoted from the game's blurb '…Lara located a faded photograph showing an Inuit whale hunter holding what looks like an ancient golden artifact, an old newspaper from 1945 referring to a conflict over an Alaskan gold discovery, and the blueprints to a secret Soviet military base and mine.'; so off goes Lara in search of the Golden Mask.
There are five levels to complete and the structure of these levels are quite familiar in style; that is find a key to open doors, push blocks, avoid and / or kill enemies and plenty of jumping. So in gameplay perspective, nothing much changes and that's a good and bad thing. Good as in you don't have to learn new skills however bad as in, if you happen to play Tomb Raider 3, Lara cannot monkey swing or crawl. Also to unlock the last level, you need to locate all twelve secret items for the Golden Mask.
So basically, if you are not a secret hunter lover, you only can play the first four levels. The first two though are definitely my favourite as the last two are like cutting floor scraps. Considering the entire campaign is located in Alaska, expect lots of snow scenery – similar to those Tibet levels in Tomb Raider 2; and that's including the snowmobile. Yet the abandoned mining factory with Russian writing printed all over them added on a fresh take to the series. And once entering the mine, there are beautiful crystal caves to explore.
Yet the next two, the scraps arrived in full force. The first is an internal volcano that spews gold (?) and the second, a village of sorts with molten gold everywhere (?). So as you can imagine, the level designers went off the deep end here. It really did feel like that the designers wanted to add these levels somehow however cannot implement this well enough to fit into the current plot – so the next best thing is just put it there for the sake of being there. And the net result was absolute garbage with a dose of chaos.
Yet, if you managed to locate all the secrets (twelve in total / three per level), the last level (for which I won't spoil it for you) is seriously good fun and it's definitely worth your time investing to locate all the secrets. However being a Tomb Raider game, the very last secret is an absolute nightmare to locate and I really mean that. It was so bad I used a walkthrough to grab it. To imagine this nightmare, where's its located is among a huge pool of molten gold where you have absolutely no idea where to jump as the ground looks like one big yellow platform of bubbling gold.
To complete the game, it took me a cool eight to nine hours yet I spent more of that time locating the secrets than completing the levels. I guess it's quite decent considering it's free however because it was released two years later (meaning two Tomb Raider's later) and nothing has changed other than adding those levels, I guess the best things in life are free (not the Tomb Raider 2 game though). So if you are a newcomer to the series and wasn't charged full price, go for it.