#my mum also almost died which was very much not fun and a little traumatising

[jalboyhenthusiast]

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[trashy-croud]

India: Temple Ruins🌿🧗‍♀️

I'm back but this level broke me. I kid you not, during this entire hiatus from doing these reviews and such, I have been coming back to this level only to cry more in the long run. I am literally only on the second level of this game. This is where I learnt, there is no God. This level held back no punches and was delivering each blow with a full on k.o. for me. Yet I still enjoyed it. Ignore the time as per usual, I spent so much of it actually looking for the secrets and searching every nook and cranny, as well as being absolutely terrified and refusing to move after the first statue came to life.

Now to talk about this level. Well for starters, this one started us off with climbing trees and with mudslides and piranhas and snakes and oh god, there was plenty of stuff happening at the start. This did lead to me being stuck a couple of times of figuring out the best path to take but eventually we powered through. We then encountered our first monkey at one point or another and I thought he’d lead me to somewhere new, y’know, like in the previous level. Hah. The only thing he led me to was my demise as as sad as it is to say, I kept him following me for a bit, not realising that he was taking away my health and I was actually killed by a bloody monkey - of all the deadly things in this level, the first thing to kill me was a god forsaken monkey. I am ashamed of myself. It seemed somehow we annoyed them at one point from the last level, perhaps because I took the key before that monkey could or because I killed it, I honestly cannot remember which one happened when I finally completed it and carried on, but these little buggars are ferocious.

After the mudslide challenge which was interesting to encounter and pretty fun to manoeuvre, along with a waterfall, we entered a dark room. I thought, “Oh lets light a flare!” Because, y’know, I actually have some for a change compared to the previous game, and when I lit it up, the look of horror on my face as I saw a statue. I could only briefly remember some parts of this game and watching my dad play it, I didn’t stick around much for this one compared to the previous instalment, but I bloody remember moving statues and I froze up and entered the menu almost instantly. That may have added to my time with how long I was on that menu thinking about what I was going to do next. After a while of debating the best course of action, I closed the menu off, pulled out my shotgun only to realise that this one didn’t come to life. Luckily I didn’t waste any ammo on an inanimate object but I was definitely wary.

After this room and moving some blocks around, we crawled into the next one and I spotted another statue, I was wary and was right to do so as it came to life and I about wanted to cry. I didn’t even pull out the shotgun this time, I went full pistols on it and didn’t know that the statue could block, didn’t seem to get that memo! So yeah, that one took a while as well, much to my dismay.

After getting rid of it, we found the first secret which was well sneaky of them as we fell into a trap door to pull a switch, but next to it was a movable block which you couldn’t tell it was movable unless you had a keen eye. Entering the room of that secret honestly was a challenge in itself with poison dart traps, a boulder trap to boot as well but we got through it all. It just took a couple of attempts, y’know how it is.

Now, a lot of what happened after is a bit lengthy to talk about and off the top of my head, a bit hard to remember how I reacted to a lot of it, some key areas was the quicksand, which I about had a panic over because that is scary. How dare they bring that in. I panicked about being unable to get any further and it was terrifying! There was also an outside part where some of the ruins came tumbling down and I was in water and had to climb back up. Let’s just say I went well into the double figures with my deaths on that one. There was so much depending on how skilful I was with some of my jumps, and I’m rubbish at jumping. I really hoped this game didn’t depend on it! But alas, seems I’ll just have to “git gud” at this now, and weep whilst I do it. But there were so many different sections to get through, to get keys to progress further through the level. There was also one part which included invisible platforms.

Do not get me started on the invisible platforms. This was the part where my sister thought it was hilarious to watch and then got stressed with me at the same time. We both admit, the way they programmed these platforms was wonderful in our eyes, it reminded me of the uzi secret in the first game, except now we actually have a way of seeing them all through the use of lights, ain’t no leap of faith this time. Basically what we got annoyed at was that I wasn’t able to jump very well and the game sometimes didn’t register the jump, so a conversation like this played out.

“Press the jump button.” “I am, what do you think I’m doing?” “Press it harder then!” “You think it’ll work if I press harder?” “It’s the only way, press the button harder and she’ll go further!”

In my opinion, I found it to be a funny moment between us as she is starting to join in more with some of the game, being more interested in later instalments such as AoD which may be interesting to write about. But this conversation reminded me of watching my dad on the PC when him and my mum would play this, my mum watching him, and literally saying the exact same thing as my sister did. It really brought back fun memories.

Back to talking about this level. After we collected the keys, we ended up with more traps to get around, more boulder traps and more fire-breathing statues. This is the theme for this level it seems. Statues that do things that I hate, such as breathing fire, and moving. As we got past all these traps, we came to a new room. I walked in like it was nothing, only to realise that it was a room with two statues in, two statues that woke up and were ready to knock me out into next week! I screamed like I’ve never screamed before, this included my sister as she just kept shouting to shoot and I ignored all that and ran away up to a ledge that they couldn’t reach. I thought we were safe and panicked once I suddenly saw another statue on this ledge, except it didn’t come to life this time which was mildly reassuring.

I decided to do this the cowardly way and handle the statues from that ledge, dangling whenever they guarded to make them drop their guard and shot them from a distance. Typical me stuff, y’know. After killing them, I was lost. I was a lot little puppy with what to do because I didn’t see them drop a sword each to put on the statue. We were scanning around and I did take a while before we managed to figure it out.

Then there was the next room. The one me and my sister called, “the room with the floating jesus-wannabe”. I told her that this was someones “team mate” (purely because she didn’t see the first cutscene with Tony) and we’re kinda figuring out what happened, “she said she liked what she called them better. I didn’t notice the statue lying in wait up until i picked the key up from underneath Randy or Rory, whichever one he may be, and then heard music playing and footsteps. I started weeping and my sister saluted me and said “good luck soldier”. I about wanted to deck her for that because she left the room to get snacks after that moment, only to come back in once I defeated it. It was super easy when you face them head on with a shotgun. Totally didn’t take to long.

After defeating it, we found more traps that were my worst nightmare, the spiked ceiling was an enemy that I was becoming too familiar with with the amount of times I died to it. Then I managed to do it. My speedy butt finally did it and I was absolutely loving it. There was the other trap as well which was smart but my worst nightmare, because it was underwater with a current trying to suck you in. Oh, I loathed it and wanted to break something. But we powered through, put all the keys in and finished the level. My sister watched and said that Tony was doing some weird “voodoo shizzam”. I thought that was an alright way to put it and after that cutscene, we were ready for the next level but left it there for the day. To be fair, that cutscene was enjoyable to watch and interesting as we saw what Tony was doing, something that we didn’t see before as he seemed to show his true colours. So we found out what happened to Randy and Rory, was probably Tony’s fault, or the artefact we have been chasing after. 

As a summary for this whole level, it was super dark yet it was atmospheric. I found out all monkeys are now rude and I have to kill them, and that Tony is also rude and a bit of a prick so I need to kill him too. All fun and games! Oh, I found out that statues are something that will haunt me to the grave, the first instalment had the centaurs which traumatised me, the second had the jade statue warrior by the end of the game, so now they’ve thrown in some right at the beginning. Great. Please let that be the end of the statues though, or am I hoping for too much there? This level has been fun and very challenging, there certainly is a bit of a difficulty jump in comparison to the first levels of the previous instalments, which were a bit easier to handle. Though I’m not complaining, to be honest, we definitely needed a challenge.

But that is all for the Temple Ruins as we will be back with the third level of the India levels, The River Ganges. It mentioned water and I saw a bike, I’m going to hate this aren’t I?