To Guide or Not to Guide: Totally Unauthorized Tomb Raider II Pocket Guide (1997, BradyGames)

Source: Who's got two thumbs and scanned those images? THIS GUY! (c) BradyGames

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Having been thoroughly insulted by BradyGames' treatment of Tomb Raider II in their Totally Unauthorized PlayStation Games Book, Volume 5, I decided to see if they could redeem themselves with this inexpensive strategy guide.

Well, inexpensive as long as you were American. Canadians, as always, get plowed on the exchange rate, which should show them who's boss of the Northern Hemisphere, thank you very much.

The Totally Unauthorized Tomb Raider II Pocket Guide, as you can see from the images above, is a 128-page book, roughly 1/4th the size of an ordinary BradyGames guide, meant to be transported in one's pocket just in case a Tomb Raider II emergency arises in the middle of nowhere, I guess? Being unauthorized, it means somebody (probably David Cassady, since he's credited as "Development Editor", but there's also a suspicious credit to "Noah" for "his contributions to this book"--I'm thinking BradyGames may have used some child labor here, y'all) had to play through the game and work stuff out for himself, instead of being handed all the goodies on a silver platter by Core Design or Eidos Interactive. With that in mind, and given the limits of both page count and format size, it's no surprise this reads like a professionally-written FAQ for the game instead of a standard strategy guide, although at least there are screenshots this time around.

A lot of screenshots, actually. Roughly 1 per page, which is better than what they managed for that Volume 5 book I looked at a few days ago. They're on the small size, and monochromatic, but anything's better than the crappy 9-page item list we got in the other book. Usually they have something to do with the level in question, but occasionally you'll get something like this:

That's a totally unauthorized shot of Lara's tush, boys.

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Like the cover says, this only covers the PlayStation version, which means the controller inputs and other stuff are all specific to the console version. Level-wise, the PSX and PC editions are identical though, so you can use this to FAQ your way through the Windows edition if you need. And really, that's about all you can use it for. It's lacking in a few areas, makes mistakes in others (the part identifying the Uzi as a new weapon for Lara sticks out to anybody familiar with the first game), and has no information the game's cheat codes. While it runs down the weapons Lara has available, and mentions the Bronze, Silver, and Gold relics hidden in each area, it doesn't explain any of Lara's other gear like medkits, flares, and other stuff she can pick up over the course of the game. It mentions the tutorial level, but doesn't provide any walkthrough or explanation for what to see and do there so if you're looking for a way to navigate that hedge maze, trap the ever-suffering butler Winston in the deep freeze, or unlock the door into the basement, look elsewhere. It's a shame about Lara's House, but with only 128 little pages, they probably had a hard enough time just getting the main parts of the game squeezed between the covers. Heck, the information on the final bonus level comprises two paragraphs on the final page, so they were fighting that constraint right up to the end.

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Are there better guides for Tomb Raider II? Of course there are. But that's not the point: this was a small book meant to provide a bare-bones hint guide for a brand new game. Being low on information means there are very few spoilers, and a distinct lack of the BradyGames snark that tends to creep into their larger books from this period. If all you need is a pocket-size walkthrough light on spoilers that leaves you with just enough info to do the bulk of the leg work yourself but extract yourself from the occasional sticky situation, this guide is perfect. If you're looking for a full-sized, full-color, and full-priced strategy guide, obviously this one won't do.

Also, this was published the year before Vol. 5 of the Totally Unauthorized PS Games Book I reviewed last time--are you telling me they couldn't have re-used some of these screenshots for that project? I will say that the two actually go hand-in-hand, since the item location list in that book meshes nicely with the walkthrough format of this one, but I still contend TUPSGB Vol. 5 was a shameless cash grab, and all involved in its creation should have received wedgies.

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To Guide or Not to Guide?

Given the small size, lack of color, and strict adherence to its low-key, spoiler-free walkthrough format, you might think I'd feel the same way about this book that I did the other one. It's understandable, but you'd be wrong. This is honestly one of my favorite Tomb Raider II books, because it does just what it sets out to do: show the reader the fastest, easiest way to navigate the game's seventeen main levels, and assumes you already understand what the Tomb Raider games were all about. It's small, it was cheap, you really could put it in your pocket and carry it to a friend's house, and it's got some small but frequent screenshots to break up the monotony of plain text. It's not a patch on the official guides from Dimension or Prima, with their full-size, full-color formats, but it's not meant to be.

I also like how the background images on the pages change depending on what section of the game you're reading about. This adds nothing at all to your ability to finish the game, but it's nice to see the art department going above and beyond a one-size-fits-all approach for such a little book.

Any Tomb Raider collector or fan would be well-served putting this one in their pocket, and carrying it with them at all times. Lara's always prepared--should you as a devoted fan be any different? The best part is you don't even have to drop $7.99 for it today, which is nice since it's been out of print for 20 years. Snap it up here for about $3 US as of this writing.

Guide.