Shadow of the Tomb Raider - Deadly Obsession Longplay

This is one of the very few cases in this blog where I am writing a report for a playthrough that is one longplay and not a playlist, and the reason is that I have a few things to say about the (apparently dreaded) Deadly Obsession difficulty level of Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

I recently reinstalled this gorgeous game in order to play its seven DLC stories that I already had aquired but had forgotten about them completely. They turned out to be absolutely wonderful, but in the process I realized that although I own the game since many years now, I had never attempted to play it in its hardest difficulty level, which is Deadly Obsession.

In reality, Deadly Obsession is not exactly a difficutly level. If you have played the game in its standard hardest mode, One With the Jungle, you already have mastered its most difficult version. Deadly Obsession is essentialy the One With the Jungle difficulty minus the automatic checkpoints. You can only save on base camps, and thankfully the game offers a few free checkpoints during sequences that are too extended or too demanding, namely: 

-During the prologue, due to the lack of base camps, there is one free checkpoint just before you meet the local archaeologist outside the dig site.

-Again during the prologue, there is one more checkpoint when the flood begins.

-After the plane crashes and you find yourself in the Peruvian Jungle (kind of useless since there is a base camp pretty close).

-After leaving Paititi on boat and Rourke's helicopter attacks, Lara finds herself alone on the beach of the Porvenir oil fields. There is a checkpoint just before the series of areas where you need to move with stealth because you have no weapons.

-In San Juan, there is one last checkpoint at the beginning of the mudslide (thank God for that, because I died about a dozen times during that evil mudslide).

I played Deadly Obsession in New Game Plus mainly because I wanted to stay focused on the progression of the game without having to worry about leveling up, which would require going for side quests and challenge tombs so as to gain as many XP as possible. Lara is wearing the outfit of Six Sky for the most part, which helps avoiding a certain amount of damage from projectiles and regenerating health faster. As I mentioned above, the actual level of difficulty in Deadly Obsession is more or less the same as in One With the Jungle. What makes Deadly Obsession so nasty is the lack of checkpoints, which results in certain sequences being extremely hard to complete, not because they are difficult but because of all that climbing and jumping where there is hardly any room for mistakes. Playing with all skills or with no skills doesn't make much of a difference, because you are much more likely to die from a stupid fall or a miscalculated jump than from gunfire. I would say that the percentage is 90%-10% (90% for fall deaths, and 10% for the gunfire), or even 95%-5%. To be more specific, there are certain sequences that are guaranteed to test your nerves and your patience.

-The Trial of the Eagle. This whole part is a test of precision, where most of the times you will find yourself being knocked off to your death by an unforgiving beam. And when you finally manage to reach the top, you will most likely miss that last jump to solid ground. But at least there is a base camp just before the trial room, so you "only" need to repeat the whole trial over again.

-The Cenote stage. The lack of base camps in this section is pure evil. The stage per se is alright, with maybe the first Yaaxil ambush taking you by surprise, but I died only once during that part, and in the end I was able to kill most of them with Dodge Kills, preserving lots of valuable ammo. The water puzzle itself is quite easy to memorize, and the subsequent part where you need to escape the Cenote can be done easily too. But then it's the hard road back to Paititi. Although "road" isn't the word to describe it. You need to make a series of jumps above an abysmal chaos, where Lara suddenly may decide to commit suicide for no obvious reason. This means that you are then forced to repeat the whole Cenote part from the beginning, only to find yourself again in the dreaded situation of falling to your death while struggling to perform a lateral jump inside a peaceful, enemy-free cave. 

-The sequence where you go to free Unuratu. The path to her cell involves a ton of climbing and jumping, and several times you will find yourself totally helpless while witnessing Lara falling right into the raging waters and breaking all her bones on the rocks. Then you will be holding your breath while struggling to survive the ambush in the yard of the Emperor's Tomb, although technically this should not be as bad as it looks as long as you have resources to keep crafting special ammo and are able to move around with stealth.

-The Porvenir Oil Fields. There is a base camp just before the second part, which I thought I would take advantage of to go back and save after completing a new area. It worked for the first area, but when I went back to save again after the second one, I saw that the enemies there had respawned. I don't know if this was done on purpose or if it's a leftover, but it was very annoying, and more so because there is again a nasty sequence with jumps afterwards, where of course Lara had to suffer a humiliating death more than once. I wanted to make those saves because I was dreading the helicopter part at the Refinery, but this went surprisingly well.

Overall Deadly Obsession was quite an experience which however I don't know if I am ready to relive any time soon. I also got the achievement with this run, but unfortunately Bandicam does not record Steam pop-ups, so it didn't capture the achievement popping up. My general impression is that, when it comes to games that rely so much on their platformer aspect, it is very risky to not give the players the chance to save more often (or at least change the placing of save points to be a bit more forgiving) when it comes to challenges like Deadly Obsession. Resident Evil 3's Inferno and The Evil Within's Classic Mode also don't have checkpoints, but those are both games that rely almost entirely on the player's strategy and you are able to be in total control almost all the time. In games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, where you are many times found in the tough position to perform series after series of very risky jumps in between demanding battle sequences, a few more checkpoints or a couple more bonus base camps could make a huge difference and save us from unnecessary extra frustration.