Level 5: Jan Mayen Island
Gate of the Dead melee challenge
Posted May 26th 2010
At the Gate of the Dead, four Viking thralls come stumbling your way. With enemy health set to maximum, and without using any health potion, see if you can kill them all with kicking only, aside from the usual finish-off stomp. Good fun! This is my favourite way to take them out and I figure it's a great way to keep Lara in shape. A nice chance to work out some of her aggression.
Stone smackdown
Posted May 26th 2010
When you reach the Gate of the Dead, there are three hefty stones that need replacing into the base of the tower. But before you get to that, why not pick one up and use it to give a Viking thrall or two a hard time? Because remarkably, Lara will melee with it! She swings it around and gives the recipient an almighty thump, knocking him off his feet. It's honestly quite hilarious - the funniest thing I've seen in Underworld. Well, there's also the lizard grenading anomaly but that's just a glitch, not proper gameplay, and it doesn't keep me amused like Lara whomping thralls does.
Tackling one thrall
To start with I'd suggest that you get rid of three of the thralls and just have fun with the one that's left, with enemy health set to maximum so you don't have to wait around for him to reanimate so much. Practice your swinging. Each time he's knocked off his feet, advance as quick as you can to get close enough for another swing before he swings back. See if you can stay in control, continually knocking him down. You could potentially make a game of this, seeing how long you can survive. Once you get the hang of it though, you'll probably be able to survive indefinitely.
Tackling more
After that, you may like to suicide Lara with grenades and see if you can handle two thralls with stone swinging. Again, you could see how how long you can survive. Alternatively, just see if you can defeat them, allowing yourself only stone swinging plus the usual finish-off move. Of course, you could also try your hand with even more thralls. But the more there are, the harder it is to keep Lara on her feet; and once she's been knocked down with thralls around her, it's hard to pick up the stone again because of how long that takes - plus she may do a kick instead. You could always allow her to run to another stone though.