WILLARD ASYLUM

Level by dissonant mind

Walkthrough by Phil Lambeth

Lara begins in the asylum's waiting room.  All prospective patients have already been processed in, and the place appears not to have been swept out in weeks.  You can help by shooting the crates in the corners, although you won't find anything useful underneath them.  However, you will find some flares behind the desk near the N wall. 

Open  the W doors and head down the ward past a bunch of closed doors.  The cabinet opposite the grated passageway is empty.  Grab some more flares in the NW corner and open the last door in the S wall.  Enter an unoccupied room and take the shotgun ammo and flares from the SE cabinet (stand a step back from the door before hitting the action key).  You need a key to open the S door, so return to the hall and find that you can shoot a portion of that grate blocking the connecting N passage.

Enter to trigger a flyby through the area ahead while a mutant crawls toward you.  When camera control is restored, you can do your best to hop around while trying to kill it, although it takes a lot of bullets to do so.  In the cabinet to your right, just before the next open doors, you'll find more flares.  The next room appears to be the recreational area.  Before exiting W you can climb the ladder in the W wall to access the upper walkway, but all you'll find up there now is a closed door for which you need a key.

Therefore, enter the W passage and engage a hellhound.  They're hard to kill as well.  Go past the stairs to your left leading down, the ones you saw in the flyby, and go to the far wall.  Open the door and enter a ward of some kind.  Loop around to the left, shoot the panel on the wall and pull down the revealed switch to open a gate to your left.  Head over there and draw weapons to kill another hellhound.  Vault up into the NE area and shoot the crates in the N wall.  Vault up into the opening and shoot more crates. 

Drop down into a red-tinted room that appears to be used for devil worship by the inmates.  Pick up the SHOTGUN beneath the hanging weeds near the E wall.  Pull back the skeleton to reveal a red KEY.  You know where that goes.  Before leaving, however, shoot the crates in the SW corner to reveal a crawlspace.  Squeeze inside for a small medipack.  Return to the ward and exit E.  Search the twin cabinets along the S wall to find a small medipack in each one.

Go past the stairwell once more and return to the rec room.  Climb the ladder in the W wall, run along the upper walkway to the far end and use your Red Key to open the door.  Enter a small room and pull down the wall switch.  Get back down to the rec room and enter the opened E doorway.  Search the SE cabinet for shotgun ammo.  Shoot the crates in the NW alcove to reveal a small medipack.  You can shoot the remaining crates and barrels too if you wish, although they're all empty. 

Stand under the hanging weeds facing N and jump up to open a ceiling trap door.  Pull up E and pull down the wall switch.  Wait patiently for the nearby door to open.  Enter cautiously as a chain starts swinging in your path.  Avoid the alcoves to your left and right, as two of them are spike traps.  Head straight E past the swinging chains and climb the pole.  Back flip into an upper room and look around.  Let's see, a green key in each corner, much too good to be true.  Sure enough, three of them are spike trapped.  The only one that's not is in the SE corner.  Jump there and pick up the green KEY.

Climb back down the pole, return past the swinging chains to the rec room down below and exit S to a previously explored area.  Go to the dark connecting corridor and turn right.  Enter the SW room and use the Green Key to open the door.  In the room beyond, the hanging weeds obscure a wall switch.  Pull it down and return N to the rec room and turn left into the NW corridor.  Go down those stairs to your left and find that the door at the bottom is now open.  A mutant waddles toward you as you enter.

After expending considerable energy and ammunition killing it, start opening doors.  The first one on the left (E) leads to an empty cell.  Ditto with the first one on the right.  In the second one on the right, they didn't even bother to clean out the corpse of the dead inmate.  Pull it back to reveal some flares.  In the room across the wall from that one, while you're shooting crates that hide a hard-to-see SCREWDRIVER, a hellhound sneaks up on you from behind.  The last door on the left (E) contains crates and a barrel that hide a large medipack.  The last room on the right appears to be a storage area for dead inmates, although I couldn't break into the large crate to make sure.  There's some shotgun ammo in a dark corner.

Open the door in the S wall, where two mutants await you.  Enter the relatively pristine operating room and grab the shotgun ammo in the SE corner.  Open the door in the W wall and enter the room where they bed down the hellhounds for the night.  Two of them are still up and about, however.  The wall switch in the NW corner opens the door to their cage.  Enter and pull up the manhole cover on the floor (facing the open cage door).  Climb the ladder down the long shaft, where a hungry mutant awaits you down below. 

Head W into the small torch-lit room and open the door with your screwdriver.  You can crawl past the phantom grates in the hallway, but there's nothing inside any of the small crawl spaces.  This next room must be where they discipline the recalcitrant inmates.  After the brief flyby, wait for the spears to pop out from the pit ahead.  Time a jump over the pit and past the swinging spike bag to the unobstructed SW alcove.  Then jump NW over the next pit into the next alcove.  A final jump SW will bring you to relative safety, but prepare to deal with the waiting mutant.   

Go W into the next area, which appears to be another rec room.  Loop around to your left and pull up onto the raised flooring.  There are two S doors to open here.  The one on the left leads to a room that appears empty.  The one on the right leads to a room with many crates.  Shoot the ones you can to reveal a crawl space.  Enter and run forward as soon as you can stand up to find yourself overlooking a foreboding room.  Climb carefully down, and don't approach the flares or the skeleton lest you find yourself skewered.  Go around the flares to your left and climb up S.  Continue forward and run down the ramp.  Note the boulder hanging ominously from the ceiling.

Don't hop down immediately to pull down that wall switch you can see in the S wall.  Instead, pull back the crate, climb over it, pull it once E, get around to the other side and push it to the E wall.  Climb up on it and lower yourself into the sunken area.  Pull down the wall switch, which does two things.  It releases the boulder (but you're protected by the crate) and it triggers spikes to your right (which would have thwarted you had you tried to pull the switch without first moving the crate, thinking you could simply side flip right to safety).  Pull up onto the crate and get down on the left side.  The door there is still closed, however.

Look up where the boulder was and find a jumpswitch.  You need to take a running jump down the ramp to activate it, but once you do so the door opens.  Enter the passage and side flip over two blade traps.  Avoid the spike pit to your right.  Climb the ladder at the end of the passage.  Pull up and jump to grab the ceiling.  Monkey swing back the other way, turn left until you're over the spike pit, go S as far as you can and release to grab the ledge below.  Pull up, run forward and claim another green KEY.   Go back, hop down NW and jump S over the blade traps. 

Return the way you came, remembering those hidden spike traps in the next room, and crawl quickly into the room with the crates before the mutant has you for lunch.  Hop down to the rec room and run across to the NW side.  Climb up onto the raised area and open the N door on the left.  Go inside, shoot the crates in the corner and pick up the CROWBAR.  Go out and open the door on the right with the Green Key. 

For the first time in the level you've got human company.  One of your fellow lunatics, armed with a knife, comes out to attack you.  In the room he came from, search the NW cabinet for a small medipack.  Stand in front of the greenish four-square panel in the N wall and open it with your crowbar.

Things appear to be getting worse.  You need to time a running jump over a deep room lined with spikes to land on a ledge just beyond the reach of a blade trap.  You don't have much room to run and jump, but you do need to grab the monkey bars overhead.  When you do so successfully, monkey swing across the pit and drop down on the other side.  Run down the ramp into what looks like Satan's Sanctuary and veer to your right or left as soon as you hear the boulder starting to roll down behind you.  When the boulder rolls back the other way, run to the golden artifact and pick it up to end the level.