Tomb Raider III Pocket Guide

As with other Brady Games pocket guides, this one is a bare-bones walkthrough explaining a single path through the game mostly through text with some black-and-white screenshots thrown in for good measure. Tomb Raider III introduced a non-linear stage concept, where after completing the India portion of the game, the next several missions (taking place in the South Pacific, the Nevada desert, and London) could be attempted in any order before Lara headed to Antarctica to confront her final adversary.

While the middle stages can be attempted in any order, the path chosen by the guide's author is objectively the worst one possible. In the Nevada segment, Lara is captured by the US Military and stripped of her weapons, ammo, and supplementary items like medkits and flares. While she can and does reacquire her weapons, the additional ammo and usable items she had gathered up to that point in the game are permanently lost. Because of this, experienced players know to head straight for Nevada after India, thus allowing them to re-supply in London and the South Pacific. The walkthrough in this guide, however, leaves the Nevada missions for last, making the Antarctica levels harder than necessary.

Oh well. Nobody's perfect.

Interestingly enough, this is one of the few Brady Games pocket guides which is not an unauthorized release.