So, remember when I said this game has all kinds of dickish game design? There’s actually one thing I forgot on the Countess’s body - I took screenshots all the way up to the end of Act V before realizing I forgot it.
If you look at the Countess’s body, this is what you get:
So you’d think there’s nothing on her, just like all of the other dead bodies where we’ve looked at them and they have nothing on them. That’s where you’d be wrong.
Instead, you have to use the magnifying glass on her corpse for some reason. This reveals that she has a box of smelling salts on her. Like the boot from last update (which only appears after Yvette is found dead), this is another item that will make the game unwinnable if you miss it. You also only have one chance to get it - as soon as we stop looking at the body, the game passes the point of no return.
Once we hit the “exit” option, time advances to 4:15 AM. Laura automatically leaves Dr. Myklos’s office and heads to the Mammoth room. From this point on, the game becomes essentially a timed autoscroller as we escape from the killer.
As the title card fades, Laura starts out in the Mammoth room with a new running animation that she’ll be using for the rest of the game. Going the wrong direction at any point causes a death - so what we’ll do right away is run to the right and shut the doors to the Pterodactyl room.
Here, we need to use the wire from the pterodactyl to wire the door shut. This is the first major screw-over of this act: if you didn’t clip the wire earlier, you won’t have time to do it now.
Doing this gives us time to run through the door to the Armor room. Failing to wire the door means that the killer will automatically catch up with Laura as she goes into the next room.
Again, we need to close the door. Thankfully, the Armor room has a wooden bar that Laura can place across the door to lock it. From there, we continue north to the close-up of the armor room outside that locked door we were never able to open.
This time, there’s a chair outside the Armor room - it’s never there before this. You might not even notice this the first time through this act, but we need to push the chair in front of the door and open the window. The idea here is supposed to be that Laura is creating a diversion to buy herself some more time.
Next, we run into the Egyptian room. It’s not obvious, but the sarcophagus on the left is openable. Laura will use it as a hiding place with a very short animation I wasn’t able to get a screenshot of. There’s also a very brief (glitchy) pop-up message saying that there’s a smashing sound coming from the other room. The killer will enter the room briefly and leave without opening any of the sarcophagi.
With the killer presumably off to check the Life Mask room (since that’s the only other place Laura could’ve gone), we head out of the Egyptian room and back to the Armor room.
The now-smashed door leads into a room full of crates, including one that convieniently happens to be hanging on a crane. Laura can push this in front of the door..
And cut the wire with the wirecutters to barricade herself in.
While this may have seemed like a dumb idea, Laura does have a way out. Behind that suspiciously flat-looking crate..
Is a secret door to an elevator that goes down into a part of the basement we haven’t been to yet.
Welcome to Mummy Storage. Unfortunately, it’s another area that’s kind of hard to get screenshots of due to the timer, which stops when Laura gets in the elevator but immediately starts up again when she gets out. The door doesn’t lock, and we’re out of things to bar it with.. or are we? Looking in the open casket causes Laura to pick up a mummy. There’s no animation for this whatsoever - you just click the casket and the mummy appears in Laura’s inventory.
The next puzzle is kind of nonsensical, to the point where the hintbook has a whole section for people who got to this point (somehow avoiding all of the possible ways to make the game unwinnable) and had no clue how they were supposed to stop the killer from getting in. The answer?
You put the mummy in front of the door. I’m not entirely sure how that’s supposed to make sense, given that we’re dealing with a killer who broke down a barred wooden door in a matter of about ten seconds, or how the mummy is supposed to stop the door from opening. The next puzzle is kind of equally nonsensical. See how all of the sarcophagi have snakes on their heads?
The answer is to use the snake lasso on the head of the nearest sarcophagus, which opens another secret door. I’m not entirely sure how the people we’re about to meet got in here without it.
So… remember back in Act 2, when the Countess suggested that there was a cult of Amon Ra worshippers who were after the dagger? Yeah, we just kinda stumbled right into their secret cult headquarters. The two cultists closest to Laura immediately spot her.
As they come for Laura, we get our last sighting of the beetles from Dr. Carrington’s trunk and Dr. Myklos’s ferret.
Rameses Najeer and his cult buddy (who I suspect is Dr. Smith) take Laura up onto their weird sphinx altar. This is the second major screw-over of Act 5. Remember how in Act 2 and later on in Act 3, we found the two halves of the Rosetta Stone and copied the hieroglyphics down? If you don’t have both of those by this point, it’s an automatic death.
: “Are you going to kill me?” : “Of courthe not.” : “Kill ith thuch an ugly word. Actually, we’re going to THACRIFITHE you to Amon Ra!” : “Can we talk about this?” : “There ith nothing to dithcuth. You thould be proud to die in thuch an honorable fathion.” : “Young Egyptian maidenth uthed to FIGHT for the privelige of being thacrifithed to the great Amon Ra.” : “Now, wait a minute! I thought the ancient Egyptians didn’t make HUMAN sacrifices!” : “Hmm. You’re familiar with the hithtory of anthient Egypt, Mith Bow?” : “Well, I’ve learned a few things.” : “Perhapth we thould test you…” : “Do I have any other options?” : “We can tetht you, or we can thacrifithe you. It’th your choithe.” : “I’m liking this idea more and more. What kind of a test is it?”
I hate typing out Rameses’s lisp, so the basic idea is that we have to answer the riddle in hieroglyphs. The first part of the riddle:
The answer is buried inside that mess of hieroglyphs on Dr. Myklos’s blackboard, meaning that the devs actually expected you to take the time to translate it for the answer. Fuck that noise.
The answer is womb, which we have to spell out in Laura’s notebook.
Again, this whole thing is kinda dumb.
: “Of course!” : “Then you may leave. May the great Amon Ra guide your footthepth.” : “Thank you! Now I just have to outrun the person who’s been chasing me.” : “Who ith chathing you? Do you think they’ll find their way in here?” : “I’m not sure who it is, but I believe it’s the same person who stole the Dagger of Amon Ra from its display case. And I’m sure they’ll find their way in here.” : “If that ith true, they will NOT leave thith room alive. I thuggest you leave through our thecret ethcape route behind the altar. Go now, and remember your promithe!”
The secret passage leads to the boiler room, where.. wait, who’s that in the coal bin?
Oh, it’s just Steve. This is the site of the final two screw-overs of Act V. If we forgot to get the smelling salts off the Countess’s body (or just didn’t know they were there) we’d be unable to revive Steve. After a few minutes, the killer shows up and kills Laura.
Once you use the smelling salts on him, Steve sits up in a very awkward pose for about five seconds. Remember the boot we had to go out of our way to get back in the last update? This is where we need that. If Steve leaves this position without his boot..
He immediately keels over and dies, ending in the killer catching up and Laura dying. Again. What we have to do is give him his boot while he’s in that awkward sitting position, which allows him to safely touch the ground.
: “Yes, Steve. I was so worried about you… are you all right?” : “I think so. I remember hearing somebody coming up behind me, and as I turned around, somebody slugged me. Cripes, my head hurts.” : “They must have dumped you down the coal chute. Let me see where you were hit.” : “I’m all right, I’m all right. Don’t touch it.” : “Honestly, you men can be such crybabies. Do you think you can walk?” : “We have to get out of here. Somebody’s been murdering everybody in this museum, and whoever it is is after me.” : “I can make it. I’m with you. Where do we go?”
This secret passage seems like a good start. Hilariously enough, if you have the game’s speed on maximum, Laura will slide directly up the passage at highway speeds while Steve takes his sweet time. Like all of the game’s other secret passages, you are put on a death timer the second you enter it until you turn your lantern on.
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Oh, crap. Fortunately, we have just enough snake oil left to repel the entire horde of cobras. Don’t ask me how that works when we needed three-quarters of the bottle to corner a single cobra.
Of course, as soon as we get past the snakes, there’s another obstacle. Time for screw-over number five, and the final screw-over of Act V.
Remember the cheese from Wolf’s office? We need to throw that cheese at a specific spot, namely the first doorway above the rats. This is actually a chute that leads into the furnace.
Shortly after the rats start moving to their deaths, Steve hears gunshots coming from the cultist room. This kind of begs the question: if the killer had a gun the entire time, why the hell didn’t they use it when they were chasing Laura around?
Taking the doorway on the right brings us..
Directly out of the mouth of the T-Rex in the dinosaur area. The T-Rex (named “Rex”) has a gimmick I haven’t mentioned up to this point. See that plaque near the right side of the screen? Pressing that makes Rex’s mouth move while a voice rattles off some dinosaur facts.
We know the killer is right behind us, and is probably about to exit the T-Rex through the shortcut. The time has come to push the button. Don’t hold back. Galvanize!
And oh look, we’ve caught ourselves a killer. In true Scooby-Doo fashion, Laura and Steve move to unmask the killer..
But we never see who it is. No, seriously, we don’t. Shortly after this scene from the killer’s point of view, the screen goes black and up comes the title card for Act VI.
Next time: The final update!