Since its 'reboot' in 2006, the Tomb Raider series has been edging closer to its core values - raiding tombs and solving puzzles - but making too many concessions to the imagined, or not, limitations of a mainstream audience, with scripted action sequences, facile puzzles and idiotic slow motion combat.
But with Underworld, Crystal Dynamics are the closest they've ever been to recreating the thoughtful magic of Lara's early adventures; the game is chock full of labyrinthine catacombs and bewilderingly complex puzzles.
Of course, there's still plenty of combat, and it's awful. The AI is abysmal. Often enemies will stand completely still as you unload clips of ammunition into them. And that's another problem; it takes 30 seconds of sustained fire to drop a single goon, while Lara's health can be completely drained in half that time.
There's also no cover system to speak of, and her melee attacks are spectacularly useless. Nine times out of ten she'll clumsily fly-kick straight through an enemy, leaving you open to a volley of health-shredding gunfire. So our advice is this: ignore the combat. Go to the Options menu, then Game Tailoring, and set enemy health to Low. Think of the shooting bits as an inconvenient, but necessary, distraction.
Jumped up There. Now we can focus on what makes the game so compelling: the level design. The environments are genuinely point-at-the-screen evocative, like the rain-lashed Mayan temples of Mexico and the foggy, atmopsheric depths of the catacombs beneath them. We've been to so many exotic locales in video games that we've become desensitised to it, but Underworld's tombs and temples feel genuinely authentic and mysterious.
Unlike previous Raider games, grabbable surfaces aren't clearly signposted, which means finding your way around the world is a real test of skill. You'll often find yourself teetering on the edge of a rocky outcrop 300 feet up, convinced there's nowhere else to go - then, after spinning the camera around for a bit, notice a ledge that's just within reach.
It's almost like a puzzle game, and you have to consider every possibility before you make the next leap. It's less forgiving than Uncharted, but the platforming is much more satisfying. In a way, it's the exact opposite of Sony's game; dodgy combat and complex climbing to Drake's excellent cover-to-cover shooting and limited platforming.
The controls aren't perfect, though. The collision detection is occasionally dreadful and Lara will sometimes miss a ledge entirely and fall to her doom, even though you threw her directly at it. But it doesn't happen often, and it's usually because you weren't in precisely the right spot to make the jump - something that really should've been ironed out before release.
There are also camera issues. Get too close to a wall in a cramped space and it'll twitch uncontrollably, obscuring your view. Not particularly helpful when you're trying to hop between tiny slivers of rock above a bottomless pit.
Under control Underworld lacks polish, but whenever you find a reason to hate it, you come across something that makes you instantly forgive its shortcomings. Like the sundial puzzle in Mexico (which takes nearly an hour to complete) that unlocks the entrance to Xiabalba, the Mayan underworld. Or scaling cliffs on the Thai coast as sunlight dances across the Indian Ocean below you. Or discovering an ancient, dusty tomb beneath Croft Manor. The game's full of surprises and memorable moments.
As for new features, the sonar map's probably the most notable. When activated, Lara receives a rough 3D model of her immediate surroundings, which you can then move the camera freely around. It's a great idea and good for finding hidden nooks, but in larger areas we did find ourselves yearning for a full map.
They've also replaced the QTE scenes from Legend and Anniversary with 'adrenaline moments'. At set points, the game suddenly slows down, giving you a second to take action - such as jumping away from the ever-popular collapsing floor.
This is the best Tomb Raider game in ages, with a vividly realised world and some ingenious level design. It's just a shame there are so many technical niggles, otherwise it could've been an essential buy. And the combat. God. It almost feels like an afterthought, as if they clumsily jammed it into the game five minutes before deadline.
But if you can grit your teeth and soldier through the lame action and occasional glitch, Underworld is a rich, thrilling and absorbing adventure.
PSM3 Staff
// Overview
Verdict
Overall Clumsy combat, but enough quality puzzling to thrill lapsed fans.
Hopefully getting this at the start of december, the demo looked lovely but the movement was so fast and daft looking, i hope thats been toned down, it didnt look like any effort was going into climbing etc, looking forward to what is effectively the first proper next gen tomb raider game, legend was fantastic but it was effectively a ps2 title ported upwards.
Mine came through the post yesda. It is indeed visually very nice - gameplay is good too, pretty smooth and intuitive controls. The graphics are more detailed and realistic than Drake's Fortune too. The review pretty much sums it up.
meh (this might sound kinda gay) lara has been dead to me ever since uncharted it just blew all the tomb raibers out of the water it was so good ill just wait for uncharted 2 and if u didnt now its set in india gonna be awesome
meh (this might sound kinda gay) lara has been dead to me ever since uncharted it just blew all the tomb raibers out of the water it was so good ill just wait for uncharted 2 and if u didnt now its set in india gonna be awesome
mate i agree uncherted is way way better than tomb raider and i was a massive tomb raider fan!
I actually think this is a lot better than Uncharted, it lacks a lot of the polish that uncharted had, but I just prefer it's gameplay, I found Uncharted's shoot-outs were far too repetious. I really don't think they're a fair comparison anyway.
I agree with your opinion about the game, Andy. TRU is at least, a standout episode of the series, and I agree that the team working on it have succeeded in delivering a game, that's more fitting to the original Tomb Raider blueprint than previous games in the series. It's great fun to play, despite some disappointing tech issues (the AI is pretty bad, like you say - at one point, this huge enemy in front of me just began running around in circles while I stood shooting it. Or sometimes, perfectly legitimate leaps could see Lara thrown right of her intended target, into some death hazard...You're right about camera niggles - it particularly dislikes panning around objects, if Lara's flush against a surface, I noticed.)
I really liked the narrative, once it started being offered; and felt that, on that score, the writers delivered skillfully, and abundantly. I found it really quite gripping, at times! It stumbles a bit, mostly while it's reflecting on what came before, but once Lara's new adventure becomes the focus of interest, things really take off. Great puzzles, impressive sense of scale and realisation for each of the locations visited, help make this one worth people's time.
....it crashed the PS3 twice (interestingly both times while attacking a Thrall, though at different points in the game), and several times the game got 'stuck' (the most notable were the times I sank to the bottom of a pool after trying to jump, unable to move anywhere and wouldn't die, and where I backed up the motorcycle to make a jump and got stuck, unable to go forward, back, or even get off the damned bike).
As mentioned in the review, I also found the AI was appauling, collision detection was a joke (many times Lara just vanished into rock before re-appearing), camera angles were confusing and jittery in confined spaces, and to top it all off there was some really bad coding (ever seen a spider act like a kangaroo on acid while on its back for 3 minutes before finally expiring)! The gameplay was further compromised by problems with accuracy when trying to perform jumps, usually compounded by bad camera angles.
I even got the feeling that the second trip to the 'sister' ship to the one that sank earlier in the game was an attempt to make the game just a little bit longer. It seemed out of place and a little bit rushed to me.
Visually it was stunning, but IMHO it wasn't enough to make this a better gaming experience that Uncharted.
guys,the game's not all that bad.i mean, it does have its fare share of bugs. but then again... what game doesn't.and as for uncharted looking better then tomb raider underworld, i beg to differ.i would say a tie at the most.im almost finished with it.and i must say, it's the best tomb raider to come along in a while.
I recently bought the 360 version of this, I was a latecomer to the Tomb Raider games and my first proper experience was with Legend on the PS2 and I really enjoyed every aspect of it, then I decided to try out Anniversary and felt much the same. So I had pretty high expectations of Underworld, so when I finally got round to playing and beating it I was very disappointed, it lacked the depth of story that Legend has and didn't really implement a lot of the swinging and pole balancing - it seems to mostly just be climbing, and I really would have to disagree with the reviewer that the ledges aren't easy to spot, it's just the infuriatingly cruddy camera makes it hard to see what you're doing. I was also kinda bummed that they went for the more solitary approach like in Anniversary, rather than Lara constantly chatting back and forth with Zip and Allister (although this is understandable with the underwater and underground sections) that Legend has, and as it's the direct follow up to that game it doesn't make sense. And I really don't see the point of the sonar map, and was kind of disappointed that they ditched the field binoculars - although the puzzles are so mind numbingly easy you don't really need any extra help. The loss of boss fights and quicktime events is also a real disappointment, especially as the new slomo events involve nothing more than jumping out the way of something which would actually be easier if gameplay weren't interrupted by it slowing down. It really does feel like they've dumbed the whole game down, perhaps they should have stuck with the Legend engine instead of allowing development of the new one to cut into time that could have been spent polishing the game and fixing the multitude of bugs and slowdown issues. It's not by any means a bad game, it's just a rather disappointing experience off the back of the previous two if you were into everything they offered, which I was. It also has practically no replay value as they decided to remove the Croft Manor level, and finding treasure/artifacts is a simple matter of kicking over some pots, not to mention that finishing a level doesn't unlock any extras. In my eyes the only way Crystal Dynamics can now redeem themselves is a Tomb Raider/Legacy of Kain crossover in which Lara goes in search of the Soul Reaver. Although my guess is that the next Tomb Raider game may see us taking control of Lara's father, which would be interesting.
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