Tomb Raider Underworld

Tomb Raider is a third person action adventure game following Lara Croft's adventures.  This action filled game plot has her globe trotting to find what happened to her mother.  Crystal Dynamics third outing with Lara has something old, something new, something borrowed but something is still blue.

Level design is often awe inspiring.  These levels are big, huge in some cases, and you can often marvel at the beauty.  Standing looking down into a deep dark pit or up to what seems an unattainable peak you know that you'll eventually have to work a way to reach that destination.  In doing so there's a great sense of achievement.  Many times you'll be left scratching your head wondering about your next move panning the camera angle left and right to look for a ledge or drop.  Sometimes you can find a short cut for the expenditure of a little health.

The intensity increases as you progress with false trails leading to treasures but little else.  With wall crawling creatures in many areas there is always a risk of missing one and being knocked to your doom.  The player themselves may become quite skilled at sending Lara plummeting to her death as they try to work out puzzles.

Numerous checkpoints make these deaths far less annoying as little distance needs to be covered to get back to where you were.  The checkpoints feel like a resolution to a far more serious problem however.  The camera often struggles seriously badly when Lara is backed against a wall or certain foliage and clipping errors occur, one of which crashed the game, requiring shuffling Lara into a very specific place to see what you need to do.

In combat this can be fatal as enemies are fast and guns fail to lock on well meaning in tight areas it may have to be repeated multiple times.  Human opponents are easier to deal with as they tend to be in open areas and you have various ways to dispatch them with a two gun limit, bombs or the final weapon...  There is also an Adrenaline Shot Mode but by the time it becomes an option combat is often over or it has been forgotten about.  The "new enemy" is over used in the last scenes and for reasons stated this can just become tedious.  Fighting and clipping errors are something you can get used to but as this is Crystal Dynamics third outing and they should be getting it right by now.

At 24 hours Underworld feels too short.  There is definitely replay value with treasures to be found and unlockable content but there are no Trophies to be gained in playing the game which some may find disappointing. Options of Player Tailoring the difficulty, even during the game, are good though.

Tomb Raider has a lot of fun elements and reasons to draw the player back in whether it be planning your next move, driving your bike or simply watching a human enemy flail around trying to remove a sticky bomb.  Crystal Dynamics must make the next one cleaner, longer and far more accurate or they risk alienating a large number of the followers of Ms Croft's adventures.