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The archeologist most noted for her pair of guns is back, but not without a little competition. The queen of the cliffhanging has been slowly pushed off her pedestal with titles like Uncharted and Prince of Persia incorporating both action and wall climbing into their formula. It’s going to take more than just a tight sweater just to turn the heads of gamers today. The previous two titles, Tomb Raider: Legend and Anniversary, brought the series into the current generation by focusing more on tombs and less on gunmanship.

Tomb Raider Underworld takes a strategic leap in game design by turning gigantic structures and even whole levels into interconnecting puzzles. As with the game, however, try to jump too far, and you’re bound to lose your footing.

Keeping Abreast of the Story

Honestly, if you haven’t been following the new exploits of old Lara Croft since Legend, just hit the mute button and enjoy the pretty pictures. For the rest of you out there, we already know that Lara’s mother didn’t die in an expedition but got sucked into portal leading to Avalon. This time around, Lara searches for Thor’s hammer in hopes to break open a portal to the magical realm. Amanda (Legend), Natla (Anniversary), and a - I kid you not - more developed doppelganger try to stop our heroine from obtaining Thor’s gloves, belt, and matching purse. The story itself might make as much sense as wearing short shorts in the middle of a jungle, but the cutscenes are actually well done with your standard fair of voice acting to compliment the experience.

Swinging Cams

Before getting into gameplay basics or how Ms. Croft looks in a wetsuit (very nice, by the way), I would like to first touch on the one aspect of the game that affected everything from combat to exploration and just about ruined the experience for me - the camera. If you cannot see it, how will you know if you can jump to it, climb it, or shoot it? The camera stays at a mostly fixed length from the bosomed explorer unless you enter a smaller area where in the camera zooms wildly around Lara. Your eye in the sky will not pass through walls - an object Lara commonly climbs, hangs from, and at times, must jump from into an unknown abyss since the camera’s lens only captures so much. One such instance was in a room where the camera actually obscuring a ledge by sitting right in front of it.

With rooms acting as giant puzzles, an accommodating camera would completely give away all its stony secrets. That, I can live with. It’s the camera that completely obscures where I can go next, one that refuses to move where I need it to make a jump, and zooms randomly into the character that adds a degree of difficulty that is infuriating instead of challenging. There are whole sections of the game where I never thought about the camera, but too many incidences indicated that your P.O.V. was greater than any enemy Lara faced in the game.

We Like Them Big…… Puzzles…… I mean, Big Puzzles

The biggest innovation to the Tomb Raider series might just be integrating all the puzzles into larger sections. Large and intricately designed set pieces act as one continuous climbing conundrum. Lara leaps, climbs, and combat rolls from one area to the next. Sometimes the biggest problem isn’t how to get in; it’s getting out. The game tosses aside that helpful camera motion that shows you exactly where to go and what to do. Instead, Lara must explore every inch of these catacombs to find her own way to a solution. Underworld now includes handholds built into the walls, walls to leap from, and a repelling hook that can be used to climb or lower yourself down. As you progress throughout the game, these sections stretch out and at times affect the whole level causing a switch you flipped in one section to change the environment in another.

Relying on puzzles to amuse the masses comes with its own problems – mainly the “what now” feeling. While the game does a great job of letting you find your own path, it does nothing in the way of explaining where you should end up or how you should get there. After pulling a couple of switches, swinging to new ledges, and getting yourself hopelessly stuck, that feeling of confusion begins to seep in. Nothing stops an action game quite like standing around or throwing your double-D’s against every wall until you find the one with nearly hidden handholds.

Once again, the camera doesn’t help the situation any since it won’t pull out and often gets stuck against objects. To see a full view of your environment, you have to use the radar in Lara’s PDA to look around, and even this isn’t always helpful. The picture that comes out looks more like graph paper origami than an actual map of your environment. While it’s useful for finding big holes in the area, other finer details like ledges you can actually hold on to are nearly impossible to discern from the Tron-like map.

Body Like a Battle Axe

Gunplay has not just taken a backseat to exploration but has completely been left behind in the dust. Unlike the previous two installments, the number of times you actually have to pull out your twin pistols are few and far between. And that’s a good thing. Lara can still lock on to two approaching baddies and use her adrenaline to keep from getting hit. The camera, however, has a hard time keeping up with enemies up-close or when Lara happens to get knocked down. Luckily, you can simply climb and shoot from a distance if things get too tough. The AI doesn’t seem to know how to get around objects or fire from any distance. If these fire fights appeared more often, this would be a major concern, but for our explorer, this is more a battle of wits than of bullets.

Lara looks better than ever (re: realistic). With a very clean presentation and a pretty lady front and center, Tomb Raider Underworld is actually a very attractive game. From the depths of the oceans to tops of tombs, the areas have a distinct look and design that makes getting stuck in some places a little more tolerable. The music fades in when there are spiders to shoot, but stays hidden most of the time to keep out of the way from exploring.

Right Mission, Wrong Tools

To move away from the pack, Underworld takes a very interesting stance by focusing on tackling cliffs rather than tackling tigers. It’s the right idea with wrong camera and gunplay to pull it off. The ledges lining the walls of the mansion would be more impressive if the camera could actually show them to me. I would appreciate the foliage slowly climbing the sides of the wall if I wasn’t scratching my head over what to do next or why I’m even there. Tomb Raider Underworld heads in the right direction, but just doesn’t have the right tools to accomplish it. With that said, I will save a spot on my dance card for the next time we meet, Ms. Croft.

Article by: James Youngblood