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| Lara Croft climbing down a massive ruin. |
Tomb Raider: Underworld continues where Tomb Raider: Legend ended. Lara Croft is looking for her missing mother, whom she believes is lost in a different dimension; a dimension which has become the basis for every depiction of the underworld in every religion. To locate this dimension, Lara must explore various crypts found throughout the world and find artifacts which will help her open up a portal to that dimension.
The game is broken up into five levels, each containing a different tomb. Lara must reach the deepest part of the tomb to locate the artifact stored within. To do that Lara must use her extensive acrobatic abilities to dodge ancient traps and climb over and under the decaying ruins, while occasionally fighting the local wildlife.
Most of the game is spent navigating Lara as she climbs walls, jump over chasms, jumps to other walls, and dodges traps. The challenge is in finding the proper way to overcome said obstacles. For every trap or puzzle, there is only one route to go around it, and it is up to the player to find that route and navigate it without falling or otherwise missing a jump. Sometimes there are additional obstacles in Lara’s way, and the player has to time Lara’s jumps so she is not crushed or burned alive.
The problem is figuring out what Lara can grab onto is not just a challenge, but can be unfair to the player. Lara cannot grab any ledge; she can only grab ledges that stick out. Usually they are lighter in color, like white ledges against a blue wall. But they are not always that easy to spot. It can become a guessing game what ledges or outcroppings Lara can and cannot grab onto, leading to a lot of pointless deaths. The challenge should be successfully pressing the buttons that make Lara jump several times in a row at the right time, not figuring out where to jump.
It does not help that the camera is very unwieldy. Several times when Lara is hanging from a ledge, the camera will swing away from the next ledge and the player has move the camera around to find the next ledge. Then the camera can get stuck against the wall, making it impossible to see where the ledge is.
The game also has a glitch where it has a hard time determining which direction the player wants Lara to jump. You will move the control stick back and Lara will loo to the right, or you will tryo to get Lara to grab a ledge and she will instead run into a wall. It is a good thing that the game gives the player unlimited lives to make up for all the pointless deaths.
Sometimes Lara will run into puzzles that involve moving objects, like huge stone blocks, around in a certain way to open a door. These puzzles are never difficult and they do not happen enough to become tedious.
There is combat as well. Lara has pistols, and can bring one heavier gun into the level to fight animals. This consists of shooting at the target while repeatedly pressing the dodge or jump button to get Lara out of the way, though she does not jump far enough to make much of a difference. Since there is usually little space to move around in each fight devolves into shooting the enemy before it kills Lara, without any strategy on the player's part.
The story is okay. The odd thing about it is that, while it is a sequel to Tomb Raider: Legend, it takes several parts from Crystal Dynamics’ other Tomb Raider game Tomb Raider: Anniversary, almost to the point of forgetting the original story. It is almost like Crystal Dynamics wanted to make a sequel to Tomb Raider: Anniversary but could not for some reason, so they shoehorned a sequel into Tomb Raider: Legend’s sequel.
The graphics looked great. All the levels are unique and detailed, from the lush jungles of Mexico to the cold and lonely Arctic Ocean. Some of the underground parts can look a little similar, but the above ground parts look beautiful.
Tomb Raider: Underworld is an okay game, but several technical problems that could have been fixed keep it from being a great game.
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