Tomb Raider Underworld for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

Pro's:
Looks great, I mean detail added to detail, Lara gets dirty as you go. Water moves about as you play, when your not under it anyway. The story builds off past games and Lara's history, you meet up with people Lara knows so on so forth.

Con's:
Well now all of the above kinda screams good game doesn't it. It would be if that was all there was to it, I mean a movie made using the game probably would be entertaining and everything. Sad fact here, this is not a movie made with the game, this is the game, I use the term game loosely.

The controls are iffy, if your trying to move closer you can't kick anything, you have problems with collision recognition. It does not always recognize that hey there is a wall there that you can jump up and grab something. The grapple works fine, when you find something to grapple, finding said thing is not always easy. It gives you alerts on what you can do as you go along, except at a very key point very early on in the game, namely pulling a piece of a statue down so you can get a door open.

It has a help audio, that generally is useless. Though at least they spent the time to make an audio. The combat system which happens rather often is worse than useless, no more can you run about shooting fast, the fastest shooting gun you have is the assault rifle, it shoots about 10 rounds a second. Pistols are very slow shooting, shotgun reloads take about 2 seconds and are very short range. There is a target system, that does not always appear when you press the button, you move slower and the reticule moves slow. You can get a target by pressing the left trigger, good luck on getting the right one, good luck on keeping the right one and good luck in shooting them all fast enough that you do not die.

Looks great, actual storyline that is kinda interesting, gameplay that is the absolute worst ever for Tomb Raider. Barely even a renter, though it looks great and has eye candy in Lara and her clothing.

As a big Tomb Raider fan, I have to say that this game was quite enjoyable and defiantly worth a rent. The achievements were fairly easy and I got most of them by just playing through the story without going out of my way to get them.

Game play 7: The game play had to be the most frustrating part of the game. A lot of the jumps, like most tomb raiders, take timing and precision. This is expected, but what isn't expected is the wonky camera system. The camera is constantly repositioning itself and and often does so in the wrong direction. I found myself having to make a lot of "blind jumps". I could never seem to rotate the camera were I wanted it to be. The puzzles were fun and not to hard. The camera angles made them very challenging at times. The games difficulty level is very customizable to your needs. If your like me, and like the game more for the puzzles, you can turn the enemy's health down a notch and not have to spend a lot of time on the gun battles. Messing with these settings does not affect the achievements, except there is one achievement for beating the game on the hardest difficulty.

Visual 9: The graphics of this game are just stunning. The underwater worlds are great and the jungles are very detailed. This sometimes presented a challenge in itself. There was so much detail that sometimes it was hard to find a ledges that you could grab. This wasn't a big factor though.

Story 7: The story was OK and gave sufficient purpose to the game. Wasn't very gripping though. I could give you a summary of the story and that's about it. It really didn't hold my attention.

Overall 7: Honestly, this game would have easily been an 8 or 9 in my book if it weren't for the terrible camera controls. I found myself knowing exactly what I needed to do in the game, but having troubles accomplishing it because I couldn't find the right camera angle at times. If you can accept that, you will probably enjoy this game like I did.