GameSpy Review of Tomb Raider Underworld

After two reasonably successful Tomb Raider games (Legend and Anniversary) under its belt, we were really looking forward to developer Crystal Dynamics' newest iteration. Unfortunately, despite (or perhaps partially because of) Crystal Dynamics' lofty ambitions for Tomb Raider Underworld, this acrobatic platforming puzzler suffers from a severe lack of polish and ultimately feels unfinished. Granted, the plot is a perfect capper based on the story trajectory of the last two games, so there is some value for followers of Lara Croft's prior adventures, but take heed that you'll need to wade through quite a few pernicious control issues, a querulous camera and several straight up bugs to get at the goods.





Full Circle





Tomb Raider Underworld picks up after the events of Tomb Raider Legend. As the third game developed by Crystal Dynamics, it presents the conclusion of a trilogy that was fleshed out in Anniversary, which retold the story of Lara's first adventure highlighting her family drama. Lara's mother disappeared while helping Lara's father chase down an artifact of sufficiently infamous stature (no spoilers here) and Legend and Anniversary served to set Underworld up as the final chapter in Lara's investigation into the suspicious nature of her mother's disappearance.





For fans, Underworld successfully brings things full-circle, delivering a fitting solution to the missing mom equation that has had Lara puzzled for the last two games. For those unfamiliar with Lara's past adventures, however, Underworld does little to describe the profound significance of its events in relation to the previous games. The result is that Underworld is weighted to benefit longtime fans and is fairly successful from a purely story-based standpoint, but this plot payoff is buried under layers of mechanical and technical issues that could keep all but the most devoted followers of Miss Croft from finishing her trilogy.










Da Vinci's Buggy Code





One of the major detractors to the enjoyment of Underworld is the unfortunate prevalence of a number of pesky bugs. We're not talking about the ornery jumping tarantulas which make up a significant portion of Underworld's somewhat limited bestiary... no, we mean broken parts of the game itself. Lara frequently gets caught on bits of the environment that interrupt her traditionally fluid animation and can lead to hiccups in her gait that cost her life. Nothing is more frustrating than taking extra time preparing for a difficult jump, only to botch it at the last second because Lara's boot catches on an invisible yet immovable triangle jutting from the scenery.





Lara will also occasionally display bizarre behaviors such as holding her arms out as though she's jumping whenever you try to shoot her guns. That particular issue doesn't show up terribly frequently (it only happened once during one level and we weren't able to reproduce the error), but it combines with a number of other little programming missteps to undermine the overall integrity of Underworld.

















Camerratic





Tomb Raider Underworld's nefarious camera is likely to be one of the biggest contributors to Croft-death you'll encounter. It will zoom in and out with the slightest (and in most cases absolutely no) provocation, which is occasionally helpful by pure accident. It looks like the developers were trying to guide players by temporarily taking over camera control to suggest potential paths for Lara's progression, but it simply doesn't work very well and leads to confusing wrestling matches with the camera controls.





The camera presents additional problems in that Lara's sense of direction is linked to the camera's perspective, but it doesn't always choose the best angle for performing her acrobatic maneuvers. You can move the camera around, but that doesn't always result in the shifts in control that you'd expect. Sometimes you'll want Lara to vault backwards from a ledge, so you press what appears to be away from the ledge on the analog stick and watch as she jumps into the gaping abyss that you were hoping so desperately to avoid. Granted, Lara will telegraph her intentions with subtle changes in her posture (she'll look backwards if she's planning on jumping that way), but during the high-tension moments where she has to execute a series of delicate gymnastics under a time constraint (like when ledges are crumbling beneath her), subtle animations just don't get the job done. It's notable that while the Tomb Raider series has always had some issues with the camera, Underworld has more than either Legend or Anniversary, and therefore feels regressive.










Lara Has Lots to Do





Underworld furnishes Lara with a whole new suite of additional acrobatic abilities enabling her to balance on poles and rappel with her grappling hook. While these new skills present an opportunity for richer level design, they also have the unfortunate drawback of offering Lara new ways to disobey you as well. Lara's fairly expansive new repertoire of skills means that designers can come up with clever new puzzles, but that comes at the expense of Lara doing these new things when you really want her to do something totally different.





The guiding mantra of "what could Lara do" is a great idea in theory, but in practice it means that there are a whole bunch of things Lara could do that lead to her imminent demise. Similar to the camera problems that result in Lara jumping into nothingness, her new ability to balance on poles means that you run the risk of having her swing off of a pole when what you actually wanted was for her to balance on top of it. Rappelling using the grappling hook coupled with Lara's ability to wall-run brings new complexity to using the grappling hook that isn't always conducive to intuitive play, because you can't always be sure of exactly what behavior is expected of you. Do they want you to make her swing from this grapple point or rappel from it? In the end, the wealth of new acrobatic abilities raises more issues in Underworld's control scheme than it solves.





Oddly enough, combat seems to have been stripped of some options, and Lara's ability to grapple onto enemies has been removed. Melee combat has also been simplified and Lara will only engage enemies with a roundhouse kick rather than use any other close-up techniques. The new adrenaline-fueled headshot moves and focused fire are not as engaging as Lara's previous combat systems that allowed her to jump off of enemies' faces and subsequently shoot them.





Despite the improved graphical quality of Underworld, which features some spectacular vistas, beautiful high-resolution textures and interesting atmospheric effects (like fog and rain), it performs poorly with regards to framerate. Underworld looks brilliant in screenshots but chugs during actual gameplay, even having trouble reaching 30 frames per second during cut-scenes.





The numerous performance issues in Underworld mar the overall experience and detract from what could have been a perfect conclusion to the trilogy started by Legend, Anniversary. While it's likely worth it for fans to get closure from Underworld, expect to trudge through a large amount of frustrating gameplay to get it. Suffering from a distinct lack of polish, Tomb Raider Underworld seems like it could have benefited greatly from a little more attention. If it didn't have so many technical issues, Underworld could have been a brilliant conclusion to Lara's latest trilogy.

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