I need Thor's belt to get to his hammer, and I need the hammer to kill a God.

Ah yes, Tomb Raider: Underworld. I’m a big Tomb Raider fan, what can I say? I wrote the base of this review back when the game first came out. I found it on my computer the other day, and decided it could do with a bit of work before I post it anywhere. Bottom line: I wasn’t impressed by this game, or the previous game Legend. I’ll admit, my previous review on this game was so harsh, it was stupid. It had a decent structure and some of the content is worth reviewing. I’ve reviewed this here probably two years too late, but better late than never. AND I need something to review... it’s been months!

Spoilers ahead; you’ve been warned.

The story starts off with Croft Manor in flames, and Lara running for her life. You are just chucked into the control tutorial of the game, which is a good thing for most games, but with this... it was pretty hectic . Controls since the games first appeared on PS2 haven’t been pretty good, and after much of me hearing Lara’s cries of agony as I accidently killed her multiple times, and much jumping over walls of fire, I ended up in the main room of the house, where my good friend called Zip shoots at me. Confusing, eh?

I’m most disappointed that we then revisit this scene again after a few levels which shows previous events in the last week or so. And guess what? We have to play through the burning house part again. It made me wonder if the developers had just chucked that part in to make it seem as if the game was longer than it is.

After the ending of Tomb Raider Legend, you as the player understand that the next game will feature Lara finding her mother in Avalon. So that’s what you would expect out of this game, right? Yes, Lara finds her mother, but in the brief cut-scene in which she does was yet another disappointment. Her mother was a walking corpse. I’m not sure if you were supposed to feel the disappointment that Lara was feeling, but either way I feel that more could have been done in the game surrounding the long lost mother and daughter relationship, seeing as it WAS about Lara’s quest to find her in the Underworld. Playing the previous levels to find your mother, then kill her because she was dead anyway felt like a waste of perfectly good time I could have spent re-playing Fallout 3.

What was the point? It was anti-climatic. There wasn’t even a build up for it to even BE climatic – the game was spent with Lara wondering around the world, endangering herself for some well protected Godly artefacts to kill a God. It was boring.

The ending! I longed for a long awaited boss battle – like in the original Tomb Raider games. There were no boss battles during the game, so I expected to be one at the end at least... but none. The final area has you running Lara around on circular moving platforms, trying to break the supports for a structure in the place she’s in, and Natala is chucking fire balls at you. It’s not really a boss battle – just a nuisance battle. Once you’re done, it goes to a cut-scene of Lara throwing Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir, at Natala, and she dies. The hell? We don’t even get the pleasure of killing her, and even more so... LARA, WE WASTED THREE HOURS PLAYING THIS GAME TO GET THAT STUPID HAMMER, AND YOU JUST CHUCKED IT AWAY?!

Game failed to impress me.

...on that level, at least. The graphics weren’t terrible. I actually liked that part a lot, and seeing the details on the many in-game structures. Staring at my television screen in amazement after finding the beautifully structured temple in Thailand was one of the best moments in the game.

For me, it made me want to explore every inch. It was almost flawless, although something were a little out of place. There’s a section where you have to use your grapple to drag a rock off a podium to smash it through the floor below you. It’s raining, and you can still see the raindrops falling on where the ground used to be in a corner of the hole – the droplets aren’t falling in.

The controls were good once you got used to them. I did find in some places where you wanted Lara to move faster, the controls could get over sensitive and you’ll end up chucking her off the top of a ledge to her death. Maybe it was just to teach people like me to take it easy.

Swinging using the grapple hook should seem like an easy task to perform, but it wasn’t. Getting Lara to face in the precise direction you wanted her to swing in proved to be a little difficult as she tended to move really slow. So then you would over compensate and whack the analog stick over to the left or right and then she will be facing too far in the desired direction, and you’d be back to frustratingly and more patiently re-aligning her again.

Using the bike in the levels was fun, but I found lots of difficulty controlling it. It seemed no improvement had been made on it since Tomb Raider Legend, and the sense of déjà-vu wasn’t welcome. I noticed that when you did a wheel spin by pressing the reverse and accelerate buttons at the same time, then moved the analog stick to the left or right, the bike would spin around. Not a problem. BUT. The bike seems to be spinning from the centre of the bike, and NOT the front wheel. The front wheel of the bike should have remained in one position, leaving the other spin and move.

I found the new Sonar feature to be useless. I didn’t see the point of it – it didn’t help you get through a level at all.

Finally, I didn’t like the artefacts/secrets either. There were too many to find in a level, and most were way to close to the last. What is the point on finding three in the same room, less than a 10 second walk/swim/climb from each other? Put in less, space them out a bit, and you got yourself a treasure hunt!

The game wasn’t that difficult, even on the harder mode. I noticed that enemies became harder to kill and you took more damage (like you would) on the harder mode, but not much else changed. Hard mode in Underworld was normal mode on Uncharted. It was disappointing. The puzzles were actually quite hard without the help on Lara’s PDA, but the information given made them too easy. I miss the puzzles of old in the original Playstation games...

The music was good. I’ve always liked Tomb Raider themes, and a good job was done on this game like all of the others. The voice acting was pretty good too.

So much more could have been done to improve the game in all the above aspects. I can only keep my fingers and toes crossed that the next game won’t be as disappointing. I remember spending weeks finishing the Playstation One games, and they were cheap. Now,
I feel as if I’m not getting what I paid for; £30 for five hours worth of gaming? I’d expect more...

Being a hardcore Tomb Raider fan, I for one wasn’t impressed.

6/10.