*Review* Tomb Raider - Underworld

Tomb Raider Underworld is a stunningly impressive looking & epic game but not without it's nagging problems!

The Good Stuff

Incredible visuals & lifelike environments, challenging puzzles, nice variety of levels and the sheer size of them, fantastic sound & epic soundtrack.

The Bad Stuff

Camera problems plague the game, not much has changed from Lara's last couple outings, Lara does not always do what you want her to do maybe due to sensitive controls.

The Review

(For this review I am only referring to the Xbox360 version) This game is hands down one of the most visually stunning looking games on the 360 with it's lifelike environments from incredible lush jungles, creepy caves & ruins to truly amazing underwater environments... this game brings environments that you play in to an all new level of realism! On top of the awesome visuals you get equally impressive sound effects and music that perfectly compliment the onscreen action and environments!

This game feels epic and it actually is because no other Tomb Raider game before has given you such large levels to explore and simply admire and with Lara's new moves you have more freedom to explore the grand levels. Lara can now free-climb, balance along beams, and climb down thanks to her rappel line. You will need to use her new abilities in order to find all the secrets and gain achievements.

One gripe with the new moves and massive levels is not everything is explorable and it sometimes is frustrating because what looks like something you can climb is not always climbable you have to look for very subtle visual cues in order to advance through levels but after a level or two you eyes will eventually be trained to pick up on those subtle visual cues. You also have a cool PDA which you will have to rely on for some helpful hints to progress in the game and it also acts as your map and sonar device for caves and underwater levels.

You won't encounter too many enemies in this game as the game seems to be more focused on exploring and puzzles and because of the sheer size of the environments the puzzels can take up lots of time to complete. The biggest enemy in this game though is the environment meshed with the sometimes downright nasty camera control but more on that later. As for actual enemies though the ones you do encounter are for the most part pretty dumb, the AI in this game is not that intelligent. You have a basic arsenal of weapons from Lara's trusty pistols which you can now dual wield to shoot multiple targets at the same time to a shotgun, a harpoon, a couple different automatic weapons and a special weapon Thor's Hammer which is very powerful and fun to use. For the most part you will be using your dual pistols on your first play through. You do encounter some very impressive boss's that are very challenging because you will sometimes need to use the environments to defeat them rather than your weapons which adds some nice variety and the levels themselves are boss battles with epic moving set pieces that you need to traverse and survive.

As for the nasty camera control I mentioned it seems to be the norm for Tomb Raider games and you would think that they would have been able to solve the problem by now but sometimes in this game it seems worse than ever which is a real shame because sometimes it ruins the moment or becomes insanely frustrating and you end up falling to your death and having to redo some sections over & over. Another gripe I have is the controls because Lara sometimes jumps in the wrong direction often to her death or swings when you don't want her to which is due to the sensitivity of the directional stick I believe. I have also encountered some annoying glitches where all of a sudden Lara will disappear into a wall and she becomes stuck or falls to her invisible death lol... thankfully these glitches do not happen that often.

For the price of the game though I really would of loved to have seen the upcoming downloadable levels included in the game or available for free download because even though the levels were huge the game is still beatable in a couple days which makes it feel a bit unfinished, rushed and nothing more than a cash grab on the part of Eidos & Crystal Dynamics.

Camera control problems and some small annoyances aside this game is still worth purchasing if your a fan of Lara Crofts adventures because it really is a breathtaking, fun & challenging game especially if you have a high definition TV and loud home theater system to compliment the onscreen action.

StEC's Score - 7 out of 10!