If you've been living in a virtual cave for the past twelve years, the
Tomb Raider series is one of adventure, exploration, and puzzle-solving, with a bit of action thrown in for good measure. In short, you control Lara Croft, the most adventuring archeologist on the planet. In
Tomb Raider: Underworld, you will once again be taking Lara on another adventure through the jungle, a ship, and numerous other locales.
While Underworld's gameplay sticks to the basics of the franchise, it also strives to improve on the formula with new move sets and interactions. Since most of the game is based on the exploration of ruins, let's begin there. Ms. Croft still has her standard walk, run, and jumps to keep her flying high, but she can also balance on beams, bars, and pedestals. Adding to her death-defying aerial moves, she can now wall-jump back and forth in close-quarter areas, and she can swing across chasms using her grappling abilities. In addition, you'll be able to control our heroine across broken walls and the sides of cliff thanks to the new wall climbing feature.
On the combat side of things, Lara now has a special Head Shot move available to her when the adrenaline meter is full (typically when a number of baddies are present). This one-shot-kill move slows down the gameplay as you line up your target sight and fire a round off before Lara hits the ground. The catch is that you have to let the enemy get in close before you can trigger this special. The lock-on feature for combat is a saving grace as well because the camera tends to have a mind of its own far too often. Locking onto an enemy keeps him always in front of Lara, enabling you to not lose sight. The negative side to the combat is that, in general, it almost felt tacked-on at times. The combat itself was good, but whether fighting other humans or defending against approaching animals, I couldn't shake the feeling that at times these sequences just didn't fit in and were only there to add mindless challenge to the more interesting puzzle aspects of the gameplay.
The camera problems don't stop with the combat, however. Unfortunately, the camera is enough of a problem that it takes away from the gameplay in more ways than one. Most of what lies on the disc entails exploration, and as such, Lara finds herself on the edge of death as she navigates vast (and usually steep!) environments. Because of this, when the camera doesn't exactly react as expected, it is quite easy to plummet to your death from high above the earth. A specific example is that you'll often have to be quite patient when leaping from ledge to ledge because, depending on the camera angle at the time, controlling Lara's leaps may be slightly different. In addition, her Spiderman-like wall-sticking ability is often more annoying than helpful as she sometimes sticks to unintended walls, and an accidental jump at that time may launch her three stories below to her death.
Tomb Raider: Underworld also adds some simple physics into the mix that do a pretty good job overall. As mentioned before, Lara can now use her grapple to swing, but it goes beyond that. You can actually work your way into a direction change and can use this device for both rapelling and grappling in select locations, as well as climbing other select walls, as long as a grapple point is present. You even have the ability to wall-run back and forth from your hanging lifeline. Certain objects also react to Lara's (and the environment's) actions. While it is possible to see a few buggy physics items (like floating objects that are dropped next to ledges), most of the interactions are sound.
The gameplay of Underworld is still quite engaging, even with some of these mentioned minor issues (okay, so the camera thing isn't so minor). In Tomb Raider: Underworld, be prepared for a lot of acrobatics and other craziness in your exploration. While the developers could have maybe tweaked some of the interactions a bit more to prevent the mindless plunging to death after death after death, I never really felt overly frustrated as I have with some games of this genre. In all, I love exploring and puzzle-solving more than combat anyway, so Tomb Raider: Underworld is a near-perfect match for that style... near-perfect because more puzzles to solve would have been a nice addition.
