It’s been five years now since the disastrous Angel of Darkness completely ruined the Tomb Raider franchise. Since then, the series was wrenched from the cold dead hands of Core Design and handed over to new studio Crystal Dynamics for Tom Raider: Legend. After a back-tracking interlude in the form of Anniversary (a remake of the very first game in the series), Crystal Dynamics is back with the follow-up to Legend, Underworld, which sees Lara jetsetting around the world to do the normal saving-the-world thing.
Although I didn’t get spend much time with the newest entry in the series, I was able to get a bit of a feel for the game. My playtime began with Lara jumping off a boat into some sea somewhere, at which point I decided it would be fun to try out the new underwater elements. The underwater shooting is a bit strange, as the game appears to have no concept of tides, and therefore there is no noticeable difference between normal and underwater shooting other than the fact that you’re mostly on your front, not your feet. Also, the new twin-aim system takes a bit of time to get used to.*
Luckily, the climbing, jumping and acrobatics are as amazing as ever. After climbing up a sheer cliff-face, making ridiculous stretches from one rock to another, then shimmying along a ledge and jumping about a bit, I realised that Lara is too late. A year too late, in fact. Because, you see, bar the camera that seems to always pick the best angle to show off Lara’s derriere whilst climbing, this is all very much what we saw in last year’s Uncharted.
I’m not going to review Uncharted here (that’s for the Wanderer to do in a bit), but there are definite and absolute similarities that range from the increased importance of gunplay, to the new much greener setting. Having said that, taking Underworld as a game by itself and it looks to be a successful continuation of the series that Legend rebooted, and here’s hoping for a demo before the game’s release on November 21st.
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