It will soon be time to get reacquainted with everyone’s favorite sexy spelunker, Lara Croft. With Lara’s new adventure Tomb Raider: Underworld releasing soon, Eidos and Crystal Dynamics decided to let loose a demo for 360 and PC late last month. Now that I’ve been able to play through the 360 demo a few times, I’m here to give my impressions of how the new TR is shaping up.
The demo opens with Lara on a boat off the coast of Thailand. After a cutscene that talks a bit about why you’re there, you’re put in control of Miss Croft. From here, you’ll take a quick swim to the shore fighting off a few sharks on the way and make your way up the cliffside through some caves. Next you’ll make your way into the jungle and to an ancient temple that you’ll work through for the remainder of the demo. The gameplay’s focus is mainly on finding a route through the environment and making the appropriate moves necessary to make it through the level. Lots of moves from the past two games are back, so, you can expect plenty of ledge shimmying, swinging on poles, hopping on top of columns, and swinging with your grappling hook. But they’ve augmented the platforming with plenty of new moves, too. For instance, by simply moving the left stick you can climb around on different outcroppings (sort of like those rock-climbing walls or how climbing was in Assassin’s Creed). You can also balance on beams and poles and bound between walls (think 3D Mario or Prince of Persia). The level design in the demo section was quite impressive. It was generally linear, but there were areas to explore and offshoots you could go off on to find treasures and health items. Some sections have alternate paths you can take to get places as well which is neat. The final section of the demo puts you in a large room and let’s you start what looks like it will be a large multi-faceted puzzle to get through that section, but cuts the demo off before you an really get into it.
Lara's new rock-climbing skills (plus the walljump shown in the image at the top of the article) add more depth to the platforming and exploration.
The game also has a bit of combat. In the demo, you’ll face off against a handful sharks underwater, a couple groups of tigers, and bunch of random spiders and bats. The combat feels a lot like the last couple games which is to say it isn’t very good. Basically, you lock on with the left trigger and shoot with the right. You’ll run around jumping and rolling to avoid the enemies and shoot them. There’s a new trick to getting headshots which is pretty good, but not all that much better than it was in Anniversary. You can also melee enemies and the addition of shooting while hanging on a ledge or on a balance beam is nice, but overall the combat just feels sub-par compared to similar games on the market.
There were a few other new features present in the demo. For one, the game allows you to adjust different things to help tailor the experience to your likings. Basically, you can make combat or platforming harder or easier or access hints or a map from your PDA for those that get stuck. The game also added a sprint button which should come into play during the game’s time trial mode. It acts as a dolphin swim of sorts to speed you up underwater, too.
Lara shows her passion for tigers and other wildlife throughout the demo.
It must be said that Tomb Raider: Underworld is really nice to look at. Lara’s character model looks great and they’ve added some new animations like how she braces herself when running into a wall or pushes brush away from her face when moving through the jungle. The environments looks fantastic as well. There were some glitches like a strange effect around Lara’s shirt in the opening cutscene and some clipping here and there, but it’s a demo. If they can polish off some of the rough edges, this game should look really good when it comes out. The music and voice acting featured in the demo also seem to be on the right track.
Overall, I came away pretty happy with the demo. New moves and less linear level design look to make platforming and exploration more enjoyable while the new engine really improved the look of characters and environments. The combat certainly isn't good, but with only a few confrontations in the demo to base my opinion off of, I'll wait for full game to really judge it. I think based on what I've played and seen, this could be Crystal Dynamics' best Tomb Raider game yet. In just a few days, we'll get a chance to see how Lara's latest turns out, with Tomb Raider: Underworld releasing on Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii, PS2, and DS. I should be back with a full review later this year.
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