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.
Of all the awards, this was the hardest one for me to pick. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and Resistance: Retribution were basically dead even. They both look spectacular on their respective systems. Ultimately, I gave the edge to Castlevania. The art feels more reminiscent of Symphony of the Night than the other DS games which is a good change in my opinion. They also added some other good additions to this entry like a new female protagonist, the new glyph system, a power-up that allows you to slingshot yourself around levels, and more environments outside the castle. It seems this could be the best Castlevania game in a while (and that's saying something with the quality of recent titles). Having said that Sony Bend seems to be doing a great job in bringing Resistance to the PSP and adapting the controls to Resistance's faster pace (compared to Syphon Filter). It also deserves a mention for how good it looks.
There were a ton of great downloadable games, but Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty rose above the crowd. This new Ratchet actually picks up where Tools of Destruction's cliffhanger ending left off and even though it's a downloadable game it has graphics and production values as good as most full games. It's basically a 3-4 hour mini-Ratchet adventure for $15. But it also looks to change things up with a bigger focus on platforming and puzzles along with a new wrench that allows you to manipulate things in the world. It looks like a great way to hold over fans until Ratchet's next big adventure while adding some new ideas to keep things fresh.
Of all the great games at E3, Prince of Persia impressed me the most. It started with the gameplay being shown in motion for the first time in a very well-made trailer. That was just the start though as the gameplay demonstrations that would occur over the course of E3 really showed off a lot more of what this game has in store. The Prince's moves have been overhauled as he has many new ways to move about the environment including cooperative moves with his new partner Elika. The game features what you'd expect from PoP with influences from games like Ico and Okami along with the new duel-type combat and more open level design which all look to make the game stand out among others in the genre. I'd heard about many of these features, but seeing them in action in the beautiful new artstyle was really impressive. It's tough to know how all these changes will ultimately work out, but the game looks extremely promising and fresh. It definitely earned my Game of the Show.
This was a close one between Mirror's Edge and LittleBigPlanet. Both are really original games, but having seen LittleBigPlanet for over a year and Mirror's Edge really having it's coming out party at this E3, I went with Mirror's Edge. Mirror's Edge screams originality from it's unusually crisp and clean visuals to it's first-person perspective platforming. Instead of shooting everything in sight like you usually do from this view, you'll be running, jumping and climbing through environments with a unique control scheme. Even though you can use guns, combat is more about melee and disarming enemies. In fact, holding guns actually slows you down. Mirror's Edge is definately a breath of fresh air.
While Killzone 2 doesn't quite look like the infamous E3 2005 target render, the game looks pretty close and it's still rather early with KZ2 set to release in February 2009. Watch some videos of the single-player campaign and you are in for some stunning visuals. The gun models look fantastic and the animations for Helghast hopping over rails look great. Add in plenty of incredible effects and details and Guerilla is creating one of the best looking games we've seen yet. There were plenty of great looking games at E3 and I've noted some of the best in my runners-up below.
E3 2008, as I've said before, was a bit light on surprises. But when Final Fantasy XIII was revealed to be coming to the 360, it was pretty shocking. I've thought for a while that of all the PS3 third-party exclusives FFXIII was the mostly likely to stay exclusive, but I was clearly wrong. While I don't think it's the end of the world like many PS3 fans do, it's definately a big deal and was certainly a huge surprise.
The new Prince of Persia sounds incredible. Ubisoft easily could have cranked out another sequel similar to the last few (and to be honest I would have been fine with that), but instead they've decided to really take some new directions with the franchise. The level-design has become more open giving players more choices and the game more replayability. The combat has been overhauled to focus on fighting one enemy at a time. The Prince (a new one) now has a new partner in Elika who helps you with combat, platforming, and puzzles. But it also keeps the focus on the series' great acrobatic platforming. All this sounds great, but finally seeing some gameplay footage will really help us to understand how it will all work out. Plus, Ubi has come up with a bold new artstyle that looks beautiful in the screens, but I can't wait to see in video. That's coming this week and it really can't come soon enough.
