Tomb Raider Underworld (Sony Playstation 3, 2008)

Since its 'reboot' in 2006, the Tomb Raider series has been edging closer to its core values - raiding tombs and solving puzzles - but making too many concessions to the imagined, or not, limitations of a mainstream audience, with scripted action sequences, facile puzzles and idiotic slow motion combat.

But with Underworld, Crystal Dynamics are the closest they've ever been to recreating the thoughtful magic of Lara's early adventures; the game is chock full of labyrinthine catacombs and bewilderingly complex puzzles.

Of course, there's still plenty of combat, and it's awful. The AI is abysmal. Often enemies will stand completely still as you unload clips of ammunition into them. And that's another problem; it takes 30 seconds of sustained fire to drop a single goon, while Lara's health can be completely drained in half that time.

There's also no cover system to speak of, and her melee attacks are spectacularly useless. Nine times out of ten she'll clumsily fly-kick straight through an enemy, leaving you open to a volley of health-shredding gunfire. So our advice is this: ignore the combat. Go to the Options menu, then Game Tailoring, and set enemy health to Low. Think of the shooting bits as an inconvenient, but necessary, distraction.

Jumped up
There. Now we can focus on what makes the game so compelling: the level design. The environments are genuinely point-at-the-screen evocative, like the rain-lashed Mayan temples of Mexico and the foggy, atmopsheric depths of the catacombs beneath them. We've been to so many exotic locales in video games that we've become desensitised to it, but Underworld's tombs and temples feel genuinely authentic and mysterious.

Unlike previous Raider games, grabbable surfaces aren't clearly signposted, which means finding your way around the world is a real test of skill. You'll often find yourself teetering on the edge of a rocky outcrop 300 feet up, convinced there's nowhere else to go - then, after spinning the camera around for a bit, notice a ledge that's just within reach.

It's almost like a puzzle game, and you have to consider every possibility before you make the next leap. It's less forgiving than Uncharted, but the platforming is much more satisfying. In a way, it's the exact opposite of Sony's game; dodgy combat and complex climbing to Drake's excellent cover-to-cover shooting and limited platforming.

The controls aren't perfect, though. The collision detection is occasionally dreadful and Lara will sometimes miss a ledge entirely and fall to her doom, even though you threw her directly at it. But it doesn't happen often, and it's usually because you weren't in precisely the right spot to make the jump - something that really should've been ironed out before release.

There are also camera issues. Get too close to a wall in a cramped space and it'll twitch uncontrollably, obscuring your view. Not particularly helpful when you're trying to hop between tiny slivers of rock above a bottomless pit.

Under control
Underworld lacks polish, but whenever you find a reason to hate it, you come across something that makes you instantly forgive its shortcomings. Like the sundial puzzle in Mexico (which takes nearly an hour to complete) that unlocks the entrance to Xiabalba, the Mayan underworld. Or scaling cliffs on the Thai coast as sunlight dances across the Indian Ocean below you. Or discovering an ancient, dusty tomb beneath Croft Manor. The game's full of surprises and memorable moments.

The concept of Cool Britannia now seems laughable – a discredited chunk of spin from a previous century. Its standard bearers haven't fared too well. The Spice Girls are no more, Tony Blair is no longer one of the most powerful men in the world, and the country is generally too busy trying to scrape a living to bother about being cool. However, one of Cool Britannia's standard bearers continues to beaver away, doing what she does as well as ever: Lara Croft.

Indeed, in her latest starring vehicle, Tomb Raider Underworld, Lara has never looked or moved better. Since it's the first Tomb Raider game designed for next-generation consoles from the outset, you'd expect it to look good, and it doesn't disappoint. And for the first time, Lara's movements are governed by motion capture, rather than hand animation, so she moves in a more deliciously gymnastic fashion than ever.

If anything, Lara's movement is the key aspect of Tomb Raider Underworld. Looking at the game dispassionately, it would appear to lack a killer innovation, something that adds a new twist to the franchise. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. The franchise is incredibly successful and changing it radically just for the sake of it could render it worthless.

And when you get stuck into Tomb Raider Underworld, it swiftly becomes clear that it is designed to appeal to a generation of gamers – surely now in their 30s – who grew up with Tomb Raider and fell in love with Lara's attributes and attitude.

It's easy to detect the hand of Toby Gard, Lara's originator, who is now back in the fold at the game's San Francisco-based developer, Crystal Dynamics. Gard and co have taken a back-to-basics approach, assessing Tomb Raider's best aspects, so in Underworld you get huge, engrossing and epic puzzles that involve much leaping, swinging and climbing from Lara, a strong storyline, the usual shooting of endangered animals and rival treasure hunters, and no more.

The boss battles, which tended towards the fiddly and invariably involved tedious periods of button-bashing, have been abandoned, as have recent Tomb Raiders' occasional timed button-pressing. In Tomb Raider Underworld when, say, you're standing on a pillar and it starts to collapse, instead of having to push the X button and the A button at specified times, you just have to react and jump before plummeting to a rag-doll physics demise. Tomb Raider Underworld always feels more logical than its predecessors.

There are new aspects to the game, which do impinge on gameplay. The first level, in the Mediterranean, for example, has Lara leaping off her gin-palace with, for the first time, an aqualung, before solving a puzzle that takes place entirely underwater. If anything would strike a chord with Lara fans, it's that aqualung. We've all caused her to drown agonisingly in the past through inept underwater manoeuvring.

For the first time, too, she can free-climb (although only on visually obvious areas studded with hand-holds), and she can stand on all but the narrowest ledges. All things that in Tomb Raiders of yore, Lara should have been able to do but couldn't.

The shooting engine has been mildly tweaked so that now, as you kill enemies, Lara has an adrenalin meter that fills up; clicking the right stick with an enemy targeted brings about a slow-motion period during which her shots also do extra damage. With full adrenaline, you can also set up a head-shot by pressing X in proximity to an enemy. The net effect is a sho

When Crystal Dynamics took over the production of tomb raider many fans were concerned that it would dimish the serise witch at the time was fading fast but with the success of legen and aniversary tomb raider is now going strong. However even some fans still didn't like what many people consider some of if not the best tomb raiders around well the new edition Tomb Raider underworld will make it diffucult for people to complian. As the sequeal to Legend if may be nessacary for some new to the serise players to read up on what happened to follow the story.

This Tomb Raider really is the best so far there are dozens of new feature like being able to point Lara's two guns in different directions a host of new jumping ablities and Lara now moves and acts mutch more like a real person. The enviroments Tomb Raiders are famous for return but on a brand new level through out the game you'll go to Thailand, the Artic circle and mayan underworld to name just some the enviroments are understanding visually and are the largest seen in any tomb raider to date.

The game play is a mixture of action, jumping and puzzel solving and really offers a good mixture of them all its also very multilayerd meaning theres more than one way to do things. Also a vast weather grid as been placed allowing for rain to make areas slippery and create mud slides it all that more realistic.

The story is brillantly told and intresting and your'll often find your self getting mixtured up in it. A host of characters return like Natla from Aniverrsary/ Tomb Raider 1 but i don't want to give the plot away to mutch.

Otherall if your a tomb raider fan you cant afford to miss this adventure and even if your not is still somthing you shouldn't pass up on experincing.
Sound - 10 Classic tomb raider music adds atmosphere to any surronding
Graphics - 10 The best in Tomb raiders history
Gameplay - 10 May take time to learn all the new moves but its worth it

Otherall - 30/30
The best Tomb Raider ever i don't know if they'll be able to beat this quality any time soon.

I Gave it a three star becuase the graphics are impressive. However, the story and gameplay was very weak.

First off, let me start with the glitches. the whole game is a one big glitch party. Lara can get stuck in places. you can die but your ride could be left in an area where you can't go back to. everytime you load back to a game point, if you've killed an enemy, sometimes they appear but suddenly die as if the game suddenly remembered that you killed it.

There are TOO many secrets in this game. Lara can find one in the corner, then take 5 steps and find another one. there are at least 20 to 50 in a level and they are at VERY obvious places. so there's really no point to having them. Plus the only thing they unlock is pictures, no cutscenes, no extra items or clothes, just pictures.

Lara does not have much to choose from when it comes to weapons or outfits, becuase at the very beginning of each level, it will give you a choice between two outfits (same outfits over and over) and maybe 4 to 5 weapons.

after the game is done, you can't reply any levels. the only way you can go back to the desired place, is to play from point one ----> the very beginning and work your way up.

You kill the same things over and over and over, spiders, bats, thralls, goons. almost on every level, thats about it.

Lara's mansion blows up, but they could have given us the option to play the Mansion level, where we could just walk around or something. you don't get to see much of it.

Okay, on with the story. This tomb Raider is about Lara getting closure about her mother disappearing for almost 40 years. Lara doesnt really expect her mother to be alive, she just wanted to understand what happened. but near the end, when she finds Ameilia, her mother standing near the edge in the underworld, she comes to find that her mother is dead and that she's just walking shell in the form of a Thrall. some suspect that she must have accidentally touched or fell into the Thrall poison or was probably attacked by one. but anyway, the thing that really disappointed me, was the fact that THAT little moment lasted less then a minute. When her mother seemed to be unresponsive but instead savage-like, Lara shoots her off the edge and thats the last you will see of her mother. After all Lara's work, she comes to a less-than-a-minute reunion with her mother. They could have had Lara charged at her and press down on the ground and tried yelling at her concious to see if she would recognize her own daughter. only half of her body appeared to be infected, plus she looked far different from the rest of the thralls.

The ending is pretty averaged, however they cut out the ending where Lara leaves Amanda for dead. So i'm guessing thats a sign that mabye Amanda will appear in the last one or both future Tomb Raider games.

overall, i quite disappointed. i wasted 50+ bucks when i could have just rented it.

I'm an old fan of the Tomb Raider series, although not a hardcore one. This game and character just appeals to my gaming instinct. As soon as I got my PS3, I bought his only title.

The game itself doesn't disappoint: adventure, mystery, great ambiances, huge scenarios and the gracious Lara. The game designer did a great job on the scenarios. Unlike the previous versions, they don't look modular and predictable. Their "realism" is quite pleasing. But I think the PS3 platform can produce much better graphics, specially Lara and her foes.

This game is a safe bet and won't surprise Lara's old fans but doesn't bring anything absolutely new. I read the next Tomb Raider game will be a major breakthrough from the previous chapters, so I won't miss it.