Tomb Raider Underworld

Playing Tomb Raider Underworld was quite the rollercoaster. I frantically flipped between surprised enjoyment at how interesting the platforming was, followed by moments of crushing frustration when glitches and less accurate controls caused me to jump to my hilarious death.

It was my first time playing the game since its release in 2008 and the first time playing it on the PlayStation 3, having originally played it on the Xbox 360. It’s been on my list to come back to for a while since it has a relatively achievable Platinum trophy, and when fellow contributor Jon (See his article on PlayStation vs Xbox) sent me a flurry of messages about the announcement of two new Tomb Raider games, Catalyst and Legacy of Atlantis, it sparked a real longing for some Tomb Raider, so I got started with Underworld.

Tomb Raider Underworld is the last in a series of Tomb Raider games and the last iteration of this particular Lara Croft before the series was rebooted with Tomb Raider (2013), released five years later also for the PlayStation 3. Underworld was also the last one to be published by Eidos Interactive.

The game does well to build on the foundations of the old Tomb Raider games but incorporates a more modern and fluid style of platforming that games like Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted really polished.

The story of the game is a continuation of the previous two titles and centres around Lara Croft following up on some adventures of her father, where she finds lots of relics and temples relating to Norse mythology. There seem to be quite a lot of franchises, God of War being a popular one, that have explored Norse mythology in recent years, so it was interesting to see it actually be done some time before. Lara Croft even finds and wields Thor’s hammer Mjölnir in the later parts of the game, complete with lightning powers; it’s hilarious as it is awesome.

Excellent Platforming

The main focus is, as it should be, platforming and adventuring. The layout of levels encourages some really creative platforming, and lots of sections have you going back on yourself, and the designers found a way to pack so much platforming into such small areas. As for mechanics, there is hanging, shimmying, wall jumping, swinging on bars, all the usual things, plus a few movable objects and optional areas.

I felt the platforming actually struck a really good balance. I have complained, as have others, that modern platforming can be a bit too easy. Uncharted has its famous yellow painted ledges to indicate exactly where you can jump, and you can see the path easily laid out in front of you at a glance. In Tomb Raider Underworld, ledges are mostly distinct and clear about what you can and can’t hold on to, but they are also just vague and hidden enough that you feel like you have to use your brain a bit in determining a path and where you can go.

One aspect I really appreciated in comparison to Uncharted was the lack of emphasis on combat. There are enemies in the game, but most of them are animals or undead creatures, and they are just sprinkled in between the platforming areas. Uncharted probably takes the opposite approach - platforming is sprinkled in between heavy combat sections. It’s just as well, as the combat is pretty shallow. You have a choice of guns, which didn’t seem to make much difference, and no ammo management except for the grenades. It didn’t bother me as it was not the focus, more of a distraction.

Game-Breaking Problems

I was really enjoying the game for the first few levels until I hit the level - Southern Mexico. This area is where the game really started to fall apart for me. The game on the PlayStation 3 has a clear lack of polish and accuracy. Things like wall jumping just weren’t reliable; the only way I found it was reliable was just to mash the X button as fast as I could. Quite often, you’d jump or glitch something, and you’d fall to your death. In the earlier levels, this mattered less as small mistakes didn’t lead to much backtracking, but now the game was ramping up in difficulty and complexity, things started to get annoying.

It is absolutely crucial to keep manual saves on the PlayStation 3 version, as in the Southern Mexico level, I encountered a game-breaking glitch which blocked my progress. I eventually conceded defeat and reloaded an old save and lost about 30 minutes of play time.

Tomb Raider Underworld certainly isn’t one of the best in the series, although far from the worst. It is a real shame that the lack of polish and accuracy is quite detrimental to the game, and I do think it would put many people off, especially if they are used to modern games. But I really enjoyed it for it’s sense of adventure and platforming, that was the part that kept pulling me back to it, there was a certain simplicity about it that I found really appealing.

The good news is a copy can be picked up cheaply, either as the standalone release or part of the Tomb Raider Trilogy, which includes Legend and Anniversary as well and the Platinum Trophy is obtainable relatively easily if that thing interests you (Check out this issue’s Trophy Hunter article). If you really enjoy Uncharted but wish it had less emphasis on combat and you are willing to put up with some control issues, then it’s probably worth you checking out this game.