I’ve played Legends and enjoyed it, and I was anticipating the sequel. Tomb Raider: Underworld is the third Tomb Raider game by Crystal Dynamics. They’ve made Tomb Raider fun to play again with Legends. The biggest change that Crystal Dynamics did was the way you controlled Lara. She moves more freely than ever before.

Graphics and Presentation
In Underworld, the graphics are better. Lara’s character model got a big upgrade. Her facial animation changes from mad to curious and so forth depending on the type of action she is doing. For example, if she kicks, she gets an angry mean eyebrow look on her face. Her outfit can get wet and she can get dirty from rolling around on the ground.

The backgrounds have improved too. For example, in the jungle island in Thailand, you start off on your boat and swim towards the island with a beautiful view of the ocean. Once you end up on the island top, you see giant ancient temples and statues in the distance covered with plants and wildlife.

Gameplay
The puzzles in the game can be fun, but gets tedious after awhile because there’s no balance between puzzles and action. In the majority of the game, you’re solving puzzles after puzzles. A lot of it revolves around backtracking just to put an item in a slot. The platforming in the game is good. She can balance on beams, jump from ledge to ledge, hang on a pole while shooting, and many more different moves.

Solving a puzzle is more satisfying than combat. The combat is too simplistic. You can’t manually aim at enemies’ body parts. This doesn’t leave room for head shots and that means the enemy will go down once their life bar goes down.

Camera
The problem with the game is the camera. Sometimes it has a mind of it’s own and moves around a lot, making it hard for you to navigate. One example of this was when I was hanging on a ledge, trying to jump to another ledge, I couldn’t turn the camera completely behind me to see the other ledge, so I had to rely on luck that I was going to land it.

Music
On the plus side, the music in the game is good. The main theme is very dramatic, yet soft, while music from different levels give you the impression that you’re really on an adventure..

Story
The story is decent. It kept me interested in Lara’s tale to find the truth about what happened to her parents. The ending didn’t leave a cliffhanger, but it felt very short and some things weren’t resolved in the end.

I was really disappointed with the extras for Underworld though. In Legends, you could replay a level and choose from a lot of different outfits for Lara that you’ve unlocked. This release has less content than Legends. Also legends gave you a chance to skip cutscenes, this one didn’t.

Final Thoughts
Tomb Raider: Underworld is a game that fans would enjoy and for those who loves puzzles and platforming. Replay value for this game is really low because the game is short, and there’s no incentive to finish the game again. Rent it, or wait until it gets cheaper.

Grade: C+

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