

- TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD PC REVIEWS HOW TO
- TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD PC REVIEWS FULL
- TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD PC REVIEWS PS3
Give it a few months and I suspect these opening hours will be what people will be talking about when they talk about Crystal Dynamics' reboot. Her first human kill leaves her blood-soaked and distraught. Her elbows shake believably when she mantles up onto a ledge. Hunger necessitates finding a bow and hunting deer. Lara sobs and trembles, and evident effort has been made to slow down and focus on the details of her experience. This early cruelty is the game's most strikingly idiosyncratic feature. Fail any of these and you'll also watch her be crushed, impaled, strangled, mauled and so on. In the opening hours of Tomb Raider she is stabbed, burned, drenched, assaulted and almost freezes to death: that's if you're doing well, meeting the demands of every linear climbing section, gunfight, finickety stealth sequence and quick-time event that presents itself. Grenades make for a more interesting battle, sending enemies ragdolling everywhere, and flying melee kicks and roundhouses are the perfect finisher as you race along the deck after taking chunks out of a bad-guy's segmented circular health bar.Stranded on the mythical island of Yamatai following a freak storm, 21-year-old Lara Croft's career as a videogame protagonist begins with suffering. We've got to get down into the bowels for reasons we'll leave out to preserve the surprise.Īs with all ships in videogames ever, none of the doors open, so Lara has to climb the containers, but not before a shootout with some, it has to be said, thoroughly stupid and predictable identikit henchmen, one of whom stutters back and forth on the spot as we pop him repeatedly with one of Lara's iconic twin pistols.
TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD PC REVIEWS FULL
Lara pulls alongside in a cracking little boat with a widescreen TV in the cabin (Tipping the Velvet no doubt in the DVD player) and then we take over and climb up the anchor, emerging onto a deck full of shipping containers.

We've seen Thailand before, so instead we head out to sea for another of the game's levels, this time set aboard a ship. After the relative solitude of Anniversary, Underworld is back to the Scooby Doo antics of Legend's headset cast.īut onto more serious business. Given the option to upload stuff to the internet, and the inclusion of blood for the first time in a Tomb Raider game, we can't wait for all the pictures of Lara swan-diving onto spikes or toeing the kraken.

TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD PC REVIEWS HOW TO
And using Lara's multi-use camera (photographs can be transformed into hints about how to solve the puzzle), it's also possible to insert our heroine into the pictures by setting up a timer and then jumping into frame. For example, you can fight dolphins, and throw sticky bombs at tigers.
TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD PC REVIEWS PS3
He also wrote some beautiful things about the puzzles and referenced Keeley Hawes a few times, which should keep him in work.įortunately, despite having to suffer the indignity of sitting in my flat for the demo because I left the PS3 debug at home, the latest Eidos Man to show us round Lara's Underworld had a new level to explore, and a whistle-stop tour of the levels we've already seen offers us a chance to present new facts. Less award-winning but just as cuddly, Christian then took a couple of virtual trips to Thailand, first to contemplate the auto-lock weapons, shooting two people at once, stupid insect enemies, wall-jumping, and shooting while climbing, and then returning a few weeks later to consider the story (Croft Manor in flames! Thor's hammer! The Legend story revisited!) and, well, flying kicks. That must have been a heck of a call to answer after half a dozen Tomb Raiders, and we only bring it up because we're trying to think of a good touchstone for our present situation, trying to come up with something good for Eurogamer's fourth preview of Tomb Raider: Underworld, due out this time next month.Īfter all, our first preview by award-winning Ellie has already covered Lara's new sonar (for sniffing out usable ledges), camera (for sniffing out solutions) and bum (not for sniffing), along with her smaller bag (so she has to drag bigger stuff around like a normal person), and the controversial adrenaline events, which are QTE-style scenarios, like fast-moving trap blades, navigated in slow-motion with regular controls. It's just come out - plunged from the development womb into the amniotic fluid of fiscal desperation - and someone's called up Crystal Dynamics and asked them to step in. Eidos won't thank us for bringing it up, but let's go back to 2003, and Angel of Darkness.
