Tomb Raider: Underworld

Yeah, so I had what amounted to a very conflicting conversation with a friend of mine concerning tomb raider games. Generally speaking, I've played previous games and disliked them all for one reason or another. I've felt they've scarcely been at the cutting edge of innovative gameplay and even less so with graphics, but of course they should fix the former before the latter. Have my opinions been misconcieved?

Turns out, no. Take this with a pinch of salt, I've played the demo and but an hour or so of the full game (demo on PC, full game on PS3), but to be honest a demo is supposed to sell a game, impress potential buyers.

Frankly, I wasn't impressed, but lets not tear right into it straight away. The game begins with a quick cutscene adding some kindof backing story, though throughout the demo what brief pieces of monologue and such you catch are so obscure and irrelevant it's clear you don't need to pay a great deal of attention to the dialogue to get on with the game.
#1
Speaking of Lara's physique, and it does have to be said, apparently her chest just wasn't big enough in previous games, and she now boasts cleavage worthy of SC3's jiggle-physics; it's a wonder she can scale walls so well without having trouble reaching. Not to say they're without further purpose I suppose, it seems someone of the developer team coined the term "air-bags" all too literally, and as a result Lara has suddenly aquired the ability to survive underwater for a good 3 minutes or so before having to return to the surface.
#2
On first impressions the game is average. Keep in mind though the main competitor for an indianna jones ripoff is Drake's Fortune, which a kind flatmate of mine gladly presented upon request, boasting "Look how good it looks!". Yes, yes, with the playstation's NVIDIA 7800 chip, sure, go buy Farcry 2 already. Now then, as I was saying, the game engine, while brand new, isn't exactly pretty, it just doesn't scale well onto higher resolutions. Okay, maybe my standards are too high, just judge for yourself on the screenshots I've taken. 1440x900, every option on highest, even AA and AF.
#3
Being (and quite generally speaking) a platformer, the gameplay here is exactly what you'd expect it to be. You run, jump, dive and climb your way around conveniently arranged pillars and ledges to work yourself into the depths of whatever long-since forsaken temple it is Lara has decided to take a vacation in. The climb animations are nice and smooth, and precise for once; she does actually use the holds you can see marked in the rockface, and often it's clear where you have to go. The only quarrel I have with the way you can move around the environment is the whole walljump thing, but that's mostly made difficult by the hyper-procrastinating camera, which can often confuse things by spontaneously changing angle, leaving you to fall hilariously to your ragdoll fate at the bottom of the ravine below. Like with most games that include ledges to hang from as a core gameplay element, it's sometimes easy to get confused between simple static scenery and something you can actually grab onto, and when the risk of finding out is death I think I deserve to borrow the phrase 'dick-move' to describe such a design flaw.
*edit here: I don't think I made it quite clear enough how poor the camera control is: Really poor*
The combat system isn't bad, it's certainly different to the increasingly widely-used Gears of War-esque approach to it, and the auto lock-on is handy and remarkably quick, perhaps too quick. It doesn't give the player a great deal of control when it comes down to it. You see the enemy, a little red target reticle appears around it, and you're pretty much guaranteed a hit. I have to say it suits the free-moving spirit of the game well, no major complaints here really, it's very much an improvement on previous titles.

What puzzles there are are more often than not, simple, or at least those I observed during my time with the full game were, the demo only includes well, I wouldn't call it a puzzle, that's just lame. If anything I suppose the kindof puzzles here are comparable to those of the Zelda series, but lets not get carried away here.

All in all the game is exactly what you expect it to be, but that's the problem. It's nothing more than that, it hasn't anything new or exciting to offer, no innovative gameplay elements or compelling story. There's little depth to it beyond the rest of the series, its just another sequel, as if the developer just felt like making a game without any real inspiration or idea. Every area is so linear it's frustrating at times to try and understand what the level designer wants you to do, and in an age where everyone and their mum is making games with at least 100 different ways of going about completing them, TRU seems a little simplistic. Go ahead and buy it if you enjoyed the other games: maybe there's something about the Tomb Raider Underworld I'm just missing here, some enjoyment I can't fully understand or grasp like an abstract idea behind a really simple painting.

Then again maybe it's just not that good.

i saw a poster for this game and lara's breast enlargement is harlariously noticable and apart from the previoius games demo i haven't played any tomb raider since the second one. the first 2 tomb raider games were good and the rest just seem to be a big pile of ass. sadly there will always be hornie 13 year olds who will buy every new tomb raider that comes out simply because they were dumb enough to buy the others and they want the full collection.

p.s. on the review frount

"A wall of text crits you for 100,000 - You die." ^^

For skimmers - It seems things haven't changed much since Yahtzee's review of Tomb Raider Anniversary

Yah, I realise I've not been too economical with my words, but I do like putting what I think down in something a little more organised than a single sentance of chaotic ranting.

Good review, I've moved this to the reviews board, so go nuts with the word count