Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (Playstation 2)

by CORE Design Limited

Product Features

• Lara has been accused of murdering her old teacher, Von Croy. On the run and pursued by the police, she falls into a world of murder and betrayal, revenge and dark secrets.
• Help Lara solve the mystery of the Obscura Paintings, and why the mysterious Alchemist is so dead-set on having them
• All-new features like the ability to interact with other characters, a wild new combat system with stealth attacks and last-chance grabs, and much more
• As you solve puzzles and overcome obstacles, you'll earn improvements in Lara's upper body strength, jumping ability, brainpower and more
• Cutting-edge graphics bring the adventure to life as the legendary Lara Croft returns!

Product Details

• ASIN: B00006BMQB
• Item Weight: 5 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (213 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,885 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

A series of grisly murders brings Lara Croft into conflict with a sinister alchemist from the past and a secret alliance of powerful individuals shrouded in mystery. At the center of the conflict are the Obscura paintings, five 14th-century pieces of art that the alchemist is desperate to repossess. Accused of the murder of her one-time mentor, Werner Von Croy, Lara becomes a fugitive. Pursued by the police, she follows the alchemist into a dark world of blood, betrayal, and vengeance. It's up to Lara to defeat this unholy alliance and stop the villains from unleashing their incredible powers on the world.

Product Description

In Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness, fans of Lara Croft will experience an all-new adventure for a new century!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unacceptabley Awful, February 29, 2004

By 

Review Lover "ReviewLover" (At a place...) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (Playstation 2) (Video Game)

In this day and age, are we as gamers really expected to put up with this level of crap? Possibly the biggest disappointment in the history of videogames since the Sega Saturn, 'Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness' is the first next-gen outing for the intrepid Ms. Croft.

Stuck in development hell for the best part of 2 years, Core and Eidos should be very, VERY ashamed of themselves for allowing such a bug-filled, poorly thought-out piece of software onto the shelves, much less a game with such a rich and popular reputation to live up to.

Put simply, 'Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness' is an absolute dog.

First: The graphics just do not cut the mustard. Granted, the human characters in the Tomb Raider series were never graphically astounding, but here they're just badly done. Textures are pixelated and the frame rate is low. Lara's animations are smooth and her new costumes are diverting, but that's it. Characters like Bouchard and Carvier are not good enough for the PS 2, being underdetailed and very badly animated.

Level design is very substandard for a TR game. And, horror of horrors, there's only one tomb, The rest of the game is like a horrible cross between Metal Gear Solid and a weak RPG, where Lara is forced to run about Parisian streets and warehouses with no real sense of raiding anything.

Second: The control system is an absolute abomination. Lara is just not meant to be analog. Gone is the intuitive quad-style floor layout and now jumps and falls are impossible to judge, the upshot of which is Core have created a game which is insanely easy to beat. Lining up the camera, controlled by the right analog stick, every time you want to make a jump, is just annoying, and the collision detection is ridiculous.

Third: This is such an easy game to beat. Although I should point out, you'd better get to like the phrases 'Overwrite Successful' and 'Load Successful', becuase you'll be seeing them a hell of a lot. Thanks to the ridiculous control system, Saving and Loading happens far more often than is acceptable, and when you do manage to make the jumps and climbs without the control system hampering your every move or the game crashing out (happens a lot, sound and event glitches abound) you wonder what happened to the rest of the level.

A horrible, horrible game that yields no rewards, and will cause great distress to fans of the TR series, 'Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness' is something we should all forget.

Core, never let this happen again.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not great, but good..., July 9, 2003

By 

William the Conqueror "William the Conqueror" (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (Playstation 2) (Video Game)

I've played all of the Tomb Raider games but Chronicles. AOD should satisfy any fan, despite all of the criticism that you read. It takes a little while to get used to the looks and feel of the new game, which kicks into high gear once you get out of the Paris Ghetto. As for the controls, yes they do take a while to get used to, but you do get used to them. Some people mention that they cannot step sideways or back to set-up a running jump: read the instructions, it's there, stop whinning.

Here is a list of the positives and negatives that I have encountered, and some things that I would have liked to see in AOD.

Positives:
1) The graphics are great, including Lara herself, with even some jiggling you-know-where.
2) The story line is a great combination of the first movie and the previous games, mixing murder plot and traditional site exploring.
3) New moves like peaking around the corner and sneaking up on people.

Negatives:
1) The game slows down in certain places. Really annoying.
2) The controls are not responsive enough.

Some things I miss:
1) The mansion.
2) Lara saying 'u-huh' when she finds something.
3) She loses some of her English accent. It's there, but it's really light.
4) I would have preferred a greater variety of sites to explore, including outdoors. Instead, it's really Paris and Prague (so far).

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Take It Away In Chains, July 17, 2003

By 

Fantastik (his place.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (Playstation 2) (Video Game)

Despite all the hype and all the delays, "Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness" turns out to be just a waste of plastic. The game would've been great had the designers taken the time to fix up the unacceptable amount of bugs and glitches, and come up with a new and different style of gameplay.

What do I mean by that? Every single movement Lara makes is animated and much slower than it ought to be. A three-legged dog with one eye could swim through a pool of molasses in less time than it takes Lara to run from one side of a room to another. Not only that, but simple actions like crouching take at least 3 seconds longer than they should. And don't get me started on jumping. Jumping from ledge to ledge is about the only task the developers could come up with for you to do. Apparently, it's the camera's job to make it seem a lot harder than it is. If the camera's turned just slightly to the wrong angle, you might end up doing a side flip to your doom instead of jumping forward.

The puzzles that you come across (rarely), are usually idiotic and unrealistic. At one point in the game, you're asked to get from one side of a room to another, unfortunately the only way the door on the other end will open is if the laser security system is activated. The first thing you should notice is that these lasers are very poorly placed and any real person could easily just step over them or duck under them. Of course, being the tomb raider she is, Lara must use a series of timed run-and-jump moves to get through them, making what would be an extremely easy sequence to get through into a much harder one.

You'll learn early to save all the time. The game is extremely glitchy and freezes up in certain areas, usually when there's lots of things going on at the same time (like when three lights are turned on and there's another guy in the room). Also, since Lara dies inconsistently, you'll never know if that jump to the floor below is too far or not. I found that in certain areas, a ten foot fall to the floor can result in death, while in other places, falling forty feet will only slightly hurt your life bar.

Then there's all those nagging questions. Why is it that setting yourself on fire will slowly drain Lara's health, but stepping into a laser can kill you instantly? How come it takes seven bullets to kill a guy with no body armor? What kind of dog dies after two kicks, but remains alive after being shot several times? What's the point in the stealth mode if you almost never have to use it? In the extras section, why do the game designers claim that '"Tomb Raider" has always set the benchmark for games'? Why does the "Cradle Of Life" movie trailer have such messed up audio? I could go on and on.

In conclusion, all I have to say is that "AOD" was not worth the wait and isn't worth your money. Save it. I hope Eidos decides to speed up the gameplay in the next "Tomb Raider" installment and gets some developers that aren't mental patients to work on it. If not, I won't be buying it.