Customer Reviews

Tomb Raider: Underworld

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I never played TR until last years Anniversary and thought it was surprisingly fun since I'm more of a Sci-Fi/military shooter/racer type. This game focuses on exploration and puzzle solving with cool Indiana Jones type of mythological environments that are really nice to look at all with a very lovely lady doing the exploring with the occasional battles. I found myself not wanting lovely Laura to get hurt even though she can take care of herself!

I can definitely say this is a pretty big improvement from last years graphics and Laura has some pretty cool new moves with very intuitive controls configured very well for the PC gamer. I did have the occasional camera wigging out problems but it was not something that happened often. The sound was well done and fit into the whole mystical environment with the story occasionally coming in as cutscenes.

The whole interface is very well done and up to date. One thing I wish this game had was an autosave option at the checkpoints which are signified by a distinct sound, otherwise I can't always remember where I last saved. Also the saves don't go exactly to where you save, they go to the last checkpoint, this can be annoying if you finished a particularly tough climbing sequence. That's pretty much all that I don't like.

You should get this if you like exploration and puzzle games or Indy Jones/Mummy type of movies, it's not a run and gun or horror type of game but that's a nice break from the many games in those genres.

Underworld is a great game, with a clear focus on exploration, acrobatics and puzzles - all the things that make a good tomb raider game. The environments are the most beautiful ones I have seen in a long time, and I play a lot of games. Granted, there are some games that might be technically more advanced, but Underworld's levels are simply breathtaking. Also, a mid-range pc is fully satisfactory to run it (I use my Inspiron 1520 laptop).

Lara's model and animations have improved considerably too, so that she looks and moves more realistically. Further, the game is full of little details bringing Lara and the world to life; for instance, Lara brushes away leaves when she runs through foliage, she gets dirty when she performs acrobatics, she gets wet when she swims, etc. One can clearly see that Christal Dynamics put a lot of effort into making her adventures believable, and they succeeded. The music is great too and could be from a Hollywood blockbuster; it fits the game well, with many memorable tracks.

On the downside, the combat is a bit lackluster, and I would have preferred Crystal Dynamics had retained the focus attack of Anniversary. Some people complain about the camera/controls, but I had no problems at all - granted, one should use a controller (I use the Xbox-360 one), since a mouse-keyboard combo is simply not well suited for this game. The story is ok for a tomb-raider game, but still rather silly.

As for DRM: there is no activation needed and no installation limit, which is good. It does have a disk-check facilitated by Securom as far as I can tell, and even though I loathe Securom, it is used in an unobtrusive manner here (compared to the nightmares that Electronic arts imposes on its paying costumers).

Compared to Legend, Underworld is bigger, more challenging and simply better (as much as I liked Legend, it was too easy, short and lacked the exploration bit, but I guess they needed a game whith a broad mass appeal to restart the franchise).

Bottom line: Underworld is a great game, which I can only recommend. I hope it will be a financial success for Eidos, since it would be a shame if Eidos were to go bankrupt (they have quite a few financial problems right now). Over the years they have published many memorable franchises, such as Hitman and Legacy of Cain, and the last thing I would like to see is Electronic Arts buying yet another publisher to screw over customers and fans.

I had high hopes for this as the reviews were favorable.It has a good look and plays nicely on my XP, but the controls are clunky, there's not enough guidance for the novice as to Lara's linear focus. Even switching between the game & a walkthru I found myself wishing for an easy death. Frustration is putting it mildly.
I enjoyed the puzzle aspect, but could not continue, it's just too slow. Compounding all this is the game has no quick save option, no quick load, forcing one to relive the slow painful repetitive track thru nothingness.
Without the quick load/save,the game is monotonous. Good luck, you'll need more than that my friend.

I bought PC version and can say that it's an incredible game, the best of TR games ever. Amazing graphic, absorbing plot and so many new movements of Lara. My favourite game of the autumn, for TR fans it's must have purchase

I picked this up on Amazon, because it was cheaper here than on Steam, in hopes that I could use the key to activate it on Steam, but I was out of luck. The key that comes with the Amazon version is not compatible with Steam. Lesson learned.

That said, I found this game quite fun. It was the first Tomb Raider game I played, so I can't compare it to the others, but I enjoyed it all the way through. It's a good deal at its current $3.99 price.

When I heard about Underworld, for PC specifically, I was excited. I'd been waiting for a new Tomb Raider game since the old ones, and this one looked perfect. This game delivers 90% of what fans want, with the exception of a few, minor flaws in the gameplay.

The atmosphere of the game is superb. It has a very dark and creepy feel when you're in the dark, deep tombs; and it has a very fun, Indiana Jones feel to it when you get into the thick, high jungles. Ontop of the general atmosphere, the game has a very large scale compared to the others in the series. The first few levels really bring this out in an outstanding way when you dive down deep into the ocean, all the beautiful scenery displayed. The graphics in the game are very very good, I was impressed personally, I expected them to be a little under par.

Now, I'm going to address the main issue that fellow reviewers and websites like IGN have pointed out: The Camera.

For me, the camera posed very little problems. The only time the camera really gets tricky is when you're in very tight areas, or if you're in an odd situation when climbing. It doesn't become a problem otherwise, or at least it didn't for me. The camera was fine through the game, with only a couple spots that were a tad bothersome.

I don't believe IGN and other reviewers have given this game it's credit, really. There's so many little things about it that makes it enjoyable to play; the scenery, music (which is wonderfully composed), puzzles, and things like when walking too close to fire, Laura will shield her face from the flames. The little things. It's a very enjoyable game if you take it slow, and pay attention to what you're doing. The camera should never pose a problem unless you're rushing, jerking your mouse all over the place. This game wasn't meant to be rushed through.

The only problems I really can come up with that are valid and not down to personal experience are the AI. When fighting against humans, they generally just stand in front of Laura at a decent distance, firing, while standing still. That, or they run around and try to hide while shooting at you periodically. This issue doesn't bother me, because Tomb Raider isn't supposed to be a run-and-gun third person shooter against humans. It's supposed to be Tomb Raider; going up against nature.

Overall I enjoyed this game very much, and I recommend it to anyone who's looking for a good adventure game, something refreshing and that will give you a good sense of accomplishment and fun.

What can be said - this is the best Tomb Raider to date. The visuals are grand - the water looks and acts like real water (waves, air bubbles and all), the plant life is excellently drawn, the rocks / columns look real. It is almost like the programmers took the levels from pictures. The game has locked items as before, and continues the series.

One of the most entertaining points to the game is the fact that you can get to the same place from different ways - you don't always have to follow the same track. For example, getting to the SUN Door, you can either jump to it via the left viking, go through the ledges on the right viking or use the ring to grapple.

The enemies act more intelligently so it is a more life like combat on Amanda's ship.

The only bug that I have come across the the grapple - you can grapple with "Q" but it will not release the grapple by hitting "Q" again. I have found that jumping or wrapping the cable around columns will "break" the grapple. Overall, this is a very minor bug.

I've never played a Tomb Raider game. As I'm mostly addicted to FPS and certain RPG games, these never quite grabbed me. But I recently purchased this game (crazy cheap I might add), and decided to try and get through it. Well OMG this game totally rocks.

Instead of repeat what mostly everyone has said here, I'll just summarize my views briefly.

Pros:

Story, scenery, visuals & artwork, and the art direction were absolutely amazing and almost unprecedented in most games I've ever played (hundreds I might add). This felt like a sweeping scifi/adventure/fantasy movie most of the time, and a good one at that.

Voice acting was just flawless. The person who voiced Lara just nailed it...big time. Just perfect, and the rest of the voices were as good.

Gameplay, puzzles, and linearity are also really really awesome. There are many ways to accomplish the same task in many case, in some there is only one way. But the combination is pretty well balanced. Some of the puzzles are truly mind numbing. I relied heavily on Stella at [...] though when I was stumped, which happened occasionally.

The save system works pretty well. The autosaves/checkpoints are really tightly woven into the story. Most are where I would have saved anyway. There is a nice little bell ring whenever you get to an autosave/checkpoint that lets you know where you are.... a very nice touch. The manual save system is pretty useless, but I found that the autosave system works well enough. As always, there are some annoying places where you had to repeat 9 million times where it could have used an autosave, but I only found a half dozen here and there, so not really that bad.

Stability and software quality was just fantastic. No crashes, no hangs, nothing. You can even Alt-Tab out and come back in and the software is smart enough to have you at the pause page... really really nice.

Cons:

The controls are definitely painful sometimes. This was one of only 2 things that made me mad playing this game. They are inconsistent.... you can be in the exact same spot, repeating a checkpoint, and for example, the W makes you lean forward one time, and backward another time, etc. You find yourself jumping into the abyss, when you think you are climbing. Really annoying.

The grapple hook is the most frustrating mechanism as it almost never worked as intended. Sometimes I had to repeat 30 times just to get it to behave as I think the devs had intended.

3rd person view... BLAH. Now I know this is a Lara Croft game, and watching her various body parts jiggle is supposed to be part of the game. But the camera just gets CRAZY sometimes.... its murder on the eyes. The classic is the chimney jump where you basically have zero idea where you are, you just push buttons and see what happens. I can deal with 3rd person sometimes, and it was 80% good in this game, but 10% was annoying and the other 10% was horrible.

I would dock the game a whole point for these cons, but the pros are so amazing and wonderful, I just didn't care that much. I've never played a perfect game (Fallout 3 was maybe close), so I learn to take the handicaps in stride.

In conclusion, if you've never tried a Tomb Raider game, this one is truly amazing and astounding. My hat goes off the the production, art and software development teams. This is about as close as software comes to a work of art

This game looks fantastic. Lara looks great and moves fluidly through the air. She of course does a number of impossible acrobatics, but that's part of what makes this game fun. The scenery and textures are beautiful. The water and lighting effects are superb. While much of the game takes place deep in the earth or underwater, there are moments of big sky and bright sunshine. Without a doubt, the visuals are the game's greatest strength.

The sound effects and music are nice as well. The voice acting is fine enough, but I found it difficult to hear some of the dialogue during movies and cut scenes. I had to blast my speakers to make sure I could catch all of it.

The narrative is somewhat unremarkable. The game is about playing around with Lara and seeing what she can do. I really didn't care anything about the plot. The game is way too short, but I imagine there's some fun in replaying a level to find all of the treasure.

The game's greatest weaknesses are by far the horrid camera perspective and clipping issues. You have very little control over the camera, and it seems to zoom in and out of its own accord, quite often locking your next ledge off screen, so that you have to guess and risk Lara plummeting to her death. And nothing takes the genuine tension out of a battle with three tigers than a close-up of a tree trunk that you can't shake. I became so frustrated with the camera that I nearly quit playing. Every Tomb Raider game has had camera and clipping issues, and I probably won't buy another one until these issues are fixed in upcoming games.

Overall, I enjoyed this game when the camera didn't get in the way. Unfortunately, this happened far too often. I recommend the game for fans, but wait until the cost goes down. A short, buggy game is not worth the retail price.

This is the best Tomb Raider in years, maybe ever. For fans of gaming and fans of Tomb Raider this is a great buy. They even made it cheaper than most new PC games so its a great value too.