If you’ve played Tomb Raider: Legend, then you’ll immediately familiarize yourself with Underworld. As soon as you complete this level, the game flashes back a week and this is where the story begins. The game’s opening level is a prologue sequence where Croft Mansion has been nearly destroyed and you need to guide Lara safely out (actually, you’ll replay this sequence again about half way through the game). Lara sets out to find Thor’s Hammer as she believes her search for this relic will also shed light on the mystery of her late mother’s death. The story for Underworld centers on Norse mythology and specifically Thor’s Hammer. Tomb Raider: Underworld is the latest game in the series brought to us by Eidos and Crystal Dynamics (same team that also worked on Legend and Anniversary). This is sad and boring.It’s hard to believe that the Tomb Raider franchise has been in existance since 1996 when the first Tomb Raider game made its debut on the Sony PlayStation. I don't mind having the game consist mostly of exploration, but when the gunfight starts I expect a legitimate battle. It seems like a joke when you play for an hour and the only bad guys that show up are two easily dispatched goons guarding a temple. I mean really few, as in you only ever see a couple at a time. There are the occasional enemies or murderous jungle cats, but they're few and far between. Combat has also taken a back seat in the Wii version. Usually you can move the camera, but sometimes it resists and shakes violently or swings around way too far. Oftentimes it will lock into some weird position, making it hard to see where Lara needs to jump to. Part of this had to do with the stubborn camera the game has. I inexplicably leapt in the completely wrong direction and killed myself numerous times. The controls in general are kind of clunky and the collision detection is hit or miss. Why can't I press a button to make Lara move faster along ledges? Shaking the nunchuk doesn't make me feel like I'm in the game or anything. There are pointer based puzzles in the game, but all of them are so absurdly simple that they can't even be called puzzles. Everything about the game that is Wii specific is either annoying or a joke. Crumbling pillars sound like they're made of soft clay rather than ancient stone, and swinging tentacles slide around silently through the temple. A huge monstrous octopus should be making a lot more noise. It's noticeable right from the beginning when battling the giant Kraken. On the other hand, the sound effects are weak, if they're present at all. There are some pop-in and clipping issues, and players will occasionally move Lara right through pillars or arches like they were phantom architecture. She goes diving in the ocean, rides a motorcycle through canyons in Mexico, and even relaxes in her luxurious mansion (before it gets blown up in the opening cinematics). The jungles of Thailand are beautiful, and while most of the temples are fairly bland there manages to be a few cool looking rooms. The game's environments look great by Wii standards. Lara is still free to roam about wherever she pleases, but it's just that most of those places make her fall to her death, so the game feels kind of boxed in. Scaling huge temples and cliff faces is still a fun pastime and the later puzzles are tricky enough to make you scratch your head. It's still got that acrobatic charm and puzzle solving that has made the series fun. It just lacks the feeling of huge unexplored environments that the other Tomb Raider games had. There's still plenty of jumping, climbing, swinging and puzzle solving, but it's short and streamlined. The levels are small and not very intricate for a Tomb Raider game. A lot of the shortcomings are simply due to failure to capitalize on the hardware. This isn't a terrible version of Tomb Raider, but compared to the other versions of it, and even compared to the PS2 prequel, Underworld is a sufficiently lacking title. There are plenty of the same puzzles and areas to climb, but there are also unique ones. The Wii version is not a direct port, though it is very similar. The plot is pretty good, though it tends to get a bit overdramatic and occasionally dips into silliness. Players control the lovely Lara Croft through temples, caves, and, yes, tombs in a hunt for the fabled Avalon and her long lost mother. Underworld picks up right after the events of Tomb Raider: Legend and includes a movie recap of the events in the previous game (if you didn't play that version, be prepared to scratch your head).
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