2013 Tomb Raider: Underworld Review

[5U93R ( . Y . ) LU15]

First off, been playing this game for 2+ years and finally beat it.

In preparation for this years release of Tomb Raider, It has re-sparked an interest in this utterly annoying platformer/puzzle game that one can only experience by owning an original Play Station and throwing in Tomb Raiders I through III. Regardless, some odd years later, the Tomb's haven't changed much.

Tomb Raider: Underworld is the most recent of the old franchise. It's at this peak that Lara Croft has the biggest "body features" of the series. Which is most likely why the new game is a prequel, featuring a more vulnerable, weaker Lara that not even Jolie could portray. Although the entire game and models like Lara look absolutely stunning in crisp HD, it all seems a bit to convenient. Which is the way of the old Tomb Raider franchise I suppose.

Over all, the mechanics of the game are clunky and out of date. Often times misdirecting jumps to utter and complete death. Death was overlooked in the animation department as well, not in the budget I suppose. And if it's not wacky jumps then it's the camera angels that kill you. Puzzles are tough, no strategy needed but a gift for common sense and practical solutions. Over thinking this game will leave you searching for hours, which like all Tomb Raiders gives you that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ WTF! moment when you figure it out. That has authenticity, which I like, but that kind of searching in games is so 90's. Story is way over my head, not a Tomb Raider story follower. The Tombs and places I went however where very interactive and enjoyable. Although NPC's are as smart as a door knob, killing them is always a good time if you can get past the horrendous shooting and melee mechanics of the game.

Over all, this Tomb Raider brought together what I loved about the old franchise, clunky mechanics smashed together with high levels of platforming, and put it on a grade A level with visuals. Although I doubt we will see a Tomb Raider like this again, it's a great benchmark for gamers who want to know what the game was like, before it became an "Uncharted like" masterpiece.

7.5/10 (A 7.5 out of 10) Original. Visually stunning. Doesn't compare to newer games but for 2011, it defiantly holds it's own. If your a Lara fan, play it!

[CoffeeCat]

basicaly how i feel as well about the game thank god for the reboot of the series

was wondering if u can help me i sent a friend invite

i am stuck at (cant remember the name of this island) i am at the last gear room with the hammers going back and forth where the bridge is broken

[5U93R ( . Y . ) LU15]

SCE_Tunguska původně napsal:

basicaly how i feel as well about the game thank god for the reboot of the series

was wondering if u can help me i sent a friend invite

i am stuck at (cant remember the name of this island) i am at the last gear room with the hammers going back and forth where the bridge is broken

I'm glad someone agrees.

I sent you a friend request as I denied yours by mistake. I will gladly help with what I can.

[Wezilla]

Underworld is true Lara Croft. Reboot Lara sucks.

[CoffeeCat]

Redboy původně napsal:

Underworld is true Lara Croft. Reboot Lara sucks.

the new Lara croft is probably best game that has came out so far this year

[Cygnus]

Super-Luis původně napsal:

First off, been playing this game for 2+ years and finally beat it.

In preparation for this years release of Tomb Raider, It has re-sparked an interest in this utterly annoying platformer/puzzle game that one can only experience by owning an original Play Station and throwing in Tomb Raiders I through III. Regardless, some odd years later, the Tomb's haven't changed much.

My first TR experience was on Sega Saturn,Then I got PS1 and played TR II & III
Utterly annoying... yet was such a mix between serene environments & music and sometimes cussing the game out lol.

Tomb Raider: Underworld is the most recent of the old franchise. It's at this peak that Lara Croft has the biggest "body features" of the series. Which is most likely why the new game is a prequel, featuring a more vulnerable, weaker Lara that not even Jolie could portray. Although the entire game and models like Lara look absolutely stunning in crisp HD, it all seems a bit to convenient. Which is the way of the old Tomb Raider franchise I suppose.

Over all, the mechanics of the game are clunky and out of date. Often times misdirecting jumps to utter and complete death. Death was overlooked in the animation department as well, not in the budget I suppose. And if it's not wacky jumps then it's the camera angels that kill you. Puzzles are tough, no strategy needed but a gift for common sense and practical solutions. Over thinking this game will leave you searching for hours, which like all Tomb Raiders gives you that HOLY ♥♥♥♥ WTF! moment when you figure it out. That has authenticity, which I like, but that kind of searching in games is so 90's. Story is way over my head, not a Tomb Raider story follower. The Tombs and places I went however where very interactive and enjoyable. Although NPC's are as smart as a door knob, killing them is always a good time if you can get past the horrendous shooting and melee mechanics of the game.

Over all, this Tomb Raider brought together what I loved about the old franchise, clunky mechanics smashed together with high levels of platforming, and put it on a grade A level with visuals. Although I doubt we will see a Tomb Raider like this again, it's a great benchmark for gamers who want to know what the game was like, before it became an "Uncharted like" masterpiece.

7.5/10 (A 7.5 out of 10) Original. Visually stunning. Doesn't compare to newer games but for 2011, it defiantly holds it's own. If your a Lara fan, play it!

Good Review...TR 2013 sparked my interest and I decided to go a first run through of TR Anniversary-TR Legends (In the middle of that now)....And finaly I'll play TR UnderWorld.

As clumbsy, the Camera and control of TR games, the atmosphere of these games always seem soothing and a great stress reliever......thats if you arent cussing the game out !
Looking forward to this graphicaly updated version (UnderWorld).

I actualy have the origonal TR & my Sega Saturn, quite awhile ago I plugged it in just to look at the game...Holy Giant blocky polygons, back then It sure looked cool.

After Underworld I'll be trying out the new Tomb Raider 2013.

[5U93R ( . Y . ) LU15]

Boo to you for not loving what this franchise has become. You are one of those fan boys not even Lara could convince if she said "My reboot is awesome." Which she would.

Redboy původně napsal:

Underworld is true Lara Croft. Reboot Lara sucks.

[5U93R ( . Y . ) LU15]

Cygnus gets it. Understanding WHY the game is so important to the industry is majorly important. But at the same time, it is also important to move past a franchises achievements and move onto something to change the industry again. Or at least set a good standard. Thief is a great example of that. By the way, played a bit of TR so far, give credit where credit is due.

[Cygnus]

I'm quite a way into Underworld and I have to say this is a great game,graphics are really nice, good puzzles,unlocking puzzles as that cinematic epic feeling.
I've found nothing frustrateing yet, advice is "look before you leap" examine all climbable areas,explore....I actually like useing the PDA to get hints, at least for main goals, as far as collectables ...your on your own.

So Ive been on a Tomb Raider binge, having gone through Anniversary,Legends and then the most graphicaly updated UnderWorld...Tomb Raider puzzle solving has always had a more epic feeling,more rewarding than the old Resident Evil puzzle solving on PS1 (controllers on consoles killed my fingers, especialy RE's stickyness)

So UnderWorld is not perfect , few sticky control spots, but has really well thought out puzzles and goals...kind of nice I'm working my way through these 3 games and knowing I've TR2013 to look forward to.....I expect the reboot to be quite different from what I read, but things always change.

Hoping 2013 version is the new beggining and keeps the franchise alive for a few more games.

[SM-]

Man I loved useing Thors hammer in underworld! That was fun. Great game!

[Cygnus]

Just got Thors hammer, sends guys flying 50 feet away lol

[Cygnus]

fatwednesdayite původně napsal:

It's fantastic to see how far Tomb Raider has gone with the new reboot, but there is still something about the trio of Legend, Anniversary and Underworld that excites me. I really love these games; Underworld was amazing, a bit short but still a fantastic experience!

Those 3 games keep that TR atmosphere ,especially Anniversary,each feel different but has that Tomb raider ambient solitude and new age instrumental music,

Saved Underworld for last as it was the most graphicaly updated...you know dessert lol

[Cygnus]

fatwednesdayite původně napsal:

The music in all of the three games was unbelievable and an indispensible part of the experience. The composer for the 2013 Tomb Raider, Jason Graves, got a lot of attention and publicity before the launch of the game and I was expecting something amazing. However, the quality of the soundtrack in the reboot is not even comparable to Legend, Anniversary or Underworld. Some of the compositions in Anniversary were absolutely magical. The score for Croft Manor makes me want to replay it every day just to hear it!

There is something about the old games that I like and replaying them soon will certainly feel a lot more entertaining than playing the reboot. Call me a luddite but too much has been sacrificed in the 2013 Tomb Raider to call it a proper "Tomb Raider game". It's still good just not good enough.

Also, I hope you enjoy Underworld, it is amazing! Just look out for the yeti - they do exist!

UnderWorld is excellent......UW has the best underwater exploration of them all as far as I can tell.
Have not played TR2013.
My hopes are that whatever they did change they incorporate it with the old atmosphere,you know like they have this whole new game, what can they do to bring the old atmosphere in with the new If they continue the series, Plan on getting TR 2013, my expectations, maybe the reboot is just a new foundation and they can bring back the TR feel and atmosphere (music) too.

[Zaxx]

So uh... after 3 terribly generic reboot games and the "action-adventure platformer" genre being dead for a decade are ya missing the classic design yet? :P

[5U93R ( . Y . ) LU15]

Zaxx původně napsal:

So uh... after 3 terribly generic reboot games and the "action-adventure platformer" genre being dead for a decade are ya missing the classic design yet? :P

Going back through my review now 10 years ago, there is something so familiar feeling of where I thought we would/could be regarding the state of our beloved Tomb Raider Lara. That's to say, if the T.R. series was a car the reboots would be one of those electric cars that start with a T. Now, not the most impressive looking car, or driving car, or bragging rights car (seriously, no one cares about your electric car that starts with a T) but it definitely has features, functionality, and a design that most would say is a modern and sexy look for the future. Tomb Raider Reboots 1-3 fit that description to a "T" (Pun intended). At its best the Tomb Raider Adventure Genre is now a playable action movie, and at its worst it's an overly stylized third person shooter with the same makings of any jump to your death platformer.

My favorite thing to happen to the series is that Square Enix got a hold of the game and wanted it to be a AAA tittle worth remembering. As far as Adventure games goes, I would recommend all 3 to anyone with the Lara Croft itch because they are next gen games and play and look like next gen games (Not something you pulled out of your old box of forgotten video game relics to try and impress the younger crowd who never booted up or held an original console or play disk) and that includes T.R. Underworld. I couldn't impress a younger gamer with even Underworld Lara's wet suit shenanigans. A very similar experience is to how some will either appreciate Final Fantasy 7 Original on the PS1 over the Remake not just because of the graphical changes but because of the overall game as a whole. Sometimes even the most detailed pant zipper on Clouds Ultra 4k HD jeans cant make up for the lack of the way a game makes us feel playing it.

I love your comment in today's gaming world. With Remakes on the horizon as the new and best way to bring back old franchises from the utter depths of Gaming Davey Jones Locker, I look forward to seeing how these old games makes us feel. Good luck Dead Space Remake and all the children of those remakes to come in the future.

Cheers!

P.S. I still haven't written a proper review for Tomb Raider 1 Reboot, and man do I have some sexy screenshots!

[Zaxx]

5U93R ( . Y . ) LU15 původně napsal:

Zaxx původně napsal:

So uh... after 3 terribly generic reboot games and the "action-adventure platformer" genre being dead for a decade are ya missing the classic design yet? :P

Going back through my review now 10 years ago, there is something so familiar feeling of where I thought we would/could be regarding the state of our beloved Tomb Raider Lara. That's to say, if the T.R. series was a car the reboots would be one of those electric cars that start with a T. Now, not the most impressive looking car, or driving car, or bragging rights car (seriously, no one cares about your electric car that starts with a T) but it definitely has features, functionality, and a design that most would say is a modern and sexy look for the future. Tomb Raider Reboots 1-3 fit that description to a "T" (Pun intended). At its best the Tomb Raider Adventure Genre is now a playable action movie, and at its worst it's an overly stylized third person shooter with the same makings of any jump to your death platformer.

My favorite thing to happen to the series is that Square Enix got a hold of the game and wanted it to be a AAA tittle worth remembering. As far as Adventure games goes, I would recommend all 3 to anyone with the Lara Croft itch because they are next gen games and play and look like next gen games (Not something you pulled out of your old box of forgotten video game relics to try and impress the younger crowd who never booted up or held an original console or play disk) and that includes T.R. Underworld. I couldn't impress a younger gamer with even Underworld Lara's wet suit shenanigans. A very similar experience is to how some will either appreciate Final Fantasy 7 Original on the PS1 over the Remake not just because of the graphical changes but because of the overall game as a whole. Sometimes even the most detailed pant zipper on Clouds Ultra 4k HD jeans cant make up for the lack of the way a game makes us feel playing it.

I love your comment in today's gaming world. With Remakes on the horizon as the new and best way to bring back old franchises from the utter depths of Gaming Davey Jones Locker, I look forward to seeing how these old games makes us feel. Good luck Dead Space Remake and all the children of those remakes to come in the future.

Cheers!

P.S. I still haven't written a proper review for Tomb Raider 1 Reboot, and man do I have some sexy screenshots!

I have to say that I love your comment too though not in the way that you might expect it. It kind of represents an old mentality that I haven't seen in quite a while, a sort of narrative that basically wants videogames to feel and to some extent actually become movies because that's the perceived way to reach a bigger audience or as you put it "to be an AAA title worth remembering".

Now the problem with that argument is that it usually results in an identity crisis because a game has to lose its more complex elements in order to become easily digestible for the avarage consumer. In my opinion that's exactly what happened to the Tomb Raider games that were made under Square Enix or as I like to call them: the "Optional Tomb Raider" series.

Now the thing about "Optional Tomb Raider" is that it makes an essential part of "Actual Tomb Raider" (meaning every old stuff up to Underworld), mechanics that can lead to frustration an opt-in / opt-out part of the experience. Compared to the complex climbing system of Underworld "Optional Tomb Raider" is a "press A to platform and stuff" game and every single puzzle is you guessed it: optional. What isn't optional? Mass murder because that's what the kids love ever since Uncharted hit the market: adventuring in exotic locations while doing no activity that would relate to adventuring while killing a ton of people.

The new games aren't exactly bad in that they are indeed competently produced AAA titles but that's exactly why they can't offer anything that's unique and rather stick to the generic over the shoulder shooter formula that Gears of War and Uncharted popularized. That kinda sucks for a Tomb Raider game even if you shed tears of joy from thinking that generic and outdated AAA schlock is what will eventually give immortality to Tomb Raider. You're wrong, even popular culture forgets this mass produced crap eventually.

Now why I necroed the thread is because I was curious to see you self-reflect because honestly after I read it I thought "damn, it took this guy 2 years to beat Underworld so he's clearly not part of the core audience yet here he is acting like as if he was the authority on what TR's future should look like". I'm not saying this as a way to dismiss your criticism because you're bad at the game or anything like that but really if you kept bouncing off Underworld for 2 years until you finally managed to beat this shockingly short 8 hour game then it was surely not enjoyment that brought you through the finish line.

And really the things that you mention as problems, like the game sending you to your death is not actually part of the whole deal if you know, you carefully look around the environment and plan your moves. Sure, the last portion of Underworld is super janky and unpolished but that's not a game design issue but rather caused by the lack of polish. Compared to the rebooted series these games were made from peanuts, they were produced by an Eidos that was on its last legs and on top of that Crystal Dynamics faced a ton of issues during development. The whole thing was made on a new engine in parallel with Anniversary's development, it's a rushed product from an understaffed team that simply didn't have the time to polish it up properly. And to make matters worse the PC port never got some of the DLC so chances are we're missing a bit of extra post-launch polish too.

Honestly even when I played this game for the first time 14 years ago the production issues were glaringly obvious and if you've played similar games that are produced better (for example Ubisoft's Prince of Persia franchise offers a more polished platforming experience) then you see that game developers actually know how to make this type of game better.

So when you condemn this game design based on you not being great at it combined with the game having a bunch of bugs then really you're being dishonest when you name that as the reason why the game needed to move on to something "optional". Nope, what TR needed is a better publisher and a higher budget and that's kind of it, the game design itself was excellent.

Now the franchise definitely didn't get the better publisher with Square Enix even though they could provide the bigger budget. The history of "Optional Tomb Raider" at Square Enix is that they were never happy with the sales even though they actually sold pretty well for a multiplatform AAA title. Optional TR never topped all the sales charts and it never made the type of money Square Enix wanted out of it but they never lost a dime on it and even earned some.

It wasn't enough so last year Square sold off Crystal, Tomb Raider and a few other IPs to the Embracer Group for 300 million dollars... a company that according to rumours now has also sold Tomb Raider to Amazon for 600 million dollars. Yep, Square never knew the real value of TR. Time will tell if Amazon can do better, they most likely won't.

As for remakes that's an interesting subject because if you look at the Dead Space remake what you'll see is that they not only kept the original game's design but also cranked it up to eleven. Dead Space remake embraces the identity of Dead Space and that seems to be the ongoing trend now. Resident Evil is in the middle of a similar and massively successful revival ever since RE7 where Capcom left behind the generic AAA shooter trappings of RE6 and returned to survival horror.

Literally all the successful remakes that are out now have kept the identities of the original work so really "Optional TR" is what holds the outdated pihlosophy if you think about it. Hopefully Crystal can change, Shadow of the Optional Tomb Raider was a step in the right direction so maybe there is a non-optional future somewhere along the way.

At any rate oh boy am I glad that we're done with the whole "let's make games more like movies so videogames could be legit" era that you managed to recapture here for a few seconds. The devil put dinosaurs here, I tell you.