Tomb Raider: Underworld

Here'se a thing. The game is barely fun. The story is complete. I could enjoy it. The design parts are good some of them are beautifull. Too much enclosed spaces, unfortunately. Lara is not a whining teenager and game is THANKFULLY not filled with stupid pretentious placeholders of a dialogues (the ones that game journalists like to sell you as "drama"). Lara is not bubblehead anymore and can be considered sexy. At least she looks better then MGS V's Quiet (shorts do make difference). Towards the end game gets easier (and more rushed). That said I'll have to explain the issues maybe too shortly as it is impossible to fully convey them all in text review format even if it wasn't symbol-restricted. -Camera is unacceptably bad. And this is third time in the reboot trilogy I complain about it. They've gradually made it worse with every new game. And there is NO fix for it. Lower mouse sensitivity or try joypad cringe - makes it less painfull. -Explaination still sucks. Even with a hint\guide system there is no easy (not dying) way of figuring out the intented path. Googling guides IS your way to go (or stumble around here and there for a while like I did). -Game is full of bugs. Some of them might be gamebreaking (I've managed to go through). That's just a problem. -Enemies now just mob you. There is a redundant melee move that makes no use when you're stuck in corner against 4-6 lizards. They also spawn like stupid untill they don't. -The game is tedious. A slight misassesment of distance or height will at best make you redo a pretty annoying sequence over. At worst it'll kill you. That's not -Controls is as bad as it was with a couple of new elements. More things devs didn't test. It's responsive enough but still animation over player input sucks and you'll feel it. This game is a perfect case study of why people responsible for "rushing" projects (and rushing in general) should be fired (and later given to a fire).

This version works better than the one on Steam, thanks, I wanted to replay this one, but I can not.. now I can! Oh ye.

The final entry in the Legend series is a disappointment, and it's a shame because I loved the prior two releases, especially Anniversary where it felt like platforming was a legitimate challenge. I appreciate some of the improvements CD made here though, such as the animations (when they work), graphics, and larger environments. As always, the ever-illustrious Keeley Hawes is welcome. However, this game is a chore to play. Each combat encounter feels like a needless slog, with enemies both taking forever to kill while still remaining easy to counter. I preferred the puzzle-like bosses in Anniversary. The climbing animations frequently glitch out, which makes managing Lara and coping with the camera feel like you're actively fighting the game while platforming. "The controls are floaty" is a cliché at this point, but no game demonstrates that more than TR: Underworld. To add insult to injury, these puzzles are so boring and simple, there's no hardly any challenge or lateral thinking to challenge you, instead the biggest trouble you'll have is with shoddy pathfinding. Simply navigating a route takes more effort to plan than anything else. I tapped out in Xibalba while trying to navigate the timed puzzles and forcing my bike down cramp corridors with dreadful handling. I'm usually quite open minded and forgiving of older games, but I realised that I simply wasn't having fun with this one at all. I don't think it's an age thing either, I recently beat Anniversary and felt the platforming was tight, polished and highly enjoyable in that title and it released a year earlier. This one could have used a little more dev time.

Excellent game and graphics

Pros: ++ great scenaries + moderate difficulties on puzzles + best Lara Croft + good lore Cons: -- frustrating combats (especially spiders) - plots stop abruptly - scarce BGM - Amanda