Tomb Raider: Underworld Revisited

Tomb Raider: Underworld actually holds up quite well from a long running era of Lara Croft that lasted until the gritty reboot of the series. In this eighth entry of the series Lara attempts to discover the secrets behind an apparent disappearance of her mother and Thor's magical items in a quest with a Norse focus. This has her moving through a number of mysterious and lengthy tombs on a global scale to track down clues. It's actually well done in the sense of providing a linear, yet open area to move through and a world that reacts to the character. The camera was honestly a bit shaky at times and the combat gave me a laugh. It was quite funny doing side flips while firing dual guns into bullet sponging creatures or people.

The game released in November 2008 for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, Wii and eventually Playstation 2. It was also made backwards compatible for Xbox One. It was published by Eidos Interactive and developed by Crystal Dynamics. This was also the last entry in the series to be released under Eidos as they were purchased by Square Enix after. There was also some downloadable content available for the game though only released on Xbox 360. As with most of the Tomb Raider games it's a third person action adventure game that has Lara scaling structures, shooting enemies and solving puzzles to collect artifacts.

Tomb Raider: Underworld certainly provided some large scale environments with missions that took a lengthy amount of time to complete. They did however flow well with some interesting level design, but it was almost tiring to move through the same setting for such a period of time. The settings were also rather interesting and that global sense worked well in providing multiple new places to explore. The world looks decent enough at this point and Lara Croft is surprisingly well done. I did however laugh at the combat since it seems silly now and damn enemies can eat bullets in it. It's also quite something to have to deal with bats or tigers jumping at you. There are few times in games where animals get dramatic enemy introductions.

The story was also interesting to a degree continuing multiple plot points and going forward. It brought a sense of adventure while mostly focusing on the puzzle aspect of play. I would have preferred some more action driven areas like the modern Tomb Raider games have, but this one holds up fine. The scuba portions were interesting as she could literally swim forever and the open sense of it was something unique. The temples were also varied in what you were doing with puzzles rarely being annoying yet plentiful. There were some minor smaller issues with the game though overall a solid entry in the franchise.

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