Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness - IGN (original) (raw)

Ah, Tomb Raider, how shall I compare thee? The years we have spent together are unlike any other. Our marriage or sorts, with its rewards, hype, travesty and failure, remains one defined by love...and hate. After five games on PlayStation and PC, Eidos Interactive and Core Design have promised us the next big thing in the Tomb Raider franchise, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, a sweeping new, three-part movie-like adventure to carry the next generation of systems into the future. And now, finally, the game is here. Does it define this generation of systems like it did the last? Does it break free from the clunky grid-based system of yesterday? Does it charm and sway us, compel and move us? Hardly.
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness presents PlayStation 2 and PC gamers with a familiar adventure game, teeming with classic exploration gameplay elements, less frustrating puzzles, great visuals and an excellent sense of presentation. It's one that delivers new moves, a new playable character, and a vast unexplored mystery to solve. Lara herself is cast in a darker light, suspected of murder and caught in a trap that's far larger than she expects. Even more exciting is that she actually has personality, character and likeable traits other than her bursting physical attributes this time around.

So, what have we got here with Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness? A fresh chapter that represents a relatively big step for Core Design, certainly a game that's better looking and more diverse than its predecessors, and one that is probably better overall than its siblings. We also have a title far behind the times, one that's stuck in mid-transformation, presenting gamers with the undisputable notion that Core Design is struggling with Lara's present -- and future. Angel of Darkness holds close the qualities that made the first two game so likeable, but it similarly retains many if not all of the same mechanics, gameplay tactics and problems that dragged the series down over the years.

Story
Along with Super Mario 64, The Tomb Raider series may have introduced gamers into the vastness of 3D movement back in 1996, but it's never been known for anything dramatically revolutionary when it comes to storyline or character development. Lara, to this point, has been defined by her extraordinary physicality, which never ceases to amaze even the brightest of plastic surgeons. Showcasing one of its best new attributes, Angel of Darkness breaks the mold with a compelling storyline, a real character behind the bursting physique, and a set of intriguing bit characters along the way.

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**Gameplay When it comes to gameplay, however, Core's new game careens slowly down a well-trodden path, albeit with a new pair of boots. There are enough changes and fixes in the Tomb Raider repertoire to warrant a glass-half-full attitude for at least a few hours, but in the end each "fix" acts as a band-aid (instead of a cast) for a broken bone.

While Angel of Darkness might tout its new action moves and stealth abilities, Core's sixth game in the series is without a doubt conceived as an adventure game at its heart. It's a slow, explorative adventure game based on solving 3D puzzles and physical discovery. That's fine. I like slow adventure games with good stories, puzzles and exploration. But the action/combat aspects pale in comparison to 90% of the PlayStation 2's adventure or action-adventure games, and they actually hurt the rest of the game's best qualities.

In its own clunky way Angel of Darkness addresses problems that have plagued the previous iterations for years. Designed as a precise, grid-based adventure game, old iterations of Tomb Raider have relied on the strange precision of the PlayStation's Dpad to get Lara from point A to point B. Over the years, the analog sticks were worked into the mix but the game still played better with the Dpad. Now, players can walk over thin planks using the L1 button, which is "steady walk." It essentially prevents Lara from falling or moving out of control, which is also essentially her default nature when controlled by the PS2's wily analog sticks.

Little items, powers-ups, ammo and the like once lost in the colorful plains of Lara's vast ground textures now shine in _Resident Evil_-style, glimmering to make themselves more obvious. A helpful hand icon appears on screen to indicate you have located something, and it's a major relief.

Some of her movement is made easier. Players don't have to press a button each time they want to climb a ladder, crate or rope. Instead, Lara's character automatically recognizes the object and climbs it -- at least when she's precisely aimed at it. These are all welcome fixes, among others, to a series that's essentially unchanged over the last six years.

Lara's capable of many more moves this time around and the sense of control is, as a result, both better and...worse. Capable of an array of new maneuvers, Lara's more athletic, more diverse than ever. She can now shimmy around corners while hanging; she can rock climb up fences, gates, and along tall narrow rock cliffs; she can climb down areas with ease and jump long distances and grab on to the upcoming ledge, saving herself from massive disaster. She can get down on her knees and she can crawl on her belly. Kinky.

The dark spelunking heroine can climb across ropes and lift her legs up to avoid danger, and she's now stealthy. Press L2 and Lara will "sneak" around quietly, surprising guards from behind and performing numerous neck-breaking tactics to keep things quiet. She can perform wall creeps a la Solid Snake to complement the new stealth techniques.

The new moves all work well enough, with the exception of the very clunky wall sneak and stealth moves. The wall sneak does indeed function, but awkwardly. The animation is longer than the move need be, and she sticks to the wall when it's combined with the sneak button, turning any sort of stealth into a Three Stooges comedy routine.

But despite all this, controlling Lara is only millimeters more progressive than games from the previous series, and that's being generous. Simple things such as opening doors and climbing through a window can be a real chore, because of Core's reliance on the grid-based system. And despite several hours honing my skills jumping and shimmying, Lara's lack of fluidity, rigid set of moves, and Core's desire to retain the series' clunky, awkward mechanics brings on genuine frustration and disappointment. It's 2003, for God's sake! We have played the dynamic roster of adventure titles such as ICO and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (which both came out nearly two years ago) and even lesser known games, such as Tales of Destiny and Primal, each of which display movement and control light years ahead of Core's baffling new effort.

The combat experience only deepens the wound. First, the gun fighting is exactly as it was in the first five games: Auto-targeting instantly tells you where the enemy is coming from, and the combat is horribly rank at any range. But the frosting is the combat. The new hand-to-hand combat is stupefying. Fine, so Lara is now a martial arts expert, and it's a videogame so my suspension of disbelief is running. But when slowdown, combined with remarkable sluggish kicks and punches are administered, the result is just plain slow-motion ugliness, like a 300-pound woman in a French bikini. You just want to look away. Even if there wasn't any slowdown during fights (and true, that happens once in a while), the simplistic one-two attacks are boring, clunky, and witless in their design. God help us all if this isn't completely revamped in the next version.

My litany of complaints is almost over, but I truly must rant some more. Without a doubt, the AI is some of the weakest I've ever seen. Enemies don't hide; they run right at you. They take an incredible quantity of bullets, and they're slow and stupid: A fine resume for any bad guy with a gun. Essentially, they're not A.I., they're A.S. -- Artificially Stupid. Essentially, these enemies aren't any different than those in any of the previous games. Lastly, the bosses. If you have played the previous games, you'll know how these guys work. You get trapped in an arena with a big nasty creature, you learn its pattern, jump, shoot, and hone those springy summersault jumps, and outlast it. Been there, done that, and kinda hoping for something different.

The puzzles are a mixture of old and new. Ms. Croft finds that simply switching this level here and that one there won't suffice any longer. What's interesting is that as part of Lara's new move set, a few RPG elements, such as increasing leg and arm strength, help to bolster the progression and the sense of Lara's evolution. They help solve physical puzzles. Lara must jump from one ledge to another in the Industrial Rooftops level, for instance, but she's not strong enough. She then must explore the region, push a few boxes around to gain strength, and return to the ledge to cross it. Kinda neat. Additionally, the puzzles are slightly easier, which in my mind is somewhat of a postive element.

Similarly, solving puzzles here is more akin to older school games like Monkey Island. In early stages of Paris, Lara must speak with several Parisian Ghetto denizens, trade items, perform a few fetch quests and gather information through interesting conversations with them to complete the puzzles. This kind of variety keeps the puzzles from growing dull, even when really stupid scenarios (such as Lara's gassy run through the Lourve) try to pull them all back down into the mire. Why doesn't she just grab the gas masks from her slain enemies? In short, the puzzles aren't in any way as tortuous as those in Tomb Raider III, and they're more varied. But it doesn't take a genius to see that many of these puzzles can be solved logically by simple means, rather than many of the plodding, long-winded ones presented herein.

Graphics If the previous Tomb Raider games did anything visually right, it was to show off huge 3D worlds decorated with plentifully rich textures and remarkable architecture. Angel of Darkness performs these same functions well, and adds new current-generation touches.

After sliding through the cinematic cutscenes and age-of-discovery-style menu system, players are confronted with two cities, Paris and Prague, in which the attention to the city structure and the building architecture are pleasurable. Paris' huge museum The Louvre is exceptionally good looking, the grid of city streets and buildings, and the sewers, green houses and cemeteries are all well constructed and designed. This kind of attention to detail no doubt helps to create an authenticity and mood for a game that relies on the gradual building of suspense and surprise. Too bad the framerate drops at seemingly at random from 30 to 20 FPS with only one person on screen.

Lara herself is, as you know, "darker." Her hourglass figure is as unnaturally perfect as ever, with bulletproof, cannonball size breasts (just kidding about the bulletproof boobs), an anorexic waistline, and the best childbearing hips in gaming history. Her polygonal count is impressive, though the texture work on her body, face, et al is still very simplistic. The most substantial change is that she's mad, so shows more anger, and she sports the raccoon eyeliner look, making her, you know, moody and tempetuous.

The range of special effects won't impress the folks from Industrial Light and Magic, but they do create a batch of cool visuals. From the many kinds of water (mercurial liquid forms, good surface texturing, and realistic pools of water) to fire (heat blurs and colorful fiery pits), to the game's many light effects (lots of shadowing, multiple light sources and effective reflections), Core mixes more realistic settings with special effects to create a well-rounded whole.

Sound The simple answer to the sound question is this: Angel of Darkness is a beautifully scored game, plush with dramatic mood and feeling. On the opposite end of the spectrum its minimalist sound effects and piquant set of character accents add a sense of variety and even peculiarity.

Perhaps most notable in the orchestration is the excellent use of the brass section to emphasis drama and tension. The London Symphony Orchestra, led by Peter Wright (with Martin Iverson and Peter Connelly composing), is not a musical group to mess with. What's especially pleasing is that players can listen to the game in Stereo or Dolby Pro Logic II to get the orchestra's full effect.

On the conversation side of things, things get go from interesting to weird. Conversations are often forced. Many take strange paths. During your conversation path (which often provides two to three choices at a time), Lara will have essentially not convinced the person of what she wants. She'll be forceful and then you'll be convinced, as in the scene with Madam Margot Carvier, that you have made the wrong choice. Then, somehow, the AI changes its mind, and Lara gets what she needs. It appears that the dialog is often curbed into reaching the same conclusion no matter what the player's decision.

Aside from the peculiar conversation mechanics, it's often a pleasure to hear this game, one not filled with American accents. In Angel of Darkness, players receive a surfeit of accents, from English to Parisian to Czech; showing its unique European origin. Another note about the voices: Lara's voice is excellently portrayed (thanks to Jonell Elliott), who reads her lines with unflinching directness and compelling force.

The biggest complaint? The numerous sounds of Lara screaming, grunting and moaning. I swear to God, I don't know how many sighs issued from my mouth every time I pushed a box. My son and I laughed many a time imitating Lara as she pushed anything, and the game became fun in spite of itself, because we tried topping each other with the most horrid female moans we could think up.

Verdict

Core's latest baby delivers an excellent presentation, a pretty set of visuals, a sweeping score and, as usual, a game filled with trusty exploration, good puzzling solving and surprise. But in nearly all of the areas where the series was weak before, it remains so. The game fails in nearly all of the gameplay areas -- control is awkward and miserable at best, combat is pathetic, and stealth is infantile in its implementation -- leaving only Lara's mainstays, exploration and puzzles, intact. And those are improved, but with band-aids, not with genuinely new thinking. Yes, the new moves and the playable Kurtis Trent are interesting, but Angel of Darkness is essentially a slightly broader adventure game than before, riddled with horrible control, awkward movement, and a silly combat system. For a game with such notoriety, of such popularity, and one that was once known for intelligent design and innovative 3D movement, the new addition is a disappointment, but not a surprising one.

Me personally? I respect the series and would genuinely like it to succeed, but this game is just not anywhere near the level of ambition I had hoped for from Core Design. It underwhelms at nearly every turn and disappoints often. I love adventure games, and I've always wanted to see the Tomb Raider series return to its original heyday.

For adventure fans I would recommend this with this caveat: You're likely to be disappointed, so RENT it at your leisure. For Tomb Raider fans, well, I expect the result to be a mix of those who love it and hate it, given its odd mix of horrible mechanics and excellent storytelling.