Finishing up my revisit of the Legend timeline, I was most curious about what I would think of Underworld. When it was just released, the reception to the game everywhere was rather positive, but somewhat mediocre, yet to me it seemed like a really good game. And since unlike Anniversary I did not revisit this game since launch, I was afraid that my memories of this entry were a bit more rose-tinted than I was willing to accept.
Well, time to accept it now. It’s still a good TR title, but a lot of it doesn’t work all that well.
Released just a bit over a year since Anniversary (and this might well be the reason for a lot of issues the game has), Underworld tried to evolve the ideas from Legend while also looking back at the classic TR gameplay studied during the development of Anniversary. It was also a title released well into then current generation, and a year after the release of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, a PS3 exclusive title that not only pushed the visual boundaries and gameplay fluidity of action adventure titles of the kind Tomb Raider was part of, but was also directed by Amy Hennig, who was just a few years prior leading the team developing Underworld. So somehow, despite such a short development cycle, Underworld tried to update a lot.
For one, Lara’s movement, while remaining mostly the same in basic terms, was updated to look more “natural”. She hops onto or over shorter obstacles, can cross smaller distances while shimmying without jumping, has an ability to climb walls with lots of grips (game came out after Assassin’s Creed as well, after all) and her jumps and dodges are more agile in general. Classic inventory from the Anniversary has been removed again, however some puzzles require using items that have physical presence in the game and must be carried, with Lara being able to shoot one-handed at the same time if the object isn’t too heavy. Binoculars have been switched to a camcorder to better fit Lara’s role (though in 2021 this already feels quaint). Combat combines the manual ability to enable the slo-mo shooting from Legend with the critical one-hit shots from Anniversary. Oh and Lara can kick things and enemies too better than before.
Sprint makes a return after being absent since Legend and this improves swimming sections a lot. Several levels include extended swimming segments with unlimited air, which is super fun. And the bike returns as well, now no longer relegated to linear sections or a one-off part from Legend, but rather as a permanent companion of Lara for several levels, just like in The Last Revelation (but far far better). Levels themselves are now absolutely huge and are only symbolically divided into separate sections. And thanks to that there are occasionally multiple paths to the same goal. Secrets, of course, are even more fun to find due to this as well.
It’s a shame then that after a genuinely fun beginning, with a cold opening of an exploding Croft Manor and a long exploration of a ruin, focusing on platforming and puzzles, it switches to combat and things start to feel a bit off. You start with human enemies, which simply feel not as fun to fight as in Legend, but as soon as wild animals start attacking you, things fall apart. For some reason, all of the non-human enemies are painful to lock-on to, due to the speed and erratic movement. While most big animals also have rush attacks that hit you from across rooms and knock you down, while you can’t see anything because the camera cannot handle this. When you’re not jump on by 3 giant spiders from 10 meters away, you’re swarmed by dozens of little spiders or bats which sloooowly gather around you, while you cannot really do much else until the swarm ends. It’s a constant whiplash between obnoxious and tedious with no middle ground and how did we get here after Legend is beyond me.
And if only this rough unbalanced feeling concerned only action. Sadly, lots of puzzle and exploration segments feel not entirely thought out as well. Context-sensitive jumps that you don’t land either because something went wrong out of your control or because you tried to jump from one clearly reachable location, but the game would only accept another spot to jump from. New context animations sometimes get in the way too with Lara jumping over a box you should clearly be able to jump onto to get higher. Out of all of the Legend trilogy, this was also the only game where I had “okay, now what” moments, where the game lacked any signposting. While some puzzles simply had some bizarre additional layers that were not necessary and went beyond the point of the puzzle being fun.
It’s also worth noting that the game originally had 2 DLCs that are not present on the PC version and neither were they included with the PS3 release of The Tomb Raider Trilogy, making them currently exclusive to the Xbox 360 original release of the game. Other than that, though, the PC version of the game is still fine and doesn’t have any notable issues.
Even though I’ve had far less enjoyment with the game than I hoped I would, I still liked replaying Tomb Raider: Underworld. It didn’t quite do what it aimed to do, but it still delivered a really fun Tomb Raider experience, mixing the freshness of Legend with more of the classic elements of the series. The action in the game isn’t great, though luckily the game difficulty is entirely customizable, so this can at least be tweaked. While the levels are really fun to explore and the sense of adventure, the key to any Tomb Raider game, is here. I’d still recommend checking this game out and it might still be among the best Tomb Raider titles out there, even if it’s less fun than I remembered it being.