Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness

I have played the first two Tomb Raider games and loved them both. I'm also familiar with Chronicles which I've played a few times though I don't actually own it. A couple of years ago I saw this game and as it was so cheap I decided to buy it since I hadn't played a TR game in quite a while. When I started playing, I found myself enjoying it, but then after a while I started to become annoyed by the controls, and the story in general. The controls made it really difficult to complete even the easiest of levels. I'll admit that I liked this game at first, but after a while, it became a bore., I didn't even get to finish it because it started to crash midway into the game so I was forced to stop playing and uninstall it. Not that I'm complaining, though, since I was on the verge of quitting it already. This is a warning for fans of both Tomb Raider AND Lara: this game is very tedious and the controls are really annoying. Also, Lara is just.. blah. I hated her in this. I hate everything about this game. It's a real shame that the first few games were amazing and then AoD comes along and proves to be one of the worst games of all time. DO NOT buy this game ! You will regret it, I assure you. ** out of 10

The game is a total mess its unplayable, i never finished or get into the story because the controls are awful. I would like to see a remake for this game though the story looks nice and the Lara looks fresh and badass.

Lara Croft is back and she was supposed to be better than ever - but she is not! Eidos Interactive released the game half-finished and blamed Core for the poor quality of the game. But is it that bad as people or critics say? No, it is an entertaining action adventure with some small and major flaws. A.I is pathetic and textures fall apart but the controls aren't that bad. Worse than before but not bad. It takes few seconds for Lara to respond which makes the fighting very hard.

After getting used to the new control system I had a chance to follow the story - and a great story it is. Core made the best plot for Angel of Darkness and it totally surprised me. Kurtis Trent was great "new thing" but the controls were horrible and there was nothing that made him special - except he had lot of charisma. He is one of the only character in the world of Tomb Raider that can challenge Lara into a fight - which one we love the best!

The camera system was more or less bad but not all the time. It did quite well sometimes, except when Lara died or got too close to the wall. The controls and camera hurt the gameplay but not so much that "Laragame" wouldn't be playable. There were some difficulties to do some long jumping in the end and some minor problems in Louvre Galleries.

The Enemy A.I (like I mentioned) was bad. Actually, there weren't any. Just put the "Stealth" mode on, and they won't notice you. Yes, stealth mode is something new for Tomb Raider but bad controls, sloppy camera and non-excisting enemy A.I made an end to that one.

What would Lara be without new moves? Lara can now do hand-to-hand combat and kick some butt! But unfortuneately, this element is a poor show to run. By tapping action button once, Lara hits, by doing it twice she kicks. Where's the catch? There was no use to kick or hit them because there was barely any effect to the opponent. It was lot easier to use stealth mode and break their neks or just shoot them - and oh boy - Lara didn't forget her weapons home! There is many choices you can do when selecting a gun. All of them have different strengths and flaws. I just loved the action sequences in Louvre Galleries.

So, game play is not the best but the story, voice acting and music are. Jonell Elliot handles her role well and makes the most impressive voice acting in the history of videogames. London Symphony Orchestra has done good job and the athmopshere is great. The story and "looks" of this game was supposed to be dark but don't expect anything big from that part. The story is darker and begins with Lara finding her mentor killed and she is the one to take the credit for it. As Lara is fugitive on the run, she must find out who did it and why. She meets Kurtis Trent, who is after the Cabal Cult members, and so is Lara. Later in the game, these two make an alliance to defeat Eckhart, the man who killed Verner and framed Lara for it. Kurtis wants the man dead because he killed his father and is also the leader of the cult. Lara has to defeat the cult because they have plans for this world that she is not ready for. Eventually, this cliche story ends up being a total surpriser, Trust me, if you need a reason to buy this game, it is the story.

Core has always been great at level design and won't let you down this time either. Paris is stunningly well build and the graphics are something that makes it even better. Louvre is also one of the best parts of the game but then it gets worse. The time when Lara enters a tomb or few. I didn't wan't to go there but thank God, later I had an oppurtunity to go to Praha. That ladies and gentlemen, is a place you should go. It was just awesome.

Now, the graphics. The fix patches clears out some bugs but the graphics isn't good as should be. The lighting effects are stunning and some levels are beautifully textured and Lara looks good but it is not the graphics the game-engine should create. The graphics engine is a total mess. It demands a lot but gives little. At least Lara looks good and smooth.

Now, should you buy this game? Yes, if you don't care about few bugs, floppy gameplay and the fact that all the new elements brought to game are badly done. Tomb Raider fans should buy it but others, perhaps when it is cheaper. Anyway, I enjoyed this adventure but I admit there was lot of things so wrong and lot things so right. Lara is still cool character, the story is great and so is the music and level design. I didn't "love" it but enjoyed it for what it was. This isn't end of the Tomb Raider franchise, just one down hill. The next game is schedueled to be released summer 2005. Core was replaced by Crystal Dynamics.

8/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------

This is a hardcore Tomb Raider fan since 1998 talking.

Tomb Raider was already damaged. Everything started when little changes occurred in Tomb Raider 4, removal of the ring menu, change in the save system, Lara's model was done badly, introducing Jonell Elliot as the voice actor, etc...

Then there was Chronicles who thanks to the lack of storyline and pathetically bringing back dead characters back to life (timeline doesn't matter, since Larson and Pierre apparently died in both TR1 and TR5).

Then this piece of junk was released (Unfinished, full of bugs and glitches after being delayed by 1 year and 6 months). The controls are horrible, the game boring and the moving Lara while in combat mode is absolutely a nightmare. it's clear that Core design had lost all interest in Tomb Raider. Maybe if the same team that worked on TR1 stayed things would've worked differently, but sadly, we all know the outcome. What makes things worse is the beta version of the game, which looks a lot easier to control and a lot more Tomb Raider. Not to mention moves like wall jump and parts of the levels that had Tomb Raider written all over them were cut out. Replaced by the boring and never ending empty streets of Paris and Prague.

Since when does Lara bribe people to run errands for her? Since when does she ask for directions? Since when can she level up? How did Core even think that it would be a success? They couldn't have gone any lower.

Thank God Crystal Dynamics were brought into the picture by Eidos. Tomb Raider legend wasn't the best Tomb Raider game due to the lack of challenge, linearity and shortness of the game. However, the controls did give a great feeling, so just think of what can be achieved if they fix the flaws.

If they can fix the stuff mentioned above, bringing back the "Current Position" (Meaning; replaying levels, when you save, you restart from that checkpoint when you load and not restart the whole level), keeping your equipment when replaying (and not finding stuff in the final part of the game and have it in the beginning when reloading a level), beating a replayed level, the game will take you to the next one and not to the main menu, and making Lara hold the guns in the classic way, I think it would be safe to say that Tomb raider really IS back.

Lara Croft is arguing with her old mentor Verner von Croy over something called the "Obscura Paintings". After some yelling, Lara is knocked down, we hear gunfire and when Lara regains her consciousness, von Croy lies dead on the floor. Not long after that, police sirens can be heard in the distance; Lara Croft is wanted for the murder of Verner von Croy.

Thus does a fast paced story telling in the 6th installment of the Tomb Raider series commence, and it is by far the most intriguing story of them all. Readers of The Da Vinci Code will see the obvious similarities here, since the game is told the exact same way; A murder, a chase, a secret, the Louvre... much inspiration has been borrowed here. Also, the pace of the famous book is equally fast; with Lara being hunted by French police helicopters, cops, villains and secret society special forces, it would seems that everything's set for a fantastic and enjoyable adventure; suffice to say, the story is certainly not where the film snaps.

The control, however, certainly does its part in ruining the little escapade. First off: Lara no longer runs instantly, she walks and THEN she runs, which can prove fatal when you haven't got a large plateau to jump from. Also, her acrobatic actions like jumping over railings and climbing drain pipes are not triggered by pushing Shift, or the X button, but simply by pointing the directional buttons in that direction. This can create some very frustrating and catastrophic situations, as Lara will be more than willing to jump over a railing and fall 70 meters down. However, the controls can be mastered and once they have been, they work.

Another thing that will cause many players to throw the controller into the TV screen is the absence of an Auto Save function. Since you'll die on a regular basis, saving is certainly necessary every 5 minutes. Every run and jump has to be executed with surgical precision, something that is destined to fail, especially with newbies behind the screen.

On a graphical side-note, AoD is a peculiar game. Lara's shadow is in high resolution, but doesn't match her surroundings, i.e. her shadow is pointing in another direction than other objects. The 3D environments have high polygon counts, but this can't be said for Lara or any other characters: they still look like dolls, with octagon eyes and square fingers. The tombs are fantastically rendered but low res textures (for the PS2 version at least) makes the experience a little dull and does not encourage one to explore.

The enemies in AoD are brain dead and uninteresting, they can run, bite, shoot, hit you... and that's pretty much it. Any unusual behaviour is usually programmed actions like soldiers roping themselves down the roof and so on. The stealth elements in the game quickly falls to the ground as it is ten times easier to just run forward and mash the action button to shoot your foes, since the auto-aim function takes care of the hard part. And once defeated, they will simply blink and disappear, arcade style. That is one of the things that makes AoD lose much of its realism. The new kung-fu elements looks cool, though albeit slower than Tom Cruise's moves in MI:2, they usually cause you to lose 50% health since the enemy can still hit/shoot you during the attack. RUBBISH! Also, AoD suffers from strange bugs, like the sound repeating itself over and over again when dying and Lara has a rare tendency to fall through the floor into blue, uncoded nothingness.

Conclusively, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is a game that requires patience, tolerance and a pretty controlled temper if you like your TV. Although the graphics are decent in places and outright ugly in other, and although the controls take forever to master, it is a decent game that requires your attention, at least by a rental.