Is it worth the buy?
Last we saw Lara, she claimed Excalibur and saw her mother in Avalon. Now she's off in search of another mythical artifact in hopes of actually finding her mother, in this case the mythical artifact is Thor's hammer. After the brief tutorial level where Lara's manor blows up, the first actual level takes place underwater in the Mediterranean Sea. From there you'll also visit Central American ruins, the Arctic Sea, as well as the fabled place known as Avalon.
In this regard, it sounds great, and although the story only progressed early on via pre & post mission cutscenes, it was pretty good. Its the gameplay where the disappointment stems. Where in Legend, Lara felt very good to control, almost Prince of Persia-like, here in Underworld, she doesn't have that fluid feel. Her platforming animations were pretty canned. Perhaps Uncharted spoiled me with its fluid and realistic animations, but Lara's platforming here was not that good. Seeing her shimmy along ledges and jump to another one, seeing her jumping in shimmy position just looks bad. And it doesn't help that there are a number of graphical glitches, where Lara will get stuck in the environment (happened to me in the tutorial level?!). Not what I was hoping for after the great return in Legend. Otherwise, most of the levels were just okay, they didn't really have a great feel to them that made them really memorable. Not until the last two levels.
All in all it was a decent game. It's just hard to recommend it for a full purchase.