Altough it requires a walkthrough to complete the rewards just about make up for it resulting in a good experience.
+ Some beautifully detailed enviroments
+ Rewarding achievments
+ Interesting story
Negatives
- Puzzles can be extremely difficult
- Very hard to complete without a walkthrough!
Welcome to my review for tomb raider underworld for the xbox 360, being the third tomb raider game to come to 360 there were high expectations, so what did I think of it? well read on..
First of all you'll notice the gameplay graphics are stunning, there's a total of 8 levels to adventure your way through, these include thailand, mexico, croft manor and the Artic.
Take my faviroute level, Thailand, the water is a beautiful blue colour, there's sharks in the water which try and eat you, as you progress you discover ancient tombs buried in lush amounts of greenery, you also fight mythical creatures such as undead and huge lizards.
As for cut scenes the graphics are still good along with the superb voice acting but aren't as noticable as the enviorments.
Gameplay isn't bad but as gamespot says it fails to fix previous flaws in tomb raider games, the camera angle is still a bit dodgy altough it can be moved by using the right stick, also some of the jumps are a bit awkward and you'll find yourself getting fustrated very easily.
I found a moment of fustration in the first level in which you have to use your grappel to pull down the door and I spent 30 minutes trying to do it, I then looked up a walkthrough which told me I had to stand in a certain place altough realistically it could have been done in any place... it's hard to explain but everything has to be precise.
You follow the story on from the previous 2 games on the 360, so if you havent played them I reccomend starting there as they also are rated higher than underworld, don't worry about it though, it dosen't matter to much.
Bassically it's based on norse mythology and obtaining Thors hammer that can only be touched when wearing his gauntlets etc.. so it contains some interesting mythology as well.
You have a choice of several weapons in the game, shotgun, pistols, sub machine gun, tranquilizer gun and harpoons, each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Your pistols have unlimited ammo but other weapons have a limited amount (altough the ammo is restored at the end of every level)
You also get a choice of difficulty, there are 3 settings, casual explorer, tomb raider of master explorer, the only thing which changes is how hard the enemies and bosses are to fight.
In combat you target with left trigger and shoot with the right trigger, you can also do some stylish jumps while pressing A when locked onto the target, you'll fight poachers, panthers, tigers, lions, sharks and undead throughout the game.
There's also grenades, you get given a certain amount of them every level and they stick to enemies then explode causing damage in the area of effect.
By 'rewarding acheivments' I mean altough there's a lot of time consuming extremely hard puzzles you get a lot of achiement points (about 600 on your first play) and you get to experience lots of different eniviroments, they really are that good, I was sad when I had to leave Thailand.
Overall tomb raider underworld should please all that have access to a good walkthrough and want to reap the rewards.
Thanks for reading.
~Gormo