[robfosters]

OK, lets see everyones thoughts. We'll start with my review of the game:


For starters, lets get the graphics out of the way. They are tremendous! They are some of the best i've seen, the shot when your mission starts in Thailand and you're standing off a boat just offshore is staggeringly beautiful. I am extremely envious of you people with your MASSIVE 1080p PJ's. You simply have to see it.

Environments are sharp and detailed and destructible. The underwater parts also excel, and characters are really nice animated If lara falls on muddy ground, her knees will be dirty. Swim and they will clean. Motion capture on Lara herself is first class.

There are a few graphical glitches, but these do not detract from the experience too much. For me at least.

The surround sound is really powerful and has a great soundstage. Really adds to the atmosphere. The best parts are when you are in claustrophobic temples. I love the drips of rain that appear in all corners of the room.

The gameplay is solid. The gameplay in TR really comes down to controlling Lara. If thats wrong, the games gone to the dogs. However, the system is intuitive and very responsive. You never feel really unsure what you need to do to make her achieve a particular feat. PDA function is very handy, as are the tips it provides. I even like the combat tbh. I know it mainly consists of shoot, roll, shoot, roll, but it feels OK. It isn't the best, but that's not want TR is about for me. Puzzles are great. Get you thinking without seeming totally impossible.

Story's not great and character voicing sounds poor and very scripted. However, these are minor faults for me. If I want a really top storyline and top acting, i'll watch a film instead.

Overall it's a fine experience and one that I think will keep you coming back until it's finished. The gameplay is solid, the puzzles are frustrating without becoming suicide inducing and the environments are well thought out and planned. They change routinely, flinging you from one experience to the next.

And wrap all this up in one of the finest graphics and audio performances i've seen in a while, then it becomes a must play for me.

9/10

I think CD have done a great job on this.

[shared4]

Nice review Though for me the controls seem at times a little oversensitive, but that could just be me, and the camera is a pain in the backside, I think the camera aspect may frustrate some people, completely agree with everything else though, the graphics are superb, the music is very well done, in fact i think the main theme tune is worthy of an award.

I wasn't going to get this on release day, but I hadn't told my g/f and she got it yesterday for me, and as you can see, 02:28 AM and I've just switched it off .

Brilliantly enjoyable game that's giving me a feeling of Lara going "back to her roots", and a game I'll play on all levels of difficulty, I've given it 9 out of 10, if it wasn't for the ropey camera angles I would have considered giving it a full 10/10.

A game I really enjoy sitting down and getting stuck into, and I'm looking forward to giving it another bash tomorrow.

[Batman2]

Don't bother buying this game, played it over the weekend and it's got a few bugs and glitches, looks like they rushed it for the christmas market.

Lara gets stuck when there is nothing about.
When jumping from either columns or on top of posts she sometimes jumps in the wrong direction than what you pressed.
On one stage I worked my way up a very large building, right at the top I fell off by accident but landed in water so survived. The problem is I could not get back up there again, and due to autosave if I killed myself I would still start at the bottom.
On the ship section guards that were hunting me would not see me even though I was standing very close to them, they just looked in another direrction firing that way.
The sonar Lara has for mapping is about usefull as a chocolate teapot.

Already traded my copy in for 50% what I paid for it, just stick with Uncharted: Drakes Fortune a much better polished game.

[beowulf]

my sister is a rabid lara fan , she even dresses up like her for fancy dress parties and is amazing at all the games

she played the demo on the 360 and pronounced it utter dross

nuff said

she mentioned the terrible controls , lack of interaction , bugs and general YAWN been there tomb raidered that all before

they should either ditch the franchise or re make the classics like tr2 & 3 in amazing ps-3 vision imo

she rates tomb raider 1 as arguably the best ever , even played it on the saturn before it came out on the ps1 !

[Batman2]

Have to agree Tomb Raider 1 is still the best and never has been bettered in all the sequals.

Another annoying point with the new one it is a coninueation of the story from the last one, and if you have not played it you have to go in to the options and watch the "Previously On Tomb Raider".

Not sure why they bother with all this story business and try and make the game in to a film lark. Tomb Raider 1 was great with all the exploring and puzzles the game just drew you in.

[finalfight]

Although the game is good it's thankfully heavily puzzle orientated as the combat engine is absolutely dire with poor AI and terrible collision detection.

It is a good game though but as a multi format release it suffers heavily when compared against the glory of the PS3 exclusive Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (which it seems to have lovingly ripped off in places).

So then a 7 out of 10 for me and that's being very generous looking and probably looking at it with rose tinted spectacles from yesteryear!

[Kryptix]

So far... Superb.

[Nebbs]

Got this on friday and as previously mentioned here the graphics are utterly stunning (Lara's curves in HD goodness ). Sound is atmospheric and each location has perfect ambient sound effects to really immerse you in the game, especially effective in 5.1. Controls are a tad loose but not game destroyingly bad and the camera can occasionaly be a bit frustrating, but if you can see past these problems you have a very solid game to enjoy.

Only up to the temple in the Thailand level but so far having a blast and looking forward to more.

Score 8/10 for me!

[Magus]

Very rewarding game with lush graphics and atmospheric soundtrack. The puzzle solving and platforming is solid, challenging & rewarding.

The downside is slightly loose control, minor glitches, non-existent AI and poor combat.

Those that enjoy a slower paced game that requires thinking, this is a definite must. 8/10

[forumhound]

Hi

Can anyone tell me whether it's possible to have two profiles for two people to play the game.

For example, my wife plays and has her own game saves, whilst I play with my own game saves.

Thanks

[rehmanmohamed]

Originally Posted by forumhound

Hi

Can anyone tell me whether it's possible to have two profiles for two people to play the game.

For example, my wife plays and has her own game saves, whilst I play with my own game saves.

Thanks

If you have two different accounts on your PS3, then I'm pretty sure you can have separate game saves for all games - and have a different trophy collection aswell.

[robfosters]

Second what rehmanmohamed said.

If you each set up a different account on the ps3 and sign in to yours when you play, the game saves are kept completely separate.

Even if you use the same account, you can still save and load different games, but it's much better to do it over 2 different accounts as you can just resume every time you load up.

[forumhound]

Great, didn't realise I could even have separate accounts on PS 3. I shall look into it..

[meweavy]

a solid 8/10 for me..

its still not as good as the first 2 tomb raider games.

ive played all of them now and they are still the best 2 games.

but underworld is a lot better than i expected.

im glad i played it now. a good game.

[Ninja21]

Hi do you need to set the sound to 5.1 within the game, as I set my PS3 to output 5.1 and that works fine with movies blu ray ect but tomb raider didnt produce any sound.

Rgds

dave

[meweavy]

it should produce sound..you dont need to set the sound up in game..have you checked the connections..or tried the sound with another game.?

[beowulf]

my sis played it for an hour last week and ended up with motion sickness , apparently the frame rate sucks and the whole game is derivative boring dross ( her words )

i found it really boring too , i reckon they should just let the character die off as it's so stale and dull to play

2/10 and that's only cos you can use it as a trade in for a real game like bioshock or cod4

[gregster10217]

Loved every minute of it. Lara in HD - what more needs to be said.

6/10

It's like Eidos never played Uncharted !

Terrible first few levels combined with awful glitchy character movement and poor camera angles make this a big disappointment. Been a fan since the first TR on the PS1 but Uncharted is so superior in every way.

I doubt TR made any new fans with underworld.

[clc.sheff]

Voted 7/10. My view is that this is an absolutely brilliant game brought down by a few fairly important problems:

The Good:

Excellent level design / Great environments
Very good looking
Good story
Enjoyable and challenging puzzle solving
General balance between puzzle solving / platforming / fighting is very good (especially for us older gamers as not totally combat orientated)

The Bad:

Character handles poorly = many retries over the course of the game not down to lack of skill (honest!)
Camera poor to control and MANY camera glitches
Easy to get stuck in environment
Combat is VERY poor (poor controls mainly but also enemy AI is very basic)
Personally I found camera too close = bit of a restricted view and twitchy
Although good story it's a bit detached from the gamer in terms of how it's told

General random comments:

1. I really like this game. I rate it as one of the best games I've played on the PS3 so far. I would strongly recommend anyone plays it but you will have to put up with the above niggles (edit: and the ones below )

They could have made you use all of Lara's abilities much more through the game as she can actually do quite a lot of stuff. In fact it's very impressive what they have programmed into this character and the game in general

In general the interphase between Lara and the environment is lacking and is not helped by the 'loose' controls whatsoever. However the integration of the platforming / puzzles into the evironment is absolutely top notch. They really need to solidify the character into the environment and tighten up the controls more.

If I die I want it to be because I've not done the right thing not because the camera is going mental or the controls are too loose or I'm stuck on something = Frustration

One more thing I really want to mention is the general quality of the picture on screen. I've only tried it on one tv (26 inch Sony HD LCD with HDMI) however the game has the ability to hurt my eyes quite a lot. I can't say exactly what the problem is. It seems to be a combination of a few factors:

1. Slightly flickering screen, no my telly's fine but I will try it on a crt and my plasma at some point and post an update
2. Highly detailed and highly contrasting graphics
3. Close camera angle and twitchy camera
4. Panning is not smooth
5. Bit of an achillies heel this one. The platforms you can grab etc. are fairly well integrated into the back ground
6. Jerky animations at times.

This all can make you squint at the telly. It's not so bad on some levels but others are a bit of a nightmare. Biggest problem for me is when you are trying to pan over a large area to work out what you are going to do / where to go.

The above niggles all sound a bit damming but I still think this is a very good game and well worth a play through. Especially as I got hold of it for £10 and for that price it's an absolute bargain. I really hope they can do another one

p.s. Game has been patched for trophies

[ibrox_grfc]

Originally Posted by beowulf

my sis played it for an hour last week and ended up with motion sickness , apparently the frame rate sucks and the whole game is derivative boring dross ( her words )

I started it yesterday and had to turn it off because the underwater part was giving me motion sickness. I've been playing games for about 25 years and that's never happened before

I actually thought it looked very nice in parts (Lara on the boat in the sea for example) but I doubt I'll ever go back to it now.

I got it cheap though so I'm not too bothered. I'd give it 5/10 because I liked what I seen until I had to give up or risk losing my lunch

[Tigerblade]

Just finished it, was surprised at how puzzley it was tbh, enjoyed it tho. Gfx were excellent, only time the framerate got choppy was on the bike stages (to me at least). Didn't suffer from motion sickness in either underwater parts tho

I'd give it an 8

[Jocky Wilson]

Originally Posted by TheSabreman

6/10

It's like Eidos never played Uncharted !

Terrible first few levels combined with awful glitchy character movement and poor camera angles make this a big disappointment. Been a fan since the first TR on the PS1 but Uncharted is so superior in every way.

I doubt TR made any new fans with underworld.

I'm with you.

I've been a huge TR fan ever since the original came out on the PS1. But Uncharted has just moved things on to another level.

I gave the game 6/10 also, but would probably have given it 8/10 if I hadn't played Uncharted.