Tomb Raider Underworld

This looked stunning when we first saw it, so has Crystal Dynamics followed through?

	Version PS3, (All Formats)	Developer Crystal Dynamics	Publisher Eidos	Genre Action

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In fairness, Lara has picked up a few new moves in her decade-long journey from the halls of Core Design to those of Crystal Dynamics. Among the tombs she pillaged on the way was that of the Prince of Persia, whose PS2 debut Sands of Time was itself a genre landmark, trading spongy handling and bitty, trial-and-error progression for long, winding chains of easily mastered moves. To the Prince we owe Lara's ability to shimmy along ledges, trot across tight ropes and nail wall-jumps in swift succession, the camera automatically reorienting itself (most of the time) to show the next waypoint.

To the Prince we also owe the game's unfashionable linearity, which has prompted upset in some quarters. The problem, in a nutshell, seems to be that Underworld's intensely naturalistic locales, each saturated with rain-slicked, decrepit stonework, fallen logs and hummocks of earth, give the impression that obstacles can be tackled in a similarly organic, spontaneous fashion. This is not the case. Leap on a boulder you aren't supposed to and Lara will skip and slide around it; try to clamber up an inappropriate wall and she'll refuse to get a purchase. By contrast, if you go where Crystal Dynamics wants you to go the old girl is poetry in procedural motion, turning her head towards the next ledge as she dangles from a nook, and clutching realistically at cliff surfaces like the chap from Assassin's Creed.

It's not something I'm minded to fuss about myself: Underworld is pretty clear about where you should be headed and how you should go about heading there - the camera takes a quick bird's eye tour of each area as you enter it - and constantly kicking against its directives smacks of perversity. This is not a game you should play because you want to wander at whim, though there are optional relics to collect marginally off the beaten path. Lara's PDA (accessed with the select button) features a novel sonar map, and there are hints if you're truly stuck, but it's often enough simply to latch onto the first handhold you see and let the straight-and-narrow design sweep you onward.

There are puzzles, needless to say - depending on how rigidly you define the term, the entire game is one long, multi-part puzzle divided up by cut scenes. Most of these will feel familiar if you've so much as sneezed on an action-adventure title in the past five years: there's always a giant central conundrum of some sort blocking access further into the depths, with one or more smaller, connected puzzles radiating from it. Expect lots of pressure pads to weigh down, poles to slot into sockets, statues to rotate to face doors, beams of light to reflect into jewels, and so on.

When the puzzles are good, they're great, lifting the move-set and level design well above the game's borderline plagiarism. Where an area in Sands of Time might as well cease to exist once you've traversed it, in Underworld you'll often have to retrace your steps, and much like a WipEout track, each set of obstacles has a different identity in reverse. Later on Lara has to descend into a giant acid-filled pit, draining it by pulling closed the jaws of the snake-like sluice gates that feed it. To get back out, however, you have to attach a grapple line to those same sluice gates, pulling them open again and triggering a frantic race to the top as the acid returns to its original level.

Each chapter has one or two "Adrenaline" moments, which give you a scant few seconds of cutaway slow-mo to evade a sudden threat, such as a giant blade emerging from the wall at neck-height. They're a little gratuitous, perhaps, but they keep you somewhere in the vicinity of the edge of your seat. Whoever threw together Lara's bike this time round deserves real applause: not only does it drive worth a damn, but the wretched thing has actually been integrated into some of the puzzles rather than being relegated to on-rails interludes.

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