The last time Tomb Raider Underworld news came up, I found myself going off on my rant about how stupid people are for not being excited about a consistently excellent game series (apart from that one), that’s only getting better with each new release.
My frustrations haven’t waned. I’m seeing a couple of current mags writing previews of Underworld, saying it looks good, but they’re getting tired of the games now. Tired of an ever-improving, top-notch platforming series with a stupendous cast, excellent writing, and the best acrobatic fun available? Then you’re not a gamer! Bah! Anyway, in the trailer below, Underworld looks bloody excellent, and more than that, it’s picking up where Legend left off.
Zip, Alistair and Amanda are all back, with a peculiar moment in the trailer where Lara is apparently threatening to kill Zip. Which is odd. And the imdb credits suggest that Lara’s mum, Lady Amelia Croft, will be appearing once more. In fact, all of Crystal Dynamic’s first cast are back, so I’m hopeful for a direct follow-on from the cliffhanger ending that Legend teased us with. Many hints about that, including references to Avalon, below.
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I really, really, really hope this is more in the vein of Anniversary than Legend. I didn’t see any controllable motorcycle sequences or human enemies, so my hopes remain high for this.
The animation in that video looks superb. Very fluid, with excellent lighting/shadowing effects. Storyline sounds deliciously epic as well.
The trailer suggest more ruins and less motorcycles which is a great thing.
I *love* exploring ruins and tombs (and in a game!) so I can’t wait for this one.
Legend was great, but not as good as it should have been. Anniversary was also great, but not as good as it should have been in a different way.
Let’s hope that Underworld is great, and as good as it should be. It’s facing some stiff competition in its milieu this autumn from the likes of Mirror’s Edge and Prince of Persia, so I hope it’s ready for a fight.
Human enemies and motorcycles will feature. However, rather than the lacklustre ‘racing’ segments of Legend it seems that Lara’s bike will be used more like a tool. So for instance you might hit a timed switch and then have to saddle up to make your way to a gate on the other side of the level before it closes.
And on that note from what I’ve heard the levels will be far more akin to Anniversary’s back-and-forth environments as opposed to Legend’s corridors, although I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a smattering of the latter for pacing reasons.
I think Underworld will be Crystal Dynamics’s attempt at marrying the best bits of the last two TR games, and I for one can’t wait!
Oh, and incidentally that GameSpot video is rather jerky for me. JeuxVideo have a better quality version, although the text and voices are all in French.
Some doors should never be opened.
And some tombs should never be disturbed.
But we’re going to anyways, because that’s the kind of people we are.
Because what’s the point of having ancient evils if you can’t unleash them and then destroy them forever?
I mean, the Ancients had artifacts, but we’ve got those artifacts too and we’ve also got guns.
I don’t see what the problem is.
@Noc:
Where can I sign your manifesto?
@SenseiJinx: From a purely psychological perspective could GLaDOS or SHODAN ever be anything other than female? SHODAN in particular, she’s very much a mother figure, explicitly so in System Shock 2.
@Diogo Ribeiro: I think you might be taking some of the comments here a little too seriously, I suspect a lot of the “Huh, huh boobies” comments were intentionally ironic and sarcastic.
The Tomb Raider games generally do very well with women, it’s not just teenage boys who play them. In fact I’d be surprised if many teenage boys actually did play Tomb Raider anymore. I suspect they are far more likely to be playing Gears Of War or Halo.
I stopped playing the Tomb Raider games with number three. I tried the demo and I got lost and frustrated far too easily. I was also interested in the back story of Lara and when they started to retcon in elements like her being “trained” when she was fourteen it put me off.
If I’m going to be spending hours “as” this character it’s more pleasant for me to see an attractive figure and hear Keeley Hawes lovely voice that it is to handle the macho excess and gravelly voice of most male characters. In terms of the sexualisation of Lara, is it really any worse than the airbrushing and retouching that goes into pictures of women in magazines? Lara is explicitly an idealised representation, but she is also an intelligent, successful and driven character. Surely a much better female icon than Paris Hilton et al?
Crystal Dynamics made a good game with Legend, one that reminded me of everything I had originally liked about Tomb Raider. Additionally the script and voice acting were of high standard. Anniversary was a remake and I really enjoyed it, even though I’d never been able to finish the original something about Anniversary made me keep playing even after repeatedly dying. Failure always felt like my fault not the games which a fundamental requirement of any such game if it is to avoid frustration. The combat in Anniversary was badly implemented to the extent that I’d have preferred for it to have been entirely removed; it’s good enough without it.
Crystal Dynamics made some changes to the plot of Anniversary that made it fit as a prequel to Legend, and helped to make Lara into a more rounded character than she had been before. Something they seem to be continuing with Underworld, with Lara becoming obsessive and putting her own life at risk.
Simply put the two recent Tomb Raider games are good action adventure games, with intelligent puzzle and strong writing and characterisation. Both have their weak elements, the vehicle sections in one, the combat in the other, but both are as good as my memories of Tomb Raider and that’s a difficult standard to achieve.
Oh and can we please STOP TALKING ABOUT SPIDERS now. I’m already planning who I can get to play through the spider infested sections of Underworld for me, and this really isn’t helping. ;)
@Ash Firelord:
Granted, although I’d further add that female leads aren’t as few and as far between as we’d think, although strong and mature female leads are certainly less. For every time we argue the positives of a Lara Croft being less driven towards a pre-pubescent group, there half a dozen new bimbos everyday that in some way or another don’t really bring out the best kind of sexualization. Like that Damnantion female protagonist RPS mentioned, with
As for Anna and Fall-From-Grace, you do have a point, and it’s also a good example of what I’m talking about. When playing Torment, Grace is very sexualized – due to her nature – yet the writers went out of their way to have her sexual drive all but suppressed :) By contrast, the game’s bestiary – the log book which shows images of creatures to NPCs you encounter – brings out that which I’m talking about. See the female NPCs on those listings, in particular, their attire. Lara Croft is a nun by comparison :D
@CrashT: I wasn’t actually referring to the comments here, by the way, just those generally made across other sites, or even in real life. And yes, the way sexualization is handled can be pretty bad across a variety of mediums – but as I asked earlier, do the ones in videogames lose any impact or are worth less discussing because it’s widespread in cinema, literature, fashion and others? I disagree with that being the case, although it is on a positive note that she’s an opposite to likes of Hilton (if you discount some of those terrible “fan fictions” or “comics” the internet so casually may assault you with :) ).
So I was at the local Gamestop (as much as I hate it) today to pre-order Fable 2 (for the free pub games), when the clerk starts his spiel about do you have this pre-ordered, do you have that pre-ordered.
As I politely tolerated his sales pitch for each game telling him I’m not interested at the moment he listed this game. Then he mentions this game, since I had only vaguely heard about this Tomb Raider I asked him what it would be about. & he replied “It’s an underwater game and it uses Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune’s graphics engine so you know it’s going to look great.” At which point I told him I was in a hurry & to please finish ringing me up. Seriously, where does Gamestop find these people? He was trying to get me to pre-order a game for the 360 & telling me it used an engine internally developed by a Sony studio specifically for the PS3….
I know the main theme in this game is Lara stopping the villains from getting Thor’s Gauntlet, Hammer and Belt, but the first, most evil character returns – Miss Jacqueline Natla.