This Lara Croft adventure offers excitement in exotic locations, despite some pacing issues.
Overall this game finished on a high note, but too many single mistakes prevent it from being great game. They are 8 chapters; Prologue, Mediterranean Sea, Coastal Thailand, Croft Manor, Southern Mexico, Jan Mayer Island, Andaman Sea and Arctic Sea. As you can see, all are pretty different locations, and I like that because you get more out of the game. You can run, swim, drive, climb and it never gets old. But on occasions it got boring, single parts where your running around for ages or your stuck on a single puzzle for a while, it gets boring. Another annoying thing is the amount of times I got lost and in the end had to reload the level. I was sick of the amount of times I just didn't know where I was or I found myself either going the wrong way or going in circles. The game was also full of annoying glitches. In levels 4,5 and 7, you come across this strange blue gooey water. If you fall in it your supposed to die and restart from the last checkpoint but at times I fell in and stayed alive. This got more annoying as when you fall in you can't get out again and you end up restarting the game from the last checkpoint, but to do this you have to save and quit and that takes at least a couple of minutes, and because of that there's no real pace to the game, everything's stopping and starting, stopping and starting. It got seriously annoying when in level 4 (Southern Mexico) I fell in the goo and had to save and quit but when I restarted the game, I actually kept re-spawning in the goo and dying. I couldn't even press the menu button, so in the end I had to restart the entire game again. On the good side, the graphics were excellent and that's just as well because you'd expect them to be in all the exotic locations you explore. You got to experience all of Lara's tricks, you got to use a grapple hook, kick moves and athletics, jumping and good shooting with both hands when you use the pistols, just like in the films. On a down side, the puzzles got repetitive after a while and some of the puzzles too hard. But I liked the way the game took a risk with the story and wasn't afraid to make it 'over the top' with all the different creatures and magic of the story. Overall I'd recommend this game but buy the 'Tomb Raider Trilogy' because if you buy this game separably and the Trilogy, you'll end up with two copies of this game. But if you are going to buy the Trilogy and your not a full through Tomb Raider fan, I'd recommend renting this game (Underworld) on it's own to see if it's your cup of tea, as the games are pretty much the same, just with different stories, puzzles and locations.