Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness – Review
In 2003 the Tomb Raider series was in an odd place, it had not seen a block buster hit in almost 4 years but a fairly successful movie in 2001 had re-kindled the fire slightly. A new generation of consoles had since come out, games were telling stories more akin to a movie script and action adventure games controlled far better than the Tomb Raider games of the late 90’s. Would Tomb Raider the Angel of Darkness bring Lara Croft into the 21st century? Or would we be left feeling her best days where far behind her?
The story of TAOD is an almost direct continuation of The Last Revelation. Lara, back from being buried alive is confronting her old mentor Werner Von Croy in his Paris apartment when during an argument he is killed in mysterious circumstances. He mentions something about a cult, who are after him and Lara escapes into the Parisian night chanced by the police and now framed with his murder. The story then moves onto Lara trying to clear her name while chancing a serial killer linked to the cult. It’s a fairly well written and delivered story which is clearly designed to last longer than one game. All cutsenses are well put together and you do get a good sense of what is going on, Core have used the new gen tech available to them to tell an interesting story that is by no means great, but slightly more interesting than we are used to seeing in a Tomb Raider game.
My first twenty minutes with AOD were frustraighting to say the least. You start in a Parisian back ally and have to climb your way out. The entire section of the level is designed to take no longer than five minutes max and acts as a mini tutorial. However the first thing I noticed is how bad the controls are in AOD, much had been made about how Lara now no longer controls “like a tank”. Well in Tomb Raider AOD Lara still controls like a tank, but a tank on an ice rink. Time and time again I would fall of edges, overshoot jumps, randomly back flip to my death due to the over sensitive movement controls. This is not helped by the fact the camera controls are slow and unresponsive, to the point you hardly use them and stick to the pre-set view point. All throughout my play though it was difficult to control Lara and it took away from the overall experience the game was trying to produce, compared to other games from this genre, AOD has terrible, clunky controls. Regular frame rate dips and slow down are also a problem and don’t always seem to be triggered by anything in particular.
Some new additions to the game play are that Lara can “upgrade” her abilities. For example strength and grip can now be improved throughout the game. This is done by doing the actions and overtime her ability to pull or push heavier objects will increase, or the length of time she can grip a ledge will improve. However these add-ons add next to nothing to the experience as you improve these in line with the story as you progress, it’s not like a Zelda game for example where you need to return to a section once you have improved your skill in order to progress. In AOD it just so happens that you always improve them just as you need to use them, effectively eliminating the point of having this in the game at all. There are reasons that this is the case, much was cut from AOD and a levelling system was one of these additions that was cut. Stealth was also added, but again there is no punishment for not using it and enemy AI is terrible, just making it much easier to shoot them. The game was also meant to include a large open Paris level with side quests and other activities. Again however most of this was cut, apart from Paris itself which is now just an empty semi-open space for you to walk around in and watch a loading screen every 5 feet.
One of the most striking new additions to AOD is that you now play as someone other than Lara. Through the course of the game you will meet a character called Curtis and end up playing as him in a couple of levels. Somehow he controls even worse than Lara and is an entirely unlikeable character.
It’s not all bad news however, the graphics in the game are very impressive. Lighting and textures are great for the time and Lara’s model has seen allot of attention looking fantastic as do other NPCs in the game. Environments look the part, from Parisian streets to the Louvre and even the one Tomb in the game, they all look very impressive.
But that’s it! That’s the only positive segment of this review, having struggled to get into this game 15 years ago I find myself even more unable to play it in 2018. It’s a mess of a game and almost un-playable in its current form. There is a rather loyal fan community that have created many mods that make this game more “playable” but even with them installed it’s not worth the play through.
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is a game that is well documented, discussed and lamented. It features on many top ten lists for all the wrong reasons, and was sadly the last curtain for Core Design with Tomb Raider. It was in development for 3 years, delayed twice and finally forced out the door by Eidos in order to come out in time for the second Tomb Raider movie. Lots was cut from the game, and many at Core felt the game was over ambitious and needed more development time. In the end it fell short of what many wanted and the future of Tomb Raider, with the second movie doing poorly, now seemed bleak. There is a distinct lack of what made the original Tomb Raider games so great (tombs for example) while Core added nothing of any note to improve things, leaving us with an empty shell of a game.
As a Tomb Rider fan I am sad, you can see what Core was trying to achieve and this may have even worked out well if more time had been given and development was less hellish. In many ways Eidos milked the games during the PS1 era and that has haunted Core up to this point. Tomb Raider :TAOD is a very poor game and an even poorer Tomb Raider game.
PS2 – 5/10 PC – 5/10
In 2003 the Tomb Raider series was in an odd place, it had not seen a block buster hit in almost 4 years but a fairly successful movie in 2001 had re-kindled the fire slightly. A new generation of consoles had since come out, games were telling stories more akin to a movie script and action adventure games controlled far better than the Tomb Raider games of the late 90’s. Would Tomb Raider the Angel of Darkness bring Lara Croft into the 21st century? Or would we be left feeling her best days where far behind her?
The story of TAOD is an almost direct continuation of The Last Revelation. Lara, back from being buried alive is confronting her old mentor Werner Von Croy in his Paris apartment when during an argument he is killed in mysterious circumstances. He mentions something about a cult, who are after him and Lara escapes into the Parisian night chanced by the police and now framed with his murder. The story then moves onto Lara trying to clear her name while chancing a serial killer linked to the cult. It’s a fairly well written and delivered story which is clearly designed to last longer than one game. All cutsenses are well put together and you do get a good sense of what is going on, Core have used the new gen tech available to them to tell an interesting story that is by no means great, but slightly more interesting than we are used to seeing in a Tomb Raider game.
My first twenty minutes with AOD were frustraighting to say the least. You start in a Parisian back ally and have to climb your way out. The entire section of the level is designed to take no longer than five minutes max and acts as a mini tutorial. However the first thing I noticed is how bad the controls are in AOD, much had been made about how Lara now no longer controls “like a tank”. Well in Tomb Raider AOD Lara still controls like a tank, but a tank on an ice rink. Time and time again I would fall of edges, overshoot jumps, randomly back flip to my death due to the over sensitive movement controls. This is not helped by the fact the camera controls are slow and unresponsive, to the point you hardly use them and stick to the pre-set view point. All throughout my play though it was difficult to control Lara and it took away from the overall experience the game was trying to produce, compared to other games from this genre, AOD has terrible, clunky controls. Regular frame rate dips and slow down are also a problem and don’t always seem to be triggered by anything in particular.
Some new additions to the game play are that Lara can “upgrade” her abilities. For example strength and grip can now be improved throughout the game. This is done by doing the actions and overtime her ability to pull or push heavier objects will increase, or the length of time she can grip a ledge will improve. However these add-ons add next to nothing to the experience as you improve these in line with the story as you progress, it’s not like a Zelda game for example where you need to return to a section once you have improved your skill in order to progress. In AOD it just so happens that you always improve them just as you need to use them, effectively eliminating the point of having this in the game at all. There are reasons that this is the case, much was cut from AOD and a levelling system was one of these additions that was cut. Stealth was also added, but again there is no punishment for not using it and enemy AI is terrible, just making it much easier to shoot them. The game was also meant to include a large open Paris level with side quests and other activities. Again however most of this was cut, apart from Paris itself which is now just an empty semi-open space for you to walk around in and watch a loading screen every 5 feet.
One of the most striking new additions to AOD is that you now play as someone other than Lara. Through the course of the game you will meet a character called Curtis and end up playing as him in a couple of levels. Somehow he controls even worse than Lara and is an entirely unlikeable character.
It’s not all bad news however, the graphics in the game are very impressive. Lighting and textures are great for the time and Lara’s model has seen allot of attention looking fantastic as do other NPCs in the game. Environments look the part, from Parisian streets to the Louvre and even the one Tomb in the game, they all look very impressive.
But that’s it! That’s the only positive segment of this review, having struggled to get into this game 15 years ago I find myself even more unable to play it in 2018. It’s a mess of a game and almost un-playable in its current form. There is a rather loyal fan community that have created many mods that make this game more “playable” but even with them installed it’s not worth the play through.
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is a game that is well documented, discussed and lamented. It features on many top ten lists for all the wrong reasons, and was sadly the last curtain for Core Design with Tomb Raider. It was in development for 3 years, delayed twice and finally forced out the door by Eidos in order to come out in time for the second Tomb Raider movie. Lots was cut from the game, and many at Core felt the game was over ambitious and needed more development time. In the end it fell short of what many wanted and the future of Tomb Raider, with the second movie doing poorly, now seemed bleak. There is a distinct lack of what made the original Tomb Raider games so great (tombs for example) while Core added nothing of any note to improve things, leaving us with an empty shell of a game.
As a Tomb Rider fan I am sad, you can see what Core was trying to achieve and this may have even worked out well if more time had been given and development was less hellish. In many ways Eidos milked the games during the PS1 era and that has haunted Core up to this point. Tomb Raider :TAOD is a very poor game and an even poorer Tomb Raider game.
PS2 – 5/10 PC – 5/10