E3 08 Preview: Tomb Raider Underworld

by Andrew Podolsky on July 17, 2008 at 6:27 pm

E3 08 has had plenty of surprises so far, but far more reliable was the sexy spelunking of heroine Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: Underworld. The demo we played started on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean, a scene about ten minutes into the beginning of the game.

Immediately Lara began her underwater descent to a sunken ruin, wearing SCUBA gear that meant she could swim at her leisure without having to find air pockets. Plus, she looked really good in that bikini.

At the bottom of the ocean, a garden of kelp grew around waterlogged tunnels, making it difficult to see which pathways were available. This gave us a good chance to try out Lara’s new sonar map, which sent out a ping to create a 3d map of the area around her. The sound actually bounced off of the stone to reveal a few hidden crags. Along the way, Lara was attacked by a few sharks, which could be disposed of with either dual pistols (which seemed to work fine underwater in this build), a harpoon gun, or sticky grenades.

After a typical Tomb Raider puzzle, which involved swimming to find two hidden keys and turn giant stone discs into place, our way was now clear. Lara moved out of the water and onto the slick rocks for some of the running, jumping, climbing, and swinging that have become her signature moves. Little flourishes like an extra twist when swinging on poles looked nice, but didn’t add much gameplay-wise.

For innovation, we instead have slow-motion “adrenaline moments” where Lara has a split second to make a jump, or face instant death. The cause of these dramatic incidents was a huge krakken, a tentacled creature that was so large, it blocked her from moving into the next chamber. The adrenaline moments are thankfully not quick-time button presses, but maintain the same controls and camera angle of the normal game, with only a slight screen blur and whooshing sound effect.

To get past the krakken, Lara had to move to two opposite sides of the chamber and use her grappling hook to position a large, spiked rock squarely above the beast. While we did this, we noticed a new move Lara had with her hook– she can now rappel down walls, but in actuality this doesn’t perform any differently from the walking move she had in the last game, Anniversary.

With the giant spiked stone in place, all that was left was send it crashing down. We shot the supporting chains (you could also use the sticky bombs here) and squished the krakken. With this puzzle solved, the demo was over.

So what did we learn from this encounter? It looks to me like Tomb Raider: Underworld is not going to try anything substantially different from what worked in Anniversary. The swimming mechanics were a bit clunky in this early build, and the platforming and puzzle solving didn’t use any new elements that grabbed my attention other than two brief adrenaline moments.

While I am interested to find out where Lara will go next, I can’t help but feel she’s just being led through more of the same. The krakken wasn’t a boss (shooting it does nothing), and it could have just as easily been replaced by a giant stone statue.

As an early part of the game, this section served its purpose in easing players back into the experience. However, I was hoping to be impressed with a bit more innovation and a genuine sense of discovery. Instead, Lara just seems to be going through the motions. And at this point in our twelve year relationship, she’s got to try harder than that.