Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (PC) Review

By Athanasios 28.10.2016

Review for Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness on PC

After a pretty strong start for a newcomer, the Tomb Raider series nearly disappeared into oblivion, and almost everyone but the few passionate fans simply lost interest. The right thing to do? Create a title that will bring it back to the spotlight… or simply destroy what's left of it by making Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, which tries to turn over a new leaf, and makes a mess of the whole book in the process.

Continuing from Lara's previous endeavours, where she was left for dead, but… somehow wasn't, the great tomb raider is being chased by the French police for a couple of murders she didn't commit - or did she? Thus begins a mysterious journey down the road of sinister ancient societies and their heavily guarded secrets, breaks into the Louvre, and lots of detective work from Lady Croft.

Does it all sound a lot like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code? Actually, if "Tomb Raider" wasn't in the title, this could very well be a traditional adventure like the - thematically similar - Broken Sword series. In fact, this is such an adventure, because despite all the shooting and acrobatic work done by Lara, this is mainly about going from point A to B to talk with a character… and then repeating the whole process about 100 times.

In other words, this Tomb Raider is far more into noir-mystery storytelling, and is thus a lot darker for some bizarre reason. Gone is the Indiana Jones aura that the series was known for, and with it, gone are the ancient temples and tropical forests. Now, it's grey urban area after grey industrial area, with little variation in between… Oh, and by the way, gone is dear Lara's iconic attire, who is now dressed in blue jeans and a jacket, and who behaves like another person altogether.

Screenshot for Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness on PC

To be more specific, Ms. Croft has turned into… well, a douche - unpleasant instead of charmingly sarcastic, and aggressive instead of a cool and confident force of girl power. At least, is the story worth your time? Yes and no. It's certainly more complex than the "find trinket in ancient tomb" of the past, but it's just… decent - not to mention very B-movie-ish at times, and not in a good, Resident Evil kind of way. The big problems, however, begin with the gameplay.

No, it's not that the acrobatics required are simplistic, and, thus, unexciting, it's not because Lara moves like a slug when pulling off any of her moves, it's not the fact that the gunfights are sleep-inducing, and, no, it's not that the puzzles (the few available) are non-challenging chores. It's not even the addition of the unnecessary "RPG" system that requires doing some menial tasks in order to get stronger and be able to move on, like, for instance, to open a random door or push a box(!?).

The thing that turns this average action adventure into a mess of a video game is how terrifyingly bad the controls are; the worst in a franchise consisting of more than 20 titles. The player will simply feel as if he or she is struggling to "push" Lara into moving instead of controlling her. She is slow, she is unresponsive, she hits invisible barriers near walls, she fails to grab ledges, and she feels as if she hesitates even before running. Combine all this with bad camera movement, as well as an assortment of - still unfixed - bugs, and you are in for quite the ride!

Screenshot for Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness on PC

Cubed3 Rating

2/10
Rated 2 out of 10

Very Bad

You know something is wrong when not even Lara Croft's bouncing assets could manage to save this train wreck. Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is slow, boring, unexciting, and even though the plot and overall foreboding atmosphere have some redeeming qualities (although they feel a bit out of place here), the notoriously bad controls, annoying camera, and tons of glitches are enough reason for even the most hardcore of fans to never ever try this one.

Developer

Core Design

Publisher

Eidos

Genre

Adventure

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  2/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date Out now   Australian release date Out now   

Comments

Comments are currently disabled

Subscribe to this topic Subscribe to this topic

If you are a registered member and logged in, you can also subscribe to topics by email.
Sign up today for blogs, games collections, reader reviews and much more
Site Feed
Who's Online?
Azuardo

There are 1 members online at the moment.