Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness PS2 Review

This is my review of Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness as seen on Eidos' forums. It is copy and pasted 100% from there.

THIS THREAD MAY CONTAIN SPOLIERS SO BEWARE.



Before I begin let me just say. Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness, does NOT suck.

Yes I can hear the disbelievers gasping now and melting in agony as I utter those words but to all who have said this game is bug filled or un-enjoyable seriously need to get their head examined.

To be honest, I just rented this game on Thursday and have only been with it for maybe 5-6 hours tops (BTW, I have the ps2 version). However; I am already so pleased with this game that I am going to buy it as soon as the 5 day rental period is over. In my opinion, as crazy as the haters may call me, I think this stands along Tomb Raider 1 as the first true sequel in the series.

Now to those who haven't even played the game because they are unsure of what it is from all the bad reviews, listen to me first and then decide whether it’s worth renting from my review.

Gameplay
From the day this game was first released in stores, one of the largest complaints with Tomb Raider has been that the new controls are well..confusing. I will admit that, as a die hard veteran of the series, picking up the controller and moving Lara around wasn't necessarily the easiest thing possible. But there's a reason for that.

One of the confusing features of the new control system is that Lara moves relative to the camera direction and not the direction she is facing. However, problems such as these can be fixed by pressing in the right analog stick (which centers her view), moving the camera with the right analog stick so its behind her, or pressing the look button while moving.

Sounds confusing? Not really. I only struggled with the controls for maybe 20 minutes tops and after getting used to it, let me tell you...the new controls are MUCH better. Lara moves so easily with the new controls that the controller becomes an extension of your arm after playing for a short while. Trust me, it may come off as frustrating but if you're someone who's played a lot of games with analog support, you'll soon understand the controls no problem.

You will die at first. However; seeing how there is no “level reload” or auto save option, if you haven’t saved at all, you’ll need to reload from the start. This problem is what probably keeps this title from being a 10 but if you are smart enough to save before a challenging jump or deadly situation you’ll be thanking yourself in the long run as you can load from where you last saved.

Once you learn to control Lara smoothly and efficiently your skills are put to the test in a variety of situations, including disposing of a club full of armed thugs or escaping a building filling with deadly gas. I don't know about anyone else but, I don’t think I would have been able to pull off half these missions with the old control scheme.

To add to this, I never have experienced the 'two bullet' bug so far. My Lara only fires once and that's it. Also enemies aren't as stupid as people say, yes you can sneak up on some of them easily but in some of the first missions, if Lara gets caught and has no weapons, she will simply put her hands behind her head and surrender, which I believe is a nice...if not realistic touch to the game. Later on you can kick the crap out of them or shoot them to death, but it’s clear that until you get ammo for your weapons, Lara's pretty much out of luck. This is nice because for once you don’t have to walk in with guns blazing.

Lara's a bit rusty around the edges with her strength this time and she even admits it early in the game. "I don’t think I can make that jump, I'm still a bit rusty.." which leads you to have to perform certain tasks to enhance her strength. Lara will let you know when she's too weak by going "I'm not strong enough.." and will let you know when you built up her muscles by saying "I feel stronger now." While some people may find this incredibly dumb, I like it a lot because it makes the player explore more, for ways to build Lara's strength. And in the event you hurt Lara? There’s a large variety of health pickups.

The old game had a small medipack and a large medipack. Lara now can get: Bandages, chocolate bars (food gives you strength), A large medipack, a medium medipack and a small medipack and health pills (and this was all in the first few stages of the game!)

Speaking of picking up items a neat feature is that you can pick up virtually anything to be taken to a pawn shop. This ranges from a necklace, to ancient doubloons, to vintage cognac as well as many other things.

All of this ties into the coolest addition to Tomb Raider yet, MONEY. When talking to some people (which you could never do in previous Tomb Raider’s mind you) sometimes they can be a bit stubborn and ask for money. You can both be really generous and give them how much they request or give them a rude retort. But keep in mind, a rude Lara isn’t a well informed Lara. Most of the time its better to be nice to everyone, then act rude and walk away, you never know what you can get. This is why I love the new talking feature in this game.

Also in one experience I've seen so far, you can bet all the money you have plus an item from someone else on an event. Lucky for me I won and had a brand new item to pawn at the pawn shop.

While you're running to the pawn shop you might be awe struck by the..

Graphics
Despite being three years in the making, AOD's environments manage to be some of the best I've seen on the console. To some skeptics outside of the series, good graphics and Tomb Raider might not necessarily go hand in hand but believe me, when walking outside in The Parisian Ghetto, you may find yourself looking around with the look button and admiring the amount of work that went into each individual building. At least I know I was.

Despite being on PS2 the draw distances seem to be very far. You can see tall buildings in the distance and clouds far away which leads me to recall the first time I ever stepped outside in the daylight in this game. Core made the “shot” so u get a large view of the daylight sky with skyscrapers when you stumble out into the daylight and let me tell you, I had to stop and look around for a brief second because I was so amazed. The colors and everything in this game are so vibrant and while the game might not necessarily use photos as textures like Max Payne did, the worlds still manage to look better then most of the games on Ps2 so far. While some of the talking characters could have benefited from a bit more modeling, Lara croft herself looks great and fluent while speaking, her eyes and eyebrows conveying her shifting emotions as she speaks. A nice change from the head bobbing speaks of the play station one. Let’s just say screenshots do this game absolutely no justice. You can’t really get a grip of how beautiful this game is until you see it in action. It truly IS a nice graphics engine.

Also, Lara dies realistically depending on her type of death. If she chokes on gas you’ll see her grab her throat and gasp convincingly...as she slowly sways from unconsciousness and falls over. If she falls from a great height...don’t expect her to just “plop” right there if she hits something on the way down. Lara will bounce/roll off of things she hits as she falls until she rolls on the ground, dead in a heap. Her screams are convincing too when she falls which brings me to…

Sound
Ahh what would a Tomb Raider be without sound? As many of you know Tomb Raider’s have always been rich with sound, whether it be the creaking in the distance or the short blast of music to warn you of upcoming danger…a Tomb Raider just wouldn’t be a tomb raider if it didn’t have sound.

The voice acting is exceptionally well done in this game; more so then in the past Tomb Raider games. Lara’s British accent has become heavier which leads to some very true to life British pronunciations of English words. This can lead to a laugh when an American thinks of how different he/she pronounces the word that Lara just said.

Gunshots and ambient sound effects come off not as insanely loud as in the last games and more of a realistic volume then before. Sound can ‘echo’ during speech as a bug but this only happened once in the game so far and it didn’t happen again when I revisited that part, so it cant be classified as a real bug because it only happened once, and for all I know the CD was dirty. (Hey, it WAS a rental).

The London Symphony Orchestra did an EXCELLENT job of sound tracking the game, as the ambient music that usually plays in areas manages to match the mood of that part of the game really well, without distracting the player from what he or she is doing.

Then you come to what seems to be Core’s own creations. Upon entering a broken down nightclub, you are treated to a very nice techno mix that makes you bob your head a bit showing that Core obviously didn’t want to slack in the sound department this time around. And I can assure you they didn’t.

Did I encounter any bugs?
A review cannot be complete without its criticism on flaws. Although I have not encountered any and I mean any of the serious bugs anyone has complained about in the 5-6 hours I’ve played it, the game has unfortunately locked up twice, which was usually when I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to do (*evil grin*) but never while I was just right out in the open which is a good thing. So its my fault for trying to get to areas I’m not supposed to.

I did experience the slowdown people complained about but usually it only lasted 1-2 seconds and was uncommon. Maybe it will happen more as I get further in the game but for a game that has this much environment on screen at once I would’ve expected a lot more of it.

Plus apparently it doesn’t even have anything to do with the engine. The slowdown is just a result of a poor PAL to NTSC conversation as apparently people in Europe play it at a constant 60 FPS with no slowdown ever. Either way, the slowdown is in no way as extreme as people have whined about and it definitely doesn’t hurt the game.

People have complained about bugs that ruined their enjoyment of the game and all I have to say is “Where?”. I am being totally honest and not a fanboy when I say I have not experienced anything that ruined the game for me. To me the game is still pretty fun.

Overall

Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness is a fun game that was unfortunately ruined for many potential players by bad press. The game isn’t really half as bad as some critics are saying and it’s definitely far from complete rubbish like so many gaming magazines have declared it.

Trust me. I know when a game is crap, and this is not the case. I am very proud that I rented this game despite the bad press because what I got is an awesome game that was unfortunately shadowed by the horrible, scrutinizing gaming magazines.

If you’re still unsure if its worth buying, do what I did. Rent the game. You might like it.

Overall: 8.5/10

 

Unfortunately, playing at Target for only a few minutes you might not like it right away, especially if you were confused by the new control scheme. I know I didnt like it totally when I first played it because the controls confused me but..after I played it for a while, I found it pretty fun.

Like I said to Jawknee, while I dont think it will attract any new fans, I do think it will make some die-hard fans of the series pretty happy. Unless they have the PC version..which I heard is a B*TCH to run on old hardware.

 

Well you saw the early specs for this Jawknee. I showed them to you. While they may not be Doom 3-ish, they were still impossible for an old computer to handle. Especially mine. My computer barely played Max Payne. The only thing that allowed me to run it in medium was my RAM upgrade.

But even to my dad its becoming aware..sooner or later we must invest in a new PC. This one does the job, but it wont forever. Maybe they can do what Will's family did which was set aside 50 bucks every week until they had 1000 bucks in 5 months. Just..can my family handle 50 bucks they could use on bills and crap, set aside every week? I doubt it.

Maybe its about time I get a job and help pay for that new computer. It's basically gonna be mine from how much I use it so, why not pay for my own computer? It's logical. Unfair but logical.