Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness

Angel of Darkness was the first Tomb Raider game to be released on a new era of hardware. Core previously released annual games on the Playstation 1, and this was going to be the first in a new trilogy. It was much maligned by fans, but in reality, it generally suffers from the same problems as the previous games. It ended up being Core's final game, with the next releases going to Crystal Dynamics.

Since it is a new game engine, they have done away with the grid-based design, and now the levels look more realistic. There's been a few tweaks to the way Lara controls, but some of the supposed improvements have made things a bit clunky, especially when you are used to the old controls. You can press Up when stationary to climb. Higher ledges may still require a jump but you don't need the additional "action" button press. There will be times when she grabs when you don't want; I seemed to have problems at the bottom of ladders where Lara would grab the ladder again when I wanted to move away. The reduction of buttons is supposed to be smoother but there's times where it feels way more inconvenient to stop dead then press a direction to climb. Additionally, there were some railings Lara decided to leap over to her death just because I pressed forward next to them. Lara's movement seems slow as she walks then builds up into a jog. I found it was often quicker to jump forward.

Lara arrives in Paris to meet Werner Von Croy, who was contacted by a man named Eckhardt to find the Obscura Paintings. Von Croy is killed and as Lara flees, she is suspected of the murder.

At the start of the game, you are on the streets of Paris, and it will be a while before you see some tombs. To be honest, some of the other games had long periods where you weren't raiding tombs. In the urban areas, you will be navigating side-streets, climbing up drainpipes and ladders, and opening many doors. You will see streets, rooftops, nightclub and a museum in the first half of the game.

There are still medpacks in the game but there's also chocolate bars to restore small amounts of health. It seems odd that there's so many chocolate bars on the ground and Lara has no problem picking them up, even the ones she finds in the sewers. There's plenty of money around in the streets of Paris and you find some expensive items to sell at the pawn shop. I assume this was planned to be a bigger feature, but the pawn shop owner is quickly killed off and then you have no use for the money after that point.

Lara picks up a variety of weapons, mainly variations of pistols. She no longer has her iconic dual pistols with unlimited ammo. I felt there were fewer enemies to shoot though so they weren’t really needed.

There's some janky voice acting, fluctuating quickly in tone. Some dialogue gives you a couple of options to choose from, so you can decide if you want a standard or more aggressive tone. Lara seems overly antagonistic at times, and there's some occasions where you select the nice options, then Lara will switch to a threatening tone in the standard dialogue.

The way it looks, the fact it's partly set in Paris, there's some mystery cult involved, the dialogue tree, controls and the clunky block pushing, it actually reminds me of Broken Sword, in particular The Sleeping Dragon. That game was the worst in the series and was the point where they transitioned into a new 3D engine. You can probably make more comparisons and accuse the transition for causing problems.

Stealth was awkwardly introduced in Tomb Raider Chronicles, where walking was the stealthy approach. In this game, there is a button to enter a stealth position where Lara will crouch. You can hug the walls and peer around corners. The system is poorly implemented though, where enemies have poor vision and you can even walk into them without them detecting you. You are supposed to be able to stealth choke them from behind, but sometimes Lara didn't seem interested in carrying out the action. I thought killing the guards in the museum seemed a bit out of character because I don't think they were involved in the gangs.

There's some weird design decisions throughout the game. When on the run at the start of the game, a SWAT team bursts down a door and throws in a smoke grenade instead of just taking you down. They then wait at the bottom while you mess about upstairs and then escape. Then there is a helicopter that chases you and tries to gun you down. Later in the level, you then venture back onto the roof where the helicopter is lingering, and I thought there would be secrets here because running into danger clearly isn't the way forward, but it was legitimately the correct way to go.

The new stamina and upgrade system is a bit of a joke. You are introduced to this concept when Lara sees a long ledge she would, in previous games, be able to shimmy along then drop down to the balcony below. She exclaims that she “isn't strong enough” yet, so you climb up to the roof instead. You find a locked shed, so go to the edge of the roof where you look down and see a crowbar (for some reason). After crowbarring the lock from the shed, Lara exclaims "I feel stronger now", and then you can now shimmy across the ledge. In previous games, you would often use keys or find levers to remove impediments, but now they are often behind this strength idea, and the solution is often a few seconds away. You can't push over a statue "I'm not strong enough", but after shoulder-barging into a grave "I feel stronger now", she can then push it. In the manual it says "Note, Lara will need to have picked up the appropriate lower body upgrade to sprint. She’ll tell you when she feels strong enough to sprint". This seems to trigger when you pick up a gas mask. What's all that about?

There are quite a few doors with keycards, or keycodes. You often find the keycodes on documents you pick up and can view them in your inventory. I think if you know the keycode (look it up online), then you can bypass large sections of the levels.

In previous games, I sometimes struggled to see what I could interact with. For example, if there was a vine texture on a wall, you would just assume this is simply a texture rather than being a climbable surface. In this game, Lara tends to exclaim "I can climb up on that" to make sure you don't miss climbable areas. There's a few instances where the climbable areas turn into acute angles which Lara can still climb and will take a few seconds to transition. I don't know if these moments were for visual flair, or just to add tension as you are watching your stamina bar deplete; but it looks odd and slows the pacing down.

Some of the objectives at the start seem a bit strange. You get told to go to a nightclub and check inside a broken light for a stashed item. I was looking at the lights for ages and couldn't see a broken one, but then there's actually a different set of lights further up. Instead of them being lit, they all seem unlit but one of the metal casings is dull - and it is that one that you want. It just seemed a strange idea.

You can manually save at any point, but I did think it would be nice to have some checkpoints/autosave especially when you move between areas.

There were a few random crashes in the game, then in Strahov Fortress, the game crashed when leaving the ventilation shaft which was a game-breaking bug for me. I tried earlier saves, tweaking configuration settings, but the crash consistently occurred, so I had to abandon the game.

There’s definitely elements to criticise the game for, but the core gameplay remains unchanged. I think the game isn’t drastically worse than the previous entries, but the game-breaking bug was the biggest issue for me.