Tomb Raider:
The Angel of Darkness

When Lara Croft's mentor ends up murdered, there's only one man who can help prove her innocence

	Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
	By Core Design Ltd. from Eidos Interactive
	PlayStation 2
	MSRP: $49.99

Review by Eric T. Baker

t the end of her last game, Lara Croft, the star of the Tomb Raider franchise, appeared to die. Luckily, death didn't suit Lara, and now she is back in a new game and sporting a new, tummy-revealing outfit.

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness opens with Lara meeting one of her mentors, a man who begs her to help him with a search that is threatening his life and the lives of others. Unfortunately, there is bad blood between Lara and this man, and then there is confusion, and then he is dead and Lara can't be sure she isn't the one who killed him. The Paris police are pretty sure that Lara did kill him, and the first part of the game consists of Lara dodging and fighting the police while trying to find the truth of the murder. Before long, the quest leads her into a tangle of lost artifacts, a secret society, a serial murderer and globe-hopping adventure.

The gameplay of The Angel of Darkness is different in several ways from previous Tomb Raider games. Lara now has a meter that limits how long she can hang from things, like pipes or ropes or ledges, that she is shimmying across. When the meter runs out, she lets go. The trademark guns and the lock-on system that targets them is back, but Lara also has some neat hand-to-hand moves this time around. She also has some "stealth" moves that allow her to sneak up on enemies and dispatch them at close range. Two RPG elements have been added: Lara now gets stronger as the game goes along, allowing her to jump farther, and some encounters contain dialogue trees allowing the player control over the events in the scene.

The biggest change is the introduction of a character named Kurtis Trent. While his movies and controls are very similar to Lara's, Trent has powers and abilities that she does not. To capitalize on this, there are some sections of the game where Trent is the playable character.

A story worth puzzling out

The bad news about The Angel of Darkness is the controls and the camera. The controls are sluggish and the camera is hard to control. This is a deadly combination in a game that depends heavily on jumping puzzles for its entertainment value. Until players gets the hang of the controls, they will end up killing Lara over and over. Once the player does get used to the controls, Lara still dies, but not as often. Thankfully, the game designers bucked the status quo in console games and allow players to save at any point in the game. Without this ability, the game would be unplayable for all but the most patient Lara fans.

The good news is that Lara looks great, as does the game in general and the cutscenes in particular. The new outfits are nice, and the locations are properly varied. There are wide-open levels and narrow levels, and some of them have terrific puzzles, such as the monster machine that Lara must first activate and then escape from. The enemies could have been smarter, but there is a good mix of fighting and puzzle-solving and jumping in the game. And the right things have been kept from the previous installments: The guns, the ponytail and the attitude. The things that make Lara Lara.

Trent, while not really a welcome addition, does not hurt the game. He is not overused, and he acts as more of a partner than the original publicity made him sound. Another surprise is the C.S.I.-like detail that goes into the murder investigation. Players may learn and see more than they care to about the methods of the game's serial killer. The information, however, feeds the story of the game, which is its best part. Players who are frustrated by one puzzle or another will find themselves carrying on because they want to know how the story of the game comes out.

Lara is one of my favorite characters in fiction, and I'm a sucker for the Tomb Raider formula, so I enjoyed this game despite its rough spots. For me, watching Lara do her backflip never gets old. — Eric

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