Lara Croft is arguing with her old mentor Verner von Croy over something called the "Obscura Paintings". After some yelling, Lara is knocked down, we hear gunfire and when Lara regains her consciousness, von Croy lies dead on the floor. Not long after that, police sirens can be heard in the distance; Lara Croft is wanted for the murder of Verner von Croy.
Thus does a fast paced story telling in the 6th installment of the Tomb Raider series commence, and it is by far the most intriguing story of them all. Readers of The Da Vinci Code will see the obvious similarities here, since the game is told the exact same way; A murder, a chase, a secret, the Louvre... much inspiration has been borrowed here. Also, the pace of the famous book is equally fast; with Lara being hunted by French police helicopters, cops, villains and secret society special forces, it would seems that everything's set for a fantastic and enjoyable adventure; suffice to say, the story is certainly not where the film snaps.
The control, however, certainly does its part in ruining the little escapade. First off: Lara no longer runs instantly, she walks and THEN she runs, which can prove fatal when you haven't got a large plateau to jump from. Also, her acrobatic actions like jumping over railings and climbing drain pipes are not triggered by pushing Shift, or the X button, but simply by pointing the directional buttons in that direction. This can create some very frustrating and catastrophic situations, as Lara will be more than willing to jump over a railing and fall 70 meters down. However, the controls can be mastered and once they have been, they work.
Another thing that will cause many players to throw the controller into the TV screen is the absence of an Auto Save function. Since you'll die on a regular basis, saving is certainly necessary every 5 minutes. Every run and jump has to be executed with surgical precision, something that is destined to fail, especially with newbies behind the screen.
On a graphical side-note, AoD is a peculiar game. Lara's shadow is in high resolution, but doesn't match her surroundings, i.e. her shadow is pointing in another direction than other objects. The 3D environments have high polygon counts, but this can't be said for Lara or any other characters: they still look like dolls, with octagon eyes and square fingers. The tombs are fantastically rendered but low res textures (for the PS2 version at least) makes the experience a little dull and does not encourage one to explore.
The enemies in AoD are brain dead and uninteresting, they can run, bite, shoot, hit you... and that's pretty much it. Any unusual behaviour is usually programmed actions like soldiers roping themselves down the roof and so on. The stealth elements in the game quickly falls to the ground as it is ten times easier to just run forward and mash the action button to shoot your foes, since the auto-aim function takes care of the hard part. And once defeated, they will simply blink and disappear, arcade style. That is one of the things that makes AoD lose much of its realism. The new kung-fu elements looks cool, though albeit slower than Tom Cruise's moves in MI:2, they usually cause you to lose 50% health since the enemy can still hit/shoot you during the attack. RUBBISH! Also, AoD suffers from strange bugs, like the sound repeating itself over and over again when dying and Lara has a rare tendency to fall through the floor into blue, uncoded nothingness.
Conclusively, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is a game that requires patience, tolerance and a pretty controlled temper if you like your TV. Although the graphics are decent in places and outright ugly in other, and although the controls take forever to master, it is a decent game that requires your attention, at least by a rental.
Thus does a fast paced story telling in the 6th installment of the Tomb Raider series commence, and it is by far the most intriguing story of them all. Readers of The Da Vinci Code will see the obvious similarities here, since the game is told the exact same way; A murder, a chase, a secret, the Louvre... much inspiration has been borrowed here. Also, the pace of the famous book is equally fast; with Lara being hunted by French police helicopters, cops, villains and secret society special forces, it would seems that everything's set for a fantastic and enjoyable adventure; suffice to say, the story is certainly not where the film snaps.
The control, however, certainly does its part in ruining the little escapade. First off: Lara no longer runs instantly, she walks and THEN she runs, which can prove fatal when you haven't got a large plateau to jump from. Also, her acrobatic actions like jumping over railings and climbing drain pipes are not triggered by pushing Shift, or the X button, but simply by pointing the directional buttons in that direction. This can create some very frustrating and catastrophic situations, as Lara will be more than willing to jump over a railing and fall 70 meters down. However, the controls can be mastered and once they have been, they work.
Another thing that will cause many players to throw the controller into the TV screen is the absence of an Auto Save function. Since you'll die on a regular basis, saving is certainly necessary every 5 minutes. Every run and jump has to be executed with surgical precision, something that is destined to fail, especially with newbies behind the screen.
On a graphical side-note, AoD is a peculiar game. Lara's shadow is in high resolution, but doesn't match her surroundings, i.e. her shadow is pointing in another direction than other objects. The 3D environments have high polygon counts, but this can't be said for Lara or any other characters: they still look like dolls, with octagon eyes and square fingers. The tombs are fantastically rendered but low res textures (for the PS2 version at least) makes the experience a little dull and does not encourage one to explore.
The enemies in AoD are brain dead and uninteresting, they can run, bite, shoot, hit you... and that's pretty much it. Any unusual behaviour is usually programmed actions like soldiers roping themselves down the roof and so on. The stealth elements in the game quickly falls to the ground as it is ten times easier to just run forward and mash the action button to shoot your foes, since the auto-aim function takes care of the hard part. And once defeated, they will simply blink and disappear, arcade style. That is one of the things that makes AoD lose much of its realism. The new kung-fu elements looks cool, though albeit slower than Tom Cruise's moves in MI:2, they usually cause you to lose 50% health since the enemy can still hit/shoot you during the attack. RUBBISH! Also, AoD suffers from strange bugs, like the sound repeating itself over and over again when dying and Lara has a rare tendency to fall through the floor into blue, uncoded nothingness.
Conclusively, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is a game that requires patience, tolerance and a pretty controlled temper if you like your TV. Although the graphics are decent in places and outright ugly in other, and although the controls take forever to master, it is a decent game that requires your attention, at least by a rental.
