This game was a geniune mess, I played Legend years ago and I beat Anniversary recently and I always heard this game in this version of the TR timeline was the worst of the bunch and yeah it lives up to its reputation as being just that. I was always hesistant on even playing this game at all, I wanted a PS3 game to beat and I bought the "LAU" collection a couple of years ago, and this was just lying around for so long. There were many times I wanted to drop the game and move on to something else but due to reasons I will state later, I held on, and preservered and got to the end.
Anyways introductions out of the way, what why am I so negative on it? Simpily put, this game is a case study of how automated platforming can go horribly wrong. The first problem and this can apply to Anniversary to varying degrees is that Lara doesn't feel very smooth and precise to control. There are times where Lara jumps and she will either not go the way I want her too, refuse to do the action, or do a completely different move from the one I want her to do.
For example, if I say, have Lara balance on a beam, she will either jump across or do a weird front flip that causes her to miss the ledge and fall to her death.
Speaking of Lara falling to her death, that is something that will be happening a lot while playing TR Underworld. It has unpolish written all over it. Everytime she jumps on to a ledge, clambor on to one or just anything that involves moment to moment climbing, there is always a 50-50 chance of Lara messing up the jump even though I pressed the right inputs and she falls to her death or her doing something I don't want her to do.
To name two examples, when I try to make Lara wall jump, I have to mash x for dear life in order to for Lara to consistently jump from side to side because the timing for it is almost non existent then there is the parts where Lara is on a pole which she will either climb on top of one, shimmy to the side and hopefully she will actually jump to the position you want her to. The movement in general feels very stiled since like mostly anything involving climbing or platforming, there is always a 50-50 chance, the player will succeed or just die and restart.
Then there is the camera, which at it's best, does an okay job at giving you an angle on where to go next but at it's worst it starts spazzing out and it gives the player an awkward angle on where the player can or cannot jump to. Then there is the fact that it can get way too close to Lara while she is climbing and it gives an even worse angle on the action.
This now leads to my next issue, what can Lara can or cannot interact with? I had a hard time what hand holds and ledges Lara can climb or she will ignore, having Lara climb up surfaces that are waist high is a herculan effort considering sometimes she will climb and sometimes she won't. Am I supposed to climb anything colored in white? I think but all of that can start blending in with scenery and as a result, I have no geniune clue which areas Lara is able to interact with.
I looked up a walkthrough for much of the since all of these issues combined made for an extremely cumbersome game to play. This game came out the same year as Prince of Persia 2008 and that game is much more polished and enjoyable to play than TR Underworld is.
Now on to the good, after all that complaining why did I beat the game at all? Simpily put the game checkpoints well and load times after dying is super fast, I wish all games loaded as fast as TR Underworld did. This might be the one of the redeeming parts of the game.
Another good part is that the under water "Helheim" level is damn good. It's an underwater level meaning there is barely any climbing, and as a result, the level design gets to shine and I can tell where I am supposed to go without needing a guide. I can appreciate the exploration and backtracking Indiana Jones style power fantasy of exploring the unknown mythological tombs the game wanted. Knowing what I can and cannot interact with was easier to tell compared to the previous levels since it's just collecting keys and switch pulling, two things in game level design I like.
Combat is okay, I like using Thor's Hammer and it felt better to use here than it did in the Avengers game. I see people complain about it but it's decent, not good but combat was not the sole focus so as far as, combat inbetween climbing and exploration is concerned, it gets the job done. It's not supposed to be combat master class. Shotgun rounds can take out most enemies before getting Thor's Hammer.
Overall, TR Underworld is about as mediocre as mediocre games can get. It clearly needed more polish and more time to cook in oven before releasing. If I didn't own the game for so long and it didn't checkpoint and load as fast it did, I would've dropped and not see it to completion at all. If you want a case study of how to mess up automated platforming in a big budget AAA game, this is it
No comments:
Post a Comment