Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (PC)

Both games in my opinion are excellent, but as this review is supposed to be about Lara's new game, I'd better concentrate on her. I'll not give any of the plot away. I'll let you discover that for yourself! First off, AOD doesn't require a computer with an immense amount of power at its disposal. Naturally the more powerful your machine, the better the game will run, but it will run on a 500 mhz pc with little difficulty. It's good to report that although the game is graphically superb, you won't need to shell out for a brand new system in order to enjoy it. As I say, the graphics are excellent, as you'd expect. This time round, the areas Lara explores are much more detailed, as indeed is Lara herself, with a much greater polygon count making her more realistic, as indeed are her adversaries, who are more intelligent too. Hand to hand combat also comes into play, which is a great addition. The ability to sneak up behind an enemie and choke them, without being seen, adds a great deal of stealth to the game, as opposed to the 'going in all guns blazing approach'.

There is another playable character in AOD; Kurtis Trent, and his inclusion is very welcome. It is a good idea, that Eidos have implemented into the game very well, and gives the game a perspective from another character's point of view. Now then, onto probably one of the biggest issues for many people - the controls. Let me point out here that Lara's latest adventure does not control in the same way as her previous games. The control system is now much advanced, and may take some people a little while to become accustomed to. The game plays at a slightly slower pace BUT (and I must emphasise this hence the capitals) they are very responsive. Imagine the controls in Resident evil, if you will, and you'll be pretty close to what is on offer here. To elaborate on that a bit more, moving the controller left or right doesn't immediately move Lara in that direction. This will rotate her character round and round. When you are in the direction you wish to go, pressing forward will make her move in that particular direction. I hope I've explained that ok. Anyway, give it a try yourself, and you'll see what I mean. The game comes on 2 cds, and is fairly lengthy too, giving good value for money. In summary, the many delays the game has experienced have been well worth it. For anybody who has their doubts on this last point, don't worry. I'm sure many patches will be available in the near future, so you can tweak the game to your liking. As for me, I'm very happy with Lara's latest adventure, and wouldn't hesitate in recommending it to anyone. Congratulations Eidos, on creating the 'definitive' Lara Croft experience!

Well, I'm sorry to disappoint, but it's total tripe. The game is bugged beyond belief, to the point that it's almost too bothersome to actually play. If you get a single setting wrong in the pre-game graphics setup (which is, by the way, too technical for all but the most hardcore gamer to understand), the game does not display any in-game menus. If you install the first patch (yes, one aready exists), the game develops even MORE bugs on some systems. If you have a high-end system, forget it... you can go and cook a five-course meal in the time it takes your character to make a 360 degree turn, the engine is so bad.

The controls are terrible, bordering on abysmal, with a hint of pure stupidity built in. It's a classic case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and what we're left with is a game where controlling the main character becomes as much of a challenge to completion as solving the puzzles. Mouse control (a first for a Tomb Raider game) is negligibly useful at best, downright annoying at worst. The fact also that you can only remap a select few of the game controls (notably not the "look" or "inventory" keys) is unforgivably lazy.

This game is, to put it bluntly, an inexcusable waste of time in its current state. The controls are awful, the bugs are bad enough to completely ruin your gaming experience, and the storyline and characters are undoubtedly the worst of any Tomb Raider game so far. The fact that console gamers are stuck with it, whereas PC gamers are destined to have poor patch after poor patch shoved down our throats in an attempt to fix this travesty, might even be an advantage - those using a PS2 have NO excuse whatsoever to buy this game.

A big improvement visually over its predecessors. Lara looks great, the animations for her movement are very good and the shadows and reflections make for rich environments

Excellent sounds

Loads more moves/actions that Lara can do

Most importantly - the controls are dreadful. They are completely un-intuitive, unresponsive to the point of being maddening, and there's not much that can be done about it. The first thing that hit me on the key assignments screen is there are very few buttons that can be set. Most damingly - there's no way to strafe. If you want to move a bit to the left quickly, you have to turn left, saunder fowards and then turn right again. The usual steup of:

Fowards/Backwards/Left/Right = Keys
Look = Mouse

Cannot be applied. If you're used to boming about on first person shooters using this setup, then TRAOD will probably make you VERY angry.

* It's so slow! It takes so long to do anything, the fluency of the game is ruined.

* BUGS!! The game tends to crash. The graphical glitches are horrendous, and frequent. Laras leg has dissapeared! Now her shotgun has! Now she appears to be.... sliding backwards through the air... through walls in fact... oh, it's crashed.

* The system requirements stated are laughable; you'll need a high spec machine to run this game.

TO SUMMARISE Perhaps die-hard fans of the series will love this; I like all the previous TR's, however, and my views on this one are fairly clear. I find this game very saddening, because you expect a real blast from the lastest TR title. If you enjoy game like half life, medal of honour, vice city, in fact, anything when you run a character about; probably best to avoid this one, or it'll annoy you greatly.