Now for the giant meaty chunk that is the most important to a game (And why I love Underworld) the gameplay: Multiple Outfits return from Legend, only one is unlockable (the Bathing suit) and its obtained by getting EVERY artefact and can only be used in the first level so its just flat-out not worth it, some of the secrets ARE placed in tricky spots that require going out of your way with platforming, so picking them up is fun, if a little pointless, though Concept art is still here but its also the only other unlockable (No Biographies this time folks) so the outfit selection is limited like Anniversry due to lacking re-colours like Legend, (well, unless you have the 360/xbox 1 version and pay for some of that EXCLUSIVE DLC!!!) but now you can change outfits before the start of each level, so you can choose on your play through what outfits to wear first time through, which is good, plus the limited outfit selection is still pretty good with only really 3 of them (Snow heavy, The wet suit and Bathing suit) being something I'd never pick given the option. Lara looks great as always but Alister looks a little off, while enemies look well detailed, The water and dirt effects on Lara are also amazing and the fact they're dynamic makes them awesome. Graphically, Underworld is the peak of the Franchise, Southern Mexico is beautiful and the fact blood returned adds a visceral sense to combat that was missing in Legend and Anniversary. ![]() Keeley Hawes puts out her always great performance as Lara, making her likeable and realistically emotional at the right times, the great use of facial animations to convey fear and sadness plus Anger makes Lara to be one of her best Character-wise in the entire Franchise and Natla also gets some great emotions (Such as fear), admittingly most games in the series don't concern themselves with this (because its not a focus of them), but its great when done well and its done well here, Lara feels very much like a real, relatable adventurer and I'm sad LAU Lara wasn't around for longer. Story-wise Underworld is Meh, I mean its mostly not bad, but also feels like a side-story for the most part, certain events like Alistars death and Lara's Mother feel almost like they were thrown in so the game WOULD (had they made a sequel) be important in the timeline of LAU, the fact that The only "True" stuff turned out to be entirely Norse was dissapointing, with only really Thailand and Mexico offering the variety in ancient Culture Legend had, I mean there aren't any giant gaping plot holes that I can think of, nor does anyone act incredibly stupid or out of character, so it's just alright honestly, on the plus side, if you hated Zip and Alister, they're only in Underworld for roughly 6 combined small scenes, and if you somewhat liked them like me, you'd be a little sad at the complete knee jerk almost-removal of them, I'd rather we got cut scenes showing Lara properly researching where to go next back at the manor and showing her discussing it with Zip and Alister. ![]() Tomb Raider Underworld is IMO the best game of the LAU Trilogy and shows you that Crystal could have done alot more, it feels like the game where they managed to fully improve the Tomb Raider Gameplay and its a shame we never got a sequel to iron out the kinks It had. So I've randomly decided to review my contested favourite Tomb Raider game (The other contender is 2),
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