Tomb Raider Underworld - first look

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New screens and detailed scrutiny inside

As you'd expect, the Lara model looks superb. A little older, perhaps, maybe about 30 years old, but convincingly solid. Her clothes were wet from the rain and hugged her torso, with realistic shine on her shoulders and cheeks from the water running over it. In this state, she'll pick up mud from rolling around, too, which washes off in the downpour. Despite the supposed boob reduction of Legend, a close-up of her upper-half revealed each breast to be easily as big as her head. A bit daft, in truth.

The detail level has been ramped up in the environments, to the point where you can tell there's a tunnel underneath a slab of rock because there's a small stream of rainwater running down the side of it. Clever. The rain also affects Lara's grip levels as she's climbing the walls (now with less obvious handholds) and you'll have to pay close attention to the animations as the intrusive 'Y' prompt has been removed when she's about to slip. Much better.

Disappointingly, it seems Lara's back to her murderous ways as seen in TR Legend. She came upon a pack of black panthers and a group of poachers... and so killed them all (as you would do). It seems a tad insulting that the player is forced to kill when all Lara's really doing is exploring. And while the combat seems to work well enough, it's still based on jumping dodging, rather than using the environment to your advantage. Indeed, some enemies like crab spiders can actually scale vertical walls, so Lara can't just climb to safety any more.

Justin Towell
Justin Towell

Justin was a GamesRadar staffer for 10 years but is now a freelancer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zelda BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.