Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness

The game appears to be a little confused as to what it is. Action, adventure, stealth and puzzles all play an equal part in The Angel Of Darkness. Core seems to getting unsure what to do with the franchise, either that or the developer is simply trying too hard.

Numerous bugs and glitches, some superficial and some serious, as well as a cumbersome and often frustrating control scheme seriously hurt the game, making it considerably less enjoyable than it could have been.

If you’re able to overlook the awful controls, the unintelligent enemy AI and shifty camera, the game’s great story and fantastic locations will draw you in every step of the way.

For now Lara will continue to be a hot chick in a bad game. The only thing done right in this game was graphics.

Attempts to make several bold steps forward in both gameplay and immersive story design. While it nails the story aspects perfectly there is still just a bit too much of the old Tomb Raider showing through the seams.

This action/adventure suffers from sloppy controls, unwieldy camera angles and frame rate issues that can slow the game to a crawl.

A big, huge game of half-baked ideas. There’s a ton of gameplay and a pretty interesting story here, if you’re willing to deal with bugs, control problems, and lots of loading screens.

Throw in the fact that she barely walks up to a decent jog and that the effect of the changing camera angles can make controlling her a chore. Just getting her to line up for a jump or to a ladder can be painfully frustrating.

It's 2003, yet I'm still stuck turning six hidden gears in order to open one friggin' door? That's just archaic. Games like "Deus Ex" and "Eternal Darkness" have proven that puzzles don't have to be ridiculously monotonous. [Aug 2003, p.90]

The game fails in nearly all of the gameplay areas -- control is awkward and miserable at best, combat is pathetic, and stealth is infantile in its implementation -- leaving only Lara's mainstays, exploration and puzzles, intact.

Painfully average... With the trial-and-error gameplay, lack of very much innovation, and the occasional annoying bugs, it might just require more patience than you have. [Sept 2003, p.36]

While this game has some glimpses of the past greatness of the Tomb Raider franchise, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is so full of glitches and other frustrations that it's hard to enjoy.

Whilst we found ourselves forgiving Lara for moving like a 7-ton dumper truck and Core for basically realising that their new ideas weren’t quite cutting it, we can’t say the same for the bugs that rear their ugly heads all too often - we’ve simply lost count of the number of times we’ve had to reset our Playstation2 because Lara has got stuck in a wall yet again.

This game certainly isn't breaking any new ground, neither have the past few that came before it.