But walking does little to prevent the fact that you’ll die countless times thanks to misjudged jumps. Luckily, you can toggle between a walk and stealth mode, which makes it impossible to accidentally fall off a ledge, which is great given the often-diminutive size of the platforms you must navigate. To say that Angel of Darkness’ control system takes some getting used to would be a huge understatement, but alas it is possible. The camera isn’t always a problem, sometimes you’ll be able to control it Splinter Cell style in certain areas with nary a hitch, but other times your perspective will inexplicable reverse while you are moving, making the same direction you were pushing to proceed suddenly turn around on you so that you are moving the same way you came. The camera system employed in Angel of Darkness doesn’t help matters either. Oftentimes, you are required to jump over large gaps while standing on a platform that is hardly big enough to hold Lara, let alone allow her to position herself for the jump without falling off. Moving Lara around with the L-analog stick is akin to steering a 747 with a make-your-own airplane kit remote control. Once you become acclimated with just exactly what you’re up against with Angel of Darkness’ shoddy gameplay, it becomes immediately apparent that this is going to be a rough ride.
The first couple areas of the game serve as something of a tutorial, informing you via on-screen text how to use Lara’s various abilities to overcome the current obstacle that stands in your way. Unresponsive, tedious, and frustrating will undoubtedly be the most popular buzz words used to describe the control system in Angel of Darkness.
But it is the game’s cinematic story presentation that will eventually endear you despite nearly every other element of the experience just begging you to quit.īut even an intriguing storyline won’t do much to help players endure the game’s abysmal gameplay. In a departure from previous games, Lara can actually affect the amount of pertinent details the player gets to see through finding useful informational items and interactive dialogue, though the game is largely linear regardless of decisions made. The plot thickens and eventually comes to a simmer until a secret society surfaces and the importance of a set of paintings that apparently harbor a dark secret comes into focus.Īs Angel of Darkness is the first in a three part trilogy, the story gradually unfolds and penny-drop realizations are few and far in between initially.
As the plot progresses, it becomes obvious that a known serial killer has been tailing her every step. Lara is on the run and now has to constantly evade authority and find out why her mentor was killed. Unsure exactly what just went down, Lara wonders whether she was the one who did him in, being as they were the only two people in the room when her mentor was shot. The story in Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness begins in Paris with Lara Croft hunched over the dead body of her mentor. Aside from considerable cosmetic enhancements, a more personality-centric plot, and a few gameplay tweaks, Angel of Darkness does little to win over new fans or indeed appease its current fan-base. Unfortunately, nothing could’ve been further from the truth. With its sweeping narration and stoic developer musing, I was under the impression that I was about to undertake an adventure unlike any before it.
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness reviewįrom watching the making-of featurette included on the Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness DVD, you’d think that Core Design, the long-time developers behind the Tomb Raider series, had recreated the Spanish Inquisition.