Tomb Raider: Underworld Review

Story
Tomb Raider: Underworld begins with Lara Croft in the halls of her own mansion home when an explosion suddenly sets the whole building ablaze. Making her way to the front door, Lara is surprisingly fired on by of her closest friends, Zip. The game then rewinds back in time to a week before the explosion, after the events of Tomb Raider Legend. Lara is looking for Avalon, the mythical resting place of King Arthur, hoping it will lead her to an explanation for the disappearance of her long lost father. Underneath the Mediterranean Sea Lara discovers an ancient temple designating itself as "Niflheim", of the lots of Norse underworlds. Deep within, they discovers of Thor's gauntlets. Most of the gauntlet crumbles to dust when they touches it, except for a little stone on the wrist that glows with an eerie blue light. Some mercenaries arrive & knock Lara out. When they comes to, the lead mercenary detonates a bomb that seals Lara in the gauntlet chamber, while remarking that "Amanda Evert sends her regards."

Lara escapes the temple & returns to the surface, noticing a immense cargo ship nearby. Lara boards the ship. In the coursework of a firefight between Lara & the guards, an explosion occurs & the boat begins to sink. While evacuating, Lara comes head to head with an elderly enemy, Jacqueline Natla, whom Lara believed they had killed in Tomb Raider Anniversary, but who had actually been discovered & imprisoned by Amanda. Natla tells Lara that the Norse underworld, Helheim & Avalon are & the same & that they will need to find Thor's Hammer to open the Underworld. Lara soon discovers that they will must find Thor's other gauntlet & his belt in the event that they wishes to find & wield the hammer. Natla provides Lara with a beginning point for her search in this quest - coastal Thailand.


Gameplay
Differences from earlier iterations in the series are that Lara's surroundings reproduces a more "interactive world that reacts and remembers", such that footprints left in the mud or mud transferred to Lara's knee from kneeling on the ground is washed away by rain, the bodies of the foes he encounters stay where he killed them, and any destruction to the environment he causes are permanent. According to creative director Eric Lindstrom, this is "to not only reward the player for the effect they are having on the world, but to give them navigational aids."The game makes use of an animation blending method that allows Lara to interact dynamically along with her surroundings, such as pushing foliage aside with or hands, depending on if he is carrying a weapon. It also features a "hybrid lighting model that combines dynamic lights with carefully created light maps" and a weather method that changes the environment, for example, "If Laraâs negotiating a wet ledge shes more apt to slip or lose grip," which makes "the surroundings \.\. her adversary" for a massive part of the game.


Music
Troels Brun Folmann composed the main theme of the game, & was the music supervisor for Underworld while Colin O'Malley was scoring the bulk of the music. Underworld's music is purely orchestral in style