Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness

"Angel of Darkness? Hardly worth the title of "Angel"."

I was expecting a lot more than mediocre graphics, sluggish controls, very poor camera angles, unstable frame rate. These are the main factors that made this game an un-enjoyable experience for me.

Story: The story itself isn’t that bad at all, sure it’s not the most original story, but it’s fairly cool. The setting takes place in modern Paris, Lara Croft is accused of a murder she can’t remember if she committed the crime or not. And thus the police is after her, most of the time she is running from the cops and trying to figure out what really happened. It seems pretty interesting at first, but it really didn’t keep me hooked. I give it a 7.

Game play: The game play is not very good at all, this is by far the weakest point of the game. Eidos has the idea, but they just didn’t pull thru. First off the controls are really irritating, often times you’ll find yourself screwing up and dying because you didn’t jump right, or you didn’t exactly hit up and jump at the same time. Jumping over gaps is the biggest problem, since often times you think you’re gonna make the jump, but you fall short plummeting to your death. Secondly, you’ll spend most of the time, adjusting the camera! It’s fun! Because the camera will place itself in the most annoying way possible. You go up a ladder, and the camera is facing your front, not your back, which makes it more complicated when you’re trying to line up your jumps correctly. Also when you run down the hall, and happen to turn the corner, the camera just pops right up facing you, then you gotta take a few seconds to place it back. Sure the camera and controls would be acceptable for Survival Horror game such as Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but for an action game, it’s just irritating. Also there are many glitches in this game, a gun was on the ground, and it was blinking, and for some reason I could not pick it up, also the game has frozen on me numerous times. But, there are some good things about this game, I really like the “Indiana Jones” style puzzles, (i.e. jumping across huge gaps, climbing across a latter, and well just generally shooting things up) if only Eidos could have made it a bit easier to control Lara Croft. The auto aim is actually pretty good, I didn’t have any problems at all with it. It auto aims at the nearest guy, and you hit them regardless (unless something is in your way of course) usually takes quite a few shots to kill them though. Also, this game is very hard, this is not a bad thing, I like a game that gives me a challenge. Finding a way to clear gaps and the puzzles take a lot of thinking, since they are not easy in any sense, reminds me of Ico. Although the game play has some strengths, it is very poor, and made me hate the game I give it a 3.

Graphics: The graphics are very poor to other PS2 standards. Lara herself, is very blocky, even during the cinematics, this doesn’t make the game any less enjoyable, but it is there. Also, during certain parts of the game, the frame rate slows down, a lot. It goes to probably 5-10 FPS sometimes, when there is a lot of action on screen, it looks like it’s slow motion, and it is very irritating, especially when you are trying to run from something. I would expect slowdowns for games with fancier and better graphics, but this it just annoying, especially because most games don’t slow down to that much (except maybe games where you can use slow motion to your advantage). Even though the graphics are not up to par on most PS2 games, the blood is nicely done, in my opinion. Blood doesn’t squirt in gallons, it just kinda falls off a little, like in Splinter Cell. I give graphics a 5.

Sound/Audio: The music sounds like something you’d hear in a movie, which is cool. Makes a neat effect in the game. The voice acting itself, is pretty good, whoever did Lara’s voice, knew what they were doing. Angel of Darkness supports Dolby Surround 5.1, but sadly , the sound effects don’t really sound good. The gunfire sounds week, and whenever you fall down a great distance, you don’t even hear the slightest dud. I give it a 6.

Replay Value: Well, there’s not much, you can always go back and try to collect all the items you missed, hardly worth replaying. I give it a 2, since hardcore fans may do that.

Unless you’re a diehard Lara Croft fan, I would not suggest buying AoD, or even renting it. There was too much hype around this game before the release, I really wish Eidos had made the controls a lot more simpler. But I give the final rating a 4, this game had a lot of potential too.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/26/03, Updated 07/26/03