Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness First Look

It seems like ages now since Lara's preceding adventures in The Last Revelation. Yes, I got to see her. Lara Croft is back. And not just back as in back from the dead, but back as in 'Baby got Back.' Don't take my word for it though, just look for yourself. I got a chance to take a look at some of the new advance screens and the playable demo for Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness and all I have to say is: "Wow!"

Can I come in? Are you guys decent?

Hey, do you smell Chanel No. 5?

Lara is of course, back from the dead in the new Tomb Raider release. This Tomb Raider will be a more out of the jungle adventure though. The new Tomb Raider is set mostly with Lara attempting to track down the murderers of her one time mentor. The catch? The police think that Lara herself is the murderer, so while you track him, they track you. After all the countless sequels to the original game I thought that they couldn't possibly come up with an original enough story. But, apparently they did. This time Lara Croft has fallen victim to a nasty frame, which seemed to have tossed her entire career and reputation right down the sewer. Being a respected citizen and highly regarded archeologist, poor Lara is not used to such a crisis and she's gonna need some help along the way.

Anyhow, the story is as follows: "Lara has changed since her experiences in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. She has become darker, harder, and less tolerant and her tomb raiding days are a distant memory. A desperate phone call from her former mentor Von Croy leads her to Paris. Von Croy has been asked by a sinister client, Eckhardt, to track down one of five 14th century artworks - the Obscura Paintings. She arrives in Paris to find a city in fear. Von Croy has been the victim of a horrific murder and framed for the crime, Lara has no option but to go on the run. During her exploits Lara encounters a kindred spirit in Kurtis Trent, a hardened adventurer like herself, who is in pursuit of Eckhardt. In her struggle to unravel the trail left by Von Croy, Lara becomes involved in underworld deals, grotesque murders, the dark side of an advanced form of alchemy and a history of blood, betrayal, and vengeance spanning across hundreds of years."

Gameplay wise, Tomb Raider will be going over some fundamental changes. First of all, Lara is now required to go through various tasks, which are going to grant her to acquire many new skills. This is where the developers have planned to induce sort of an RPG component to the game. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean that players will collect experience points or leveling Lara's magic skills. It simply means that after performing certain actions, Miss Croft will gain the ability to run fast or jump higher - stuff like that. Also the new TR will be more of an interactive experience than before, Lara will be able to converse and speak with surrounding characters.

Furthermore, for the first time ever in the series a second playable character is being introduced. For portions of the game the player will control Kurtis Trent a character with distinctive moves and mechanics. Moreover, the character Kurtis isn't just there to offer Lara moral support; players will be able to control him just like Lara. The developers have confirmed on several occasions that Kurtis is going to have a variety of moves similar to Miss Croft. As for Miss Croft personally, she will have martial arts capabilities for the first time, which, you gotta admit, sound cool and will surely be a great boost to the gameplay value. When I first heard that they plan to endow sexy Miss Croft with (count 'em) 150 moves altogether, I was really close to collapsing. That's when I realized that for the first time Core Design has decided to radically change the essentials of Tomb Raider. This means we'll finally be treated with a decent and proper sequel.

Are you still single miss Lara?

No kiss for you tonight, stay back!

Visually the game is stunning; with the backgrounds fully rendered and the gameplay much more fluid then the Playstation ancestors that we are familiar with. Core Design, the developer of the Tomb Raider series, has developed an entirely new PS2 engine for this game to glean the maximum amount of power from the Playstation 2 hardware. They have also enhanced Lara herself, increasing the amount of detail on her body tenfold. Additionally, there's one thing we're excited about most. Basically, the whole game will now work with a brand new engine. Our Miss Croft is going to be composed out of 5,000 polygons, in place of the 500 she possessed in the previous game. Now you can just imagine what that's going to do for her looks (rumor has it that her...er...*cough* bosom area will be considerably richer... size-wise).

While playing the demo, I noticed that the controls are well-defined, making the game as easy to play as ever. Overall, Tomb Raider promises to deliver a truly satisfying gaming experience.

As Eidos has confirmed, Tomb Raider: The Angle of Darkness is being created for the PC and Playstation 2 platforms, and recently they've revealed that the game will not be making an appearance on the Xbox console yet.